Posts Tagged ‘living and life’

My 4th Blogging Anniversary

Posted: August 2, 2015 in Living and Life, Reflections, Writing
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
6

Happy Birthday to the blog,
Happy Birthday to the blog.
Happy Birthday Rami Ungar the Writer
Happy Birthday to the blog.

Well, it’s a big day for me and for this blog, folks. Four years ago, at a library in Columbus, Ohio, 18 year old me logged onto WordPress for the first time and wrote a very bare blog post explaining who I was and why I was starting a blog (while also making a distinction between myself and the Rami Ungar in Israel who apparently is some big shipping magnate). I had absolutely no idea what I was doing at the time, because I’d thought blogging would be easy and that I didn’t need to watch the tutorials. I also thought that I’d have five hundred loyal and excited followers by the first anniversary and that they would be hanging on my every word.

Boy, did reality hit fast. I did learn eventually about blogging, and that doing it well is an ongoing process. I also did not get that many followers in that first year. Maybe 60. And I didn’t get that many views in the first year, either. Or for part of the second year. But I kept at it, kept blogging. People somehow found their way here and decided, for whatever reason, to subscribe and like and occasionally comment. And here we are four years later, with me in Germany, and you guys coming from the United States, Canada, England, Austria, and so many other places. It’s just humbling, so thank you all for being here.

You know, when I started this blog, I did it for a simple, slightly selfish reason: I wanted a ready readership for when I published my stories. Yeah, that’s it. I’ve known since I was a kid I wanted to be an author and to have people reading my books, so I wanted to make sure that when it happened I had a lot of people who would be willing to read my books when they came out or buy a copy of a magazine when I got something published there.

Well, like every journey, I’ve found something much different. I mean, some of you do read my books and short stories when they are published, and I’m sincerely grateful for that, really. But I’ve found much more. I’ve found wonderful friends, some of whom have helped me in so many ways in making sure that my stories are as good as they should be. Without blogging, I would never have discovered Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors, which has been a great boost for my career and for my following. I started a new blog, From the Voice of Common Sense, which has been pretty fun to write and has had some interesting results.

And I’m sure more great things are to come. I’m hoping that this next year I’ll reach a thousand followers, and I’m pretty sure before that happens I’ll reach twenty-five hundred comments.  Depending on how many people read my posts, I could get somewhere between thirty-five and forty-thousand views, and at some point I’ll get five-thousand likes.

More importantly, I’ll probably make some more great friends, and maybe meet some of them offline (it could happen). I might publish a book or two, and I’ll certainly get a few short stories out, starting with “Tigress Lizzy” in the anthology coming out this October. And as for life…I don’t know. I’m hoping I find permanent employment after this internship with the US Army Civilian Corps is over. If that doesn’t happen, I have other options that I’m seriously considering. We’ll see what happens.

Thanks for celebrating with me, everyone. It means a lot to me.

Thanks for celebrating with me, everyone. It means a lot to me.

In the meantime, thanks for sticking with me through these four years, everyone. I hope we have a wonderful and somewhat scary time in the next year, as I work hard on becoming a successful horror novelist who might someday be able to take up writing full-time (I can dream).

You know, when I get to the fifth anniversary, I’m going to have to do something special. An autographed book giveaway? A big sale? Maybe name a character after someone I know? We’ll have to see.

That’s all for now. You have a wonderful rest of your day, my Followers of Fear. I know I will.

Self-Pub Authors: Avoiding the Info-Dump

Posted: August 1, 2015 in Journalism, Writing
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
0

My latest article from Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors has just gone live. This time around it’s Avoiding the Info-Dump, and ways to make sure you’re not giving your reader too much information at any one time. I used lessons I learned after receiving feedback on Rose in order to write this article, so I’m hoping what I learned comes in handy.

If you get the chance, please head over and check it out. And while you’re there, check out the other articles on the website. Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors is brought to you by indie writers for indie writers and contains numerous articles on how to write, edit, publish and market your fiction independently and without spending yourself into the ground. As both a general indie writer and a writer for the site, I’ve found it extremely helpful.

All for now. I’ll be posting more over the weekend, so keep an eye out for those. Have a good one, my Followers of Fear. And thanks to everyone who have been wishing me support and love since my last post. You really brought up my mood and helped me when I needed it. I couldn’t be more grateful to have such a good group of people around me.

Until next time!

Something I Need to Get Off My Chest

Posted: July 31, 2015 in Living and Life, Reflections
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
10

Well, Wi-Fi’s back, after being off for about a week. It’s the highlight of a week that’s been rather rough on me.

Don’t get me wrong, for the most part I’m loving Germany. I’m getting great work experience that’ll definitely come in handy after this internship, I’ve got great prospects for afterwards, I’m learning a lot about this country, its people and the language everyone speaks. And I’m seeing and doing amazing things that some only dream of doing.

But like anything in life, there’s ups and downs and lately I’ve been getting a lot of downs. My catchphrase lately is “if it’s not one thing, it’s always another”, and it definitely applied this week when a lot of the time I felt stressed and fatigued and just plain miserable. In other words, not me. At some points I wondered if I’d made a mistake coming to Germany. At other times, I wondered if God was maybe punishing me for something I’d done (perhaps getting into Tarot was a bad idea after all).

What’s been causing this, you ask? A number of things. Work, for one. It’s good people and it’s got great benefits and I get to write articles, which is fun. But often I’m doing tasks that nobody likes doing, and they stress me out. There’s also a hundred different that for some reason or another are mixed up or unresolved and when that happens it comes back to bite me in weird ways. I only just found out that somewhere along the line, my mailbox wasn’t properly put into the system, so I wasn’t receiving any mail! You can imagine the annoyance fixing that was!

There are other problems, as well. It’s not easy to go shopping. The closest supermarket is limited in what it has (and it’s in German, so I can only get things I can make on my own), and the base’s commissary is a trip to make, so unless someone’s providing a car, I can’t go there to get the stuff I’d like to cook with. So this leads to me eating things that may not always be good for me, which affects my health (and I was starting to lose a little weight).

And you already know there was the Wi-Fi situation. For a week because of a bank error we couldn’t connect to the Internet. And let’s face it, you need Internet to live in this world. So much of our lives is invested in it these days, being cut off at home and having limited access at work was another trigger for stress.

Add in a few other things, and it got really bad for me some days. Today, I even snapped at my roommate who was trying to help me resolve a problem. I apologized right after I realized what I’d done, but it was still awful and I felt really bad for doing it. And there I was, beating myself up for that. Another problem.

As I’ve been saying from the beginning, it’s been a tough week for me.

But there are reasons to feel optimistic. For one, the weekend’s here, and our Wi-Fi’s been restored. Always a reason to rejoice there. I can relax at home and watch Netflix, or go out on the town and explore areas I haven’t seen before. And while I was without Internet, I got a lot of work done. I finished editing Video Rage, rewrote Streghe, wrote a lot of blog posts on MS Word which I would post at lunch the next day, and I wrote two outlines for short stories I plan to write before starting on the next draft of Laura Horn. Definitely not bad. Pretty prolific, actually.

Plus after kind of getting off it once I got to Germany, I’ve started meditating again. I think that made a major difference. Meditation lifts my mood, makes me calmer and helps ground me. Not doing it affected my mood, so I’m definitely trying to make it part of my life again.

And now that the Internet’s back, I can also Skype with my folks when they’re online! That’s a huge reason to celebrate right there.

And the other problems…well, I’ll resolve them somehow. I’ve got to think positive. Can’t let myself mope over them. After all, you can’t accomplish much if you spend your whole life depressed over every little thing, and I certainly don’t plan on that happening to me. I’m doing what I normally do, and I’m going to seize life by the horns. It’s how I’ve gotten this far, after all.

So wish me luck and encouragement, my Followers of Fear. After this week, I’ll need it so I don’t have a repeat next week.

Have a great weekend!

#FirstLineFriday

Posted: July 31, 2015 in Living and Life, Novel, Writing
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
2

It’s Friday again, so you know what that means! Yep, it’s #FirstLineFriday again! Here, I post the first one or two lines of a potential story, a story-in-progress, or an already published story. Today’s entry comes from the current draft of my sci-fi sequel Video Rage, which I completed the other day:

The sun baked concrete and metal in the hundred-plus degree heat, the many cars and trucks reflecting light off their chrome bodies like blinding beasts zooming down the highway.

Now there’s some scene-setting imagery.

Have any thoughts/comments/critiques? Let me know, I love feedback.

All for now. I hope you have a great weekend everyone. I plan on maybe exploring the areas around Wiesbaden this weekend, so that should be fun. I might even blog about it…assuming I can get Wi-Fi. Until next time!

It Has To Be Longer

Posted: July 30, 2015 in ideas, Living and Life, Novel, Reflections, short story, Writing
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
2

About four times in my writing career, I’ve come up with really great ideas for stories, and I think they’d work at under ten-thousand words, which is what is usually the maximum length for a short story. But as I think about this idea and the story I plan to write with it, or as I try to write it and I run into problems, I realize something important: it has to be longer than a short story. There’s just no way I’m going to be able to put everything I want in this short story within such a small range. This is going to need to be much longer.

In other words, it’s going to need to be a novel.

For me, this is always frustrating to some degree. I have this idea, and I think that maybe I can get it written within a few weeks. And then I realize there’s more than one direction this story can go. And I want to add in so much material, which is impossible with just ten-thousand words. And yet I don’t want to give up any of it! So I cross it off my short story list and put it on my novel list, even though I realize that it might be years before I get around to writing it.

It’s even more frustrating when I’ve already attempted to write this particular idea as a short story. I wrote a story about a man who gets resurrected from death through science. It was great. But it had so much in it, so much hinted at within its pages. When I lent it to a friend, he told me that it would work great as a novel or even as a movie. After a lot of thought, I realized he was right.

And remember “the short story I’ve been struggling with on and off with for over a year”? Also known as “The Murderer’s Legacy”, “Miranda’s Tempest”, and “Strong’s Trial”, I could not get that story to work for the life of me. And with every draft and every change, I felt I was getting closer and at the same time getting farther away from the story that this story should be. Eventually I figured out a way to make this story work, but it meant turning this into a full-length novel. I was just like, “Fine. I’m not going to think of another way this story could work anytime soon, so let’s just keep it as is and hope I get around to it sooner rather than later.”

And last night, I was thinking of outlining this idea for a short story that I wanted to write. I sat down in front of my laptop to start outlining, and just as I put the order of events together in my head, I thought, No way can I get all this in within even twenty-thousand words. This has to be a novel. Aw dammit. Oh well, the story calls for it. What am I going to do?

Yeah, what am I going to do? How many ideas for short stories am I going to have that will eventually need to be turned into novels that might take years to get around to because that’s how busy I get sometimes? I hate it. I wish there was a way I could make these stories work as short stories. Especially that one I was going to work on yesterday, it was going to examine the Israeli-Palestinian conflict!

But it’s just not going to happen. I can’t fit these stories within ten or twenty-thousand words. They won’t work then, they won’t have the same punch if they were novels. There’s a reason I never got a version of Miranda’s Tempest/The Murderer’s Legacy/Strong’s Trial I liked, because I was writing it with a view of making it shorter than it needed to be.

And you know what? Sometimes you just can’t control the story like that. As an author, you have a lot of control over your story, you are its God in a sense. But at the same time, the story has some control over you. Events go certain ways you never thought about, characters act in a different way you thought they would and take things in a different direction. Authors of all types and experience know that this is a thing and that it happens a lot. And when it does, you just have to go with the flow or your story won’t turn out the way you hope.

I just hope someday I have more time than I do now to write, that I can get to these stories sooner rather than later. Perhaps someday I will. I know several writers who started writing part-time and through hard work, perseverance, and a bit of luck, became full-time writers able to devote their full energies to writing. That could be me someday. I’m still young and early in my career. A few more books, some more advertising and reviews. You never know what’s going to happen.

I do wish I had less of these ideas where I think they’ll be great short stories, but later on I realize they need to be novels. As I said above, it’s annoying when that happens.

Do you ever have this problem with a story? How do you feel about it when it happens?

When you do end up writing these stories at the right length, does it normally work out?

Streghe: Rewritten

Posted: July 29, 2015 in ideas, Living and Life, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

What do you call a writer cut off from Wi-Fi, has too much time on his hands, and a lot of stories he wants to get out of his head and into the heads of others? If you guessed Rami Ungar, you are correct. Last night the Wi-Fi was still out, so I decided to work on rewriting one of my short stories where I was really dissatisfied with the first draft and wanted to change things up. The result was that this morning I finished rewriting Streghe, with phenomenal results.

Now if you don’t know about or remember Streghe, let me give you some background: during my last semester at Ohio State I took a class on the history of witchcraft to fill out the last requirement of my History major (yes, a class like that was offered, and it was awesome). One of the witch mythologies we studied in that class was that of the streghe, which comes from the Umbrian region of Italy. Now in Italian streghe means “witch” and comes from the word for owl, but in that region the word takes on an entirely different meaning. Rather than involving women who assembled to worship Satan, eat the flesh of children, and cast spells with the help of demon familiars as in traditional European witchcraft mythologies, Umbrian streghe usually worked alone or in pairs, did not consort with demons that often, if at all, drank blood from children as a form of sustenance like vampires, and had their own powers, including the power to transform into owls, which normal witches were said not to have (and that is your free history lesson for the day).

Hearing this mythology, I was inspired immediately and wanted to tell a story based on it. So over the last month of school or so, when I wasn’t busy with my thesis project, I wrote a short story that grew to the size of a novelette. And when I finished it, I found that I hated it. The story was way too long, the plot was all over the place, and at times the story actually felt like it was dragging itself along just to get to the ending. During the writing of the first draft I went back several times just to try a different angle, so I knew something was off even then.

I decided to let it sit for a few months and work on other projects and see what ideas to fix the story to me. Well, something did come to me recently, thanks to time and some Lovecraft stories I’ve been reading recently (I’ll have to write a blog post about that later when I’ve read more of his work). So as soon as I finished editing Video Rage (which was two days ago, by the way), I decided to dive back into Streghe and see what I could do with it.

The result was fantastic. I cut the story by about half to just under five-thousand words, reduced the backstory of antagonist Tom in favor of expanding protagonist Sarah’s backstory (he’s an ass anyway, so I don’t think people will care if they don’t know how he became that way), as well as reducing the number of characters in the story, and added more elements from the original mythology, among other things. And as of this morning, I feel I have much tighter, creepier, and more exciting story than what I had before. Maybe in a draft or two I get it published in a magazine (I know of one that might be interested in this one, depending on the final word count).

For now though, I think I’ll let this one lie for a little while, so that when I edit it I can look at it with fresh eyes. In the meantime, I think I’ll recharge my batteries a little before I tackle my next project. If the Wi-Fi’s back when I get home tonight, I’ll probably watch some Netflix and YouTube and plan that trip to Munich. If it’s not, I’ve got a couple of books, including one from my boss at the office, so I’ll dive into that.

In the meantime, I’m feeling pretty good about myself and about life. I’ve gotten a lot written and edited, I’m gaining valuable work experience and some language skills while here in Germany, and even if this job doesn’t last beyond the three months, I have some more prospects I can look into, so there’s plenty to be hopeful for. Things are going well for me lately, and I plan to ride that good wave for as long as possible.

Until next time, my Followers of Fear. Ein schonen tag!

Video Rage: Second Draft Finished

Posted: July 28, 2015 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Writing
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Well, latest estimates suggest that I’ll be getting Wi-Fi at my apartment back up tomorrow or Thursday, which caused me to turn into an angry gorilla and go on a rampage in downtown Wiesbaden last night (please send all complaints and bills to Donald Trump’s Campaign Headquarters). So I’m writing this on a Word document so that I can copy and paste it onto a blog post during my lunch break, when I’m allowed on blogging websites. At the moment, it’s the best I can do.

Now what did I come here to write about? Oh yes, the wonderful news for all you fans of Reborn City. Last night I completed the second draft of Video Rage, RC’s sequel, thanks to a lack of Wi-Fi and plenty of time on my hands yesterday evening (remind me to write about the benefits and problems of not having Wi-Fi after I get it back). For those of you who might be unfamiliar with the RC series, Reborn City is about street gangs in a dystopian future, told mostly from the point-of-view of Zahara Bakur, a Muslim teenager who is forced to join one of the gangs when her parents are murdered. It’s probably my most popular work, and I hope people enjoy VR as much as they liked RC.

All told, VR is a bit shorter than RC (but then again, RC had several chapters devoted to flashbacks, so that might explain a few things). The second draft is about 297 pages (8.5” x 11”, double spaced, twelve-point Times New Roman), two pages shorter than the first draft, and 82,441 words (about fifteen-hundred shorter than the first draft). I think this might be shorter than the first Harry Potter book, but I wouldn’t vouch for it. I can say for sure though that it reads better than the first draft, and that it sets up for the third and final book very well.

Now what’ll happen now that the second draft is finished? Well, I have a friend who is looking at the manuscript (he looked at RC prior to its publication) and once I get some feedback from him, I’ll do some more editing. After that, depending on how I feel, I could do a fourth draft, or I could get ready for some publication (I can hear most of my family, especially my sister, already shouting that it should go straight to publication). We’ll see what happens.

In the meantime, there’s a short story I have to rewrite, another one I want to write a first draft of, and maybe I’ll do a third short story because I am finally getting good at writing these things. After that, I have to rewrite my thriller Laura Horn, and after that I have to do a third draft of Rose, and I’m also planning a trip to Munich for either this or next weekend, and also…you know, I think it’s safe just to say I’m going to be very busy on a bunch of other projects but as committed as ever to writing and publishing quality stories while at the same time exploring as much of Germany as possible while I’m here (speaking of which, if you have any suggestions for places to visit in Munich, particularly scenic or historic locations, please let me know).

All for now. I’ve still got a long and busy day ahead of me, so I’m going to get right on it. I’ll write again when I have the chance. Let’s hope the Wi-Fi returns at home sooner than later, right?

Bis spatter, mein Anhanger der Angst! (Translation: See you later, my Followers of Fear!)

Is Gun Violence America’s Chronic Condition?

Posted: July 26, 2015 in Living and Life, Politics and Leadership, Reflections, Social Activism
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
2

I’ve been without Wi-Fi these past couple of days at home, so I’ve been only able to get online at work and at a cafe not too far from my apartment. If that wasn’t the case, I would’ve written about this soon after these latest cases happened. But I’m making up for it now, and I’m doing it with the same sense of bereavement that I would if I were writing this as soon as it happened.

First South Carolina. Then the attacks in Tennessee. A few days later, we’ve got shootings at a movie theater in Louisiana, three years after the shootings in Aurora, and one in Los Angeles on Ventura Boulevard. That’s four major shootings in two months. And once again, it seems unlikely that anything’s really going to get done about it. America isn’t suffering from a gun epidemic. It’s suffering from a chronic condition, and maybe only half the country is willing to admit that this condition needs to be treated (I think we can call that a political schizophrenia of sorts).

Despite what some have said, this condition needs to be treated. And the treatment is not more guns. According to the latest research, self-defensive gun use occurs very rarely, and that when it does it does very little to actually stop injuries or property loss. So there goes that whole “good guy with a gun” belief. Besides, if you were going to treat AIDS, you wouldn’t give more people the virus, would you? So why give more people guns if guns are the problems?

Now I know what the Second Amendment says: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” And since the people in favor of the Second Amendment say we need to follow what the Constitution says, guns should be available…in case the government needs to form a militia in order to protect itself. But there should be more restrictions as to who gets guns, and what sort of guns. Why have an automatic rifle in your home? You’re not going to go hunting with it, and if you ever have the need to use it in your home, you’re likely going to end up making your living room look like it’s been visited by the Terminator or John McClain. What sort of use is there for that sort of weapon outside of a battlefield, then?

When it comes down to it, America’s chronic condition needs to be treated. The loopholes that allow gun sales to go through without sufficient background checks need to be closed, and the system errors that allowed Dylan Roof and the man from the Louisiana shooting need to be fixed as well. Background checks should be expanded and made tghter, and what sort of guns are available to the public should be restricted (like I said, what use is there for military weaponry i a private home? Might as well keep a rocket launcher around), and there should be fewer people allowed to carry firearms on them in public unless they have a legitimate reason for having them (stalker or important public figure who is likely to be targeted? Sure. Generalized anxiety of being attacked? There’s medication for that). And of course there needs to be more resources for the mentally ill, a lot of these attacks are carried out by people with mental illnesses. But of course perfectly sane people can carry out acts of extreme violence as well.

And that’s enough to worry me.

Say what you will, but after so many acts of violence involving guns, what’s happening isn’t a few rogue individuals with problems or just random accidents. These aren’t hurricanes or earthquakes. What we’re dealing with here is a long-term illness, and it needs to be treated. Research has to be done, effective treatments have to be developed. Otherwise this will keep happening, and more people will be lost and nothing will be done until none of us are left.

And I may just be shouting on the Internet, that happens a lot. But to stand by and not say something when evil is occurring in my nation allows evil to proliferate. So I’m shouting for treatment, and i’m hoping something actually gets done before another attack occurs.

Because no one should have to lose someone to something that is completely preventable. And that includes a chronic condition like gun violence.

#FirstLineFriday (Plus My 1000th Post!)

Posted: July 24, 2015 in Living and Life, Progress Report, Writing
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
6

It’s Friday again! You know what that means! It’s #FirstLineFriday!

It also happens to be my 1000th blog post. Yes, you read that right. This is my one-thousandth blog post. Nearly four years after I started blogging, I’ve reached this momentous milestone. And I couldn’t have done it without all of you. In the early days, when I only got one or two views every couple of days, I thought a lot about giving up. But you guys kept coming. From the far reaches of the globe and the farther reaches of the Internet, you came, read, liked, commented, and even followed. So thanks everyone. Without your help, I would not be here today.

And now, it’s #FirstLineFriday, so let’s dive right into it. Here’s what you do: on Friday you post the first or first two lines of a potential work, a work-in-progress, or a published story. This week’s entry comes from a novel involving ghosts I might work on after I get through Video Rage, Laura Horn and Rose (yeah, I’m planning that far ahead, apparently). I’ve had an idea for what the opening lines would be for awhile now, so here’s a good way to test them out and see how people react to them. Enjoy:

I awoke, feeling very uneasy, though why I couldn’t say. Sitting up, I scanned my bedroom, sure I’d heard somebody scream just a moment before.

Thoughts? Errors? Critiques? Let me know.

Well, that’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. This weekend I’m spending time at home just relaxing (especially since Sunday is Tisha B’Av, a big holiday with a fast in the Jewish calendar. Don’t want to do anything crazy, do we?), maybe planning a trip to Munich, maybe cleaning and doing laundry and editing Video Rage. If I have something to post about, I’ll let you guys know.

Ein schonen tag, mein Anhanger der Angst! Let’s stick together for another thousand posts, shall we?

8 More Problems That Only Horror Fans Have That Nobody Else Gets

Posted: July 22, 2015 in Living and Life, Reflections, Scary Stuff
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Two months ago, I published a post about problems only horror fans have and understand. Since then, I’ve thought of more problems that face the horror community, so I’ve decided to write a post about those problems and try being funny as well as educational. And I’ll probably fail miserably while I’m at it.

And now you’re thinking, “He’s going to try to be funny and educational and fail at it too? EEEK!” I wish you wouldn’t think that, I put a lot of work into this blog post!

1. Not enough Slender-Man media. If you live under a rock, Slender-Man is an Internet meme I’ve visited before on this blog, a faceless being with a tall body and long, lanky arms wearing a suit. The myth varies depending on who’s telling it, but usually he lives in the woods, occasionally has tentacles, and likes to kidnap/scare/sometimes even kill children. It started as a couple of photos made for a contest on an Internet site and has since grown and become a modern piece of Internet folklore.

Sadly, Slender-Man’s copyrighted, and not by the guy who originally created him (who is fine with any adaptations as long as they’re good), but by a third party whose identity is unknown to the public. So if you want to make a for-profit work based on good ol’ Slendy, you need to find this third party and ask them for permission. Which sucks because how can you negotiate a deal with someone you can’t find? Such is the quest to make Slender-Man merchandise.

2. We’re getting our IT adaptation…with a catch. Last time I wrote about this, I mentioned how Cary Fukunaga’s two-part adaptation of the Stephen King classic was cancelled because Fukunaga and New Line couldn’t see eye-to-eye over budget and creative directions. Well, good news, looks like New Line is still trying to make the adaptation. Just two problems: one is it’s probably going to be a single movie. Really? This is a thousand page book! Even a three hour movie will hardly get most of what made one of King’s scariest creations very good.

Even worse, the guy being courted for director is Andy Muschietti, who directed 2013’s Mama. Now a lot of people found that movie scary, but I felt that it was overall not very good. Started out great, but got slow and cliched near the end. So you can see why I’m a little hesitant over this directing choice, especially with only one movie to work with.

Seriously, why not two parts? The Hobbit got three, and it’s one book! And when Peter Jackson adapted the LOTR trilogy, it was a big, risky move. Look at how that paid out!

*Sigh* I really hope I’m surprised by this movie if it comes to be.

3. “Why not a happy story?” This actually happened to me today. I was talking to my boss and we were discussing an ice cream truck that passes through the base every day. I was trying to think of a short story involving an ice cream truck with an original and scary twist. She just looked at me with this funny face and asked, “Why can’t you write a happy story?”

Who says horror stories can’t have happiness in them? Seriously, some of them do end with the monsters gone and the main characters still alive and actually stronger for their struggles against evil. Yeah, some of them end in tragedy. But there are happy endings.

And besides, would a happy story really be that interesting? Once upon a time a bunch of schoolchildren went to play in the flower fields. They picked flowers, and one of the ones they picked turned into a handsome prince. The prince said a witch had turned him into a flower after he refused to marry her, and he would’ve died with the first frost if the kids hadn’t plucked him among the flower fields. So the prince made them all honorary princes and princesses and they were forever allowed into his castle to eat ice cream and ride the horses and learn how to dance like they do at Viennese balls.

I think I might vomit if I don’t fall asleep from boredom.

4. “But don’t you get nightmares?” Another one from my boss (in her defense, I think she ordered a copy of Reborn City today, so at least we know she’s got good taste). Yes, I do get nightmares occasionally. It’s estimated that all adults get at least two nightmares a year. Rarely do I get them from the movies I watch and books I read, though. And I’m willing to risk the possibility that one day I’ll be scared in my dreams because of one of those books or movies. Just means someone’s doing their job in making something super-scary, right?

I’ll even dream about him if it means a good scary story!

5. Horror’s so cliched. Actually, no it’s not. True, a lot of horror stories do have their tropes and conventions that appear a lot: the virgin girl, the slutty girl, the campground, the sin factor, etc. But hey, have you seen people who get upset over Bible films if there’s even a single deviation from even the most obscure text? They want the same story every time! Now that’s a lot of cliches.

And horror doesn’t always rely on cliches. There’s a lot of originality in horror, if you care to look. It Follows, I Am a Ghost, Carrie, Dracula, Interview with a Vampire. All of those were very original, thank you very much.

6. Horror has no depth. Oh, so there’s no depth in a ghost or heads getting cut off? Really? Well, where’s the depth in comedies with fart jokes? Or stories where we all go in knowing the hero and heroine will eventually hook up and that’s the only reason why we paid money for this? Where’s the depth in that?

You’d be surprised how deep a horror story can go. Anne Rice’s early Vampire Chronicles are known for their poetic philosophy and imagery. Some, including the author, has described them as “the agnostic’s search for the truth” (this is a rough quote, I may have phrased it wrong). IT, which I discussed above, deals simultaneously with the loss of childhood innocence and the rediscovery of childhood belief. And don’t you dare tell me that The Shining doesn’t explore the struggle of personal needs and desires versus the good of the group! Think about it!

7. No, I’m not sex-starved and that’s why I enjoy horror. Yeah, horror sometimes is dirty. Doesn’t mean we’re making up for something. Unless you’re the filmmakers behind the Friday the 13th remake, in which case you packed in as many boobs as possible because you wanted people to see the movie AND it was a dry spell (Ooh, new slam on that shitty movie!).

And why are you wondering about our sex lives? It’s none of your business, you perverts!

Yeah, I like these guys. So what?

8. Ghost hunting. Okay, this might just be my problem, but just bear with me, because it’s related. Plenty of people believe in ghosts, interest in horror or not. Some of us believe that it is possible to find out about ghosts using modern-day technology, which is why we support ghost hunters and even watch some of the ghost-hunting teams that have their own TV shows.

So what’s the problem? Some people think ghost hunters are snake oil salesmen and make fun of them and their shows whenever the subject comes up. For those like me who believe in ghosts and maybe even base our ghost mythologies on what ghost hunters may uncover in investigations, it’s hurtful.

Yeah, this isn’t strictly a horror problem. But it’s a problem nonetheless.

~~~

Did you identify with any of these problems? Did I miss any? Was I funny? If not, did you at least learn something?

Well, hope you enjoyed this whatever your reaction. Just thought I’d get out another list. Hopefully I won’t find any more reasons we horror fans have it tough. Have a goodnight, Followers of Fear!

The wait till DVD…oh dammit!

Older Entries
Newer Entries