Posts Tagged ‘reflections’

Munich: The Cradle of Nazism

Posted: August 9, 2015 in Living and Life, Tales from Abroad, Writing
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The building where Kristallnacht was planned.

The building where Kristallnacht was planned.

I’m telling you, I had quite the day yesterday. Besides spending half the day traveling between my apartment in Wiesbaden and the train station in Munich, I mean. That was just a pain in the butt, as well as a strain on my wallet (I will not be traveling for the next few weeks because of it most likely).

Well, let’s skip over the long, mostly uneventful train rides, and get right into my day in Munich. I got there a bit before noon despite several delays along the way and managed to grab a bite to eat and some extra water before meeting up with Taff Simon, my tour guide. Taff, a Welsh archaeologist who works on WWII-related sites when not in the midst of giving people tours (and whom I highly recommend for a tour if you’re interested in WWII stuff), was the best tour guide. Since we both were well-versed in Nazi history, he didn’t have to spend a lot of time filling me in on basic Nazi history. Instead, he took me to various locations around the city that had Nazi history attached to them.

For example, our very first stop was the place where Kristallnacht was thought up. Yeah, that place still exists, it’s an old, church-like building with two arched tunnels built into it for through-traffic. Kristallnacht was thought up during a dinner party for the fifteenth anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch being held inside. To this day there are memorials in one of the tunnels commemorating what had happened.

The coffee shop where Hitler would come up with his speeches. The Devil's Column is in the back.

The coffee shop where Hitler would come up with his speeches. The Devil’s Column is in the back.

I also got to see the places where the German Worker’s Party, the forerunner of the Nazi Party, met, as well as the meeting place of the Thule Society and the building where the SS was founded. We also visited the spot where the Beer Hall Putsch was stopped by police and an alleyway that was used to avoid the memorial that would later be set up there and became pretty famous consequently. We also visited a few beer gardens that had some history with the Nazis (though no one likes to admit it), including the Hofbraushaus, where Hitler would often give speeches after writing them in a coffeehouse down the street (to this day, the column in that shop he’d sit next to while preparing his speeches is known as The Devil’s Column).

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The Hofbrauhaus, where Hitler gave some of his speeches in Munich.

Really, one of the big things you take away from this tour of Munich is that Nazism really was born here. This was the city where the German Worker’s Party grew and evolved into its more terrifying form that we know so well today, where major events shaping the party took place, where the Thule met and where the SS was born. You even see pieces of that history today, not just in memorials but in buildings and architecture, in pieces of art, and just in the stories told about certain places. It’s quite fascinating.

Taff also took me to the University District of Munich, and brought me to the place where the White Rose, a small resistance group that operated during the early forties, would distribute leaflets hoping to get their fellow students and intelligentsia to resist the Nazis. To this day there are stone copies of their leaflets embedded in the courtyard in front of the medical school and memorials to the group within for their heroism and martyrdom.

He also took me around that area of town, showing me a building where the Nazis used to hold offices and where Hitler signed the 1937 “peace accords”, a square with Greco-Roman buildings set up where rallies were held, the remains of a temple decided to the people who died on the night of the Putsch, and quite a few others. Believe me, when he showed me the building where the Gestapo used to be headquartered, I had a bit of a chill.

One of the stone leaflets in memory of the White Rose.

One of the stone leaflets in memory of the White Rose.

By the end of the tour we ended up back where we started, in the square near the building where Kristallnacht had been planned. As I was hot and nursing a small headache by that time, I thanked Taff for showing me all that I described above and more and asked him to send me information of any future tours he might be doing (including one about some rather gruesome witch hunts and other nastiness that had happened in the city). Taff also directed me to the Hugendubel, a five-floor bookstore that had several books on Nazism and Munich’s history within its walls. I bought a very large tome and headed home after that, feeling like I had definitely made the most of my weekend.

All in all, it was a very exciting and edifying tour. I took somewhere between sixty and seventy-five photos in total, most of which I deemed good enough to send to myself (uploading them to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram is going to be a pain in the ass). I also got to see locations I didn’t know existed, let alone were still standing, and I felt like I was getting to step right into history thanks to Taff’s expertise and storytelling. And I got to see the city of Munich, which in itself is just wonderful.

The old headquarters of the Gestapo. Actually took a step back in fear when I found out what it was. You can guess why.

The old headquarters of the Gestapo. Actually took a step back in fear when I found out what it was. You can guess why.

And I even got some help with my writing here. As you can imagine, I’ve got plenty of ideas for stories that involve World War II and the Holocaust, including a book series I plan to write someday that I think could be my Dark Tower series (though probably not as complicated). Going to Munich yesterday certainly helped to give me a sense of what living back then was like and helped flesh out the setting for those stories, and I even had an idea for a new short story based on the info Taff told me.

It was just a wonderful trip and I’m glad I went. I’lm definitely going to try to do another post or two about my day in Munich, one showing some more of the photos I took and one about some of the really cool souvenirs I got from the city (trust me, that’s worth doing another post about).

Well, that’s all for now. I’m going to get off the computer and get some other work done. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day, my Followers of Fear.

And if any of you are ever in Munich and want to go on a tour like I did, I highly recommend giving Taff Simon a call. He’s a great guy, he knows what he’s talking about, and you’ll definitely come away feeling it was worth the trip.Here’s the link to his website if you’re interested.

A Question For My Readers

Posted: August 6, 2015 in Living and Life, Novel, Writing
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Doing something a little different today. I actually want your opinion, Followers of Fear. Do you remember an article I wrote for Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors a while back about ACX, a company that produces audio books for authors (if you don’t or you’ve never read it, click here to get caught up)? Since then, I’ve been considering on and off producing an audio book based on one of my books, probably one of the novels.

The question is, would anyone be interested in getting an audio book based on one of my stories? If they did, which one? And for how much would they be willing to buy it?

So I thought I’d ask my readers these same questions. If you feel comfortable, please leave a comment below telling me the following:

  • Would you be willing to listen to a Rami Ungar audio book?
  • Which book would you prefer produced as an audio book, Reborn City or Snake?
  • How much would you be willing to pay for said audio book?

Anyway, thanks for your help, my Followers of Fear. I’m looking forward to hearing your resposnes and making a decision based on them. Until next time!

Pointing Out Fred’s Race: That Weird Thing About Race in Fiction

Posted: August 6, 2015 in Living and Life, Reflections, Writing
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If you’ve known me for a while, I’m big on trying to correct injustices and inequalities. Racism is a big one for me, and when I hear people say “Racism’s dead” or “It’s not as big a deal as people make it out to be”, I’m among those pointing out why those folks are so wrong. In my own fiction I try to create casts that are very diverse, using characters with different sexual orientations, religions, genders, gender identities, ages, and races, among others.

Which brings me to why I’m writing this post. The past couple of days I’ve been working on a new short story that will probably turn into a novelette, based on how many words I’ve written so far. In it, four of the main characters are white, while one of them is black (and in a relationship with another male character, but I digress). While writing the first scene in the story, I was trying to point out the that Fred, my black character, is black. Why? Because I worry that unless I point it out, they’re going to assume he’s white.

Realizing that I was thinking this made me stop and think about my other works. Why do I take the time to point out a character’s race? Do I do the same thing for my white characters? And why do I assume that they’ll think I’m white in the first place?

On that last question, my roommate here in Germany, who has a background in psychology, was able to provide the answer to this question of mine one morning while waiting for the bus: “Most people tend to transfer their own qualities to others, including characters in stories.” That makes sense to me, and I’ve got a personal anecdote to back it up (I know anecdotes don’t count as scientific data, but bear with me): when I was 17 I spent five weeks in Israel and at one point we passed by a bookstore with some books in English. Having already read through the two books I’d brought with me (no surprise there), I went in, browsed the titles, and bought I, Alex Cross by James Patterson. This was my first Alex Cross book, but sixteenth in the series overall, and at first I didn’t find any indications to clue me into the fact that the protagonist was black. It wasn’t till midway through the book that I realized from the conversation between Cross and his grandma that they were black! Had to really adjust my image of the guy in my head right there, as well as several other characters.

Funny what reading out of order and a few misconceptions can do.

But in this line of thinking, wouldn’t this mean I assume all my readers are white? Well, I know for a fact that’s not the case: while I still have a relatively small readership (both in terms of books and blogging), they come from a variety of backgrounds. Some I know personally and off the Internet, and can attest is that they’re not white. What I worry about is that they’re going to transfer my race, which is white, to my characters. And it’s not a crazy concept: if you had never read or seen Harry Potter and heard about it and then saw a picture of JK Rowling, what would you assume the protagonist’s race was? I’d say you’d guess white.

And in a strange way, I’m helping my readers come to these assumptions. Unless I’m noting how pale a characters’s skin is, I generally don’t do anything to indicate a character is white. In Snake, where a majority of the characters were white, I did very little in terms of description when it came to skin color, and yet I’m pretty sure everyone who read the book was able to figure out my characters’ races just fine. The same in Reborn City: except for noting that Ilse has very pale skin, my white characters didn’t get any indications to clue the readers into their whiteness, while every character of another race did get indicators.

So why is there this collaboration between my readers and I? And do other authors do this?

For the second question, I’d say yes. I’ve seen plenty of other authors do this, including idols of mine like JK Rowling and Stephen King. And for the first, I think it might have something to do not just with the transference thing my roommate mentioned, but also with the society I live in. Think about it: while America may have a black president now and there are more people-of-color in the media than ever before, it’s still a very white-centric society. Because of this, I think that means, along with transference, I don’t feel the need to give indicators for white characters because in America, whiteness is still considered “the norm”, and my readers won’t imagine my characters a different color unless told otherwise because they’ve been conditioned to feel that whiteness is still “the norm.”

And I’m sure that if I were of a different race in a different country or culture, the same concept would apply. If I were Middle Eastern writing in Israel, probably all my characters would be Israeli Jews or Palestinians and I’d give indicators for tourists or Ethiopian or Russian Jews. If I lived in China and was Chinese, I’d probably only give indicators for non-Chinese Asians or Americans or something along those lines.

So to wrap this whole post up, the way my mind works, plus the way my readers’ minds work and the society we were raised in all collaborate in this strange need I have to mark my characters so as not to give my readers a false impression. Funny how that works. Even weirder that it makes sense to me as I write about it, and that I’m not sure whether or not I feel anything about it other than it being strange. Maybe that’s just how one should feel about something like this. Not liking or disliking it, but accepting it as one of those weird facts of life.

Well, I’ve gone on and on about this subject for a while now. Now I’d like your opinion on it. Do you think what I’m doing with non-white characters here is strange? Why or why not? And do you ever do the same thing in your writing? Why? Let me know, I’d love to hear your thoughts, Followers of Fear.

My 4th Blogging Anniversary

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

It Has To Be Longer

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

Is Gun Violence America’s Chronic Condition?

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

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

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

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