Posts Tagged ‘reflections’

Reborn City: Hover Technology Becomes Real

Posted: November 10, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Writing
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Reborn City

I’ve been advertising my novel Reborn City a lot lately (and doubtless I’ll be doing some of that here too), but I thought this was interesting enough that it deserved a blog post.

Near the end of RC, I introduced hoverbikes, motorcycles that, instead of wheels, hover in the air much like the hoverboards seen in Back to the Future Parts II and III. The way they hover is through magnetic plates that act against the magnetic forces in the earth, allowing them to hover. The thing is, neither hoverboards  or hoverbikes exist, so for now they’re still just science fiction.

Or are they?

Last month, tech company Arx Pax unveiled its own hoverboard, which does apparently hover a few inches off the ground. They are currently funding research and construction through a Kickstarter campaign which at this time has surpassed its original goal of two-hundred fifty-thousand dollars and made over four-hundred thirty-six thousand dollars. Backers have the option of getting their own Developers Kit or “White Box”, which allows them to create their own hover devices. Check out their campaign video.

Pretty amazing, isn’t it? Apparently the science behind it also revolves around magnetic forces, though not the same kind that the hoverbikes in Reborn City use. What the Hendo Hoverboard does is manipulate magnetic fields, which creates flux, or changing magnetic fields. In conductive surfaces like metals, it creates current, and according to a law known as Lenz’s Law, the current will create its own magnetic field which will act in opposition to the original flux. With enough flux, the magnetic fields will repel each other and, in the case of the Hendo Hoverboard, cause it to levitate (thanks to the Nerdist channel for explaining this to me. Click here for their video explaining the concept of the Hendo Hoverboard).

Now, the Hendo Hoverboard does have its limitations. It can only work on certain circumstances, it’s loud, and it has a short battery life. But part of the hopes of its creators, as expressed in the video above, is that people who buy a Developer Kit will be able to make breakthroughs and develop the technology further. With technology progressing in amazing new ways each and every day, and with people in high school developing amazing new programs or devices (like this kid who developed his own smart gun) we could be seeing new developments in this field within the next decade or so, enough that Wikipedia might stop calling hoverborads a”fictional device”.

And since Reborn City takes place in the year 2056, or about 41 years from when those first developer kits get shipped, there’s plenty of time to fine-tune the technology and find new applications for it, including in creating hoverbikes. Perhaps even utilizing the design that I made for the ones in Reborn City.

Below I’m including an excerpt from RC featuring the first appearance of the hoverbikes, which will also feature in the sequel Video Rage. If you’re interested in checking out RC, it’s on sale through Friday on Amazon and Smashwords, and there’s still a giveaway to participate in for a free copy. Hope you like what you read, Followers of Fear. And I’ll try to stop myself from talking anymore about RC till Friday, but I make no promises. HYDRAS!

 

When they were all safely inside, Harvey closed the door and pointed to a row of crates sitting under a single, unlit light bulb. The crates, five in all, were large and rectangular, and were marked with big red letters that read HEAVY BULK OBJECT.

            “D’ya guys want help openin’ ‘em up?” asked Harvey.

            “I got it.” said Rip. Extending his claws, he went to the crate closest to him and cut through the nails holding one of the sides to the rest of the crate. The wooden side fell with a loud clatter, revealing the hoverbike inside. It looked like a regular motorcycle, except it seemed more box-like and instead of wheels had two half-circle panels at each end. The entire thing had been painted black, even the handles and panels.

            “Huh.” said Rip. “I thought it’d be mo’ showy.”

            “Them rich kids prob’bly wanted to do the paint job,” said Fox. “Give it their own gang colors an’ shit.”

            Iori scoffed. “Never say ‘gang’ an’ ‘rich kids’ in the same sentence.”

            With Harvey’s help, Rip lifted the hoverbike up and out of the crate. The key, a small plastic rod with an electronic laser identification tag at the end, was wrapped around one of the handles with a small metal chain. Unwrapping the chain from the handle and setting the key in the ignition, Rip tried to start up the engine.

            There was a loud rumbling sound from within and the hoverbike rose a foot and a half into the air, bobbing slightly where it stopped. From beneath the panels there was a faint blue glow, probably from the magnets, Zahara guessed. Everyone around Zahara gasped and stared at the hoverbike.

            “Wow.” said Ilse. “’Kind of ‘em to put the gas in ‘fore we needed ‘em.”

            “Y’all mind if I test it out fo’ ya guys?” asked Harvey.

            “Be our guest.” said Rip, gesturing to the bike.

            Harvey swung his foot over the hoverbike and sat in the seat. It dipped slightly but other than that did not react to the new weight that had been added to it.

            Harvey sat there for a second, looking like he was trying to get his excitement under control. “Alright.” he said. “Now how the fuck d’ya drive this thing—?” Harvey twisted the throttle and the hoverbike sped forward. He lost his grip and fell off the bike, landing in Rip’s arms with a loud grunt. Both of them fell to the ground, neither really hurt but both looking shaken. A few yards away the hoverbike had come to a stop, hovering serenely as if nothing had happened.

            “Shit.” said Harvey.

            “That bastard’s gonna take some practice.” Rico observed, looking at the bike.

            Zahara was still staring at it, not really listening to the others. She had seen what Harvey had done and thought that if he had just twisted the throttle slowly and hadn’t tried to move too quickly, he wouldn’t have fallen off the bike.

            I have to try it out. she thought, feeling like she was being drawn to it. I just have to know if I’m right. Before she realized it, Zahara was striding towards the bike and swinging her leg over the seat.

            “Zahara?” said Alto, and Zahara knew without looking that all the others were watching her. “What’re ya doin’?

            “Babe, are ya crazy?” said Ilse. “Ya can’t just get on the bike an’ expect t’ get it right on the first try when we haven’t even tested it out—!”

            But she ignored them. Bending over the handlebars, she twisted the throttle slowly. The bike sped forward, going at a pace that was slower than what had it had been going when Harvey had gotten on but still pretty fast. Feeling the air whipping around her, Zahara timed a turn and spun to the left as the wall neared. Navigating the maze of boxes and crates, she reappeared in front of the Hydras, braking with ease.

            Only when she looked at the others and saw their mouths hanging open did she realize what she had done: she had ridden a hoverbike without any previous practice and made it look easy. She looked at all of them, then at the bike, then back to the rest of them again.

            Finally Miguel closed his mouth and said, “Well, whaddya know? The chica’s a gangsta after all.”

            “Yeah.” said Owl. “The riding-a-hoverbike-like-it’s-easy-as-pie type of gangsta.”

            “Wow Zahara.” said Ilse, and Zahara felt herself glowing with pride and accomplishment.

Hey, Haven’t I Had That Idea Before?

Posted: November 7, 2014 in ideas, Living and Life, Writing
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So last night, it’s very late and I’m exhausted. I’m getting ready for bed when an idea for a short story comes to me all of a sudden. I go to write it down in the notebook I carry around with me, so that in the morning I can write it down in the morning on the list I keep on my flash drive for stories. But just as I’m about to write it down, a thought occurs to me: Haven’t I had this idea before? As I think about it, I recall an idea, very vaguely, of a short story idea that sounds very similar to the one I just came up with, but I can’t remember that well.

I don’t feel like booting up my laptop and logging in just so I can look up something on my flash drive and then shutting down again. So I scribble myself a note reminding me to see if I already had this idea and I go to bed. The next morning (or I guess this morning) I see the note, get on my laptop, and pull up my list of short story ideas (now up to 367 ideas since the last time I added an entry. God help me find the time to write them all). I type in some relevant key words into the “Find” feature, and sure enough, entry number 108 matches the idea I had last night. The only differences were the genders were switched on the characters.

At that point, I felt a little silly. I know it’s common for authors to have similar ideas across all their works (Joss Whedon has powerful organizations whose very purpose allows them to wield strong influence in nearly every sphere of society, HP Lovecraft has those slithery Cthullu creatures, William Shakespeare had more than a few manipulative villains who seemed honest on the surface but were vile beasts underneath it all). Heck, a lot of my ideas involve female protagonists who rise to the occasion after travailing over several obstacles. I just never expected to happen across the same idea like that.

At least I can take comfort in the knowledge that this has probably happened before.

As for the idea that I had last night…well, maybe I’ll keep it, maybe I won’t. I know there’s room for variation, but the question is, do I want to do it if it sounds so similar to my previous idea, and should I do it when it seems so similar?

If you ever find two short stories of mine and they have similar plots behind them, as well as characters, settings, and whatever else, you’ll know the answer I came to.

Have you ever had an idea that was very similar to a previous idea? How did you deal with it?

By the way, there’s only 7 more days to buy Reborn City at discount price or participate in the special giveaway for a free copy. Better get on that while you still have the chance!

Frauwolf: Critique Day

Posted: November 5, 2014 in Living and Life, Reflections, short story, Writing
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Today in my creative writing class it was my turn to get critiqued. And as you may recall, my short story was about a woman who turned into a werewolf. Or as she preferred because of her gender, frauwolf, which became the title of the story.Unlike other stories, I thought this first draft was a piece of crap. And it was, too. But it was the only draft I could finish, so it was the draft I ended up sticking with. And last week I bought sugar cookies to bribe my classmates with, so that when they tore my story into little pieces they would be nice about it.

Well, the bribe didn’t work. Apparently cookies that are about 90% sugar don’t work on college students, because  only half of them got eaten, and mostly by the students with sweet tooths. But they were nice while they tore my story apart, I’ll give them that.

Anyway, the biggest problems with “Frauwolf” seem to be that I throw way too much in and that the readers felt yanked along by all that was happening. Well, that’s not surprising, considering it’s me writing this story. I like to write novels, especially long, expansive novels that may in fact involve into series. So I tried to add a huge amount of stuff into 5,000 words and the result was a story that was rushed along so as to get to everything happening in the story. The result is an overly-complicated and insane story that deviates from what I originally intended (as you read two posts ago, that was the problem I had with Rose).

My classmates also had some trouble with the relationship portrayed in the story. They couldn’t get why my main character’s girlfriend still stuck around with her, among other things. Well, I guess that makes sense. I don’t delve that deep into the foundation of the relationship. For the next draft, I think I will do that thoug.

And speaking of next draft, I’ve got one more story to turn in this semester, and it has to be a revision of a previous story. I’m thinking I’ll work on this one, maybe change the setting and the story line and see what comes of it. Besides, I’m not nearly satisfied with this story as I should be, so I’ll put off editing my other short story, “Evil Began in a Bar”, until another time. Besides, my critique gave me some great ideas of where to go with this story, so I really want to see what I can do with them. I might even write something worth publishing.

I’ll let you know what comes of all this editing, and what my classmates say at my final critique. In the meantime, I’ve got to get dinner ready before my evening class, so that’s all for now. Have a great day, my Followers of Fear.

Rose: A New Outline

Posted: November 1, 2014 in ideas, Living and Life, Novel, Scary Stuff, Writing
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I would’ve written this yesterday when my last thesis meeting occurred, but I was pressed for time, and then I had homework up the wazoo, and then I got up late today, and then I still had homework, and then…what was I typing about? Oh yeah. Well yesterday I met with my advisor M and fellow thesis-writer P (he’s not working on Rose, of course. He’s got his own thing). I told them some of the changes I wanted to make with the story, and they liked some of my ideas once I’d taken the time to explain them.

But the conversation took a different turn when it came to the latest work I’d sent them. They began asking about all these fantastical elements I’d been adding to the story, wondering where I was going with the story and maybe if I was taking the focus off of Rose and the antagonist. Up until then, despite several offers to show them what I’d planned for the rest of the novel and even show them the outline I’d written, they’d said no. But today, in order to give them more of an idea of where I was going with this story, I gave them the basic idea of where Rose was going.

They had issues with the course of the story, to say the least and told me why.

Basically, the plot of the story would have gone with a powerful Japanese god joining the story and trying to kill Rose. They pointed out that my antagonist would’ve been relegated to barely secondary antagonist and that the story would’ve gotten too complicated for a single book. And I had to admit, they were right. It would’ve gotten pretty complicated, maybe unnecessarily so, if I went down that path.

So I took all that in, realized they had some definite points, and worried that maybe I still have a ton to learn as an author (good thing I’m still pretty early in my career). I’m now going to start a new outline for Rose (the fifth, by the way), and see where I go with it. I’ve got some ideas, so I’m going to brainstorm some more. However, I’m going to try and focus it on those two characters, Rose and the antagonist, and keep the focus on their topsy-turvy life. After I write the new outline, I plan on sending it to my advisor and getting his feedback on it. Hopefully he’ll like what he sees.

So for now, I’m off to read some manga, watch some TV, and see what comes to mind. Hopefully it’ll be something really great that will impress readers. Wish me luck, Followers of Fear.

And remember, there’s a huge sale on Reborn City and a giveaway going on right now. Click here for more details.

Rose: The Present-Tense First-Person Shift

Posted: October 19, 2014 in ideas, Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Reflections, Scary Stuff, Writing
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It’s been a while since I updated everyone on my novel-that-also-doubles-as-my senior-thesis Rose, but I have the opportunity to do so now. Especially since I can’t do my job search without updating my resume, and I’m waiting to hear back from a couple of people on whether I can use them as references.

Well, if you’ll remember my post on my first thesis meeting, you know I ended up switching to first person and rewriting some of the early chapters to make them darker. Well, this past Wednesday there was another meeting with my advisor and the other student I’m working with (I keep meaning to ask if I can use their real names, but I keep forgetting. Oh well, I think I’ll stick to M, my advisor, and P, the other student I’m working with). They had a lot of suggestions for me:

  • Probably a hold over from writing Reborn City and Video Rage, but I have a tendency to explain the stranger elements of the story. Works great for science fiction, but terrible for horror. So I’m trying not to explain the stranger aspects and let the story tell it through what happens.
  • There are a few comedy elements that I’m trying to cut out. We’ll see how that goes.
  • There are some things I will need to change for the first couple chapters, but that’ll wait for the second draft.
  • Most importantly, I’ve switched to narrating in present tense.

That last one is a big one for me. In a previous post, I mentioned that I probably shouldn’t narrate in present tense because I’m not very good or familiar with it and because I have the tendency to switch back into past tense. I explained that to M, but he insisted that I at least try it. His reasoning was that since I’ve been narrating the story in past tense with a first person narrator this whole time, it’s pretty much assumed that things will turn out for the best (probably true). Putting the story in first person would probably serve to add a little mystery and uncertainty to the story.

So I thought, might as well give it a shot. I’d switched from third to first person already, and that had brought about a definite improvement, though I have to work harder to make sure that Rose’s constant state of terror doesn’t start to sound boring. On the other hand, I was already comfortable with writing in the first person. One of my early attempts at writing a novel was in the first person, and for a story written in my early-to-mid teens I did a pretty good job. Writing in the present tense was something I’d hardly ever done before.

So I rewrote parts of Chapter Three to start with, the parts that needed some holes to be plugged so that the story could continue to flow.Then I wrote Chapter Four, and over the past twenty-four hours or so I wrote Chapter Five. Both of those chapters and the parts of Chapter Three I rewrote were written in present tense. And it is weird for me. I don’t know many other authors who write that way, so I don’t have an example to refer back to. I’m basically feeling it out as I go.

But I somehow managed to do it. And it’s been a rather dramatic shift, like the DNA of the story has been altered. I keep thinking back to that scene from the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man film, when Peter Parker’s DNA gets rewritten by spider-DNA, causing his whole self to change. It’s that dramatic a shift, like the whole thing has changed in a very important way while still remaining the same basic story. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it before.

Well, I’ll keep writing it in first-person present tense, hopefully gaining a knack for writing stories like this along the way (it could be useful for a future story). I just hope that when we meet again on Halloween, I don’t have to do another major change to the story. Writing this thing’s been hard enough as it is with just a busy schedule. Writing in unfamiliar styles and with so many new rules or ideas to incorporate certainly makes the job a bit tougher.

Well, it’s late, so I’m going to bed. Hopefully I’ll start Chapter Six tomorrow after classes and homework. Wish me luck, my Followers of Fear.

Creating a Curse

Posted: October 19, 2014 in Reflections, Scary Stuff, Writing
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Before I start, I just want to make sure everyone is aware that I’m not actually showing you how to curse someone. I do know how to do that, but I don’t want to share the method lest someone use it on me. That would suck. No, I’m talking about creating a curse for a story, one that would terrify all who read your work.

The thing about curses is that they are relentless and awful. A curse doesn’t discriminate based on how nice you are, how much money you make, what religion you belong to, or any other factor. No, once a curse locks onto you, it’s like you have a target on your back that you can’t get off, and you won’t get that target off until the curse has run its course (usually this means death). That’s what makes them so scary.

So how do you create a curse? First you need to decide on this:

Person, place, and/or thing. A curse is usually associated with a specific object, location, or person, though sometimes a curse can be associated with more than one of these (such as with an entire family, multiple houses, or a person who lived in a house). In the movie The Conjuring and its spinoff/prequel Annabelle (which I just saw recently), a curse was placed on the doll, allowing a demon to possess it and make havoc for anyone who came into contact with the doll. That’s an example of a cursed object. The house in The Grudge is an example of a cursed location, as well as an example of a cursed person (Kayako, the woman who lived in the house, is the one who carries out the curse). Another example of a cursed person is simply someone who has a curse placed upon them, making interaction with others difficult, if not impossible. Boy, would that suck!

This brings me to my next point, though:

The well is essential to Samara’s curse and origin story.

The origin story. Every curse has its story of how it came to be, and often that the basis of how the curse can be warded off (more on that later). Generally this involves some horrific event happening, causing the curse to manifest or be cast. For example, in the Buffy universe Angel’s curse was caused when he killed the beloved child of a tribe of gypsies, who restored his soul to him through magic. Another example is when Samara/Sadako from the Ring movies was trapped in the well and died, her soul was filled with rage and she infected a blank video cassette. And in The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, Freddy’s curse came into being when he was killed in a fire by the parents of the children he’d killed/molested (depending on if you’re going with the original movie series or the remake).

 

The trigger. For a curse to take hold of a target, something specific has to happen. For instance, in the popular Bloody Mary legend (which I’ve tested numerous times, by the way), you have to say Bloody Mary three times in the mirror in order to summon her. In the Stephen King story Bag of Bones, the curse was triggered when a child descended from one of any of the families involved in a gruesome murder, whose name usually began with a K, got to a certain age (in the TV miniseries, this was simplified to just the daughters). And in the popular story The Monkey’s Paw, one had to make a wish on the titular paw in order to start the curse. Which leads to the fun part:

How the curse manifests. A curse manifests after the trigger has been…well, triggered. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (yes, I’m pulling Harry Potter out), Katie Bell was put in unimaginable pain when she touched the cursed necklace. Touching the necklace was the trigger, and the pain was the manifestation. Another form of manifestation would be the Tecumseh curse, which was that any President elected in a year divisible by twenty would die in office (though Ronald Reagan and President Bush managed to get away). The election year is the trigger, while the death of the President is the manifestation.

How to ward it off. This is optional for literary curses, but it’s something you want to consider in creating a curse. In Jewish folklore, the demon Lilith tries to take the souls of newborns or eat them. However, if one has a mezuzah, a marker on one’s doorpost  that has the name of three angels on it, Lilith cannot enter the home and attempt to take the child. The angels whose names are on the mezuzah were the same angels who tried to get Lilith to return to Adam when she was still his wife. When she refused, they cursed her to become a demon and made it that she could not enter a home with their names on it (that’s how the origin story relates to warding off the curse).

The hamsa, a symbol prevalent in Judaism and Islam, is also good at warding off evil. It’s no good at warding off taxes though.

In another example, there’s a curse among some actors about saying the name Macbeth in a theater which leads to bad luck. Depending on who you ask, there are different methods to dispelling the curse, a popular one being to leave the theater, walk around the building three times, spit over one’s left shoulder, say an obscenity, and then wait to be invited back into the theater.

Containing/canceling the curse. This is also optional in writing fiction, but it should be considered. Two things one should consider when figuring out how to cancel or seal a curse is that it should be difficult, and that it doesn’t necessarily have to do with the origin story. In the movie The Unborn, the dybbuk couldn’t be stopped until it was exorcised. A similar thing happened in the third movie in the American Grudge movies, in which case an exorcism that sealed Kayako into a little girl was needed before she could be stopped. In Japanese onryo legends, the spirit needs to have whatever is disturbing it resolved or it will continue to seek revenge.And in Bag of Bones, Sarah Tidwell did not end her curse until her bones were dissolved with lye, thereby releasing her from Earth.

That’s how you create a curse. As for creating a terrifying story involving that curse…well, that’s up to you. I’m not going to give you directions on that. Not in this post, anyway.

Oh, and one more thing: I saw Dracula Untold and Annabelle at the movies today with a friend. Both were excellent, getting 4.5 out of 5 from me. But something in the latter film really stuck with me: near the end, the priest character says that evil can only be contained, it’s not created or destroyed (or something like that). I think that when you’re writing a scary story, especially one involving curses, that’s some pretty good stuff to keep in mind. True evil is not something you can easily be rid of. At least, not in my experience.

What advice do you have for creating curses?

Have you written anything with curses recently?

Are there any stories of curses that are your favorite or that I didn’t include? Tell me a bit about them.

Autumn Semester 2014: Halftime Report

Posted: October 15, 2014 in Living and Life, Progress Report, Writing
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It’s Week 8 of the semester, which means it’s time I update you on how I’ve been doing so far in the semester. So if you haven’t heard the news so far, I’m extremely busy. I’ve got five classes and a thesis I’m working on, and a part-time job on top of that. I’ve got barely any time for blogging, and I’ve completely cut out television. And if I didn’t manage to find time most evenings right before bed, I’d think pleasure reading was some sort of drug the young people are on these days (though from what I hear that’s not the case at all).

Anyway, I’ve somehow managed to keep my grades up, though I’ll definitely try harder for the next exam in my History of War class, I’m not satisfied with the grade I got on the first one. My History of Pre-Modern East Asia course is going well, though the recitation class is a pain in the butt, even if it is somewhat helpful. Shakespeare is pretty interesting. The teacher is a fun character, and I’ve enjoyed reading Taming of the Shrew and The Merchant of Venice (we start Othello tomorrow as well as take our midterm). And remember that Biology course where we mainly watched movies about human anatomy? It’s like what I expected and then it’s not: most of the films we’ve watched deal with a lot of aspects of human health, so we’ve watched documentaries on our healthcare system and vaccines, a biopic on Louis Pasteur, and films on mental conditions like autism, addiction, and schizophrenia, among others. I think this week we watch a film about an English professor with cancer, but I’m not sure.

My creative writing class has been where I’ve learned the most, probably. I think I’ve made it clear that short stories are not my forte, but I’ve gotten some ideas on how to improve my short stories and my work in general. Already I’ve posted on some of the advice I’ve gotten from my classmates for one of my other short stories, and I’m looking forward to what they say about my next short story when I turn it in two weeks from now.

I’m also learning a lot from working on my thesis. My advisor, the other guy who’s also working on a thesis, and I don’t always have a lot of opportunities to meet up due to everyone having busy schedules and just the craziness of life, but I’ve found our sessions so far illuminating. While work on Rose has been slow due to the short story I’ve been working on for class, I’ve gotten some good advice on how to improve it, including making sure that the tone and atmosphere of the novel is consistent throughout. When it’s finished, I feel like it will have already have been edited a little bit due to the feedback I’ve gotten in the sessions we’ve had together.

Well, that’s all for now. I’ve got work to do, so I’m going to do it. I’ll update everyone again on how my semester is going when it’s over, so have a good 8-10 weeks until then. Until then, Followers of Fear. Wish me luck with the rest of the semester!

Frauwolf: Finished

Posted: October 13, 2014 in Living and Life, short story, Writing
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I just finished the second short story I’ll be submitting to my creative writing class. This one is titled “Frauwolf”, and it’s about a woman who turns into a werewolf–or as she prefers, frauwolf, meaning “woman wolf”. Werewolf mean “man wolf”, so my character thought she’d coin a term for the ladies out there. Anyway, she turns into a werewolf, but at a certain point she can’t tell whether she’s actually changing into a wolf creature or if she’s nuts, and I write it so I make it hard for even the reader to figure it out either.

This story’s also significant because the main character and her partner are both women, and it’s been a long while since I’ve written any characters that were LGBT (I originally intended to make 011 from Reborn City gay, but I didn’t think it fit with the story I was trying to create, so I mase him just creepy and sadistic and possibly asexual). I’m wondering if having two women in love will influence how anyone sees or likes this story. As far as I’m aware, non-hetero couples are still not very prominent in horror fiction, and it’s common for those that are to die pretty early on or be shunted to the side where they won’t make that much impact in the story. Perhaps having them at the forefront will make a difference.

This particular short story was probably one of the hardest I’ve ever had to work with ever. I had to go back three times to the beginning and start over because I didn’t like the way the story was going. Thus, about two or three weeks that could have been devoted to my thesis were devoted to this particular short story. Finally on the fourth try I came out with a version I happened to like.

Still, considering how I’m more suited for writing novels, I doubt “Frauwolf” will come away from critique day without a lot of comments and plenty of edits to make. I say, bring it on. I’m pretty sure there’s plenty of stuff I could do to improve the story, and if I decide to try to publish it in a magazine or something, plenty of the story I could cut out and rewrite to be shorter. And considering how much I love this story’s concept, I’m really hoping to find ways to improve it.

In any case, I’m putting this story away until it’s actually time to deal with it. I’ve still got a thesis to work on and I’ve taken too long of a break from it to get this thing done. If I finish my homework early (and that happens a lot on Tuesdays, for some reason), I’ll get right on the next chapter. Wish me luck, because I’ve got a meeting with my advisor on Wednesday and I don’t want to tell him I have nothing new to send him!

Well, I’m exhausted, so I’m going to rest and relax till bed. You have a good night, my Followers of Fear. Sweet nightmares to you all.

How to Dress for Halloween Without Offending People

Posted: October 5, 2014 in Living and Life, Reflections
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It’s October. The month where my powers of evil are at their greatest. Don’t be too terrified, the chances that I’ll terrorize your city on the 31st are actually pretty slim. Unless you live in Canada, because I’m planning on creating some Samhain mayhem up there this year. Honestly, you Canadians have had it too good for too long. You need a little tragedy and horror for once.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, it’s October. Many of you are thinking of your Halloween costumes. Personally, I’m thinking of the Eleventh Doctor, a gas-mask zombie, or Hannibal Lecter. Of course, there’s a lot of other choices out there. And if you plan to get creative with your costume, well, the sky’s the limit. You can literally dress any way you want.

Doesn’t mean you should though. Last year, I read several disturbing articles or saw several upsetting photos of what people chose to wear for Halloween, including:

  • Two guys going as George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin, complete with bloody hoodie. Can you say, horrible and not funny?
  • A couple of people in Australia donned KKK robes for a Halloween party. If this were Spain and they were actual priests, I might accept it, but anywhere else…it’s more than a little insensitive.
  • A mom in Virginia sent her son in KKK robes to school, trying to pass it off as “a family tradition”. Lady, no one believes that for a second. And if it is a family tradition, then that’s one sick family (I feel sorry for the kid. Unless he’s already been brainwashed and knew what the robes were, he probably thought he was a ghost).
  • Julianne Hough went as a character from Orange is the New Black, and put on blackface to do it. I’m only going to say two words to this one: oy gevalt.

So many things wrong with this picture.

Listen people, I love Halloween. I love dressing up as something scary when I can afford a new costume and going around being scary without people thinking I’m weirder than I actually am. But there’s a limit to what you can wear without hurting people and an idea we have for a costume may seem funny and original, but it might not turn out that way in the end.

So while we still have 26 days till Halloween, I’m asking people who are planning on creating their own costumes to examine your ideas and make sure they won’t cause offense or seriously upset someone. And I know some people get offended just by the very concept of Halloween, but I don’t mean them. I’m talking about the people who are thinking of going as an Ebola victim, dressing up as Michael Brown and the cop who shot him, or perhaps as a stereotypical Islamic terrorist or Jew (I’m looking at you, Macklemore. That was not cool!).

Often we don’t consider how our actions can affect people. Sadly, it’s still common for people, including many young people who are raised in a “tolerant” atmosphere to say “That’s so gay” or insult someone by calling them a faggot. Saying that may seem small, but in reality they can cause serious psychological harm, because implied in their utterance is that being gay or thought of as gay is bad. For an actual LGBT person such as myself, hearing this is hurtful and makes me feel like less of a person. Such words and actions are known as microaggressions, and they can have as much of a psychological impact on a person as being mugged or some other traumatic incident if they continue consistently over time.

Now imagine that harm in the form of a Halloween costume, out on the streets where so many people can see it, where it can be photographed and uploaded onto social media for the whole world to see forever and ever.

Kind of makes you think, doesn’t it? So please be considerate of others when you decide a costume. You can be scary or funny or cute or even sexy, if you’d like. But if your costume idea has the potential to cause distress, offense, or insult to someone of a different religion, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or even socioeconomic status, perhaps it’s better to come up with a different costume.

Having a Facebook Page and Being on Twitter

Posted: September 27, 2014 in Living and Life, Reflections
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I started my own Facebook page back in September 2013, and I logged onto Twitter for the first time nine months earlier in January of that year. I didn’t know if either of those accounts would amount to anything at the time I started them. That was partially because I’m wary of social media in general, even if I use them in my everyday life. I’d also been told by plenty of fellow authors that while Facebook and Twitter can be great marketing tools and maybe increase your following, they won’t necessarily increase your book sales by very much, if at all. I’d seen the same thing in my blog: while I’ve had a steady growth of followers over three years and a tremendous amount of views since last year, it didn’t necessarily mean that everyone reading my blog posts was going out to buy my books.

Still, I thought it was worth a try. Plenty of people had bred huge followings on both media platforms. And if they could do it, why couldn’t I?

So I started posting on my Facebook page and sending out tweets (though I kind of neglected the latter for a while save for links to my blog posts). Do I have a huge following on either yet? Not really. My Facebook page only has 126 likes at this point, and each post usually only gets a small fraction of any of those followers. And blog posts tend to get lower views than regular Facebook posts. Same with Twitter, though the amount of likes seem to fluctuate a lot. Last night I had 71 Twitter followers, then this morning it was 75, and now it’s 74.

And I’m not sure how many people check out my books through these pages, let alone buy or download copies.

Still, that doesn’t mean my forays into social media marketing have been utter disasters. I’ve found the online pages of friends of mine, and we’ve subscribed to each other’s pages/tweets/whatever. Occasionally we’ve even helped each other out, retweeting each other tweets or sharing articles that really speak to us. It’s a great opportunity to support one another and help each other out. And once or twice people I’ve had some pretty important people check out what I’m doing online thanks to Twitter: a director of a movie I reviewed once retweeted the review, and ACX, the company whom I wrote an article about a while back, not only retweeted the article, but now follows me on Twitter. To which I say, “AWESOME!”

 

So while I don’t have hundreds of thousands of followers through either platform, let alone that many sales, I think I’ve had a pretty successful run on both of them. I get to interact with friends, the occasional important company or filmmaker, and I’ve actually grown to like tweeting really unusual but funny stuff on Twitter. Like this:

https://twitter.com/RamiUngarWriter/status/514890936934215680

That one actually got a few Favorites and one Retweet.

In any case, I’m really happy with the followings I have been able to build, and while I wouldn’t mind bigger ones, I’m glad that I have people interested in what I have to say to begin with. And who knows? I’m early in my career. I could still build those followings with some hard work and plenty of optimism. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Though don’t expect me to get an Instagram (I don’t have the right kind of phone for it). Or a Pinterest. Or a Tumblr. Or a Flickr, Foursquare, Tinder, or…is there any others I’m missing? Never mind. I’m not sure I want to know.

Well, that’s all for now. I’m going to have a late lunch and then work on a short story for my creative writing class. Have a good day, my Followers of Fear.

 

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