The Return of the Shameless Self Promotion

So, Coach's Midnight Diner is finally working its way to the printers. What is better, the editor has decided to release a 93-page free "Sample-Size Diner," which contains the first 2-10 pages of every story in the collection. Of course, it is the nature of the short story to lead up to one central point, so it's hard to really judge a collection based on the first halves of the story, but what I've read so far seems to be a very good indicator that this project is just what I'd hoped it would be.

I can only describe the general tone as "hard boiled;" a sense of seething violence seems to settle in, which is pretty much what one would expect from a short-story collection with "Midnight Diner" in the title. Premises range from the self-consciously absurd (Jesus dressed as Thor at a comic-book convention) to the hyper-gritty (a man leaves his sympathetically-portrayed abusive wife, convinced by his lover she's demon-possessed), with just about everything in between. It's not always easy to tell where the stories are going to go, and some of them certainly seem capable of going the kitchey-Christian route, but as a whole the anthology seems to do an excellent job of keeping away from the predictability and pratfalls of so much modern Christian lit.

But there's really only so much you can say about an anthology of first parts of short-stories. If it sounds interesting, follow the link and check it out. It shall, at the very least, be a collection like nothing you have ever read before.

Stardust: First Impressions

Recently I stumbled upon the UK trailer for Stardust, which looks to be the latest in this summer's series of wonderful fantasy entertainment. (Okay, actually I stumbled upon the inferior American version, but we don't like to count that, do we.) The trailer's humor, wit, and Princess Bride-esque B-movie charm ("Wait, you're the star? You're the star? Really? Oh, wow.") pretty much instantly launched it to the top of my to-watch list. But then I did what any internet-addict would do after stumbling upon a new bit of entertainment--I hopped over to RottenTomatoes.com and imdb.com. Turns out that this is actually an adaptation of a Neil Gaiman & Charles Vess short story, which has (alas!) also had all the pretty pictures viciously torn out for an ugly, boring, text-only version. Well, I'm done with Harry Potter for a while, and the Terry Pratchet I nibbled on while catching back up with my sleep is over, so today I cracked open the softback illustrated version (not on Amazon.com) to see what the ever-unpredictable Gaiman cooked up this time.

I'm twenty pages into the thing, and I'm already hooked. It is, as Gaiman wastes no time informing us, a fairy-tale about a boy who sets out (as most all boys do) to find his heart's desire. Gaiman, I have learned, does whimsical coming-of-age stories quite well. And with a beginning that enchants from page one despite its basic mashup of world-setting exposition and glorified town gossip, I doubt I'll be disappointed. What surprised me was the illustrations: I don't have a lot of experience with illustrated stories, but from what I've seen Stardust is the the most lavishly illustrated book that doesn't have "Gospel" or "Kells" in the title. Each page averages at least one color illustration (watercolor or colored pencil depending on the effect needed), and interspersed are a number of beautiful black and white drawings, which themselves run the gamut from faux-woodcut clarity to misty and atmospheric charcoals. I felt almost overwhelmed with an orgy of illustration, and found myself studying the pictures as much as the words too eek every ounce of character, whimsy, color, and sheer personality from the book.

And then came the most brilliant stroke, which I sincerely hope will be repeated whenever useful. On page 19, a young man visits what is in essence a fairy flea-market. He "paused in front of a stall covered with tiny crystal ornaments; he examined the miniature animals, pondering getting one for Daisy Hempstock. He picked up a crystal cat, no bigger than his thumb. Sagely it blinked at him, and shocked, he dropped it; it turned in the air like a real cat, fell on its four paws. Then it stalked over to the corner of the stall and began to wash itself."

At this point, if you're anything like me, you're sharing in the young man's wonder, savoring Gaiman's inventiveness, and could use a bit more. The next line, "Donstan walked on," is the last line on the page. I turned the page to read what happened next....

....and was greeted by a full two-page visual spread of the entire market, stretching from corner to corner and top to bottom, divided ino two rows by great red tarps but with mysteries peering out from the edges. On the very top, a shadow with eyes. Below everything and set off by a ragged set of roots, a mother and two children sift through wheat. And throughout the middle, marvels too numerous to name, as crowds of people purchase books, staffs, weapons, armor, fruits, wheat, bottles, mysterious cages, lamps, and strange items of all descriptions.

Eventually, the desire to continue on with the story pervaded over my curiosity to soak in every inch of the tableau, and I turned the page again. I read:

"The market was thronged."

I literally laughed out loud, and thought: "you're telling me!" Because, of course, I knew what the market was like, and any time they referred to it I would know exactly what is meant. I had already even spent more than a few moments wondering just what it was that was behind those red curtains, what was it that was so valuable as to be hidden away and visible only in the smallest glimpses, with an avidity that probably rivaled Donstan's.


If anyone tries to tell me that stories don't need illustrations, or that pictures kill written fantasy by giving it one fixed image that prohibits freedom of imagination, I think I shall be sorely tempted to put a gun to their head and force them to read Stardust. Yes, that includes you, O ghost of Tolkien.


**Content Warning: Having read a bit further, I feel I should warn the reader that while the book is delightfully Victorian in most ways, it is not so in its description of the one sex scene that is so far present. Caveat lector.

The Cross and the Moralist

I have come to a realization: almost every time I hear a Sunday sermon where the Gospel is not preached (and by preached I mean explicated/dwelt on/delved into, not a tagged on section informing unbelievers that they can receive the free gift of eternal life), I stumble out of the church a bit shell-shocked, more than a bit angry, and with despair gnawing on my heart. The funny thing is, every time I walk out of a sermon that did revel in God's grace and Christ's sacrifice and all those metaphysical violences in which a universe of corruption, desires, and divine love collide in blood and gore on an executioner's scaffold made of two pieces of wood, I feel rather happy and eager to seek after and love our Lord.

O love of God! O sin of man!
In this dread act Your strength is tried;
And victory remains with love;
For Thou our Lord, art crucified!

Now, I know that a bit of the reasons behind this are linked to me. If I were dwelling upon the Scriptures more daily, maybe I'd be able to take a sermon on poverty or financial responsibility while remembering to place it in the context of Christ's love. If I weren't so self-focused, maybe I'd be able to brush off these admonitions, or turn them into announcements of my guilt and return with greater gratitude to divine forgiveness. If I were given a magical WWJD bracelet that turned me into the Christ himself, I'd sit down after the sermon and calmly instruct the elders on the meaning of the scriptural passages they'd read.

But I'm not, and instead I'm as sinful as the next guy, probably more self-righteous than most, more proud of my intellect than I ought to be, and and a guy who'd rather throw all my forces into a brute-force attempt at virtue than even take the first step towards patience. The thing is, though, that sermons that attack those sins only generally tend to make the problem worse.

I once went to a couple of church services with my Episcopal friend. I was rather shocked at their callous disregard for the Scriptures that seemed to throw out sections that I'd agonized over and about which I'd wrestled violently with God. I felt that they'd jumped a bit too hard on the tolerance wagon, and was reminded again what a pale and sickly ghost of love tolerance can be. I wondered how long a church that seems to put our culture on an equal level with divine Scriptures can even remain Christian at all. But both sermons held as their central focus the death and resurrection of Christ. Talking with my friend, I found out that this is a requirement for any service featuring communion, and that communion was taken nearly weekly. And if I ever find myself an Anglican rather than a non-denom protestant, well, I'm pretty sure that'll be the reason why.

Ponderations on a Song

"And the pain of the world is a burden
But it's my cross to bear
And I struggle beneath all the weight
I know you're Simon standing there"

I don't know how I managed to not hear those lines before. They're from Long Line of Leavers, the experimental album that (along with their praise Album) directly preceeded Derek's departure from the band.

I've certainly listened to them countless times; Caedmon's was, for the longest time, my favorite band. But the meaning. I hesitate to parse the lyrics, feeling it's something akin to explaining a joke.

I miss that old Derek, the one who wrote lyrics for Caedmon's Call. I still enjoy the new Derek, who writes his own albums and fills them with all his frustrations with the Church, the world, and himself. But I don't know that we'll ever see him so unified than in those four lines. That honest acceptance that the whole world has gone wrong, but we are identified with the Crucified Christ, born to set things right. The reversal into struggle. Then the final line:

"I know you're Simon standing there."

It's hard to say some things without sounding trite, yet he does it. If Christians really are to be "crucified with Christ so that I know longer lives, but Christ lives within me," we need to remember what it means, who the real Christ was as described in scriptures. The man of sorrows, weeping at his friend's tomb. The god-man who begged his Father to give him the chance of opting out. The scourged and bleeding man who, despite his moral perfection and perfect faith and the full power of God, didn't have the strength to carry two planks of wood up a hill.

He needed Simon of Cyrene to step alongside, carrying the cross so he could stumble to the place of the skull.

It is not good that man should be alone.

The Experience of Writing

This year has been the first year where I really took myself seriously as a writer of fiction, and it has also been the first year that I made the startling realization that if I write short stories, I can actually have a reasonable certainty that my story will be complete before, say, I die of old age.

Now there are many books about the craft of writing, and countless retrospectives written by authors. But this is my blog, so here, in one page or less, I present The Experience of Writing:

1) You start with an idea. It comes out of nowhere, and hits you at a really, really inconvienent time. Like when you're having a work meeting and they're announcing overtime. But it's there, and it begins to ferment and grow in your head, aided by lots of little sentences scribbled madly on the back of hotel contracts.

2) You outline, write, rewrite, and in all ways try to get those ideas onto paper. Then you try to connect them, and discover what the story is behind those images and ideas. The story turns out to be something that contradicts all the ideas and images you have for its second half, so with a cry you copy and past all those beautiful ideas to the Electronic Netherworld of "Unused Ideas." This is either a separate file or an area at the bottom of the story's document itself.

3) You come to The Scene of Doom. Every story has one, whether it's "now we need to kill the invincible dragon without even a gun" or "they fight and leave each other and it's really sad." You can feel in the back of your head a bit of the weave of the story, and you know it should be this way and make sense--but at the same time you feel completely unequipped, lacking in personal experience, and just plain too uncreative and tired to ever pull off The Scene of Doom.

4) Brilliant ideas come for The Scene of Doom at 1:30 in the morning. Brilliant ideas aren't so brilliant at 5:30 the next afternoon. Repeat until they stay brilliant, darnit, or until you're just too sick of working on the same story to get any more ideas, in which case the story gets submitted or shelved, depending on level of completion. (Mantra of this stage: No story is ever complete, no matter how hard you work at it, so go with what you've got.)

5) The story is complete. You read it. Hopefully, you look at it and you go "yeah. That story did something to me. It still has a punch. It's not perfect, and I could write it better, but that's not the point." Really hopefully, someone else says the same thing about it.

6) Because you are a complete lunatic, you say "That was fun! Now let's try something a little bit less expected and more interesting for the next story!" And so it begins anew.