The Boat

June 7, 2013January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

‘Round these parts, folks go to the boat for a good time. For those of you not familiar with the Cornfield and its vernacular, “going to the boat” means going to the riverboat casino in Peoria.

This past Saturday was my roommate Carrie’s birthday. Since it was a milestone birthday (I won’t say what stone that mile marks), she wanted to do something big. Our original plan was to go to Chicago, but since she hurt her knee and wouldn’t be able to do that much walking, she decided that going to the boat would be a good alternative.

We stayed at the hotel. Our room was fabulous with a lovely view of the parking lot and the river beyond. I’m not joking. For a parking lot view, it was still really nice. I could write lyrical poems about the bathroom. The shower was divine. You can’t say that about most hotel showers.

We hit up the buffet that night for dinner. It was a seafood special, perfect for Carrie’s birthday as she is a big lover of seafood. It was a pretty nice spread and the food was pretty good. I’ve never had seafood lasagna before and wasn’t sure I’d like it, but it was some tasty, tasty stuff.

I was probably the youngest person at the buffet and frankly, I didn’t mind it. It made for a quiet meal. The guy sitting next to us was getting his prime rib on. Meanwhile, another lady went back to her table with a plate of mashed potatoes and brussel sprouts. Carrie looked horrified. “Is she being punished?”

Considering the dessert spread, maybe she thought she needed to earn that German chocolate cake. Laws knows that if salad didn’t count as a vegetable then I wouldn’t have eaten one all weekend.

The casino was loud and bright and crowded, but we managed to find our way to the lowest floor (deck?) and the slots. The dress code was quite loose as we saw some people dressed to the nines and other folks that didn’t seem to own any shirts with sleeves. A few people were in their pajamas.

The first night I won about forty dollars and Carrie won about fifty. The second night, we wore more on the losing end, but we still managed to come out ahead.

I spent my winnings on Steak n Shake.

We both had a lot of fun, but we both realized that we’re not casino people. We found the prime rib guy working two slots at once and he had at least 200 bucks in one of them. Another guy was sliding into Carrie’s seat as soon as she got out of it because he thought her machine was hot. We might have spent an hour or an hour and a half at most in the casino each night. It was fun while we were winning, not as fun when we were losing, and there were a whole lot of people that resembled zombies in there.

Definitely a fun once-in-a-while weekend thing, but we couldn’t make a job of it.

Writing–June Projects

June 5, 2013January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I actually have things and stuff to do this month!

First of all, I’m going to publish both Gone Missing and Night of the Nothing Man on Amazon. I kind of hoped that Smashwords would be enough, but it’s not. They need a little more exposure. I want people to read my poor, little novellas, dammit.

Speaking of self-publishing, I’ve got the first draft of four short stories done for my possible new anthology, so I’m going to start revising them. I still need one more story to finish out the collection to fit with the idea I have, but I’m not going to push that. It’s a late year thing, if it happens, so I’ve got plenty of time to come up with a final story.

After leaving it along for about a month, I’m going to start polishing The World (Saving) Series. One of my writing goals for the year was to have this thing achieve a state of doneness and if I can get it to happen in the next couple of months, that’d be swell. What happens after that is a completely different goal.

And I’ve always got my sooper sekrit projects to keep me busy and make me feel like I’ve got so many pressing things to accomplish if my ego needs a boost and I need to fill some time.

June won’t be dull.

Sew, For My Next Trick…

June 3, 2013January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I turned a pair of jeans into a skirt.

I got the idea from an episode of Emergency! because the 70’s call to me like that. One of the actresses was wearing a jean skirt like that and I thought, “Hey! What a great idea!”

And then I didn’t do anything about it for a while because I wasn’t sure I was capable of turning a pair of jeans into a skirt with my self-taught hand-sewing skills. When I get ideas for projects, be they sewing or writing, I have to meditate on them a while to see if I can get them to work out. Boosted by my work on turning t-shirts into bags (I’ve got five of them now), I thought with a little research it might be possible.

I did some Googling on the subject of turning a pair of jeans into a skirt, looking to the wisdom of those that had walked this path before me and got the general idea of what I needed to do to make this work.

Then I talked myself into committing to this project.

It’s not like turning the t-shirts I was never going to wear again into bags; I only have so many pairs of jeans and really can’t afford to waste a pair, even if I hate them. Society demands that I keep my ass covered. So I had to be sure that I could make this work.

I’m happy I talked myself into it.

I used a pair of my fat-girl jeans (they’ve got a bit of spandex in them) that lost their shape after wearing them a few times. The legs were too big and rather unflattering. But, that excess material proved to be perfect for the skirt transformation. I used one kerchief for the front panel, cutting it and sewing it together so it would fit just right. I thought that would be the hardest part, but it turned out to be pretty easy.

In most of the skirts I’ve seen, there’s also a back panel, usually smaller, but since the legs of these jeans were so big, I didn’t need to put one in. Just sewed it up the back and added some slits to the side to show a little leg.

It took me several hours over four days to get the whole thing done.

It’s another ego boost to my sewing skills. And another lesson that I am quite capable of getting shit done if I put some time, effort, and patience into the pot.

Writing–Rereading the Written

May 29, 2013January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I’ve got several manuscripts that I’ve written that have been hanging out, waiting for me to get back to them. Some of them are just first drafts; others have had one or two rounds of heavy-lifting revision done to them. All of them were put to the side so I could focus on something else.

Since I didn’t have much going this month, I decided to read them all to see what I had and get reacquainted with them.

It was interesting to see where I was as a writer a few years ago. I can pretty much tell what was going on in my life just by reading the manuscript. It’s fascinating. Nobody else would be able to pick anything up, but I guess because I wrote it and lived it, I know exactly where I was.

Looking at the pieces in a more professional, critical light, I’m happy to say that all of them are workable to an extent. I could make them all into something that you wouldn’t gouge your eyes out while reading. Which is reassuring in a sense. There will always be work waiting for me because I’ve got four manuscripts in various states just waiting to be finished.

And it won’t be a waste to work on them since there’s something worth working on there.

I admit to liking some more than others. Spirited in Spite and A Tale of Two Lady Killers have gone through a couple of heavy-lifting revisions and their stories are pretty good. Fun, quick little things that won’t require too much more lifting to finish.

The untitled Ivy novel should probably be revised down to a novella because I padded that thing pretty hard. The other POVs can go (though I might save Leo’s and rewrite it as a short story). Sticking to solely Ivy and shortening it up will do the story wonders. I might also end up changing the location. We’ll see.

American Vampires, I don’t care for. It’s only a first draft, a NaNoWriMo draft at that, so it needs A LOT of work. And I know what I was trying to do with the original attempt at a story, but I missed the mark. Of all the pieces, I like this one least and it will take the most work. Somehow, though, I think it might be worth the effort. Eventually. I’m in no rush to get back to it.

When I’m done with The World (Saving) Series, it looks like I’m all set for the next revision project. I’ve got plenty to choose from.

In Dreams

May 27, 2013January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I have weird dreams.

Everyone does, I know, but mine are made of the stuff that people fear. One person’s nightmare is my typical night. I rarely have what I would call bad dreams because my unconscious mind has set the bar that high. It might only happen a couple of times a year that I have a dream that disturbs me enough to prevent me from falling back to sleep.

For example, in the past two weeks, I’ve dreamed of being shot, stabbed (while being Joseph Gordon Levitt no less), and set on fire. In other dreams over the years, I’ve been in plunging elevators, fallen from ridiculous heights, and been crushed. I’ve been chased, stalked, bitten, drowned, and strangled. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve died in my dreams. You know that saying that if you die in your dreams, then you die in waking life? Not true. I’m living proof of that, so to speak.

My most frequent nemesis is Michael Myers. That guy has stalked my dreams since I was seven years old, since long before I watched even one Halloween film. Funny, isn’t it? It’s my favorite movie even though the Shape terrifies me in my sleep. I guess that’s the trade off. I love his work and he kills me in my dreams. I remember the time he stabbed me with a pitchfork. That was novel.

I’m not sure why brain works this way. It might have something to do with my love of horror films and horror fiction, the steady diet of horrific things that I’ve consumed since I was young. It makes some sense. Someone who enjoys the terrible while I awake would be entertained by it when asleep.

But not all of my dreams are bad. Some of them are just plain weird. Most people can make that claim. I don’t know why Vin Scully was blind and hanging out with Keith Moreland and Aretha Franklin in a Wal-Mart softlines section while I dressed mannequins, but that’s what happened. That’s what my brain conjured up to pass the sleeping hours.

Because weird and/or bad are the norm, certain medications tend to dial that up to eleven. I avoid taking Tylenol PM unless I absolutely have to because the dreams that have resulted from its consumption are too bizarre to even put into words. The sleep I get is hardly restful because I can’t wake myself up enough to reset my brain so I can get out of the dream hell I’m in. Darvocet has the same affect on me.

I admit to turning some of my dreams into short stories. Check out “Reality Unknown”. The three stories that are told are based on three dreams I had all in the same night. I’d wake up after each one. When I woke up for good in the morning, I wrote them down because I knew there was fodder for some bizarre story there. As much as I tried, I don’t think I did them justice. I just don’t have the skill to capture the true horror and WTFness of what went on in my brain that night.

Now I don’t want you to think that my dreams are all terrible, twisted things. Some of them are fun; some are downright hilarious. Of course, I’ve been known to have a sick sense of humor.

Let’s just say that they work for me and for the most part, I enjoy them.

Sweet dreams.

MayDays

May 24, 2013January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

When I was in junior high, 7th or 8th grade, a new tradition began in my little town in the middle of the cornfield and it was called MayDays. Now you have to understand how exciting this was to the kids my age because back then we didn’t have much in the way to do around town. Our movie theater had collapsed, our drive-in movie theater had blown away, and our underage clubs didn’t have much staying power.

MayDays was going to be set up on the Square and on the streets and parking lots just north of it. There would be a carnival with rides and games and food. There would be vendors and bands and contest and sports competitions and a MayDays Queen pageant and such. The junior high at the time was north of the square and I remember walking past all of that stuff being set up on my way to school. Tantalizing and exciting. Living four blocks away from the fun guaranteed that I was up there every day if possible.

The rides were my main thing when I was a kid. They had the usual sort of stuff: ferris wheel, The Octopus, bumper cars, The Pharaoh, merry-go-round, giant slide, haunted house, The Scrambler, and the rides that challenged your ability to keep down your funnel cake like The Zipper, The Gravitron, and The Stormtrooper. The idea that I could just walk uptown to make myself dizzy was fabulous.

The big thing back in the day, aside from the rides, was playing this one carnival game in order to win beta fish. The fish usually died after a couple of days as carnival fish tend to have rough lives, but my sister won a beta that we had for over four years. His name was Herman and he liked to be pet. He was kind of a weirdo.

Over the years, MayDays has kinda died out. There’s still bands and the pageant, still a carnival and food, still some competitions and fundraisers, and this year there’s pro wrestling, but it’s shrunk over the years. Not as many rides or games or vendors. The crowd has gotten smaller from when I was in school and it was almost impossible to walk around.

I still go up for my lemon shake-up and to have a look around, but I don’t linger long and I usually only go up one day. I don’t ride the rides anymore and stick around for any of the entertainment.

I can’t help but notice when I’m up there, though, that the kids are still having a great time, running from ride to ride, sticky with funnel cake and drunk on lemon shake-ups, trying to win those elusive grand prizes and getting stuck with a half-dead fish.

At least the core audience is still loyal.

Writing–What ARE You?

May 22, 2013January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been working on a non-fiction project since the first of the year (Sooper Sekrit Project #1). I wrote the bits and pieces of it in a notebook and nearly filled the thing up before I called it done enough to type up what I had.

So I typed up what I had.

And then I added more to the notebook, but I haven’t typed any of that up because what I’ve added isn’t done yet.

And then I jotted down some other ideas for it, but haven’t expanded on them yet.

And then I thought even more about the project.

And the only thing I can honestly say is that I have no idea what it’s going to be.

All of the bits and pieces and ideas and words and sentences and paragraphs and pages put together just add up to a mishmash of something with no real center or direction. I think it’s all good and useable and it all relates to each other, but it doesn’t exactly all go together, you know what I mean? It just doesn’t know what it wants to be.

I keep feeding it. It keeps growing. But it’s not assuming any kind of shape.

I think it might be the Blob.

I hope I can figure it out before I have to freeze it and drop it in Antarctica.

7 More Things About Me

May 20, 2013January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

That’s right. Couldn’t think of anything else to blog about today.

1. I name cats after TV characters. Tuvok, Peter Marie, Stella, Spot, and McGee. You could count Maude, but I didn’t name her and she wasn’t intentionally named after a character.

2. I’ve got a scar on my knee from getting run over by a kid on a bike. He was a real jerk of a neighbor boy and rode up on the grass to hit me on purpose. Nobody was happy with that, least of all me.

3. I have trouble with light sensitivity. Some people with light colored eyes have this problem and I am unfortunately one of them. I’m that weirdo wearing sunglasses while driving in the rain. Even with overcast skies, the light can still bother me, particularly while driving.

4. I have a tendency to eat my food in a particular order during a meal and I usually eat one thing at a time. At least my food can touch now. Except bread. I don’t want my bread touching anything because I don’t like soggy bread.

5. My 5th grade teacher was a health nut. She’d make us go for really long walks, including on along side a business route, and do Gilad workout videos in the classroom. It was a bit excessive and I had no hope of being the teacher’s pet because I couldn’t walk around the park fast enough.

6. I won’t drink anything that are certain shades of green or blue. It’s unnatural.

7. I grew up playing with goats. My grandparents’ neighbors had them. Goats are quite silly, very playful, can scream like humans, and have this bizarre fascination with getting up onto things. They’ll stand on a coffee can if they think it’ll give them some height. That’s why I don’t get this sudden discovery of goats. I already knew all of this stuff.

Rerun Junkie– Dragnet

May 17, 2013January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Dragnet was one of those shows that I watched on Nick-At-Nite a hundred years ago when I was a kid. It shouldn’t have captured the attention of a hip, 80’s child, but as we all know, I’ve never been hip or normal.

"...I carry a badge." — “…I carry a badge.”

Dragnet features Detective Joe Friday (Jack Webb) and his partner Officer Bill Gannon (Harry Morgan) working a variety of cases from juvenile to bunko to homicide to robbery. The show tackled current society issues like drugs, juvenile delinquency, student dissidence, and such. It was done in a documentary style, with narration at the beginning and ending of the show saying that the stories were seen were true and the names had been changed to protect the innocent (not a whole lotta innocent people on this show) as well as Friday’s running narrative during the episode. The end of the show featured what happened to the perps they caught. Several episodes featured a bad guy at the end that you never saw during the run of the show.

These gentlemen are going to interrogate you.

The show is remembered best for the rapid fire dialogue, heavy music, and the no-nonsense attitude of the cops.

It also had some pretty memorable episodes, including the famous “blue boy” episode which dealt with LSD, which was still legal. In addition to sending people on trips and encouraging some who were waiting for take-off to smoke marijuana (which I would think would make you too lazy to take the trip, but whatever), it caused one guy to paint himself like he was going to a college football game, half blue and half yellow. This kid also had the supportive “my son would never do anything wrong!” parents that led him to enterprise in LSD and then succumb to its effects when he attempted to go out as far as possible.

It’s an interesting episode as it depicts the frustration the police had while trying to deal with a drug that wasn’t illegal, but really kinda needed to be. You also got introduced to a lot of LSD lingo that pretty much disappeared by the time I was offered a hit in high school (I declined because it was finals week and I still had to take my Bio II final and the last thing I needed was the cat skeleton coming alive and trying to scratch my eyes out).

Though the show is remembered for its seriousness, it actually can be quite funny. There’s a great episode in which Gannon and Friday are trying to watch a football game at Gannon’s house and they’re constantly being interrupted by neighbors and their complaints. I laughed throughout most of that episode.

Not to mention that Mr. Morgan’s sense of humor was never discouraged. Bill Gannon’s personal life could be pretty entertaining at times.

Mr. Webb was pretty dedicated to accuracy when it came to the show. The procedures and lingo were all by the book. That rapid fire dialogue everyone remembers was a necessity. A lot needed to be said in one episode and they only had thirty minutes to do it. Much of the exposition was done in Friday’s voice overs, but that was mostly for scene changes. The dialogue was strictly business. They couldn’t stop to explain things. Kindly, strap in and keep up, thanks.

When it comes to guest stars, this is one of those shows in which you look for the repeaters, not the big names. People like: Virginia Gregg, Sam Edwards, Ralph Moody, Burt Mustin, Henry Corden (who Monkees fans will recognize as Mr. Babbitt), Leonard Stone, Buddy Lester, Ed Deemer, Stuart Nisbet, Virginia Vincent, Robert Brubaker, and Emergency! favorites Bobby Troup, Marco Lopez, Tim Donnelly, and Ron Pinkard. And of course Reed and Malloy (Kent McCord and Martin Milner) from Adam-12 made appearances.

If you’re looking for some names you know, here are a few: Jan-Michael Vincent, Keye Luke, Scatman Crothers, Doodles Weaver, Barry Williams, Lorraine Gary, Howard Hesseman, and Veronica Cartwright.

Like I said in the beginning, there’s really no reason this show should have appealed to an 8 year old kid. Even today, people call it boring. I call it fascinating. That jam-packed dialogue (done with the aid of a teleprompter), the unexpected wit, the view of a different time. It’s nifty.

There’s a reason this show was used as a police instruction manual. It’s just that good.

They have all the facts, ma'am. — They have all the facts, ma’am.

Where I Watch It

Writing–Getting Through It To Get To the Next

May 15, 2013January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

I started writing a short story for my possible short story anthology. The idea came from my idea notebook and it seemed like a pretty good idea.

Until I started writing it.

Once I put down the first couple of sentences, I knew this story was a straight-up dud.

But I kept working on it until I found an ending. It came in at less than 1,000 words, but I was still able to call it done and that’s all that mattered to me.

I guess it sounds like a waste of time to finish a story that I know isn’t worth the ink I used writing it, but that’s just how I am. I’m a bit of a pack-rat. I don’t like to throw things away because I never know when I’ll need them. The same can be said of stories. Even if I have no faith in it while writing it, even if I know from the start that it’s a dud, I’ll go ahead and see it through, just in case. For all I know, I might be able to do something with it later. I might come along the spark that it’s missing. Well, if I come along that spark, but I don’t have a story to go with it, what kind of a waste is that?

So, I finish those stories that end up getting typed up and put away, just in case.

It’s not really wasted time for me. It’s a good exercise in perseverance in a way. I stuck with it until the bitter end and now I have something -something horribly crappy, usually- finished. It’s a test of how motivated I am as a writer. Can I finish this piece of garbage before I move on to work on something I really want to write? Something that usually pops into my head while I’m slaving away on the current piece of dreck haunting my life.

In the beginning, I would have just ditched it. I ditched a lot of things when I was younger because I wasn’t a writer then. Well, I wouldn’t call myself one. I’ve always been a writer, but before I admitted to myself and the world that I was a writer, things got left unfinished.

That doesn’t happen anymore.

Now I finish one thing just so I can move on to the next.

That’s what writers do.

Well, at least this one does.