Writing–The Nightmare of “At 3:36”

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Last week I wrote about how some stories seem to come to me as if by magic. That first draft comes so easily and requires very little revision to create a final project.

And then there are stories that are the bane of my very existence, the ones that I struggle with and can never seem to get them right no matter how much I mess with them.

All of my stories get revised. Whenever one of my short stories gets rejected, I always review it to see if there’s anything I can do to make it better. I admit that some stories get more than a little tweak after a rejection. Both “Erin Go Bragh” and “Elevator” (both published in my Rejection book) ended up getting significant rewrites more than once after being rejected. “Such a Pretty Face” required some serious work to get right.

But “At 3:36” is a story of a different beast.

It started off simply enough. I got an image of a scene in my  head, a woman looking out the window, watching as the world stops spinning for forty-five minutes at the same time over several days. I wrote it out, explored that scene, and came up with the first draft. The sticking point was that I didn’t want to explain why the world was stopping. It was just happening and the point of the story wasn’t that the world kept stopping and needed to be fixed (this isn’t a SyFy movie, after all), but how my main character reacted and dealt with this event.

But I couldn’t get it right.

No matter how I cut the story or rewrote it or change it (keeping two basic things intact: the world stopping its spin and the main character’s reaction to it), I couldn’t get the story to work. I couldn’t get it to feel right.

I go a lot by how a story feels. If I feel like I’ve told the story I want to tell and created the effect I wanted to create, then I’m satisfied and I can work on polishing and revising that story to make it the best it can be. I never got to that point with “At 3:36” and it was pretty disappointing.

The other day I was in the shower, letting my mind wonder over things I needed to work on, stories that needed to be told, money that needed to be made, the typical things that run rampant in my brain during my morning showers. It was during these mental gymnastics that the possible solution to my “At 3:36” story woes came to me. I think I’ve finally figured out how to fix this story once and for all.

I won’t know for sure until I actually do it, which won’t be until December due to Nanowrimo, but for the first time, I’m excited about this story.

Considering that I hated it as soon as I was done with the first draft, that’s a big improvement.

Like Mother, Like Daughter…Scary!

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

Whenever someone tells me (or someone else) that I’m acting just like my mother, it’s typically not meant as a compliment. What they mean is that I’m acting in such a way that they don’t approve of and attribute my behavior to something genetically inherited from my mother.

However, I am like my mother in some ways, good and bad.

For example (and for Halloween), my mom and I both love horror.

The last time I was at her house, AMC was showing all four of the Alien movies and Mom and I watched the end of Alien and most of Aliens. She loves the SyFy channel on the weekends for movies, no matter how bad they might be. The People Under the Stairs was on Saturday morning and I immediately thought of Mom. She watched that movie a couple of times a week when I was a kid.

She took me and my friend to see Se7en. She rented me Rosemary’s Baby and brought home Dracula from the library for me when I was sick.

Mom is the reason I know who Stephen King is. She read all of his books. I can specifically remember her reading Salem’s Lot. I remember the cover of the book. I remember reading the dusk jacket.

I have yet to read it, though.

When I was finally allowed to check out an adult book at the library at the tender age of 11, Mom didn’t bat an eyelash when I came back with Jaws.

I can’t say that my mom is the reason why I like horror (as I said in my post about why I write horror, I’m not sure exactly WHY I like it or write it), but my mom was definitely a horror enabler. She liked it, realized I liked it, and encouraged me to explore it.

Of course, we don’t always agree on our horror likes. Mom liked Scream enough to make me watch it (during Thanksgiving dinner, naturally). I hated it. I enjoy Vincent Price more than Mom does.

It doesn’t matter, though. The point is that it’s a bonding point for us. Our relationship hasn’t always been the greatest, as happens sometimes with mothers and daughters. Sometimes it’s easier for me to focus on the differences and disagreements. They’re easier to see. It’s easy to forget when we get along or agree. The lack of conflict seems to diminish the recall on the memory.

But even as I picked my brain for more memories of the Mom-horror connection, I was shocked at the warmth that bubbled up behind them. It’s kind of odd that I’d get sentimental and gooey watching a guy run around in a gimp suit while he shoots through the walls because one of his cellar children escaped into them because it reminds me of my mom, but there you go.

My mother and I have an interesting, if not unique, relationship.

You can tell by the ways I take after her.

Writing–Feeling That Magic

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I always say that I’m a better rewriter than a writer, and for the most part that’s true. I’ve written about my love/hate relationship with first drafts and I try to get them done as quickly as possible so I can get on to the revision process, which I like and feel I’m better at.

However, I sometimes get it right the first time.

Hard to believe, I know, but it happens.

There are times when I get an idea for a short story, the idea comes so perfectly formed in my head that all I have to do is write it down. The only revising that happens are little tweaks and some polishing of grammar, word choice, and spelling and that’s it. Those are scary moments for me because I keep thinking I should be changing more, but I’m not seeing the problems. Eventually, after some worrying and mind-boggling, I give up and call the story done. I end up submitting it, thinking it’s a sure rejection.

Three stories that this has happened with have been accepted for publication.

“Land of the Voting Dead”, about a very unique polling place, came out in a rush and was in great shape when I finished it. It really did only need a few tweaks when I was done. Then I found an anthology I thought would be a perfect fit for it. Unfortunately, I was more than a few words short of the minimum word count. Surprisingly enough, after a few days thought, the scene I added to expand the work count came to me the same way the story did. It fit in perfectly with the rest of the story and the whole shebang got accepted.

“Sentries”, about plants used to deter unwanted visitors, was written with a specific anthology in mind. With the theme of the anthology in mind, I thought about what kind of story I could come up with that would fit it. There was no pressure; if I didn’t come up with a good idea, then I didn’t try to write anything for it. No big deal. Less than a week before the deadline, the idea came to me. I wrote it with the word count in mind, adding in a couple of scenes that weren’t in the original vision. Honestly, I didn’t know where I was going with them and thought for sure by the time I’d written the last word the whole thing was crap. I gave it a day and then read it again. Upon review, with a few small revisions, I found that it all worked and it ended up getting accepted to the anthology.

I almost got “Playing Chicken” right the first time. For the most part, the bulk of the story about a group of kids playing chicken with a ghost train and how it affected their lives, was right on. But there was one scene I just couldn’t get right. I knew how what I wanted it to, but I just wasn’t getting the job done. In the end, it took a couple of rewrites of that particular scene to get the clarity and effect I was going for. It paid off in the end, as the story got accepted to an anthology.

This phenomenon happened again last week. I got an idea for a flash-fiction story called “Someone To Hold” based on a superstition that if you leave a corpse’s eyes open, they’ll look for someone to take with them to the grave. I wrote the first draft of the story in a rush that I recognized. This story is mostly done. The revisions I’ll make will be superficial ones, polishing and tweaking to make it as perfect as I can get it. My hope is that I’ll be able to scrape up the entry fee money to submit it to a contest that I think it will do well in.

Then we’ll see if I really was feeling that first draft magic.

Frankenboobies Revenge

~ Kiki Writes ~ 5 Comments

Warning! This post contains graphic details of my breast reduction surgery. It’s not for everyone and probably shouldn’t be read while eating anything. Proceed with caution.

 

In August, I wrote about my breast reduction surgery and here I am talking about my boobs again, this time about the negative aspects of my ta-tas.

Negative, you say? How can there be anything bad about boobies?

Well, there can be, and I’ll get to that. But first, I’m going to tell you why I have no trouble talking about my boobs.

When your boobs are as large as mine were, they sort of take on a life of their own. They become their own entity. My chest was large enough that it would knock things over. I’d unintentionally hit people with my boobs because, well, how could I not? They were between me and whatever I was doing. Reaching past someone guaranteed they were going to get some titty on them. Working in close quarters, an elbow to or a hand brushing a boob was common. My friends quickly got used to it.

Breasts that large attract attention. Comments were as common as accidental elbow blows. Men especially were fascinated by them. Of course. Men like boobs and boobs the size of mine are typically reserved for porn as far as they’re concerned. In high school, I had more than one guy ask if they could just feel them. It was less a sexual grope and more a need to satisfy a curiosity about objects that big.

I imagine that they thought what they saw in the bra was what they’d get outside of it. Little did they realize…

They are consequences to have breasts that large. Even breasts that aren’t that big, but grow rapidly end up with stretchmarks. That’s something you don’t see in the movies, porn or otherwise. I’ve got lots of them. They’ve faded with time, but in up close and personal situations , they’re noticeable.

The stretchmarks didn’t go away with my surgery, though with the smaller breasts I can at least be relatively sure that I won’t be getting more of them.

However, the smaller breasts came with a price of their own: scars.

I went into this surgery knowing that there would be scars. I don’t heal quickly and I don’t heal well. Chalk it up to the fair skin or genetics or whatever. It’s been that way since I was a kid. Considering the incision went from under my armpit, around my breast, and ended about half an inch from my breast bone, yeah, there was going to be a scar. It’s widest under my arms where the drain was implanted for my first week of recovery, but for the most part the whole thing has faded.

Due to the size of my breasts, I had to have what’s called a free nipple graft, which made for another incision scar. The surgeon cut up from the bottom of my breast and around my nipple. My nipples were then removed completely so the breast tissue could be removed and the remainder fung shui’d into a more functional and appealing fashion. My nipples were then reattached. The incision scars from this part of the operation have faded some as well.

Now, the risk of doing a free nipple graft is that the surgeon is taking off and then reattaching the nipple, meaning that if the nipple doesn’t get adequate blood supply, the whole thing could die and have to come off. I knew that going in and sure enough, it was a complication I had to deal with.

Before visions of a nippleless boob start bouncing in your head, let me assure you that wasn’t my case. I have both of my nipples, thank you. However, my left one didn’t get quite enough blood supply and the top layer of skin died and sloughed off. To me, it looks like long healed skin after a bad burn, that mottled pink and white, something-significant-happened-here skin. I have been reassured that it doesn’t look that bad, but no one can deny that it’s not a normal look.

My right nipple is fine and looks quite fetching, except for the tiny scar at the top where it pulled away from the skin a little after the stitches were removed.

With all of the scars and stretchmarks, my breasts have a kind of patchwork quality to them. I call them Frankenboobies as they were put together by man. And as glad as I am to have them and have them be this smaller, much more manageable size, I admit that I’m self-conscious about their appearance in the flesh, so to speak.

However, properly displayed in the right bra and shirt combo, they are fantastic and I have no trouble telling people that, too.

After all, if I’m going to talk about my boobs, I’m going to talk about the good and the bad.

On Trick-or-Treating

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

The last time I went trick-or-treating, I was seventeen and a senior in high school. It wasn’t one of those throw-on-a-mask-to-get-free-candy deals, either. My friends and I decked out in full-on, homemade costumes.

I dressed as a Monkeeman. My costume was spot on. It's almost 15 years later and I'm still proud as hell of it.

Most people think that trick-or-treating is a kid thing and once a kid gets of a certain age, they should stop doing it. When word got out that I’d gone trick-or-treating as a senior high school, not all of my friends were receptive. They thought it was wrong. Ridiculous. Childish.

For the record, no house we went to turned us down for candy. Some questioned us. It’s not a done thing, kids our age trick-or-treating. A few gave us a hard time. But it was hard for them to argue with us when we put more effort in our costumes than some of the parents dragging their kids around the neighborhood.

That’s how I look at it. The better costumes get the better candy, no matter what the age. If a 45 year old man decked out as a convincing Homer Simpson  showed up at my door, I’d be giving him Milky Way, while the 11 year olds who just smeared some fake blood on their faces would be getting my crap candy.

And yeah, I do get crap candy every year for just that purpose. I won’t turn anyone away, but I will make them wish they hadn’t bothered stopping at my house.

Though I haven’t gone trick-or-treating since high school, I do make it a point to dress up to pass out candy to the trick-or-treaters that show up to my house.

Consider it an inspiration to the youth that Halloween doesn’t have to stop when you’re thirteen.

Writing–Why I Write Horror

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

If people show any interest in my career as a writer, the one question they always ask is why I write horror.

For the record, I don’t only write horror. Yes, a majority of my short stories do fall in the horror category, but I’ve written a few that weren’t horror. And my longer works, though I’ve tried to write straight horror, I can’t do it. In my eyes, they end up more dull than anything else. I joke that it’s because I can’t keep a straight face for that long. I mixed comedy and fantasy with my horror and that’s how I got The Outskirts.

But, yeah, the short stories I’ve had published, the short stories I self-published, the stories that are going to be published, are all horror fiction. So the question about why I write horror is valid.

The answer? I don’t know.

Horror has always been a genre I’ve been drawn to, whether it be movies or books. I can remember looking at the covers of the horror movie videos at the video store, fascinated by them, knowing that they would give me nightmares if I watched them. But that fear didn’t keep me from looking at Fangoria magazine in Radio Shack or watching Creepshow through my fingers in my best friend’s basement or picking Jaws to my the first adult book to read. I’ve had nightmares about Michael Myers since I was six, long before I’d ever seen Halloween, which is now my favorite horror film.

I can’t really explain it. I’ve always been drawn to the terrible and horrible.

I didn’t always write horror. I wrote my first letters and words at three. I wrote my first story at six. I’d literally been writing nearly twenty years before I tried my hand at horror. Something in me clicked. Answering a “what if” question with a horror answer just seemed to come more naturally to me. Since then, I’ve played to that as my strength.

I’m sure this doesn’t satisfy everyone’s curiosity. I’m sure they were hoping for some buried trauma that warped my brain. When you write warped things, it makes people question why you would want to, particularly if they don’t care for or haven’t really explored the genre. I can understand that.

I feel the same way about romance novels.

Black Cats and Broken Mirrors

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I am a superstitious person.

Now, I have no problem with black cats (I’ve owned several). The worst part about a broken mirror is the clean-up (and being out a mirror). I’ll walk under a ladder, unless someone is on it, but that’s less superstition and more I don’t want them to drop anything on me. I’ve opened umbrellas in the house without any major repercussions.

But I am still a superstitious person.

I’ve got my own system of weird beliefs that aren’t grounded in reality.

For example, I’ve got a firm belief that if I put my shoes on during a tornado warning, a tornado won’t hit my house. I’m convinced that a tornado will only hit my house if I have to climb out of the rubble barefoot.

There’s no logical basis for this thought other than I don’t want to be barefoot if a tornado hits my house and therefore, I put my shoes on when the siren goes off and because a tornado has never hit my house when I’ve had my shoes on (a tornado had never hit my house, period), it stands to reason that putting on my shoes wards off tornadoes.

Thought it’s a very logical progression to get to that last point, there’s no basis in reality for it, but I still put my shoes on when the siren sounds, no matter what time it is, no matter how I’m dressed. The need for a bra during a tornado is somewhat less than the need for shoes.

I’m not exactly sure how this sort of thinking developed for me. And since I like to think of myself as a logical person, it’s kind of funny that I would fall into this sort of thought process. But I suppose it can happen to anyone. Even the most reasonable people have quirks to their thinking.

Lots of people have lucky numbers and numbers to avoid. Most people think of 7 as lucky and 13 as unlucky. My lucky number is 3 and any multiple of 3. I don’t like 5 and I’m wary of 8.

I don’t have to knock wood, but I do have to close my calendars on the last day of the month (so the old month’s mojo doesn’t bleed into the new month).

For the most part, these superstitions don’t affect my functioning. They’re so particular that they don’t often come up. Unless I point them out, most people don’t even know that I have them. And I’m sure that the same could be said for the people in my life, too. I’m sure that it’s not just chain letters that they’re superstitious about.

Sometimes I wonder about the silliness of my superstitions. Then I realize it could be worse.

I could be wearing the same underwear to preserve a winning streak.

Five Favorite Horror Movies

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Tis the season of spooky! As a horror film lover, you had to have seen this list coming. Keep in mind that these aren’t the best made horror films or the greatest horror films of all time. They’re my five favorites, ones that I’ll watch again and again and again (and again).

Also note that of the five listed here, three have remakes. I’m talking about the originals, guys. Also, none of the movies were made recently. I’m talking the “newest” one on  the list came out the year I was born. Not that I don’t like some recent horror flicks. It’s just that I’m old school like that.

My five favorite horror movies (in no particular order):

1. Halloween (1978). It’s simple, low-budget, and effective. The killer wears a white-painted William Shatner mask. The idea of that being scary is ridiculous, but the reality of it is terrifying. The slow reveal of that mask after Laurie finds her friends dead is always chilling. To this day, if I see someone wearing the now classic Michael Myers mask, it gives me pause. And the urge to run.

2. House on Haunted Hill (1959). Vincent Price is an angel in my world and I love his work. This movie was a William Castle special and when it was released, featured a skeleton on wires to appear during a key part of the movie.  But, even without the live skeleton, the low key creeps the movie provides are effective, particularly when you realize exactly what’s going on. The “ghosts” in this house have nothing on the humans.

3. Friday the 13th (1980). A young Kevin Bacon getting an arrow shoved through his throat? Who doesn’t like that? To me, this is the movie that really solidified the teen slasher flick, with the isolated location, the gorier deaths, the GOTCHA ending. The killer’s point of view was also a fun touch that kept the real killer’s identity a secret until the end.

4. Alien (1979). The isolation of space. The claustrophobia of the ship. The threat of sabotage from within. A monster that you only saw in glimpses. The classic chestbursting scene that’s scarred more than one kid for life. The tension build over the course of the movie is enough to have your palms sweating so that when the alien is finally revealed in full, screaming isn’t hard to do.

5. Jaws (1975). “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” Indeed. This is one of those movies that I’ve seen so much that if don’t feel like sitting through the whole thing, I’ve got it timed so I can tune in to my favorite scenes. From the opening attack to the shark blowing up, the mechanical shark not working is the best thing that happened to this movie. Keeping the shark in the shadows just heightened the threat and the fear. Sure, there are several shark inaccuracies in the movie, but by the time the shark eats Quinn, you’ve pretty much forgiven them all.

Writing–October Projects

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It’s getting into my writing busy season.

NaNoWriMo is coming up, which means I’ve got to start planning for it. The loose idea I’m kicking around right now is another Stanley novel called American Vampires. It would involve Stanley, Neda, and Nathan hunting down a trio of, well, American vampires that may or may not exist and may or may not be living by the unwritten vampire code (it’s all hearsay and Nathan’s the one doing most of the hearing and saying and since Stanley doesn’t trust Nathan, well…).

I’m also going to continue revising The World (Saving) Series. I finally got chapter one done after starting over. It’s still not great, but it’s a lot closer to what it needs to be and it’s good enough that I can move on.

Also on tap is more work on The Outskirts site. I need to, at the very least, get some bios up on some of the characters that inhabit the universe and try scratching out some ideas on some of their stories. I’m not expecting miracles when it comes to getting anything accomplished, but I need to get something done. It can’t just sit there.

And lastly (told you it was my busy season), I’ve got an idea for a memoir and I’m going to start jotting down some ideas for it. I have no idea if I’ll even write it, but it’s not going to hurt anything if I do some brainstorming on it. Who knows? If I decide not to do it, I’ll at least have something to come back to if I change my mind.

So, those are the writing projects on tap for October. I’ve got to get my butt out of low gear and into high.

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Pregnant Lady?

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

As a human being, I have my quirks and my fears and my quirky fears. I chose to forego any of the typical phobias like bugs and snakes and decided to jazz up some of the more traditional fears like heights and death. I can only guess at the sources of some of these out of the ordinary hang-ups. Friends and family have no desire to understand them. They just filed them in the “weird” column of my personality and moved on.

So, what scares me?

Mascots- Okay, lots of people have this one. I’m definitely not alone. And it’s more of a love-hate thing with them. I think mascots can be a lot of fun and very funny. I just don’t want them close to me. I don’t want them coming at me. I don’t want them interacting with me. Mascots are fine…over there.

The big headed mascots really freak me out. The bobbleheads at Chase Field, the Presidents at Nationals Park, Rosie Red at Great American Ballpark. I don’t even like seeing them on TV. I don’t think I could handle them so well in person. There’d be a lot of walking in the opposite direction.

This is a late blooming fear, as I don’t remember ever having a problem with mascots before my twenties. Even at DragonCon, people in certain mascot-like costumes caused me concern. The Pennywise Clown, complete with balloons and evil grin, in the elevator, however, did not.

Pregnant Women- I think this is a product of seeing Aliens at a young age. While I fully understand and recognize how amazing it is that you can grow a living creature inside of your body, you’re growing a living creature inside of your body and it’s going to want to come out. I see a heavily pregnant woman and I think it’s just a chestburster incident waiting to happen. And no, I don’t want to feel the baby kick because I don’t want to be too close when it decides it’s done incubating and claws it’s way through your belly button.

Okay, that’s ridiculous and I know it and considering the fact that people close to me have been bearing children pretty regularly for the past ten years, I’ve had lots of opportunities to plaster a smile on my face and pretend not to be creeped out by the fact that there’s something MOVING in my friend’s gut.

I imagine that should I ever get pregnant, I’ll spend the entire time pretty skeeved out and possibly flapping my hands like a girly-girl that’s just seen a spider every time the kid moves.

Wait. Why would I even consider getting pregnant if I’m scared of pregnant women? Hold that thought. I’ll come back to it.

Falling- I don’t mind heights. I don’t mind being in high places, looking out over the land, taking in the view. I don’t mind working on roofs or climbing ladders. I love ferris wheels and the Power Dive at Great America. I have no trouble with heights.

It’s the falling from heights that bothers me. I don’t get too close to the railing. I don’t like other people to get too close to the railing. We were sitting over the bullpen in Kansas City and this guy carrying his baby boy stood next to us and the whole time I was in a highly tense state because his baby was too close to the edge. Logically, I know that Daddy isn’t going to drop the baby, but on the other hand I have this overwhelming desire to not risk it and please step back, sir, you are making me nervous.

And it’s not just high places that this bothers me. It’s stairs, too. I am quite careful going up and down stairs because I’m terrified of falling down them. I think the last time I actually fell down a flight of stairs I was probably three or four and I wasn’t hurt. But be sure that if there’s a bannister, I’m hanging on.

Corpses- Yeah, I don’t like dead people (most people don’t). I’m not big on dead things in general, but I really have a problem with dead people. This means that I don’t do funerals. Period. End of story. Why? There are dead people there. I find it really disconcerting that there is a corpse laid out like a Thanksgiving centerpiece in the room.

I realize that this provides comfort to most people (for some odd reason), but it does nothing for me. As far as I’m concerned, the deceased person in question is already gone; their spirit or soul or what have you has left their body and all that’s left is a hunk of spoiling meat. And I don’t want to be in a room with it.

This goes for ashes, too. My grandparents both chose cremation and no funerals, which I thougth was great, but so long as Dad had their ashes in the jeep, I wouldn’t get in it. There are dead people in there. Nope. (Grandma and Papa have since been moved to Dad’s closet and I have no desire to get in there any time soon.)

Surprisingly, most of my family are very understanding about my funeral-aversion. They understand my problem with being in a room with a corpse and I’ve been given a free-pass for most funerals. Other people don’t understand it and think I’m just a selfish, uncaring bitch. And that’s fine. So long as I’m not in a room with a corpse, you can think of me what you like.

Fears are considered a sign of weakness in my family and I do my best to face them.

I spent most of the Cornbelters season getting used to Corny so I could get within two feet of him when I took my nieces to get his autograph (I still used the children as a shield). I like Corny. And he seems to respect my need for extra mascot personal space and I appreciate that.

I challenged my fear of falling by going on the Mine Drop ride at Great America (it takes you up a gazillion stories and then drops you straight down). Sure, I screamed all the way down, was shaking so hard I couldn’t get my harness off, and would never do it again, but I did it once and that’s what counts.

Same with getting pregnant. If the opportunity to have children arises, I would get pregnant despite that fear just to say I did it. Nine months is a lot longer than thirty seconds, but the reward would be greater for all of the time I’d put in.

The dead people thing I’m kind of stuck with. That’s going to be a tough one to get around. I’ve basically made a deal with myself that certain funerals I have to attend. I will probably sit as close the back as I can and do my best not to be anywhere near the casket, but I will go.

That’s right. If you’re really special, I’ll go to your funeral.