Monthly Archive for November, 2005

I’ve got a raging head cold. So does Bryan, but that’s coincidental. We’re never sick at the same time, and almost never manage to catch what each other has. When we do, the second always becomes sick as the other one gets ove it.

I’m starting to wonder if getting a cold is my body’s way of slamming on the brakes and forcing me to sit, or lie, still for a while. Here’s why: I almost always have a cold whenever I finish a play.

I know, being cooped up with a number of other people, especially when kids are involved, can be a breeding ground for germs. But I don’t think that’s really it. It’s when a task that has taken a lot of time and effort has been completed that my body finally breaks down for a span.

Why do I think this? Because this time around, I had another project to occupy my time. Even after Mame was done, I still had about ten days left in National Novel Writing Month, with a deadline looming. Monday night I finished my novel, beating the deadline. Tuesday morning, the cold starts hitting. If it were pegged solely to Mame, then the cold would have smacked me upside the head a week before.

Likewise, I know that if I direct either show I’ve applied to direct next spring (although I “know” I won’t be hired for either), I’ll have a cold after strike night. And I know after the first weekend of the new Woodstown Cinema’s being open, I’ll be laid up for a few days. My body always feels the needs to put the brakes on when a project is done.

I wonder if it’s something like post-partum depression. You’ve just given metaphorical birth to this completed project, and your mind (and body) start rebelling.

Rumpled Trenchcoats and Rubber Bullets is finally finished, and has clocked in at 51,188 words. All in just 27 days of writing.

Those who would like a copy of the first draft, especially to critique and mark up with a free red pen I will include for the occasion, please send current mailing address through E-Mail.

For those who are curious, Rumpled Trenchcoats and Rubber Bullets is just shy of the 30,000 word mark, coming in (so far) at 104 pages out of a project 180. I’m slightly behind schedule, but hope to pick up speed once the weekend is over.

There’s an updated excerpt at my NaNoWriMo Profile Page, containing a scene that I enjoyed writing very, very much. Things were getting heavy at that point, and needed some comic relief.

I’m thinking about putting the book out through Xlibris Publishing when it’s done. If I do, would anyone really buy and read it?

As I’ve written about on here, I’m in the middle of a novel for National Novel Writing Month called Rumpled Trenchcoats and Rubber Bullets. It’s a comedy about four kids who plan to shoot up their school Columbine-style.

I was feeling a little uneasy. These are the easiest characters I’ve ever had to write for, I’m so much in their mindset. And it almost makes me want to change my ending to make them victorious. Fuck, I’m starting to think that if they hadn’t been horrible racists, I would have been cheering on the Columbine kids.

Side of myself I don’t like looking at. Frightening.

And, then, someone sends me this.

Did you know that Scooter Libby, the radical right-wing extremist and Chief-of-Staff to Vice-Pretzel Dick Cheney who was indicted on perjury charges last week is a novelist? I just found out about this from yesterday’s Randi Rhodes Show (which you can download from here if you’re curious).

One of the more disturbing scenes in his blatantly more-pornographic-than-Anne Rice novel, “The Apprentice,” is this:

At age 10 the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls, so the girls would be frigid, and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest.

Remember that this is the kind of person who thinks that queers can’t get married, but it’s perfectly OK for a bear to fuck an underaged girl.

Randi put it best about 58 minutes into the show, and I couldn’t have said it better:

I said to Sam [Seder], “did you read Scooter’s [book]?” And he quoted it to me from memory. “Yes,” he had read it, and he said “you know, I don’t even see how putting a child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with her would make her frigid. I think it would have the exact opposite, Randi. I think she would be grateful to be with anything that wasn’t covered in hair and didn’t have claws, wouldn’t you?”

Which brought me to this point: THEY CAN’T EVEN PLAN THEIR PORN RIGHT! HOW ARE THEY GOING TO PLAN THE INVASION OF A COUNTRY?