WIP Wednesday: In Which I Leave My Body

Ever have one of those moments when you feel like you're living in another person's body?

I read a snippet from Geoff Willmetts brief mention of Triangulation: End of the Rainbow at Stephen Hunt's SF Crowsnest and had just such an experience:

‘The World In Rubber, Soft And Malleable’ by Aaron Polson has a title you have to love. A small town has a population that is slowly vanishing and one of the local graffiti painting teens remaining decides to celebrate their lives. This story wouldn’t have been out of place under the auspices of Ray Bradbury.

Ray effing Bradbury? Knock me over with a feather.

Speaking of out of body experiences, it seems I've won the Whidbey Writers Workshop Students' Choice Award for October with my magical realism flash, "Different Strings". You can read "Different Strings" online. You can also read some curious comments about one of Mercedes M. Yardley's previous entries. Thanks, Mercedes. I wouldn't have entered without your prompting.

Okay, enough of that astral traveling. Here's a piece of my as-yet-untitled WIP:


Here’s the truth about growing up in a small town: you tell lies to survive.

I worked in a grocery store in high school, part time on the evenings and weekends. I saw plenty of strange things there: avocados stuffed in a barrel of fresh popcorn left to rot, a co-worker who used an awl to punch holes in the caps of beer bottles, pies marked “Verda’s own home-baked” which came frozen on pallets with the Sunday dairy truck. I found a body in the trash bin once, but nobody can prove who put it there.

Sunshine This, Mr. Delany

Here I am, your big, cloudy ray of sunshine. Thanks to the magnificent Cate Gardner for the bestowment of the award. And yes, I know "bestowment" is not a word (thank you, Firefox, for pointing that out).

Now comes the part where I bestow the award on two deserving visitors to this blog. Quite frankly, you all rock. Each time one of these awards floats my way, I feel like the dude on stage at the Oscars, yammering away all the names I can while they start to play music and drag me off stage. So there. If you have ever commented on this blog, I award you with a little sunshine. 'cause you are. I wouldn't have continued writing so long without any of you. I know I cheat. I know it's no fun. But I did it anyway.

Maybe because I'm this dude:

I am: Samuel R. "Chip" Delany Few have had such broad commercial success with aggressively experimental prose techniques.

Which science fiction writer are you?

Yeah, I'd never heard of Samuel R. "Chip" Delany, which isn't saying much, but I'm evidently a black science fiction writer with a great bushy beard. Take that, experimental prose and all.

One of the questions on the quiz made me think about the nature of art, and I'm building up a good head of steam to discuss that in depth on Monday. Stay tuned, dear friends.

Scrap-tacular

The very generous Brenton Tomlinson has bestowed the Honest S(crap) award upon me, and I am honored.

The Award and Rules:

This award is bestowed upon a fellow blogger whose blog content or design is, in the giver’s opinion, brilliant.

The rules are as follows:

1. When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows she/he is real.

2. Choose a minimum of 5 blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have five friends. Show the five random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.

3. List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!

Drum roll please (I don't know if these folks have been nominated, and I don't know if they want to be, but here goes):

Robert Swartwood - brutally honest and one heck of a writer. Robert wrote the best one sentence story I've seen in a long time, "Lea & Perrins", and you can read it at Lamination Colony.

K.C. Shaw - inspires us all to be in love with novel writing. Her story, "Sand-Skin Man" from Beneath Ceaseless Skies was brilliant.

Brendan P. Myers - shares his writing lessons with all comers. We also share a TOC in the forthcoming Dead World: Undead Stories.

Rebecca Nazar - has a unique and (pardon the riff on her blog title) whimsical voice, when her writing isn't meandering down the dark side, that is.

Jeremy Kelly - is on vacation, so won't it be a surprise to win this prestigious award when he returns. I appreciate his dark tone and love of Tom Waits.

Ten honest things:

1. I prefer wearing glasses over contacts because I'm lazy.

2. I haven't taken down my Halloween decorations in my classroom. Why should I?

3. I used to hate, absolutely loathe, Shakespeare. Now, I can't have enough. My students groan, but we read a play in every class I teach. Of course I prefer the tragedies.

4. The scars on my face are from a biking accident. I like to say I was "mountain biking". I was really just on a little jaunt around my neighborhood when the rear brake line snapped. Since the front brakes were intact, I was sent over the handlebars, face first. I can't remember four hours of my life...it's not exactly like being asleep (I know time has passed when I sleep). Those four hours are just gone.

5. I never wanted to be a writer when I was growing up. I always wanted to be a paleontologist.

6. I never wanted to be a teacher when I was growing up. (see #6 above)

7. I've had three tremendous school-boy crushes in my life. One was on my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Reed. The second was on a classmate in fifth grade. She really liked horses, so I bought myself a rather lame unicorn diary as if to say, "I like horses, too". The third was on a girl in high school who said I reminded her of Lloyd Dobler from Say Anything. I've been a John Cusack fan since.

8. Although I'm 6'3", I've never played organized basketball.

9. We thought our second son was going to be a girl. Her name would have been Ellen. I named a character in my first book Ellen instead.

10. I still call Star Wars IV: A New Hope by its real name: Star Wars.

Honesty is the best policy. I guess.