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  Matt Coleman, Mystery Writer

Project Based Learning Ideas to Stave Off Extinction of the Modern American Schoolchild

5/23/2018

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Project Title: “Ain’t Nothing Worth Paying For That’s Free”
School or Community Problem: As the last holdout against capitalism, public education is contributing nothing to the overall wealth of society. If children are truly our best investments, then why are we not seeing a return?
Project Summary: Free water … free healthcare … free education. Is any of it really worth the cost you aren’t paying? Compare a bottle of Finé filtered through the Volcanic rock of Japan to the free tap water of an average American city … let’s say … I don’t know … Flint, Michigan. Which do you prefer? So why are we not selling bottled education? During this project, students will begin a letter writing campaign to support the privatization of schools. Parental involvement can be generated through all white children being transferred to suburban schools. By further marginalizing city public school systems, the project can garner community support via privately funded public action groups who will gleefully vilify the city schools.  Students can join the political action groups to demand more money be funneled into selective charter schools until the only education worth having is one you paid for. The culminating event will be a ribbon cutting at a highly selective private charter school on the outskirts of town, where buses will not run and the lottery process will ensure only a handful of minority children (used strategically for the ribbon cutting ceremony) are sprinkled in among affluent white students who will pave the way into the future.
Driving Question: How can we, as school children, help rich white men make money off of us?
Key Knowledge or Understanding: Finance, Persuasive Writing, Government
Success Skills: Consumerism, Submission, Socially Accepted Segregation
Entry Event: A town hall meeting where an actor pretending to be an education industry guru (funding made available by wealthy white men from a different part of the state) carnival barks a group of concerned parents into believing their school is failing.


Project Title: “Is That a Pencil In Your Pocket?”
School or Community Problem: Teachers are struggling to find second jobs which pay enough to purchase proper school supplies.
Project Summary: If we’ve learned anything from dress code violations, it’s that boys can’t get enough of butts. How can we expect to keep boys’ eyes off of those butts when we have just now started keeping their grabby, horny little hands off of them? But instead of seeing problems on every yoga pants coated butt, maybe it’s high time we started seeing some prime advertising real estate. Before sending girls to change out of highly distracting clothing, this project will direct them to first post on Instagram holding specific brands of school supplies. Since everyone knows boys can’t help but be distracted and sex crazed by the female form in tight pants, the following will grow. With increased following, suppliers will send free samples for free advertising. Win-win. In fact, win-win-win, because what girl wouldn’t want to gain Instagram notoriety? (I mean, come on … what’s the reason they wore such revealing clothing in the first place? Hello. Attention.)
Driving Question: How can we, as school children, use our bodies to help teachers buy pencils?
Key Knowledge and Understanding: Photography, Marketing
Success Skills: Instagram, Sexualizing Female Bodies, Resourcefulness
Entry Event: This is the obvious time for a bikini car wash to raise money for a new copier. If enough money comes in, a single text book can also be purchased (photocopies to be run on the new copier).


Project Title: “The Second of Amendments, But First In Our Hearts”
School or Community Problem: They out here trying to take our guns.
Project Summary: There are approximately 265 million guns in America. There are just under 100,000 public schools in America. We, as a nation, are getting dangerously close to a gun-to-school ratio of 2500:1. If those numbers don’t make you hug your gun a little tighter tonight, I’m not sure what will. But we know one truth to be self evident: we will have another school shooting. Therefore, this project aims to help prepare school children to die in numbers alarming enough to be used as a pawn in a very important grown-up debate, BUT not in numbers high enough to sway logic to the “wrong side.” If possible, the project will encourage support from administration and local law enforcement by creating helpful pamphlets of possible reasons for the school shooting other than the semi-automatic firearm in the hands of a mentally unstable peer (i.e., number of exits and entrances, violent video games, use of distraction words like abortion and troubled youth).
Driving Question: How can we, as school children, die at a rate just alarming enough to keep the debate alive but not alarming enough for any action to be taken to fix the problem?
Key Knowledge or Understanding: American Political Values
Success Skills: Dodging, Hiding, Cowering, Crying
Entry Event: The inevitable next school shooting. Or the next one. Or the next one. Or the next one. Or the next one. Or the next one. Or the next one. Or the next one. Or the next one.
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Three Things Movie Trailers Can Teach Writers About Pitching

5/17/2018

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Honestly, this post began as an exploration into book trailers. With Graffiti Creek due out August 8th, I have been pining for the ability to create a badass book trailer. Sadly, I don't believe I have the bandwidth to pull it off in a way I would be proud to share. However, on May 17th, my publisher, Pandamoon, opened itself for submissions using #PitDark as a kick-off. The juxtaposition of my research into trailers (research is a word used loosely here to mean lying in bed watching movie trailers) with this Twitter pitch event, got me wondering what we can learn from the best movie trailers about pitching our novels.

1. Focus

I think the best pitches have a focus, meaning the writer knows the draw of the book. And as a disclaimer, I will add that I am no expert. Pitching is incredibly difficult for me. I think I'm pretty bad at it. BUT DON'T STOP READING. My hope is that we can learn together.

With Graffiti Creek, I can now look back on it and see my focus should be on characterization. It was, at its core, an exercise in empathy, and those deep character dives should be my pitch. Whereas with my first book, Juggling Kittens, hindsight and reviews tell me the sense of place and time really sold the book. When we look at the best trailers, we can see the laser focus on the element of strength in the work.

​PURE PLOT

PLOT WITH A TOUCH OF CHARACTER

PURE CHARACTER - SINGLE

PURE CHARACTER - MULTIPLE

TIME AND PLACE

2. Magic

Stories draw us in with magic. The best trailers capture the magic of a story with a moment, a line, an image, a song ... something. But whatever it is, it gives you chills. Those chills trigger something in our mind which makes us feel the magic of the moment. This is all difficult with a book. But I propose the following theory: our magic is in our theme. Even in the most genre-driven book, some central theme drives every character, every choice, every sentence in some way.  As evidence, I present three trailers. What I would draw your attention to is how each captures thematic elements and a sense of magic. And, important to note, they all three play on things already familiar to us. These are universal themes of human existence. Without that important connection, nothing in our brain would send those electric charges  down our spine. In the first two, notice the choice of song, the feeling of the pace, the choice of font. Everything drives us to a familiar place where we feel the wonderment of childhood or the overbearing need to feel noticed. Forget the last minute and a half of each. We get chills at the first glimpse of the monster silhouette or the slight embarrassment of the beautiful sound of children singing Radiohead layered over the familiar clicks of modern day friendship. And the third I included because I want to draw attention to the use of stock footage. There is almost zero footage from the movie itself. The monologue sets the theme against images we can all connect with.

3. Mystery

This falls into the category of "much easier said than done ... key to everything." So, yeah, if I could master it or tell anyone how to master it, this blog post would probably cost you money. But I can point to it when it is mastered. The key to a pitch is to give away enough to tease without opening what J.J. Abrams talks about as the "mystery box." In most genres, we all need to be working to create a mystery box. And with our pitches, we need to be working to crack open the mystery box just enough to hear a sound or catch a glimpse of something which makes a reader want to rip into it. So one example is quite obviously from Abrams himself. But the other three are every bit as good. And these are arguably four different genres. Granted, two are monster movies, sort of. But one is a disaster movie and the other a horror movie. With each, there is just enough information presented to make the viewer want to find out more.
All in all, I really just like watching movie trailers and wanted an excuse to watch a lot of them. But, in writing this, I did learn a few things about my own efforts to pitch my novels. And pitching goes on even after you have a publisher. I am constantly trying to find the best way to pitch to potential readers. And attention spans are shrinking all the time. We have to work at being quicker to the punch. Hopefully, this helped a little.
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Choose Your Own Adventure!

5/9/2018

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Most people who have read my debut novel, Juggling Kittens, will mention one character straightaway. The Drew. Without fail, he has been the favorite character of anyone who has talked to me about the book. And that's cool. You know ... Ellis ... the protagonist ... he's, um ... he's cool too, though, right? I mean, he is a little bit based on me, kinda, but, you know what? Never mind. Not what we're here to talk about. It's cool. The Drew. Everybody loves The Drew. I get it. Well, here's your chance. Ever read those Choose Your Own Adventure books when you were a kid? Good. Buckle up, bitches, because ....

You Are Partners With The Drew

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You've shown quite a bit of promise as a seventh grade Arkansas history teacher. Internally, you know this means you haven't accomplished much beyond displaying an ability to read faster than thirteen-year-olds. But you have enjoyed making connections with the kids, and, setting aside humility for a moment, your project on Indian ancestry was pretty badass. Either way, the district's central office has taken notice. They have invited you to join an Aspiring Administrators cohort of teacher leaders who show a propensity to become future campus principals. As sort of an initiation to the cohort, you've been invited to shadow the administrator on your campus.

Andrew Andrews.

You walk into Principal Andrews' office and take in your surroundings. The room looks and smells like an Old Spice commercial. On one end of his desk are a disheveled pile of papers, which apparently have something to do with fantasy baseball. At the other end of the desk sits a fake (you hope) grenade with a tag hanging off displaying the numeral one. Below it, a tiny plaque reads, "Take a Number." You scan the walls to find one of those singing big mouthed bass, a poster of a mountain climber with a quote from Bo Jackson on it, a framed diploma from a college of which you have never heard, and another framed document. Stepping closer, you discover your principal is also a licensed private investigator.

Principal Andrews walks in as you are examining the private investigator license. He claps loudly and you jump. "Never met a real Private Eye, have you, rookie?" He jerks a thumb at himself and uses the coach's whistle hanging around his neck to blow out a little wolf whistle.

"Principal Andrews," you begin.

He frowns and blows the whistle shrilly. "Ahhh. Foul on the play, Rook." Dropping the whistle, and pointing at his face with both index fingers he drawls out, "The Drew." He pats a plush leather chair in front of his desk. "Now, have a seat. Let's talk shop."

Turning away from the sight of The Drew walking around his desk in his too short coaching shorts, you twist into a chair and smile. "The district office said I should shadow you today."

The Drew pushes his tongue into the side of his mouth, nodding and grinning mischievously. "Oh, I know. The only question is, what do you want to shadow?" He points to his diploma, "The man." He nods toward the private investigator's license, "Or the legend."

Do you ... ?

Shadow the Man
Shadow the Legend
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I Got All In My Feelings and Explicated a Manchester Orchestra Song

5/7/2018

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I wrote a couple of weeks ago about facing a difficult year and trying to slowly write about it. Much of writing about it means facing what happened in my failed marriage. I’m horrible at stuff like that. Luckily, Andy Hull of Manchester Orchestra is aces at it.


Let’s get the disclaimer out of the way: even though you can find song lyrics anywhere, I still hate posting someone else’s work, word for word. But to break it down, I kinda had to. Sorry. But, as part of this disclaimer, let me urge you to buy this album. A Black Mile To The Surface is a brilliant piece of work (easily an 8.8 … fuck you, Pitchfork, and the clique you claim) which deserves to be listened to straight through. Remember doing that? Back when we still bought albums. And we’d sit and listen to the whole thing while we read the liner notes. Anybody else remember the liner notes to Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain? Ahhhh … good times. But really. To ease my guilt, go buy this album.

But enough about the downfalls of modern society and the limitations of contemporary musical criticism, let me tell you about that time Andy Hull read my mail.

Let's Get to Explicating!

“The Gold” is the second song off Black Mile To The Surface, and it’s the first of two (along with “The Moth”) (that I know of) songs which got some radio play (well deserved, as should “The Wolf”). So you may have heard it. When I first heard it, although I am a fan of the band, I had not yet purchased the album. I heard it in my car while driving my kids to school. My satellite radio has a feature where I can back up and play a song over. Which I did. Probably ten times in a row.

“The Gold” is about the breakdown of a relationship--the acceptance of the fact that everything of worth has been mined from it long ago.

In a literal paraphrase, the speaker is a wife of a worker in a gold mine. She has watched him go off to work the mine for so long that she has lost any memory of why they keep doing it. Why he keeps digging. Why she keeps waiting on him to come home. She realizes they were living a life of temporary satisfaction. Much like the mine itself, eventually all the gold would be stripped from it, and then everyone has to climb back out and walk away from it.

“The Gold”
​
Couldn't really love you any more You've become my ceiling

Right away. Reading my fucking mail, man. This was a feeling I had never really accepted. When you spend years of your life caring for someone with mental illness and problems with addiction, the relationship--the caretaking--becomes a ceiling. Whether or not I accepted it, I was only going to be able to go as far as one can go while tethered to someone in need of constant care. And as long as you love that person, you can never stop providing care. It is an enabling, crippling, cyclical relationship.

I don't think I love you anymore
​ That gold mine changed you

I feel like the “gold mine” can be any one of a number of things. In my case, it was mostly alcohol. This quest for gold started with the best of intentions. The husband in the song was seeking it out as a job, which provided for his family. I can appreciate those sentiments. Addiction never starts as addiction. It starts with a desire to enjoy life or numb something which is keeping you from enjoying life. But eventually, the gold mine changes a person. The quest becomes about finding the gold. Not the original intentions behind looking for it. And, when the change happens, no one can ever find enough gold.

You don't have to hold me anymore
Our cave's collapsing

Christ on a cracker. This one. There are no canaries in a marriage. When it starts to go, it’s too late. This line is like a fucking elegy, man. That ending alliteration rings so final. Complete. The imagery of telling someone that “you don’t have to hold me anymore” carries a power with it for anyone who has ended a relationship. Heartbreaking.

I don't wanna be me anymore

Fuck all. This. This all day. When you are in a long relationship, you begin to be identified as half of a whole. I’m sure most of us have experienced it before. You are not YOUR NAME. You are YOU&YOURPARTNER. And when that becomes who you are, if it breaks down … well, Andy said it better than I can.

My old man told me
"You don't open your eyes for a while
You just breathe that moment down."
Forty miles out of East Illinois
From my old man's heart attack

Although I don’t connect with the father imagery (it’s a common motif in Andy’s writing … my dad and I are good), I can completely appreciate the advice. I remember having the conversations which ended my marriage. While I don’t think I am in a place (nor may I ever be) where I can write in specifics about what was said, I can share the feeling of “breath[ing] that moment down.” So many times. There were so many moments I had to breathe down. A feeling can envelope your mind--where you can’t bring yourself to be angry or sad. You can’t do anything but close your eyes and breathe it down. Wait it out. This was actually the line that hit me the hardest. I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone capture a feeling of mine so perfectly.

I believed you were crazy
You believed you loved me

Here we reach the chorus. And I don’t know if anyone can appreciate it quite like I do. The word believed has become a watered down term in today’s society. But here it carries power. When you believe someone is “crazy” it starts to color everything they do and every reaction or emotion you have connected to those actions. And when someone believes they love you, nothing is crazy. Very simple. And very complicated.

I don't wanna bark here anymore
Black hills, the colly
Wasn't really dangerous for us
We just catch you coughing

Colly is the dirt accumulated in a mining town. And, sidenote, “bark” is a fucking fantastic verb here. I imagine it came about in an effort to be able to use “coughing” later in the verse, but brilliant pivot, Andy. And great consonance with the b and c sounds--serves as a nice sense of onomatopoeia for coughing. And as far as meaning? Spot on. When you’re in it, you never see it. It doesn’t feel “dangerous.” The soot settles all around you until it is far, far too late.

What the hell are we gonna do?
A black mile to the surface
I don't wanna be here anymore
It all tastes like poison

The latter of these two sets of lines reiterates the “I don’t wanna be me anymore” line with a powerful metaphor. The first set contains the album title. There is such helplessness in it. The “black mile” one would see looking up out of the mine is a symbol of what happens in a failing marriage. There is so much space between where it started and where it ends. How can you ever hope to climb out of it? How can you even begin to peel apart the layers of lives grown together.

Can't open your eyes for a while
You just breathe that moment down
Forty hours out of Homestake
​And I'm trying to translate you again

Here we have a repeat of the pre-chorus, with the added line at the end. And what a beautiful line. I hear it as something deeper than simply attempting to understand someone. I hear in this line an admission that we never truly spoke the same language. I spent a lifetime translating you. And it was exhausting. Digging for that meaning every time. Prying out the nuances and finding my own words for them.

You and me, we're a daydrink
So lose your faith in me

The song ends with a few loops of chorus and pre-chorus, with these two lines woven in amidst both. The “daydrink” reference was one I actually thought I was inserting myself. I assumed I had misheard the line. I actually went searching for it on genius.com and found where they cited a tweet by Andy himself where he confirmed the line is actually “daydrink.” Perfect. I know the meaning of this line all too well. A daydrink is an experience which can seem so fun loving and high spirited at the time. But eventually, it darkens. We can all laugh about getting day drunk. I have joked about it myself. But once you have witnessed someone truly day drinking, the words sour in your mouth. I get it. “You and me, we’re a daydrink:” we were so fun once, but it isn’t fun anymore. And that last line is the money line of the song, to me. In the ending of a relationship, there is always one person who is more dependant on the other. One who hasn’t felt the fade quite as much. So I can hear the pleading in the tone of this line. It is the tone of a person begging for their partner to lose the faith which once sustained them both. Stop believing you love me.
So, yeah … sorry, Andy. But this one got all up in my emotions. With my next blog post, I’ll try to return to dropping excited f-bombs about cheesy television shows or something.
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TV Show Idea: Genoa Volunteer Fire and Rescue

5/2/2018

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Logline:

Young studs Skylar and Teigen join a volunteer fire department to break down generational gaps, small town stereotypes, and the doors of burning trailer homes.

Tagline:

When things heat up … things heat up.

Show Pitch:

In the small town of Genoa, Arkansas, the summers are hot and the fires are even hotter. But in a community of just over 1000 people, the only hope you’ve got when your field becomes an inferno are the neighbors who volunteer to help. So for the past twenty-five years, Cletus and Yancy have run the Genoa Volunteer Fire and Rescue out of a converted church house where Yancy’s grandpappy used to preach the word. Whether it’s a grease fire in Martha Whitehead’s gourmet style kitchen or another flare-up from Chevy Martindale’s meth lab in his trailer, Cletus and Yancy will be there as fast as Cletus can navigate the Genoa backwoods in his jacked up Ford. Other volunteers have helped through the years, but Cletus and Yancy have always run the show. And the show has kept the good people of Genoa safe for a quarter of a century. But now, a new class of volunteers may be threatening everything Cletus and Yancy know about volunteer fire and rescue. Skylar, Teigen, and several of their friends have all signed up, and these boys fight fire with fire. Skylar attacks every fire with the heel of his boot as he’s kicking down the front door--barreling into the blaze with zero regard for his own safety. The only thing he breaks more of than door jams are country girls’ hearts. Teigen’s broken his fair share of heart himself. Starting with his Baptist preacher daddy … when he came out of the closet. These two lifelong best friends, with a handful of buddies in tow, are ready to revolutionize the volunteer fire fighting in Genoa, whether Cletus and Yancy are ready or not. And it’s a good thing for Genoa. Because in this tiny little country town, the only things hotter than the fires … are the boys.

Show Cross:

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Characters:

Cletus:
A lifelong resident of Genoa and a grizzled veteran of Genoa Volunteer Fire and Rescue. When Cletus was a boy, his father started the volunteer fire department, calling it Volunteer Firemen of Genoa. He would do ride alongs with his dad as young as six. When he was twelve, he watched in horror as Cletus, Sr., and the rest of the Volunteer Firemen stood helpless, listening to the cries of at least twenty baby ostriches on Barnaby Gordon’s ostrich farm. “Can’t help ‘em, son,” Cletus, Sr., had told his boy, who looked on through tears that streamed down his dirty little face. “We put out the fires. But we ain’t rescue. We’ll have to hope for help to come from town in time to save those big, weird chickens.” But help did not arrive in time. And Barnaby Gordon never again wore the crown of Ostrich King of Southwestern Arkansas. In that moment, Cletus vowed, never again. And five years later, when he took over as head of the Volunteer Firemen, his first order of business was to change the name and the mission. Volunteer Fire … AND Rescue. Cletus believes in his work. And he believes in finding a way to get the job done. So while he is conflicted about the rookies, especially some of their sexual preferences, he appreciates the brazen nature of their rescue efforts. He knows he’s getting older, and he needs someone like Skylar, with his devil-may-care attitude, to make sure not one more goddamn big, weird chicken ever dies on his watch.

Skylar:
One day, up on Old Man Truesdale’s hill, Jack Burkhalter asked Suzanne Milhouse to pull up her skirt and flash her panties. Jack was the eighth grade star quarterback and Suzanne was a lowly seventh grade cheerleader, so obviously Jack expected to get what he wanted. When Suzanne said no, Jack scooped up her puppy, Mr. Bojangles, and put him in a wagon. With one kick, he sent the wagon hurtling down the hill. There was no time to think. Skylar scooped up the closest bicycle--Jack’s--and took off after Mr. Bojangles. Without a passing thought for his own safety, Skylar overtook the bounding wagon, leaned over, and scooped up Mr. Bojangles with one hand right before the wagon crashed into an oak tree, sending shards of wood splintering around Skylar as he skidded to a stop. After struggling to pedal back up the hill, Skylar knocked Jack out with a right hook. Then he returned the puppy to Suzanne, who thanked him with a kiss right on the lips. It was Skylar’s first kiss. And his first time to ride a bike without training wheels. He was five. And he never changed. Skylar wants to live life at full speed with no seatbelt … and no condom. He wants to feel things. He’s a simple guy. Don’t know much about nothing. Ain’t got no use for college or books. He loves his guns and his country music, but he also loves his gay best friend. Never gave much thought to any of the debates about choosing or being born that way. Skylar don’t care, to be honest. All he knows is that Teigen’s his best friend, and he’ll fight by his side in any bar, gay or straight. Volunteer Fire and Rescue is Skylar’s chance to prove he’s more than just a chiseled jawline and a nice set of abs. He may not be headed to med school like his younger sister, but he can still be of service to his community. He loves Genoa, and wants to make it a better place for his kids, when he has some. And judging from how he spends his nights, that could be any day now.

Yancy:
He’s been best friends with Cletus since he was able to walk across the field between their childhood homes. But while Cletus lived in a big, fancy, three-bedroom house, Yancy grew up in a trailer with a blanket for a door. For him, Fire and Rescue isn’t just his opportunity to help his neighbors. It’s his chance to find out what they’re all up to, and put a goddamn stop to it. And behind the sanctity of his Genoa Volunteer Fire and Rescue badge … the one Cletus had made for him by a bonafide Civil War blacksmith reenactor … he’s gonna get to the bottom of every last mystery in the town of Genoa. And these rookies can either get in line and help him or get the hell out of his way.

Teigen:

There are two things Teigen’s daddy won’t accept about him. Two things Teigen has no more control over than he does over the color of his eyes: the blue of Icelandic Crystal Ice Caves. His Baptist preacher father won’t accept Teigen’s sexuality and he won’t even acknowledge Teigen’s mixed-race heritage. The former would mean his son is seeking out answers somewhere other than the word of God, and the latter would mean his wife was seeking more than haircuts and groceries when she made trips to town. When Skylar talked him into joining the Volunteer Fire and Rescue, Teigen saw it as his chance to prove to Genoa that he has a place in their community. It also gave him a chance to keep tabs on Skylar, if that’s even possible. Keeping that boy alive may kill them both before it’s all said and done. But if they can stay alive, then they can both carve out a place in Genoa, break down a few cultural barriers, and, if they can get a little help from Cletus and Yancy, they might just find Teigen’s real daddy.

Saffron:

Skylar’s younger sister and easily the smartest person in Genoa. Her dream is to be an invasive cardiologist. Saffron wants to hold a heart in her hands. She thrives on pressure. So every chance she gets, she’s sneaking into the bed of Skylar’s pickup truck and riding along with Genoa Volunteer Fire and Rescue. And the team hates it … until there’s a life that needs saving.

Imagine:
When Imagene was thirteen years old, Cletus won her hand in marriage playing a game of cards. As horrifying as it was to young Imagene and to women everywhere, she’ll be damned if she didn’t end up falling in love with the old bastard, even with twenty-four years between them. She has become a mother figure to the Genoa Volunteer Fire and Rescue team, serving as a connection between the generations as well as the voice of reason when Yancy gets all up into one of his theories.

Lavonte:
Lavonte is damn near the only black resident of Genoa. He was adopted as a boy by gentle old Mrs. Geraldine Balentine and her kind, mute husband, Duff. Although Lavonte was already nine at the time, he came to love the Balentines and takes care of them financially by fixing cars and tinkering on just about every gadget in Genoa. In fact, Lavonte is the only paid member of the Genoa Volunteer Fire and Rescue. Cletus pays him to keep the trucks running. But what none of them knows is that Lavonte was sent to Genoa on a mission. A mission by his father. To find his missing half brother.

Axl:
Axl has been Teigen’s on again off again boyfriend since they shared a kiss on a bridge in junior high. What began as a Romeo-Juliet love story, when they lived in Genoa and Fouke, respectively, blossomed into a full fledged teenage romance, complete with breakups and reconciliations and even a promposal, when Axl showed up to Genoa Central High School with his band, Phil Dale’s Broken Heart, to sing a cover of The Smiths “Hand In Glove,” which culminated with asking Teigen to prom. When the school tried to block the two boys from going to prom because Axl lived in Fouke, Skylar offered up an empty trailer home of his family’s. And Axl still lives there, where he spends his days as a medical transcriptionist, and his nights working on his music. When he’s not tied up helping out with Genoa Volunteer Fire and Rescue, that is.
​

Dixie May:
Skylar has a long list of broken hearts to his credit, but the only girl to ever break his heart is Dixie May. Although she’s been best friends with Skylar and Teigen since the three of them were kids, she never fell for Skylar’s charms, as much as he may have tried through the years. She left her backwoods tomboy ways behind when she started high school, and now Dixie May is the social organizer of the Genoa party scene. Rarely is she seen without a drink in hand and glitter shimmering on her face. Her nightlife doesn’t leave much time for Genoa Volunteer Fire and Rescue, but she gets pulled in to serve as dispatch from time to time by her Uncle Cletus and Aunt Imagene.

Pilot:


We fade in on a riding lawn mower slowly working its way across a field. Silhouetted against the blood orange of the setting sun is its driver. He’s wearing a straw cowboy hat and cutoff blue jean shorts with Timberland boots. His plaid shirt lies open, ruffling in the wind. Suddenly he stops. In the distance, smoke drifts up over the trees. He leaps off the mower, one side of his shirt flapping open. The dwindling rays of the sun reflect off his sweat-glistened abs. He glowers in the direction of the smoke, pale blue eyes baring down on the horizon. He’s worried, and it’s genuine. This is his town. Someone in his town is in trouble.

He begins rifling through his pockets, looking for his phone. But almost immediately a pickup truck bounds around a dirt road and skids to a stop in front of him. A young man his age pops up out of the driver side window. He’s shirtless and wearing a George Strait baseball cap. His shoulders and biceps are muscular and tan. He slaps the top of the pickup and shouts, “Teigen! We got one! Git in!”

Teigen runs for the truck, but the driver is sliding down and pulling off before he even reaches it. Teigen laughs, “Dammit, Skylar.” He leaps for the bed of the truck, climbing in and working his way around to slide into the passenger side window as they speed through fields and backroads.

They finally come to a stop at a trailer home in a blaze. Skylar and Teigen leap out of the truck and run up to the front of the house. An older man is doubled over, wheezing and coughing. He’s a large man, with a few too many pounds in the middle, but he has the same shoulders and arms as Skylar. Has a grizzled, country strong look about him. Another man, the same age but more cagey looking, is tending to him. Skylar puts a hand on the larger man’s shoulder, “What do we got, Cletus?”

Cletus coughs and can’t answer. Teigen steps forward and talks to the cagey fellow, “Yancy? Is he okay?”

Yancy waves him off, “He’ll be fine. We can handle it.”

Before anyone can act, a woman runs up, screaming, “Please! You have to help! My baby is in there!”

The men all turn and look at her, and then stare at the blazing house in shock.

Another woman runs up, “My daughter is in there, too! She took her baby in there! To show her a box of golden retriever puppies!”

Skylar wheels around and turns his hat backwards.

Teigen cocks his head, “Skylar. Skylar, wait.”

Yancy grabs Skylar’s arm, “Cletus tried, boy! We can’t! We just can’t!”

Skylar stares them both down, “Well, the way I see it, cain’t is just ain’t with a c in the front. And if you two ain’t, then I’ll do it my damn self.”

He bursts through them and runs for the house. With one swift move, he kicks open the door. Flames lick out around him and retreat back inside. In the light of the fire, we can see the tattoo on Skylar’s lower back. It’s the Genoa Volunteer Fire and Rescue emblem, with the words “A Country Boy Can Survive” written above it. Skylar leaps into the burning house.

Teigen shakes his head, “Skylar, you hot headed son of a …” But as he talks, he pulls off his shirt and runs after him.

Yancy yells, “It’s suicide!”

Teigen stops cold and looks back over his shoulder. With his shirt off, we can see it. He has the matching tattoo. “No,” he says back to Yancy. “It’s my best friend.”

After some building of doubt, Teigen and Yancy manage to make a way out for Skylar. Everyone watches for a long moment before, out of the smoke, Skylar appears. In one hand, he is carrying a toddler, who is carrying a baby. In the other hand, he has a box full of golden retriever puppies. He turns to Teigan, “‘bout time you boys got off your asses and fetched me outta there.”

They all laugh. Cut to title screen.

During the rest of the pilot, we discover someone has been setting fires around Genoa. And it’s up to Genoa Volunteer Fire and Rescue to find out who it is. We experience some of the generational drama between Cletus/Yancy and Skylar/Teigan, but we mainly roll through a moment with each character off duty.

We see Teigan share a tender moment with Axl. 

We also meet Saffron and see her back and forth with Skylar about letting her tag along. 

Through Cletus and Yancy, we meet Imagene, Dixie May, and Lavonte. They are all back at home when Cletus comes in still hacking. Yancy helps him in, and Lavonte immediately runs to tend to him. Imagene gives them all a cussing for taking too many chances. But Dixie May strolls in, fresh from a party. She informs Imagene and the rest that they don’t have a choice. “Someone in this town is set on burning it all down. And the way I hear it, they aim on starting with the Clip and Snip tomorrow night.”

The team sets up a stake out at the Clip and Snip. Here we get more generational clash. But before anything can happen at the Clip and Snip, Imagene calls with an urgent message. There is a fire. It's at Axl's trailer. 

Saffron shoots up from the back of Skylar’s truck. “It’s a misdirection. They wanted us here so we’d miss the real fire!”

They rush to the trailer. Skylar has to hold Teigan back as he sobs in his arms. Yancy rushes in. He comes out with a body. It’s Axl.

Saffron rushes to his side. She does all she can. But it’s too late. Axl is dead.

Teigan starts to go to him, but he can’t. He asks through tears, “Was it painless? Please tell me it was painless. Was it smoke inhalation?”
​

Saffron looks up, with terror in her eyes. “No,” she almost whispers it. She flips open Axl’s shirt to reveal the same tattoos and polished abs from before. But now, there are multiple stab wounds in his torso. Saffron looks up at the group. “It was knife inhalation.”

End Credits
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Why Are You Not Watching Hallmark Mystery Movies?

4/25/2018

4 Comments

 

Is it because you don’t want your fucking mind blown?

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Allow me to lay some foundation for you. Imagine, if you will, you are in a timeless realm. You are now free of the constraints of both time and space. There are no trends and no faded memories of yesterday. No nostalgia. The characters you once loved haven’t gone anywhere. The actors who played them haven’t seen their careers fade a bit. Everything which ever was … still is.
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Oh, Mylanta!
Now, within this other dimension, I want you to imagine a place where D.J. Tanner from Full House is a librarian who runs a club where she talks with small town Northwesterners about real life murders (and they call it The Real Murders Club, for Christ’s sake). She’s always around when a dead body comes plummeting out of the sky or shows up in her attic crawl space. And she occasionally knocks serial killers the fuck out with an Oxford English Dictionary.

Meanwhile, Sami from Days of Our Lives runs a cookie shop and has a way of being a magnet for murder … and dick. She’s out there solving crime puzzles like a cupcake toting Sherlock Holmes, outthinking cops and killers alike. Running a town. Baking and mystery solving is her damn job, and she’s playing two men back and forth like she’s married to that job and all she’s got time for is some side dick. Get in line behind murder and cookies, boys. Sami will get to you when she gets to you.
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Check out this thirst trap. Back of the line, boys.
And we’re not done. Jewel (yes, that Jewel) is fixing up Victorian homes and finding skeletons and cold cases in them. Aunt Becky from Full House is out here digging up a suit of armor for her antique shop and discovering clues to the murder of a college history professor. Magnum, P.I., is the lead in a Robert B. Parker series written for television by Tom Selleck, his goddamn self. Pacey’s gay sherriff brother from Dawson’s Creek is something called a culinary sleuth, which is a thing. Becca Thatcher from Life Goes On is a crime solving therapist. The bride from Father of the Bride spars in a courtroom with Ed from Ed. 

And, in case that isn’t enough (which it fucking is), we got a western mystery going on called Goodnight for Justice centered around Circuit Judge John Goodnight, who is a character played by AND CREATED BY Luke Mother Fucking Perry.
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9021 ... oh, baby ...
This place exists. It’s called the Hallmark Mystery Channel and it is glorious. As you read this, you could be pulling up an Aurora Teagarden mystery, starring D.J. Tanner, where maybe she’s solving a murder on a movie set or tracking down an art thief. Or there’s the Murder She Baked series, where Sami Brady is a murder-solving savant, a baker extraordinaire, and a walking thirst trap. Darrow vs. Darrow, Garage Sale Mysteries, Fixer Upper Mysteries. They are all there. Right … fucking … now. It’s like a cozy mystery buffet line for your mind. 

If you dig a little deeper, you can find some of the old stuff, like the Jesse Stone series, which is fantastic. It was sort of the Hallmark Mystery flagship series, and it’s a little darker than they have leaned since then. As is the John Goodnight movies. But, they are written and created by Tom Selleck (former) and Luke Perry (latter). Come on. I mean … come on. Tell me you don’t want to go watch those movies right now!
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O.G.
Bottom line: Hallmark Mystery Channel is the shit. Can they be a little cheesy? Yes. In the most beautiful ways. But it is a factory of legit mysteries. And they are plucking them straight from some of the best cozy mystery writers: Charlaine Harris, Joanne Fluke, Kate Carlisle. Wherever your tastes lie in the way of mystery, I promise you it’s a good time. Either you are making fun of them (but secretly trying to figure out the mystery), you are loving the hokey romance angle (while trying to figure out the mystery), or, like myself, you are gleefully eating up every damn bit of it. No matter what, why are you not watching Hallmark Mystery Movies? Like, for real. Why?
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The Case of the Disappearing Mystery Writer

4/20/2018

2 Comments

 
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Part One: The Disappearance
“I didn’t want a peer group. I didn’t want to teach. I wanted to write. That all. And a whole lot of my favorite writers … learned the craft by sitting at the desk and putting in the work. I’ve never been scared of the work.”
-- David Joy
from an interview with Barbara DeMarco-Barrett (barbarademarcobarrett.com)
It was three years ago and I wasn’t missing yet. Quite the contrary. My first book had been acquired by an indie publisher. They were helping me understand web presence and self marketing--trying to create myself as a brand and all that. So I got pretty active online. I interviewed other writers and wrote humorous little blog posts about television and rap songs and cartoons and crying during gum commercials. I landed a few short stories in some web publications and a print publication or two. I was doing okay. In fact, three years ago at this time (based on a glance back at my Twitter and Facebook history), I had active conversations going on with an Edgar Award nominee, the best selling writer of the year (not named Harper Lee or E.L. James), and a National Book Award finalist.

But I’m so bad at it. You know, making friends and having interactions. All that. I’m even worse in real life. I currently have a group chat going in my text strands which I started … but in which I have never since participated. Just dropped it and walked away like an action movie cigar on a trail of gunpowder. (That doesn’t work, you say? Check my text strand, Jamie Hyneman.) However, while I may be horrible at making, having, and keeping friends, I’ve always been great at acquaintancing. The wheelhouse of my efforts to connect has always rested firmly in the hour-long conversation with my exterminator about house renovation or a multi-appearance, ongoing dialogue with the cashier at Exxon about selecting godparents for his children. You know. Normal things. So my online interactions were a touch better. Chatting with David Joy about whiskey and a desire to write which greatly overshadowed any wish to be a part of some writing community. Talking to Jason Reynolds about a distaste for boring books. These were exactly the types of exchanges I could welcome in my life.

And they all built up to the release of my first book. I even leveraged those acquaintances into a nice book blurb or two. Sara Lippmann called it “at once outlandish and heartfelt, hilarious and deeply macabre … with colorful, lively prose and crisp dialogue.” Wow, right? So promising. By January, I was being listed by Writer’s Bone along with books by Eric Beetner and Craig Johnson.

And by the summer of 2017, I had all but disappeared.
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Part Two: The First Clue
“The essential state of mind of the author is the simultaneous belief that one is the greatest writer alive and a complete fraud.”
--Ron Currie, Jr.
from an interview I conducted with him on Twitter which he probably doesn’t remember doing
I had been missing for a while by the time I disappeared. I wrote that about a character in my first book without realizing that it applied to me, too. Maybe for even longer than I realized. As much as I, like any of us, wanted to be the Lindbergh baby, what I really am is a Craigslist prostitute. (No disrespect … does that make it worse? Saying “no disrespect?” It’s sincere, I swear.) When I went missing, there was no fanfare, no search party. What little I was posting onto the Internet had dwindled over the course of 2017, diminishing to nothing by July. But I was the kind of missing person who is not missed by the world. The perfect victim kind. At best, I was in the victim category of the woman whose husband went a week before reporting her missing because she was a free-spirit type, it was the 60s, and they lived in Hawaii at the time. Anyone who even noticed I disappeared responded, I am sure, with a shrug of the shoulders and a “these things happen” or a “I’m sure he’ll come back when he’s ready.” 

The first clue rested in the circle of writers I was trying to push my way into. My online “friends” (read: acquaintances no more aware of our “friendship” than the bug guy or Exxon clerk) included a veritable who’s who of both popular and indie lit. While I would never presume to be pals with any of these people, they were all kind and welcoming and friendly. Classy people, all of them. It was me who didn’t belong. I was beginning to feel it. When I was in the marching band in high school, there were always a few kids who would hang around with the band but never played an instrument. Either they weren’t even officially in band or they stuck to things like the triangle. In high school, I played the drums. I was by no means “cool.” But I was “band cool.” In the world of writers, I quickly looked down to see the metaphorical triangle in my hands.

Then the existentialism of the realization began to bleed. One of those brilliant writers I interviewed (Ron Currie) once told me the essential state of mind of the author is the simultaneous belief that one is the greatest writer alive and a complete fraud. The latter half of the equation had me completely fucked up. Self doubt is more than a rash or a worm or even a cancer. It’s more like food poisoning. If you’ve never experienced it, you are generally quick to dismiss it or even laugh it off. But once it happens to you. Really happens. One good time. Well, you’ll never laugh about it again, that’s for sure. Mine came from a bucket of popcorn in a dollar movie theater. I vomited for five straight hours. At first, you grimace at the feeling and try to make yourself believe it’s nothing--a hiccup of gas or a passing flicker of nausea. But within mere seconds, it encompasses your entire body, mind, and soul. Yes. Soul. In those moments of churning and heaving, wallowing in the fugue state of buttered popcorn stench and cold porcelain, I would have bartered my soul for relief. That’s self doubt. And it moved from writing to my day job and fatherhood and my marriage.

And there it was, wasn’t it? My marriage. When you write a partially autobiographical novel, you essentially enter into a contract with your readers to open yourself up. I created this mystery around Ellis Mazer, with a plan to carry him through as my detective in a series. And Ellis Mazer is me. The mysteries are fictional, but his life is mine. When I wrote Juggling Kittens, I had been married for the better part of fifteen years and was remembering the first years of marriage. When the book came out, an eighteen year marriage had fallen apart and ended. My follow-up novel kept stalling out in the same place: Ellis rolled through the opening few chapters during which he came face to face with another body and a new mystery; but when he came home and the focus shifted to his family, I hit a wall. The reality of his future was beginning to glimmer on my fictional horizon (as douche-y as that sentence sounds). I now know I wasn’t ready to face it--to begin allowing the cracks to show in the fictional marriage based on my very real former marriage. And it primed the pump of my self doubt. Because any “real” writer would lean into the cathartic nature of putting experience to paper and come out with some kind of literary spun fucking gold. I was barely treading water with the book publicity, I was playing at Divorced Dad with every other week parenting, and I had dick of a follow-up manuscript to pitch around while my name was possibly out there a little. I was quickly moving from missing to presumed dead.

But like any good mystery, this one has a classic two-body plot.

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Part Three: The Second Body
“I don’t believe in the ‘storyteller’s responsibility.’"
--Porochista Khakpour
from an interview I conducted with her on Twitter which she probably doesn’t remember doing
My ex-wife and I separated in January of 2016. We were officially divorced in June of the same year. And in October of 2016, Juggling Kittens was released. By March or April of 2017, I was steadily fading out of the public eye after trying my damndest to spread the good news of my little book. In July of 2017, my ex-wife committed suicide.

Suicide really is the glitter of mourning and acceptance. And, since we all know glitter is the herpes of the crafts world, that means suicide never fully goes away and flares up from time to time in horribly awkward situations. The most difficult conversation I have ever been faced with was not telling my daughters their mother had died. Maybe because of shock or adrenaline or any number of reasons, that conversation ranks about third. Numbers one and two on the list were when I told my daughters (separately and individually) the manner in which their mother died. Incidentally, number four would be when my youngest daughter mentally blocked the nature of her mother’s death and I had to tell her all over again several months later. Yep. Just like fucking herpes.

But I get it. No one wants to accept suicide. Acceptance means cycling through reasons for a loved one’s suicide, and sooner or later, no matter the circumstances, you turn up in those reasons. I know I did. I feel certain both of my daughters did, too. We all want to insert ourselves into the story, however horrible the story may be. But for me, as counterintuitive as it may sound, this is where my own mystery took a bit of an unexpected positive turn. While logic would tell you an event like this may have buried me under my blossoming self doubt, the opposite actually happened. I liken it to getting left behind by a boat. You can contemplate all the reasons you got left and why the boat took off and what you might have done differently. But all that thinking probably happens while you drown. The truly logical thing to do is just start fucking swimming.

So swimming is where the story begins anew. Swimming means learning to parent every week, which may sound silly, but any divorced parent can tell you about the joy of the off week. Don’t judge me. I love my kids, but, man, those off weeks. They were glorious. Single parenting is for the birds. It’s super hard. Like, really, really hard. So hard. But I am beginning to come to grips with myself as a dad--mentally reciting the alcoholic mantra about accepting the things I cannot change blah, blah. I may not be perfect, but you know what? Those little assholes aren’t perfect either. So we will just be imperfect together. I love them. They love me. And one day they will talk about how I fucked them up just like we all talk about something our parents did to us. It’s all half bullshit and half true. Family is weird. But I’ve gotten them a good jumpstart on therapy, so it’ll all be okay. And swimming means coping with my former marriage. Delving into the suicide meant acknowledging the demons my ex-wife faced--seeing them for what they were and beginning to understand what they did to my marriage. I didn’t absolve myself from blame in the failure of my marriage, but I definitely came to a healthier understanding of exactly what went wrong. Sometimes knowing where you took a wrong turn does not mean you wouldn’t take the same wrong turn if you had another chance. It just means you know where it happened. And maybe that’s enough.

When I was interviewing writers, the only time I almost stepped in it was with Porochista Khakpour. I was so nervous when she agreed to be interviewed, because I knew she wouldn’t hesitate in slapping me around if I asked a stupid question. One of the things I admire about her is her ability to stand up to anyone anytime anywhere. For the record, she is one of the nicest people I ever interviewed. But I did misstep a little. I asked her a question about the “storyteller’s responsibility,” and she let me know immediately she didn’t like the wording. It was a bullshit label she didn’t believe in, basically. And I was faced with scrambling to make sure I had not opened up something leading to some sort of debate which I 100% KNEW I would LOSE. And lose big. But looking back, it leaves me thinking about my fears. Those fears of how I would handle writing about my divorce and now single parenting and suicide and loss and grief. I was so afraid, not because I didn’t want to be laid bare. I wasn’t afraid of doing it. I was afraid of doing it wrong. I felt a sense of responsibility to whatever handful of readers I may have to get it all so right. To give them some sort of outlet for their own grief or struggles or pain. I had to provide them some window back into themselves just like all of these great writers had done for me. But when I thought back to my one interview with Porochista, I sort of called bullshit on myself. I don’t have fuck all of a responsibility. I don’t have to frame this in a way any of you mother fuckers can learn from it or feel something. I just need to write. Because I like to write.

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Part Four: Solving the Case
“Dynamic, interesting, funny, tortured, and most times downright weird characters. Then a DOPE plot.”
--Jason Reynolds 
on what keeps a book from being boring
from an interview I conducted with him on Twitter which he probably doesn’t remember doing
I can only assume the high school-college transition years are impressionable. If you can recall, the time around 1995 (when I graduated from high school) was the Golden Era for the plot twist. The Usual Suspects, The Crying Game, The Sixth Sense. There was a run of several years there where any movie which fancied itself sort of a mystery had a mind-blowing plot twist. They obviously imprinted on me, because for a long while I felt the need to come up with a big twist for anything I wrote. And there is a reason you’ve never read any of it. But, having said that, this mystery of my disappearance definitely had its own Keyser Söze moment. 

When the Porochista comment hit me so hard, I had a bit of an epiphany. I came to this understanding that while none of these writers is going to be making me a friendship bracelet anytime soon, it doesn’t mean I haven’t learned from my connections with them. Just like my four-year-long “friendship” with Matthew Zardari, the Exxon guy, they may not remember me, but I sure as hell remember them. And I learned all I need to know about finding myself again.

David Joy taught me that it’s not about joining some community of writers. I’m not doing this to make friends. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to make friends or that I shouldn’t try a little harder. But it is most clearly not the reason I started writing in the first place, and it shouldn’t be the reason I continue doing it. I think David said when it stops being fun, he reckons he’ll hang it up (for the record, I don’t think he said “reckons,” but I know he will appreciate me claiming he did), and I figure I should probably look at it about the same way.

Sara Lippmann taught me what I may do relatively well. When I look back at her blurb for Juggling Kittens, I am reminded what I like to write. I enjoy writing mysteries and comedies. I like being hilarious and macabre. Sometimes I can be one without the other, but I’m always operating somewhere within one or both. So when I started writing again, maybe it wasn’t opening the wounds of my previous year, but it was mystery. And it was comedy. And now I have a crime novel about to release and a farce being produced in Dallas.

Ron Currie, Jr., taught me it’s okay to feel like a fraud sometimes. But, more importantly, he taught me to remember the other side of that coin. I should also have some self-confidence. I didn’t get here by accident. I may not have the same level of success or talent as the people I was interviewing, and I probably never will. But I didn’t just stumble into anything either. I do have some talent. I can write. And I should write. When I feel like the best writer in the world, I should write until I start to feel like a fraud. And when I feel like a fraud, I should write even more.

And Jason Reynolds taught me to not write boring books. It may be the most important lesson of all. Because you know what? The thought of writing about divorce and parenthood and suicide sort of bores me. Does that mean I will never write about it? No. But it means I won’t write about it until I can put it into a DOPE plot. And I’m sure I will. Eventually (spoiler alert), I imagine Ellis Mazer will get a divorce and deal with the suicide of his ex-wife. And when he does, I will deal with it again. Maybe it will be cathartic for me and maybe it will be life-affirming for some reader out there. I don’t know. What I do know is that it won’t be boring. It will probably be approached with some humor and it may even involve a mystery. Because that’s what I enjoy writing. And, as Porochista taught me, I do not have a responsibility to do anything different.

So I’m back, I hope. I’m writing, and I am going to be trying to keep up with some online content. As I do, I will probably continue to explore some of the events of my past year. In the meantime, I’ve got a straight-up crime novel coming out (Graffiti Creek). It deals with none of this. I wrote it during a time I was really feeling some deep sorrow for events occurring in society around me. I think, in hindsight, I was feeling sorry for other people because I didn’t want to feel sorry for myself. But it’s a crime novel. I tried my best to not make it boring. And I’ll have a play coming out called Raptured: A Sex Farce At the End of the World. I think the title says it all. I co-wrote it with one of my very few actual friends, Matt Lyle. It was a blast, and it helped remind me how much I do actually enjoy writing. Here’s hoping some of you enjoy it, too.
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The Important Stuff

9/11/2016

3 Comments

 
This excerpt is Chapter 3 from Juggling Kittens. It is also a fairly autobiographical account of my memory of 9/11.
​September 11th, 2001, was eventful for both me and one Ruddy Creek seventh grader, but not for any of the reasons you’d expect.

Rachael Marcel’s beagle died on September 10th.

The attacks started on that Tuesday around 8:00 a.m. our time. Ms. Peterman, the math teacher, and I were standing in the hallway talking about her spider bite when Coach Tipton swift-walked down the hallway, elbowing preteens out of his way to brief us on the first plane.

We reacted with a resounding, “Weird,” and filed into class behind our students as the second bell rang.

Coach Tipton wasn’t a coach. He used to be a coach. Somewhere along the way he realized driving a bus before and after school paid almost as much as coaching and required about an eighth of the time. Couldn’t lose the moniker though. He looked the part too much: shaved head, beefy neck, scowl. He was everybody’s favorite guy. Coaches loved him because he was one of their own. Teachers loved him because they viewed him as a coach who would rather teach. Girls loved him because he was 225 pounds of muscle. Boys loved him because he was 225 pounds of muscle.

Other than The Drew, Tipton was the closest to a friend that I made among the teachers at Dan Blocker Junior High. We ate lunch and watched Unsolved Mysteries together once or twice a week. Great guy. Knew how to play the game. Never took work home. Didn’t polish anything he could buff with a sleeve. September 11th, even when it looked like a freak accident to everyone but him, made for some easy-going TV time in the social studies classroom.
​
But it wasn’t half an hour before he came running back down the hallway, tapping on the glass rectangles in our doorways. It was surreal to see a mist coating those muscular eyes (yes, even his eyes were, in fact, muscular).
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“I think you better turn on your TV,” Tipton squinted and nodded at me. I’m not sure if it took more convincing for others, but for me that one statement made me feel like a little kid being told about a death in the family. I fumbled at the remote and turned a little red at the fact that the TV would still be tuned to Lifetime from the Unsolved Mysteries reruns. But no one noticed. Lifetime was doing news coverage of the attacks. I’d never seen anything but sappy movies and crappy reruns on Lifetime. To this day, that’s still one of the most shocking things about the whole ordeal: they even covered it on Lifetime.

The kids were pretty clueless as to how to react. When the first tower collapsed, one kid said “cool”. Cool. They were watching TV—not real life. These events had no real bearing on their video-game reality. Not until years later, when they would sit around sharing “where were you” stories, all far too similar and pedantic, would they even start to understand the gravity of what they had witnessed. And that one kid would remember saying “cool” and would remember how Coach Tipton had jumped his ass and would get twice as embarrassed as he had on September 11th, 2001. But he’d leave that part out of his story—leave it for others to tell so they could divert at least a little attention away from what they sat and watched on a television screen all day long.

Like me, no one would ever forget that kid’s clumsiness, his head-ducked shame, our relief we hadn’t been the one to say anything inappropriate. We would eventually forget the numbers of dead, the order of crashes, the names, the details. We would remember ourselves: I was home sick, I was watching The Today Show, I was talking to Ms. Peterman about her spider bite, I was in a class with this kid who called it “cool”. The important stuff. No one remembers events. They only remember their perspective of events.

By lunch, half the kids in school had been checked out, either in an effort to hide from the moment or out of some fear that Ruddy Creek, Arkansas, would be targeted right after New York and D.C. My fourth period had four people in it. Tipton brought his class of seven down, and we all sat in silent wonder, listening to an anchorman tell us how our lives had changed that day.
​
Rachael Marcel’s life had already changed plenty the night before. Her sniffles stumbled into sobs, and eventually she dashed to the bathroom. She was in Tipton’s class, but we both taught her. We did “paper, rock, scissors” to see who would catch her on her way back to make sure everything was okay.
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​I stood outside my door and tried to poke at a scuff on the floor until it went away. The glow of televisions flickered out of the little windows turning the yellowing linoleum varying shades of green and blue. It felt like a hospital in winter. I would have shanked a kid for a cigarette right about then. Finally, Rachael unfolded herself from the bathroom. She was all red-headed lankiness. She would probably be pretty someday, but it could still go either way. At twelve, she was pure giraffe with freckles and an affinity for Pygmalion tales about girls like her who became knockouts and drove all the rebels to put on borrowed ties and take them to prom.

She caught sight of me and started jabbing at her eyes. I studied the last little trail of scuff mark until she got close enough.

“You all right?” I didn’t look at her, but I could tell she was nodding, and the tears were coming back in force.

I winced at her silence, willing myself to find a way to say something—anything. “Is it—is it all this on the news?”

I was still a little scared to look up at her, so I wasn’t sure if she nodded or shook or cried. She squeaked out a mumble, “Lucy.”

I gave her a look. “Lucy? Is that like, an aunt or something?”

She held her fists together under her nose and shook her head. “Dog.”

I nodded. “Your dog?”

She nodded.

We stared for a moment at a banner across the hallway which counted down the days until school was out.

“Was your dog—Lucy—was she in—New York?”

She gave me a puzzled look that melted into some form of tearful laughter. And I shared it with her, if for no other reason than because I found it hard to feel awkward when laughing about the same thing. After we both took time to appreciate the chance to laugh about something again, she wiped her nose with a sleeve and sniffed. “Lucy died last night. She was twelve. I’ve had her my whole life.” The last sentence had a well-rehearsed rhythm to it, but it still made her cry all over again.

I reached out then, felt my hand freeze in that horrible no-man’s-land, and then patted her on the shoulder as if she were a touch-lamp. She leaned into it hungrily as I swallowed at the beginnings of five different things I should have said. I groped at words until a lump formed in my throat and my eyes glazed with inexplicable tears.

I left my hand on her shoulder as I spoke, “When I was in the eleventh grade I had a psychology teacher who I really liked. One day we were talking about—I don’t remember what—and she stopped at my desk to ask me if I ever had pets growing up. I told her no, and she said, ‘Hmm, yeah that explains a lot.’ I never could get her to tell me what that meant other than to say it had to do with death and loss. I think I understand her now.”

We both looked at each other and cried for a minute. Then I thought about Tipton and nutted up so we could go back in the room. Later in the year, I brought her pictures of my beagles, which made her cry all over again. But she still thanked me. And in a Christmas card she gave me, she thanked me for the talk I gave her. Although I can’t imagine what good it could have done.
​
September 12th was a Wednesday. On Wednesdays in Ruddy Creek, this old lady named Sharon would roll around an old projector cart with a “soup of the week.” She dished it up out of a dingy-looking plastic bucket, and it tasted like God himself had cum in your mouth. I don’t even like soup. But this was some sort of other-worldly concoction of goodness. And in flavors that didn’t even make sense: Meatloaf with Peas, Turkey and Dressing, Cauliflower and Broccoli with Ranch Dip. How do you make that into a soup? Whatever she made, every Wednesday, no matter who you were, you showed up in the lounge and shelled out three dollars a bowl.
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That day, Sharon sported a shirt with an eagle on the front and had a red, white, and blue bow in her hair which looked like she had swiped it off a four-year-old. She made a soup called The American Dream. It tasted like spicy barbecue ribs and cold beer, somehow. I bought two bowls.

The lounge was packed. It’s the worst place in any school, the teachers’ lounge. I’m a big teacher advocate and teacher apologist and all that, but Jesus—if a person’s only experience with teachers was sitting in the lounge for an hour or two and listening to them talk, said person would think teachers are the most bitter, judgmental, hateful, spiteful bag of dicks in the world. The eighth-grade history teacher named Mr. Smith (I don’t know his first name; I don’t think he had one. He was boring as hell. I once heard him sing along to “Margaritaville” and he replaced the damns with darns.) had brought cornbread from home and was warming it up in the nasty-ass microwave. I didn’t hear the first part of the conversation, but I saw him shake his head while he spat, “I think we should put all the towel heads in a camp of some sort until this blows over.”

The man wouldn’t use the word damn, but he would throw out towel head in casual conversation.

A math teacher threw a finger in the air. “Thank you! Did it with the Japanese. They got over it.”

Mr. Smith nodded at that. “I hate to admit it, but I’ve been looking at little Enrique Diaz in the hallway all day. And you know…” He shook his head.

Tipton had a mouthful of soup, but he frowned at me and said, “He’s Mexican.”

Mr. Smith furrowed his brow at him. “Are you sure?”

Tipton laughed. “The kids call him Beaner.”

Mr. Smith shrugged. “I thought they called him that because he’s lazy.”
​
Most everyone laughed. I closed my eyes and tried to pretend I didn’t understand why anyone would hate us while I enjoyed my second bowl of The American Dream.
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Why I Love My Publisher

5/22/2015

19 Comments

 
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This winter I will hold a book with my name on the cover. After twenty-two years of dreaming, at least fourteen years of toiling at it, a couple of failed manuscripts, more than three bad relationships with literary agents, and well over a quarter of a million written (like, final draft written) words, I will be a published novelist. In the book, I write a little about the changing of dreams—about the evolution of the fantasy of a future baseball player or ballerina into the reality of an accountant or a computer programmer. The process of going from a spiral notebook scribbler to an ISBN owner has not been dissimilar.

I can remember the fluctuating dreams of being an aspiring writer in my teens and early twenties. It was like the fluidity of a middle school persona, shifting with each new author I idolized. And my level of understanding of the publishing industry was so blissfully low. I was like that person you know who whistles a lot. If you ever ask yourself, how nice must it be to walk around like such a stupid asshole with so little to stress you out that you can whistle a jaunty little tune … Well, I can definitively tell you, now that I know much more about the publishing industry, that, yes it is nice. Very nice. The crazy thing is, though, that no matter how far behind the curtain any of us go, most of us still hold tight to that analogy of the big name publisher to the major leagues. We all want the big contract. But, in my experience, it’s not baseball. It’s more like picking a school for your kid. There is no perfect school for everyone. There is only the right fit for each individual student. Not every child fits in a private school or a public school or a charter school. And not every book fits in a big house or an indie or a university. At some point in my process of seeking a home for my most recent manuscript, I came to the decision that an independent publisher was the right fit for me. I was so sure that I (very early on) abandoned any and all search for an agent, essentially killing any chance of landing the big publishing contract. I ended up partnering with Pandamoon Publishing, out of Austin, TX. And this week, I felt completely validated in the choice I made.

Pandamoon is a little different as publishers go. They strive to be different. From our first conversation, the owner described to me her philosophy on book marketing—being willing to try different approaches so that she can place books into promotional windows that are not oversaturated with titles. Although I understood it and appreciated it at the time, it didn’t sink in until I was face to face with an example. During a recent meeting with one of the marketing directors at Pandamoon, he excitedly shared with us an opportunity to partner with a charity organization. To be honest, I almost zoned out during the first part of his pitch. It wasn’t a charity that connects with me personally—not that I don’t care, but there are those of us in the world with only enough empathy to invest in a limited number of sad-song-two-minute commercials. At a certain point, though, he explained how this was an opportunity to distribute our books to people in a very unique need of books to read. Not only would it make us all feel good about lending our talents in a selfless, helpful fashion (even the blackened-souled, dead-eyed writers among us … me, that’s probably only me), but it would also increase our readership, possibly leading to some word-of-mouth marketing. It was a risk, make no mistake. We were talking about giving away a potentially vast number of digital copies of our books. But risk … risk is, I realized in that moment, one thing that makes me love my publisher.

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There was a basketball game I remember watching a few years back. I believe it was the Knicks and Bobcats, and I believe this is a J.R. Smith story (but that may be me wanting every basketball story to be a J.R. Smith story). Regardless, whoever the player was—we’re going to say it was J.R. Smith—had played a terrible game. He made the first three that he took, I believe, but then he missed nine or ten in a row. Missed ugly. He was benched for long stretches. He looked frustrated at multiple points. Terrible game. As the game wound down to its final seconds, the Bobcats managed to tip in a miss that put them up by one point. The Knicks called timeout and loaded the court with shooters. If I remember correctly, there was less than a second on the clock—only enough time to catch, turn, and jack it. Despite his struggles, there was no question that J.R. Smith was one of the five best shooters on the Knicks. Hell, it was the Knicks. Spike Lee might have been one of the five best shooters on that bench. It was a given that he would be out there. When the whistle blew, J.R. Smith curled off a screen and found space in the corner. Having no other options, whoever was in-bounding the ball (he was probably foreign, over-drafted, and is now selling cars … sorry, no more Knicks jokes) passed it to J.R. He caught it, turned, and jacked it. No hesitation. Not a thought in his crazy-ass head that didn’t involve that ball finding net. He had missed ten shots in a row, at least one was an air ball. But the key here is that J.R. Smith had become so accustomed to taking risks on the basketball court that he had no fear of doing so when it counted. Of course, he made the shot. The Knicks won by two. J.R. did some crazy dance or sat down in the first row and ordered a beer or something. Then they traded him. Because … Knicks. This is the story that came to mind this week though. I want my publisher to be J.R. Smith. I want to see that crazy-ass fire in the eye that says, I’ll take the shot … I’ll take every damn shot … and I’ll make it.

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Even when you don’t make it. This shot—the idea with the charitable distribution of books—it tanked. It went south in less than a day. This is the part of this post where I have to be very careful. At its heart, this charity is gold. These are guys (yep, guys … not a mistake) who are trying to do good things for deserving people. But we (Pandamoon) discovered that there are some fundamental differences between our core beliefs and the misogynistic ideas hovering over this group like a funky cloud of Axe Body Spray. Again, I’m being careful. I DO NOT want to speak disparagingly about a charity which is doing good things. My focus is celebrating qualities I admire in my publisher. So I don’t want to get too deep into specifics in order to not out the charity. I will say that there is a connection between this charity and the video game industry. And I will say that Gamergate became very real for me in light of recent events. Pandamoon publishes a variety of books. Some of those books are romance novels. The guys (guys) involved in the charity (I do find it important to point out that it was not ALL the guys running the charity, but enough) exposed some of their own feelings about romance novels, gender stereotypes, women … you get the point, I’m sure. In light of the events of Gamergate, my hope as a male feminist (that’s what fathering two daughters does to you … or SHOULD do to you) was that the male-dominated video game community would be publicly shamed into either changing their collective mindset or, at the very least, doing a better job of bullshitting us all. Apparently, they may not be making an effort to do either.

My publisher, thankfully, is. The marketing director brokering this deal for us (male, for the record, but that shouldn’t matter … what matters more is that he, himself, has been a self-professed member of the gaming community) learned of these archaic beliefs less than a day after he told us all about this exciting risk he had taken. Any of us can imagine the embarrassment of having to turn around and say, almost immediately, Never mind, you guys. What he did, though, was exactly that. And, with his actions, I realized another quality that makes me love my publisher: principles. We all want to surround ourselves with people who share similar values. It is exceedingly rare, however, to partner with an organization that will so unflinchingly take a stand based on a shared set of values. Could this partnership with this charity have paid dividends to Pandamoon writers? Sure. It’s the very reason I admired it as a risk. But when the values of the people (guys) running that charity conflicted with those of Pandamoon, thoughts of possible book sales never crossed my publisher’s mind(s). No hesitation. It was a classic case of this is more important than any of that. 

Everything above is exponentially cheesier than I ever get when writing about anything. I basically just wrote a love letter to my damn publishing company. I rolled my eyes a little at myself even typing that last sentence. But it is important to realize and it’s important to say out loud (print, whatever) the qualities we admire in the people with whom we partner. Analyzing it is important. Talking about it is important. When we start to simply accept things, overlook things, roll our eyes quietly and mumble things under our breath, we end up with situations like Gamergate. We end up too afraid to take that last shot. I love my publisher. And I’m not afraid to say it (write it) (self-shaming eye roll emoticon).

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19 Comments

#twitterviews Tuesday: David Joy (from Nov. 4, 2014)

3/3/2015

0 Comments

 
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Starting today, I'll be doing interviews with writers on Tuesdays via Twitter. I ask 5 questions, they give 5 answers, and we keep it all under 1400 characters. We kick off with David Joy, author of the upcoming Where All Light Tends to Go. Joy lives in North Carolina and was a finalist for the Reed Environmental Writing Award and the Ragan Old North State Award for Creative Nonfiction before turning his talents onto novels and landing a deal with Putnam for Where All Light Tends to Go (2015) and Waiting on the End of the World (2016).

Question 1: National Novel Writing Month or No Shave November?

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Question 2: What is the book about?

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Question 3: Why choose to write in 1st person?

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Question 4: Are there settings other than Appalachia we might see show up in your novels?

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Question 5: If writers had the equivalent of cover songs, whom would you "cover?"

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The book is Where All Light Tends to Go. It is currently available for pre-order on multiple sites. Be nice, buy it twice. David Joy is the writer, and he couldn't possibly be a better guy. You can follow him @DavidJoy_Author, and you should.


         
"Shaving is for swimmers."
                                 --David Joy

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