This, that, the other, and a new e-book

This is kind of a complicated post.

First, as you can see, I've just published a new e-book: Mirrored in Your Eyes. As usual, I'm offering it to my blog readers at a 25% discount if you purchase within the first month. Just go to Smashwords and use the coupon code SZ96S.

I've submitted the book to Amazon as well, but it's still in "pending" status 24 hours after I posted it, so I think their reviewers might be on Thanksgiving vacation or something. Eh, who knows? It'll get out there eventually, and I'm not desperate to make you buy anything. ;-) That's one reason why this post isn't just about the "Mirrored" e-book.

You know by now that I enjoy fetish art, and I assume you like it too since you're visiting my blog. I'm sure some of my readers create their own art, either for private enjoyment or for posting on places like the Hypnopics Collective. Well, this post is really a Peek Behind the Duct Tape on cover art - both for "Mirrored in Your Eyes" and for a reissue of Sleepwalkers with a much hotter cover.

Let's start with "Mirrored." Lex of Entrancement.co.uk and HypnoDolls.co.uk has kindly allowed EMC writers to use photos from his shoots on our e-book covers. All he asks in return is proper credit on the copyright page. Well, I used three different images for the cover above. The "Marina" in the foreground is a model named Portia Victoria. She was wearing stockings and chunky high-heel shoes in the original picture, so the first thing I did was turn her legwear into thigh-high latex boots. I'm more comfortable with Gimp now, so that bit wasn't too hard.

What was hard was changing the model's hair. Portia had on a wig in the original shoot, and it was a short, straight bob. But it was important to me to keep Marina's long, curly black hair (because, hey, I love long, curly black hair. I even gave it to Paul in Sleepwalkers!). So I had to borrow and "dye" hair from another of Lex's models...only Lex had shot her from a different angle, so there wasn't enough hair visible on the crown of her head to cover the top of Marina's head. I ended up giving Portia/Marina the cyber-equivalent of a weave: I layered in about four different copies of the other model's hair, putting sections here and there until I got the final look.

Then I had to do the slave-face behind Marina. I didn't care whether that model was the same one I used for Marina or not, since the slave could just as easily be Karen; but I was lucky enough to find another shot of Portia that worked perfectly - sans wig. It took me about a day to work up a decent robot effect (I won't outline the steps here, but if anyone's interested, just say so in the comments section and I'll lay it all out for you). The eyes were even harder. I ended up just "painting" them, like a real digital artist. I have to admit I'm proud about that. I took art lessons as a kid and used to love drawing and painting, but I haven't used those skills in decades. It was nice to put them to use again.

Below are the three images I composited for the "Mirrored" cover (Just a reminder: these are Lex's photos and I'm using them with his permission. If you want to use them, you need to get his permission too.). Now you can see what came from where, and how far I took it all.

Now here's a little taste of what's to come for Sleepwalkers. When I'm done with the guy at left, he's going to be Paul. This is just part of his image; I'm not ready to show you all of it yet. And as a matter of fact, I'm not even able to show you what I want to show you right now. I've actually finished blending and darkening his hair, and erasing the stray marks; but Blogger won't show it in its high-quality glory, so you're seeing kind of an intermediate stage. Well, maybe that will be interesting to you in a way that the final version wouldn't.

I got the original image from Dreamstime.com. The model had long, straight blond hair, and his hands were clasped together across his forehead; so that should give you an inkling of what I've done to him so far.  All the hair, the position of his shoulders, and his entire head above the eyes are my work. The eyebrows and forehead weren't too hard, but repositioning his arms was fucking murder. That's part of why I'm not showing you the rest of the picture yet. };-P

I did his hair much the same as I did "Marina's," by layering sections from another model until I got the look I wanted. And I'm going to tell you what look that was, even though it's kind of embarrassing. I always imagined Paul's hair as being a lot like Orlando Bloom's in The Pirates of the Caribbean - only Paul's was shorter in the beginning. When Hawthorne made him grow it out, that was really me giving him the hair I preferred on him.

Quite naturally, Hawthorne herself will appear on the finished cover. She'll be looming behind Paul, wrapping her arms around him possessively and holding a hypospray gun. I'm using another of Lex's models to portray her, and as a matter of fact, the best shots I've found use Portia Victoria again. Fortunately, she has a lot of wigs and a lot of different personas, so you won't recognize her unless you remember this post when the time comes.

A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: Sleepwalkers, Chapter 11 and onward

So there you have it. That’s the end of Sleepwalkers - for the moment, at least. I’m already getting it ready to e-publish on Smashwords and Amazon; and fair warning: as soon as the story goes up for sale, it comes down from my blog and the EMCSA.

But you didn’t come here to read about the e-book, did you? You want my final thoughts about the novel and its central characters. Let me start by addressing a question that came up in the comments section of this blog: Dreamer is still out there, so can’t someone else build an empire like Hawthorne’s? Well, no. Not very easily. Notice that Wizard anticipates the Chinese Waking Up and becoming world-class programmers. That’s your tip-off that Paul and Shara gave them Waker. They put the formula into wide release because they don’t want anyone else to go through what they did. Yes, it means aiding a former enemy nation, but they wouldn't be themselves if they did otherwise. 

Here’s another question people have asked me: Will there be a sequel to Sleepwalkers? I could always change my mind later, but right now I don’t have any plans for a sequel. However, I am still thinking about a prequel involving Angela and Reynaldo.It would tie up some loose ends regarding Wiesen, too.

Now, what about the main characters of Sleepwalkers? Where do they go from here?

First, almost everyone is going to live a long, happy life. Even Hawthorne and her Cabinet won’t be too unhappy, even if we wish they were. As Shara explained, you can never really exact justice on a sleepwalker. Oh, they’ll feel sorry if you tell them to. They’ll even wallow in misery. But they won’t really be sorry; they’ll just be trying to please. But justice is important to Shara, so she did the best she could without getting into cruel and unusual punishment. Her solution is also imminently practical because the new government really needs the old government’s help. You can be sure they’ll keep Hawthorne alive as long as anti-aging treatments allow.

But forget about the General. What about the more likeable characters?

Paul and Shara will remain happily married, although that they’ll have trouble balancing their busy new careers with their private lives; and it won’t be as easy as Shara thinks to give up her government work. She'll spend a few years butting heads with politicos, but eventually she’ll decide that she can do more good in the private sector. Fortunately, by that time, she’ll have done more good than she realizes in the public sector. Paul will have only a little less trouble trying to run his university. He'll spend as much time in the classroom as he can and hire administrators for the real dirty work.

Once Wizard hires and trains her staff, she’ll be able to enjoy the outdoors as much as she likes. But don’t think that means she’ll lose her interest in computers! Picture her at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, sitting on a boulder and enjoying the view, while simultaneously uploading and downloading five different feeds.

Melora, Josue, and Ian will be senior professors at the Phoenix School for Genetics. Eventually some grateful citizens will erect statues on campus dedicated to them and Paul; and inevitably some students will drape underwear on the statues’ heads. Josue will laugh, Melora will grumble, and Ian will secretly wish his statue was covered head-to-toe.

Zane will have even more difficulty leaving Hollywood than Shara will have leaving government work, but he’ll stay out of the limelight and insist on doing only “important” films. After about three decades of this, the Academy will finally take him seriously and give him an Oscar.

Charlotte and Aimee will remain best friends for the rest of their lives, and Charlotte’s grandchildren will grow up calling Aimee “aunt.”

Mullins will either become a park ranger or move to New York City. He hasn’t decided yet.

Rubens will write (read: have a ghostwriter write) a memoir of his experiences with Hawthorne and Shara. No one will be particularly interested.

If you want to imagine any particular romantic couplings for these characters (apart from Paul and Shara, who are an exclusive pair), you're more than welcome to do so as long as they're mere speculations and not stories.

Finally, here are a few notes about the overall shape of Sleepwalkers. I didn’t start it with any overarching themes in mind, but they began to spring up naturally once I realized what I’d done with the setting. Originally I chose Phoenix just because I wanted to use a non-Southern city for a change, and I’ve actually been to Arizona. But then I made the connection with the mythological phoenix, and I realized how first Paul and then most of the other characters experience a rebirth/resurrection (This was still long before I came up with Shara’s test, but of course she fits that model more clearly than anyone). Sometime later, I thought about the symbolism of living underground and/or in darkness before rising into light and life again. And finally, after all of the above, I got around to noticing how often I'd referred to sleepwalkers as “zombies.” My subconscious fucks with me like that. A lot.

Another major theme of the story is guilt and forgiveness. I first started fantasizing about Paul and Shara when I was about 11, and I imagined myself in the role of Shara (who was a totally different character at the time). Now, as a forty-something adult, I see that my stand-in is really Paul. His sense of guilt is my sense of guilt, and although I have much less reason to feel it than he does, I still need someone like Shara to forgive me and help me forgive myself. That's a big part of why this story ends on such a happy note. I put myself through hell writing parts of it, but I knew how it would turn out okay in the end.

Well, thank you for coming along with me on the ride. I've been dreaming of publishing this story since I was old enough to come up with it; I just never thought it would happen. So even though this will sound incredibly sappy, I have to say it. Having the chance to share my fantasy with all of you, and hearing how much you've enjoyed it, is like - yeah, I really do have to put it this way - a dream come true. 

I found the image at the top of this post here.

A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: Sleepwalkers, Chapter 10

So. We've almost reached the end of of Sleepwalkers. Paul's been reduced to a rat in a cage, waiting to see who unlocks it; and Wizard and and Shara are trying to out-fake a bunch of killers.

Everything has been leading up to this, right from Chapter 1. Even before I created the character of Wizard, I knew Paul and Co. would need somebody in Mount Weather who was in a position to help them - and to risk her own neck in the process. And even as I re-created Shara's character to make her Paul's nemesis, I knew she'd be the one who finally got a shot at General Hawthorne. The question is whether Shara can actually take her down. She hasn't put enough thought into her plan; that's obvious already, and you don't know the half of it yet. But who can blame her for rushing? Every moment she delayed put Wizard in more danger; and even though Paul seemed to be safe, Shara couldn't guarantee he'd stay that way. So she tried to balance the risk to her loved ones against her need for a viable plan. She just didn't get the mix quite right.

Originally, I meant for her showdown with Hawthorne (and Wizard's run from the Peacekeepers) to pass more quickly: Sleepwalkers would have finished with ten chapters instead of eleven. But the more I wrote, the more I realized I still needed to write, in order to do justice to this part of the story. So I split it in two. That's why Wizard's cliffhanger is kind of weak: "Yikes! She's running into an unknown room!" But haven't I given you enough big cliffhangers already? ;-) Especially the one I wrote for Shara at the end of the chapter. Of course, she'd have an easier time if she wasn't so damn moral, but she won't let those sleepwalkers die if she can save them. And let's face it: even if she was alone in the office with Hawthorne, she'd still be unarmed, un-armored, and half-dead. How could she hope to compete against an able-bodied raving paranoiac with a gun?

But on a lighter note, here's a story I've been looking forward to telling you. While I was writing Chapter 10, Wizard and Shara's resourcefulness rubbed off on me. I had accidentally locked myself out of my bathroom, and I didn't know how to get the door open without taking it off its hinges (That's something I know is possible, but I could never do on my own, and I'd have been really embarrassed to call a certain someone to come lend a hand).

The doorknob has a little hole in the center that leads to the locking mechanism, and when I was a kid, I was able to pick that sort of lock with a bent coat hanger; so I tried that again. Unfortunately, either I've lost the knack or else this lock is set up differently than the ones I picked as a kid. The coat hanger got me nowhere. Then I tried the old credit card trick you read about and see in movies. It doesn't work.

I thought again about calling that certain someone and braving the inevitable embarrassment, but Wizard and Shara were fresh in my mind. I knew they'd be able to solve the problem on their own; and since I'd created them, I should be able to solve this problem on my own. So first I studied the locking mechanism on my bedroom door (being careful not to actually lock that), and I saw that I'd need to squeeze something in between the latch and the jamb in order to push the latch back. Then I looked around myself and asked the same question Wizard did: "What do I have in here that I can use?" My eyes lit on a pair of curved fingernail scissors. The blades were thin enough to fit between the latch and the jamb, and the the sharp edges were hard enough to dig into the latch and give me some purchase. Well, folks, I used those damn fingernail scissors to force the latch back and open that bathroom door by myself! It might seem like a minor accomplishment to you, but it made me proud as hell. I'd lived up to Wizard and Shara's standards of resourcefulness.

One further note, and then I'm done for the day. I researched elevator shafts in preparation for writing Wizard's escape, just to make sure they had ladders she could use. They do. However, I didn't try very hard to make her entrance and exit from the shaft believable. That was on purpose. I realize there are plenty of people dumb enough to try a stunt like that in real life, but I'm not in the business of helping them.


*The photo at the top of this post is a still from Kill Bill, Part 1 - which is incidentally another story that was meant to be a one-off but eventually got split in two.

A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape on Sleepwalkers, Chapter 9

I was probably just as relieved as you were when Shara when came back to life. After all, I built my original fantasy around her. She's a completely different person in this version of the story, but that doesn't make her any less important to me. I hated killing her. I just felt like I had to do it.

Here's how the decision came about.

Almost exactly a year ago, Callidus and his wife came to visit me. I hadn't yet begun to write Sleepwalkers, but I was pretty far along in the brainstorming. My main dilemma, at that point, was figuring out what to do with Shara. I knew that Paul would be wracked by guilt because he'd imprinted her, and that when Shara Awoke she'd forgive him; but it couldn't be that easy. Callidus was the first to realize Shara had to feel guilt of her own. Justice is her driving force, and she's done some horribly unjust things (not least to Wizard). Now she'll have a chance to try and make them right.

I probably already knew, when I met Callidus in person, that Shara would guess Paul was Awake; but I didn't know how she would confront him. That came much later. I bounced a lot of ideas off Callidus via email, and gradually I homed in on the idea of her testing Paul's loyalty by making him kill her. It was such a shocking idea, and such an impossible thing for him to do if he were Awake, that I knew it would work perfectly. I just had to figure out how to revive Shara afterwards. I toyed with the idea of faking her death; but in the end I decided, just as she and Hawthorne did, that the test wouldn't prove anything unless it demonstrably killed her (BTW, this is a good place to clarify that Shara didn't expect to be revived). But since she had to come back to life afterwards, that let out a gory death. Thus I settled on a lethal injection. Paul's test of the ingredients proved to him, and to my readers, that it really worked. But then (You see what a complicated thought process this was?) I had to figure out how Shara could be revived after the lethal injection. The magic ingredient in the saline is what the fine folks over on io9 call "handwavium."

So anyway, Shara's alive, Awake, and in a better position than anyone else to bring down Hawthorne. That's not to say she'll succeed, or whether anyone else will come along for the attempt. But at least you get to see the real Shara again after a long, dark stretch with her evil twin.

A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: Sleepwalkers, Chapter 8

A lot of people are reading the "Sleepwalkers" chapters on my blog and commenting on them below the posts; but just as many start over at the EMCSA and then follow the links to the "Peeks." I'm saying this up front because readers who came here from the EMCSA really should check out the comment section below the Chapter 8 post. You'll find some great notes and ideas about what happened in Chapter 8 and about what might happen next. For the sake of those commenters, I'll try not to repeat myself too much in this Peek.

First, of course everyone knew Paul and Shara would have some kind of confrontation. But anticipating that and wondering how it would play out is part of the excitement with this kind of story. Yes, of course it was painful; but you probably guessed that too, even if you didn't realize Shara would sacrifice her life. This is the chapter I was referring to when I said during a previous Peek that you still hadn't read the scene which was hardest for me to write. Toward the end, I could hardly bring myself to type those words - but what was worse, even if I didn't type them, they would still be in my head. I was literally depressed for days about Shara's death.

Does that make sense to you? If it doesn't, think about it this way. Some actors play a role on the set, then leave it behind when they go home at the end of the day. Others carry that role with them for the length of the production. Even when they're not in front of the camera, they stay in character until the director calls "cut" for the final time. Well, if I were an actor, I'd be Daniel Day-Lewis - and I don't even want to be! It's just the way my mind works.

But enough bitching and moaning, from me anyway. I have no idea what people will say in the comments section (They'll probably call me a hypocrite since I wrote the scene on purpose ;-p). Here are some other random notes.

I didn't want to keep Hawthorne offstage for so long, but the story wouldn't work if she had any doubts at all about Paul. She never even thought of checking up on him because as far as she knew, sleepwalkers couldn't Wake Up. It hadn't happened in 27 years, and the people who accomplished it died without sharing their formula. Plus, Hawthorne wanted to punish Paul because of those very people. Now her hubris has come back to bite her.

I really didn't expect people to guess that Paul would be re-imprinted (probably because I devised the Charlotte scene much later than the confrontation scene), but good on those of you who did guess. I'm always pleased when I figure out a joke or puzzle some other author has hidden in a story, and I like to give my readers that sensation. If any of you guess where chapters Nine through Eleven are headed, I hope you'll be pleased when you find out you're right. Think of the story as a rollercoaster. Seeing its overall shape isn't the same as riding it. I want to give you a good ride.

Paul has bought himself a little breathing room, but Wizard is in the shit. It's tempting (for me, at least, and maybe for you) to think she's Wonder Woman, but she isn't invincible. She sacrificed herself for Paul just as intentionally and almost as thoroughly as Shara sacrificed herself for Hawthorne. The spies are closing in on Wizard now, and they will pin her down. That's not so much a spoiler as a warning.

A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: Sleepwalkers, Chapter 7

Let's start today with Zane. It took me a long time to pin down his personality; he seemed as mysterious to me as he is to the rest of the characters in the story. I originally envisioned him as a wunderkind who came out of nowhere and became a major player in the novel; but the role never seemed to fit him. I've said before that some of my characters write themselves (Wizard is the perfect example), and it felt like Zane was resisting my efforts to make him a hero. I just couldn't figure out what he really was until I got to this chapter. I wouldn't call him an antihero, but he has a dark side he's not proud of. That's part of what makes him a loner.

Ian turned out to have a dark side too, didn't he? As a matter of fact, my non-fetishist beta reader (the friendly neighborhood orc) was deeply offended by the first draft of this chapter. I suppose EMC fetishists take revenge scenes for granted since our fetish lends itself so well to that fantasy. But the orc helped me remember I was writing a novel and not just a stroke story. He didn't talk me into dropping the scene, but his reaction caused me to me tone it down, give Ian more motivation, and show other characters' discomfort with Ian's actions.

Now let's talk about Wizard. This blog post, which I wrote back in January, was about the situation with her failsafe. It's all perfectly clear now, eh? I just hope you could follow what she did. I had to rewrite that section a lot. Let me know if you didn't get it and I'll do my best to explain.

Here's another note about Wizard. I've intentionally kept her isolated from the friendly characters in the story (Even her interactions with Linda take place "offscreen."). I've also intentionally kept her in darkness most of the time. She's lived with loneliness and hardship her whole life, and they've made her who she is...not that she likes dealing with them. She'd prefer to be out in the sun, healthy, and among friends. But at least she has one out of the three now.

As for Shara, well, what can I say? You all saw it coming. The next chapter will be an even bigger nail-biter than Chapter 4.

A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: Sleepwalkers, Chapter 6

This is a difficult chapter of Sleepwalkers to write a Peek on. I think it's a powerful chapter (although, looking back over it last night, I realized I should have given it one more polish). I just don't have much to "peek" on because everything's right there in the text.

Charlotte's sacrifice is one of the most poignant parts of the story for me. She and Aimee seem, on the surface, to be rather soft; but they're just powerful in a different way from the other characters. They had the courage to do something no one else did, even though everyone could see the need for it. They also knew what a terrible price they'd pay, and they accepted it. Charlotte's price is clear, but at least it doesn't give her any pain. Imagine, for a moment, how Aimee must feel now.

I'm not going to say anything about Wizard today, but I'll have plenty to tell you in later Peeks.

You should be able to figure out most, if not all, of the process by which one Level Zero turned LeFebvre into another Level Zero; but I've kept it a tad mysterious. The next chapter will spell things out clearly.

I didn't mention before now that Ian is gay for two reasons:
1. I didn't want it to affect your opinion of him in any way, good or bad
2. There's so much overt sexuality in the world I've created that it leaves no room for homophobia. You should assume most characters are at least a little bi, whether or not I've spelled it out. Only LeFebvre is an exception: until this chapter, he's been obsessed with blonde Amazons. Now he's interested in blondes of a different sort. ;-)

A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: Sleepwalkers, Chapter 5

Let's start with the most important topic: Shara's induction of Wizard. I know most of you saw it coming, and most of you thought the brown-skinned Peacekeeper that Wizard noticed on her first run to PP was Shara. She wasn't. That Peacekeeper was a Level Four; Shara was posing as a Level Five (and was, in fact, in the basement of PP at the time). I threw you a red herring. But just to be fair, I gave you a chance of catching it. In fact, I even told you, in my Peek on Chapter 4, that you might spot a typo that wasn't a typo.

By the time I wrote this chapter of Sleepwalkers, I was pushing myself a bit to come up with new ways to describe orgasm. Thus the post here (For the record, I patterned a later orgasm in "Sleepwalkers" on the "electricity" image at the top of that post). Flowers seem pretty incongruous in connection with Wizard, both as the free person she used to be and as the Level Two she is now, but that's why the image works for me. Sexuality is exotic to Wizard. She used the skein to masturbate, but she was a virgin and she had no idea how much better sex felt with another person. The experience was so overwhelming that even though it robbed her of her selfhood, she couldn't forget the glory of it.

In the comments section below Chapter 5 on this blog, Uzobono asked me how the different levels function. I'll let you read my whole response for yourself, if you wish (and I really do recommend reading the comments on all these chapters), but my frame of reference for Wizard as a Level Two was Asperger's Syndrome. She still knows what emotions are, but she doesn't get them. Her world has been reduced to black and white, correct and incorrect. It's all binary, computer-like. [Edit: I don't mean to imply that Wizard is now functioning exactly like an Aspie. Asperger's was just a jumping-off point for me in writing Wizard as a Level Two. It wasn't a template. Some of what she experiences now is not Aspie-ish at all. For instance, people with Asperger's feel emotions just like everyone else.]

I don't know what else to say about what happened to Wizard except that it was the third most painful scene in "Sleepwalkers" for me to write. The second most painful was Shara's induction, and the most painful of all hasn't been published yet. You'll know it when you read it - but I think you also know by now that "Sleepwalkers" doesn't follow the typical structure of an EMC story. It really is a novel, with all that that implies.

Now a couple of quick notes:

There are a few characters who pop up just once or twice in the story to deliver exposition or provide an alternate viewpoint. Valencia is one of those. I like her, and her current mental state is both sad and hot, but this is her only scene.

At some point during the polishing phase, after I'd finished the entire first draft of the story, I realized that I'd written Melora as a sort of non-magical Granny Weatherwax. Granny has long been my favorite character from the Discworld series. I was tickled to see how she'd snuck into my story. Of course, the "real" Granny Weatherwax would be pissed as hell for what I did to her.

(The painting at the top of this post is by Hajime Sorayama.)

Sleepwalking across Skull Island

Normally, I'd be giving you an advance peek at the next chapter of Sleepwalkers tonight. But Simon's taking the week off and I don't want to get out of synch with him, so I have something else for you instead: a  mini-peek-beneath-the-duct-tape on the whole story and some mainstream MC that ties in with sleepwalking and with a period in my childhood shortly before I dreamed up the story of Shara.

It was Shara's story then. She was the "me" I wanted to be, and because I hadn't yet come to grips with my fetish, she was never really brainwashed. Paul was there to help her fake her way out of it. I always dreamed of writing a book around their story, but I could never come up with a plot beyond "Shara and Paul accumulate allies and try to take down the Master from within his own compound" (It was a Master then, just like it was Shara's story. I'm not even sure I knew what homosexuality was at that point). Even after I started writing for the EMCSA, I was still trying and failing to make a novel out of that old fantasy.

Finally, last year, I figured it out. The real story is Paul's, not Shara's. Now, don't get me wrong; Shara is one of the three central characters, and she'll make your jaw drop several times before she leaves the stage. But Paul's the one with the mysterious, critical heritage; and the fact that he's so clearly not an action hero makes him the most interesting person to follow. He doesn't have all the skills, or all the answers, or even all the nerve, to pull off everything he attempts. All he has is genius and (now, at least) some allies.

I have to say I'm glad my readers like him as much as I do. For a long time I didn't feel confident enough to write a story where the lead was both male and unquestionably a good guy (Kerovan in Ethna Redux is heroic but not the lead character, and Matt of Raggedy Andy is a bit flat. Also, "Raggedy Andy" kind of sucks). I have the "friendly neighborhood orc" to thank for helping me keep Paul realistic. And now that I feel more confident writing male pov, I can move ahead with plans for a prequel featuring Paul's parents. I have a general outline already, and I can promise you that Angela and Reynaldo really were as conflicted and heroic as Paul imagines (I say "were" in case anyone's hoping for a twist where they turn out to be alive after all. Sorry, no. They really died, but the story of their sacrifice is amazing. IMO, anyway.).
 
Now we're on to the second part of my detour post, the bit about mainstream MC (well, sort of MC) that dates from a period just a little before my original Paul/Shara fantasy. You might not know this unless you're part of the same generation as me; but in between the classic, original King Kong movie and the recent Peter Jackson adaptation was a 1976 version starring Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange. I saw it in the theater as a kid, but I don't remember much about it now except how horrible Jessica Lange's acting was. It was so bad, I noticed it even though I was just a kid. If you'd told me then that I was watching a future Oscar winner, I'd have called you a liar.

But I digress. The reason I'm bringing up 1976 King Kong now is because of the one scene where Lange's acting actually did the trick for me: the sacrifice scene. Notice how her lips are parted just enough, how deeply she sways without quite falling over, how she's so far gone that even with all the madness taking place around her, she can't do anything but keep mindlessly drinking the stuff that's making her this way. The only thing I'd change about this scene is who comes to pick her up. Instead of Kong, I'd have it be Daryl Hanna from her Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman days. I'm sure Jessica would have a lot more fun with Daryl than she did with a grunting furball who just wanted to give her a shower.

Anyway, embedding is disabled for this video, so you'll have to head over to YouTube to see what I'm talking about. If this link works, you should pick up at just the right point; but if it doesn't, try this link instead and just scroll over to minute 44:38. Either YouTube or my browser is screwing up at the moment, but I don't know which; so I'm giving you both options just in case.

A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: Sleepwalkers, Chapter 4

First, the only thing I'm prepared to say right now about the Wizard/Shara subplot is that a certain typo that you might think you spotted isn't a typo. All will be revealed next week. This Peek - just like this chapter of Sleepwalkers - is mainly concerned with Paul.

Most of the characters in my stories share aspects of my personality, and Paul's behavior in this chapter shows how much he's like me. He has this crazy mix of deer-in-headlights panic, good short-term planning, childlike overconfidence, soft-heartedness that you just know will cause trouble down the line, and then panic again when he realizes he was even more overconfident than he thought. I know I wouldn't do any better in his situation because his actions and reactions are the ones I think I'd make - if I was on top of my game, and of course I might not be. It might be deer-in-headlights from the moment I Awoke until the moment Aimee called the Peacekeepers in to kill me. Anyway, thank goodness for Zane, who also contains some of my personality traits, although badassery isn't one of them.

Now here's a little gift for people who like digging into all behind-the-scenes material they can get their hands on. I haven't always outlined my EMC stories, but the longer I go on, and the more complex my stories become, the more I need to outline them. For "Sleepwalkers," the need was so extreme that I created a separate "Outline" document which ended up being longer than most of my stories themselves (I had a separate "Timeline" document, too, God help me). Maybe that sounds like overkill, but you try writing something with this many plot twists and keeping all the details strictly inside your head!

Anyway I thought I'd give you a taste of what my outlining looks like, using Chapter 4 as my example because this one took an absolutely insane amount of plotting. I had to know who was on which team, when that team entered the dorm, whose team was next into the dorm, when Paul would choose to Wake each Big Gun, and so on. It was a nightmare - but kind of a fun one, I have to admit. And once I'd done all that work, I had to share it with you just so I can brag about it. ;-P

 

P.S.: Yes, a few details in this outline are different from what I actually wrote. You should have seen the earlier versions of the outline!

A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: Sleepwalkers, Chapter 3

Yes, Paul is really awake - just like he was in that old fantasy I blogged about during my Peek on Chapter 2. Now you see why I brought it up. ;-) Just don't expect Paul to rescue Shara like he did in the old fantasy. Remember, he doesn't even know where she is right now; and anyway the Shara of Sleepwalkers is a completely different person from the one I first dreamed up.

I won't tell you how Paul woke up yet, but I welcome speculations...and of course, you can have an early look at Chapter 4 on this blog next Thursday. That will explain everything - and, of course, lead to further complications. The story goes off in a completely different direction from here, and Chapter 4 is a real nail-biter.

A couple other notes:

LeFebvre is an essential part of the story. His name came to me almost out of nowhere, and for some reason, once I had it in my head, I couldn't get rid of it. I have to tell you how much that annoyed my second beta reader, the "friendly neighborhood orc." He quickly started calling LeFebvre "General Unpronounceable." ;-) Now, this next bit doesn't affect the story in any way, but I'll tell you just for the record that LeFebvre is Canadian. I figure even that famously nice country has its share of bastards.

As you know by now, Wizard's disability is muscular dystrophy. I won't pretend to be an expert on the condition, and I apologize if I got any facts about it wrong. I did some research in preparation for writing the story and decided that Wizard was most likely to have limb-girdle MD because most other classes primarily affect males. Limb-girdle causes progressive, symmetrical muscle weakness and can begin in childhood, in which cases it's more severe. I hope that any of my readers who have MD, or who know someone who does, will approve of how I've handled Wizard's character.

A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: Sleepwalkers, Chapter 2

This is the chapter I blogged about several months ago, where I said I'd come up with an M/f induction so cruel that I could barely bring myself to write it. The thing is, once I committed to this particular storyline, the scene became necessary; and once it became necessary, I had to go all the way with it. I knew I couldn't wimp out. You have to know how far Paolo has sunk, and you have to see the change in Shara from furious Resister to eager slave. Early reader reactions indicate that people are taking it just the way I want them to: they're horrified but also (at least in some cases) turned on. It turns me on, too, a bit...but then I feel bad about that. This is the nastiest thing I've ever written.

On a somewhat lighter note, now is a good time to talk about the original fantasy that sparked this story. Like I've said before, I came up with it when I was about twelve. I thought I was straight, so I made the MC'er a man; and I was too innocent to realize being controlled was what got me off, so the main characters in the story weren't really MC'ed at all. They were just pretending. Here's how it played out.

Shara was the central character of the fantasy. She was a completely different person than she is in "Sleepwalkers," and the world she lived in was somewhat different than the empire Hawthorne creates. Certain people had Bene Gesserit-like control over their bodies and minds, and Shara was one of them (If you don't know what a Bene Gesserit is, go read Dune - or at least Wiki it). Paul was another. The fantasy began with Shara being arrested by the Master's troops and taken to his headquarters for brainwashing. Paul was on the ship that carried her there. He'd been captured long before and made a doctor, so he was on site in case she was injured during the arrest. Later, when they were alone in the imprinting chamber, he revealed that he was only pretending to be brainwashed; and that whenever he ran across someone with abilities like his and Shara's, he saved them from brainwashing too. He hoped to eventually create a force that was strong enough to take down the Master.

The rest of the fantasy involved him coaching Shara in how to fool the Master, then the faux-brainwashing scene with the Master gloating over them both. That part of the fantasy played out a lot like my story Mirrored in Your Eyes, as I blogged about here. Interestingly, the mind-controlling drug and the will-replacing chip were parts of the story from the very beginning. So was the bit where Paul's chip gets turned off to horrify Shara; but in the early fantasy, it was the Master who turned off Paul's chip, Paul was only pretending to be catatonic, and Shara was only pretending to be horrified.

Not much drama there, eh? Or much originality, either. But after all, I was only twelve. I'm just proud of myself for coming up with the turning-off-the-chip thing that early in my EMC career.

A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: "Sleepwalkers, Chapter 1"

I can't tell you how thrilled I am to put Sleepwalkers online after all these years. Believe it or not, I first started fantasizing about Paul and Shara when I was about 12. It wasn't quite my first MC fantasy, but pretty nearly. Of course, the plot I came up with as a kid didn't look much like what I've written for the EMCSA, but some of the basic elements remain. The drugs, chips, and imprinting table were there from the start (though without the sex - I was an innocent little thing at the time); and the gloating General was a gloating Master because I had no clue I was gay. I'll say a bit more about that old fantasy when I peek in on Chapter 2. You can see exactly where it's headed already, can't you?

Wizard wasn't a part of the original fantasy. In fact, she wasn't even originally part of Chapter 1. I added her in after the first draft was complete, when Lady K pointed out some holes I needed to fill. Having a character with communications expertise came in handy all kinds of ways, and fleshing her out made me change other parts of the story in ways that will make the whole thing more exciting.

I thought I made her up completely on my own, but not too long ago I stumbled across a website devoted to William Gibson's books and remembered that he created a disabled hacker of his own in Idoru. I'd totally forgotten that. I'd also forgotten that Neal Stephenson did the same in Snow Crash. So maybe it's a trope I'm not aware of. Anyway, I've come to love Wizard so much that she's now my favorite character in Sleepwalkers. That's pretty funny, considering how long I've had Paul and Shara in my head.

It's too early in the story to say much else about the plot, but I will add a few more notes:

1. Wizard's disability is a real one, which I researched in preparation for writing her character. You'll find out what it is before much longer.
2. Despite the current political climate in Arizona, I didn't choose Phoenix to make a political statement. I chose it because I tend to set my stories in the South, and I wanted to go in a different direction for a change. I've actually visited Phoenix, so I thought I could write about it convincingly (not that much action takes place there). It's a gorgeous city, and Camelback Mountain is magnificent, especially in late afternoon.
3. Mount Weather exists. It's so secretive that you can't find much information about it online, but there's this and a few images of the above-ground areas. The below-ground areas I describe are 100% fiction. Probably.

A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: Hoarder

First things first. The painting at right is by noted Lord of the Rings artist John Howe. When I went looking for a dragon illustration for this post, I immediately thought of Howe because he does all the best dragons. So I did a bit of googling and came up with the perfect image to tie in with Hoarder. I promise I'd never seen this picture before writing this post, but once I saw it, I knew I didn't need to look any further.

As for "Hoarder" itself, I've mentioned before that it began as a personal fantasy about MC by dragon. I'd been running it in my head since I was a teen, but it didn't have much of a plot until recently. The original fantasy sprang from the 1981 movie Dragonslayer. In the film, a kingdom is terrorized by a dragon and sacrifices maidens to it to keep it pacified, they draw the victims' names by lot, and the princess's name is always withheld - though in the movie, Princess Elspeth doesn't suspect that. When she finds out, she rigs the lot so that her name is chosen...but that's all I'll say in case anyone out there wants to watch the movie. I have no idea how well it stands the test of time, though, so be warned. After all, it is an '80's flick.

I built my private fantasy on that movie and added in the idea of layered enchantments, each one binding the victim a little tighter and entrancing her a little deeper until she had no freedom left at all. But then, because my fantasy began with an unjust sacrifice, I imagined the dragon turning its victim against her hometown. She'd be taking revenge for what they did to her, even if she was in no position to realize it by then.

And that's all there was to my fantasy at first. Not much of a story for the EMCSA, eh? But I loved the basic idea and always planned to write it up, if I could just think of the right plot. And as it turned out, I'd had that plot in my head all along.

When I was a child, I owned a book of fairy tales that included a bastardized version of the Childe Rowland fable. Whoever adapted it for a children's book decided, for some inexplicable reason, that the King of Elfland should turn his kidnapped maidens into jewels. Even as a kid I didn't understand the point of that. If it's maidens you want, why turn them into gemstones? If it's gemstones you want, why make them out of maidens? It just seemed like the waste of a good captive to me.

A few months ago I was thinking about that old bastardized Childe Rowland story when suddenly it hit me: the jewel thing was illogical if an Elf or wizard did it, but if a dragon were the mage, it made perfect sense. And right there was the solution to my dragon-story dilemma!

Excited now, I looked up the Childe Rowland story online and was surprised to find how badly it had been mangled for me. In the official version, "Childe" Rowland was chopping off heads left and right - not excluding the kind people who helped him along the way; and there were no jewels at all aside from the lamp, which made its way into my story. There was, however, a lovely suggestion of MC in the spell placed on Burd Ellen. (Do notice her name, by the way. ;-)) And if you choose to follow the Childe Rowland link above, you'll find several other names and things I appropriated for "Hoarder." The more I delved into the original fable, the more I found that I could make use of).

As I said several times while hinting about my upcoming story (here and here, for instance) "Hoarder" really did write itself. My favorite "aha" moment was realizing that the seams of gold in Ehlen's lapis lazuli could easily be the remnants of her poison, but stuff like that kept happening all through the writing process. I didn't even know how the dragon would use the Sword when I started out, but when the idea came to me, I knew it was perfect.

I'm extremely happy with the way "Hoarder" turned out. I hope you are, too.

P.S.: Rule 34 came to my aid again, in researching what a dragon's sexual organs might look like.

A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: What to Expect from Your Alien Brainwashing

So now you see why, in a previous post, I said the picture at left had influenced a part of my latest story. ;-) I think I'm going to have to create a new tag for gas masks. Yes, I really will. I know a lot of people fetishize about gas masks, and to a certain extent, I'm one of them. For me, they have to have an organic quality and/or a hood and goggles that hide the entire face. As always, it's the robotization, depersonalization and voicelessness that most appeals to me.

So anyway, about What to Expect from your Alien Brainwashing. The first bit that occurred to me (in a dream, as is often the case), was the title. And the first title that occurred to me was, "What to Expect from Your Alien Overlords." I liked the idea because it had an inherent humor based on the popular meme, and I could tweak it to be more MC-specific while still keeping some of the humor. Of course, the first tweak had to come with the title.

The idea developed gradually, with the part I'm proudest of - Tinker Toy sex lattices - coming to me again in a dream. Gah, I love my subconscious!

I wasn't sure what my aliens would look like until I found the picture above (all credit to Kimatica). Then, of course, they had to be Greys so I could fit in the huge eyes and pointy faces. Sorry if that's a let-down for anyone expecting more exotic aliens, but it's been my experience in reading SF that it's really, really hard to come up with truly alien species. Vernor Vinge did a great job in A Fire Upon the Deep, of course, but I still fault him for not making the most of the MC possibilities. ;-) As for me, I knew my audience was more interested in the MC than whether my aliens had fur or scales, so I decided to take a pass.

When it comes to the wall installations, I was probably subconsciously influenced by all those weird '80's videos that had people running along corridors where human hands or heads stuck out of the walls. Funnily enough, though, I stumbled across this just yesterday, via Oddee.

Another funny thing, as far as I'm concerned, is that I chose this story out of the three percolating in my brain because I thought it was the lightest; and yet it turned out pretty grim in the end. I hope you still find some humor in it (I do; I always find it funny when MC victims blather earnestly about the favors they're doing their recruits), but the story as a whole got pretty dark. It seemed that with each successive polish, I came up with creepy new ideas that slotted in just perfectly with the plot.

For instance, the idea of elites creating a presentation for their processees was originally just a joke: that's their notion of waiting room reading material. And I had to make my processee desperate enough to read it, so I came up with "wait times might be longer than usual" - a common recorded message Americans hear when they dial toll-free numbers for any sort of assistance. It was only later that I realized why the wait times would be longer than usual: the new architectural craze was sucking up more slaves than ever. That added a whole new layer of horror to the ending. Our poor processee will probably end up a mindless bit of X-rated wall decoration.

Is it just me, or does anyone else now have Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" running through their heads?

A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: How Did It Come to This?

I hope I fooled some of you with the red herring in How Did It Come To This? - and I hope none of you dropped the story before you found out it was a red herring. If I ever wrote another vampire tale (and after collaborating so successfully with Jukebox* on The White Album, why should I?), it certainly wouldn't have a vamp as traditional as Jimmy would have been...if he'd been a vamp.

Admittedly, my first idea for a hockey-player-vs.-figure-skater story did involve a Nosferatu, but there's a reason the story didn't work out that way. I couldn't make it work out that way; it would have been too boring. I didn't get enthusiastic about the tale until I realized Jimmy didn't have to be a real vampire; he just had to seem like one. Then it occurred to me that the lyrics to "Time Is Running Out" would fit incredibly well with an EMC story, and I got really enthusiastic.

I don't know how many m/m fans are also Muse fans (though the "belldom" phenomenon would suggest some overlap ;)), so I won't go into much detail about the Muse-related Easter eggs in the story. If you're not a fan, you won't even notice them; and if you are a fan, you'll get a few extra laughs from the story. Here's a hint: Aside from TIRO and "Hysteria," I've referenced at least seven other Muse songs; and I've also given each of the band members his own hidden shout-out.

Not all the Easter eggs are Muse-related, though. Larry Szymanski isn't a fan of Stephen King, but I am, so there's a reason for the capitalized "It" in the fortune cookie scene. You'll get "It" if you've read It. ;)

Speaking of which, my first idea for Jimmy's fortune was a fortune I received myself: "Good sense travels on the well-worn paths; genius never." Eventually I worked this out to be a bad translation of something like, "Good sense always travels on well-worn paths, but genius never does." In other words, genius goes its own way.

That's Jimmy, I think. He succeeds even though he never takes the well-worn paths and never does the expected. In fact, he's so instinctive in his actions that he doesn't always realize what he's doing, himself. I wasn't sure about that at first, but in the end I realized he was just playing by ear and having fun. Of course, he never doubted he'd get Larry in the end. After all, he's not just a genius; he's a fae.

Good thing he's an iconoclast fae, though. Imagine what could have happened to Larry if Penelope had gotten hold of him!

*My collaboration with Jukebox was so successful that I think some of his influence carried over into this story. You can see it mostly in the humor and in Jimmy's banter.

A *Preliminary* Peek Beneath the Duct Tape on "How Did It Come to This?"

I have more to say about my latest story than usual, so I'm splitting my commentary in two and devoting the first half to non-spoilery talk about the inspiration for Jimmy DeVere.

Of course, if you're interested enough in gay men to read a cyan story, you probably already know about Johnny Weir. In fact, you probably know more about him than I did when I started writing How Did It Come to This?.

I used to enjoy watching the Winter Olympics, especially the figure skating, but I gave it up before Weir burst onto the scene. Oh, I heard about him here and there, but I never saw him skate and only once saw him interviewed before I started writing. My impression of him was based mainly on pictures, a few sports articles, and the shitstorm he braved at the 2010 Olympics.

I always knew that if I wrote my "hockey player vs. figure skater" story, Johnny Weir would be the model for my MC'er; but it took a long time for me to work out the plot. Once I did, I was dying to start writing; so I researched hockey and figure skating as quickly as I could, then went with what I already knew about Johnny Weir. That might sound odd to you, but I thought I had a strong enough mental image to build a character around. Besides, Jimmy was never meant to be Johnny exactly; he's more of an intentionally uninformed fantasy version of Johnny. That gave me license to play around with details like his musical taste and personal life, not to mention his species. ;-)

Once I had the rough draft in good shape, I could relax enough to satisfy my curiosity about the real Johnny. I started with YouTube, where I found (among many other interesting things), the video below. The routines he performs in competition are beautiful, but I can't help liking his exhibition performances better because they really allow him to be himself.

Later I discovered that all ten episodes of Weir's reality show (Yes, he has one all his own), Be Good Johnny Weir, are available online. I highly recommend them. The show is awesome and Johnny Weir is even more awesome. He doesn't always come out on top, but his courage and ability to bounce back are amazing. And he never, ever caves in to bullies. He always remains true to himself, no matter what the cost.

Watching the show (and several more interviews), I realized Jimmy isn't as much like Johnny as I thought. Considering how much Johnny values personal freedom, he might be horrified to know about my story. What I'd like to think, though, is that it would give him a good laugh. Weir has a great sense of humor, and he took a hilarious jab at homophobic hockey players in one episode of his show. As you read the following quote, bear in mind that I wrote my story before hearing him say this:

Let's go brave these hockey players. Last week they called me "Johnny Queer" and then made a blow job gesture....When you walk by a group of jocks and they're making fun of you, in general, I'll want to turn around and say, "Okay, if you want a blow job, present your penis." Sexually, I enjoy being pursued, or taken to dinner and then pursued. I think it's trashy to do it behind your back.

I so love this man. :)

Now here are a few last Johnny/Jimmy-related notes before I send the next chapter to Simon:

• Johnny's teeth turned out to be straighter than I remembered, but they really are a little...peculiar looking, aren't they? And those canines are definitely worrisome.
• Yes, I've seen Blades of Glory, but I didn't name my MC'er after Jon Heder's character. I named him "Jimmy" because it was the closet name to "Johnny." I enjoyed the movie, but I don't think it made a big impression on my story.
• Yes, I've seen The Cutting Edge, but it was a couple of decades ago and I don't remember much about it. Any coincidences beyond the obvious really are just coincidences.
• Yes, I know about the Canadian reality show that pairs hockey players with figure skaters. No, I never got to see it.
• Yes, I know about the reality show that pairs figure skaters with non-skaters; and I know Johnny Weir was a judge for the show. But I didn't find out about it until after I finished my rough draft, and I haven't seen it yet.
• Yes, I'm sure the figure skating sections of my story have a few technical problems. Just take a deep breath and use that extra buoyancy to suspend your disbelief, okay?

A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: If Wishes Were Horses

First, a couple of notes:

1. I figured out how to flush my DNS cache, but that still didn't resolve my problem getting into the EMCSA; so I have to assume a lot of other people are in the same fix. Fortunately for them, they can read the story here. As for those of you who can access the EMCSA, I e-mailed it to Simon this morning, so it will show up either in this weekend's update or in next weekend's update. Not that I think you'll want to wait. ;-)

2. To avoid spoilers, please don't read the rest of this blog entry until you've read the story itself.

Okay, still with me? Well then, first of all, I can assure you that at least 95% of the text in Captain Benbow's hypnosis program really does come from one of my personal Virtual Hypnotist sessions. Just don't expect to be able to cut and paste that text into a session of your own and get the same results I do. For one thing, reactions to hypnosis are highly subjective; and for another, my real VH session includes a lot of the tweaking I discuss here, in order to achieve the semblance of a real human voice. If you want the same effects in a session of your own, you'll have to figure out how to do it yourself. ;-) I'm not being mean, just not giving out such a huge freebie without strings attached. And I really don't think there's any way at all to make the speech synthesizer chuckle, no matter what you do. ;-)

As for the plot of "If Wishes Were Horses," I just used my VH session as the foundation and tried to build something on top of it that could stand on its own. You'll have to let me know if I succeeded. Clearly, the greatest heat in the story comes from the VH text (and maybe Captain Benbow's reactions, which you can imagine are my own, even though they're often not ;-P), but I hope the story as a whole is satisfying to you. As for me, I love the idea that even though the captain is so concerned about her privacy and so protective of her fetish, the Queen's control takes her completely beyond her fears. I was proud of myself for coming up with the story's big reveal, that her crew was watching her helplessly the whole time and she neither knew nor cared.

There's a part of me - the closet exhibitionist part - that wants to reach that stage, but I'm not there yet and probably never will be. In fact, I don't want to be. I have a lot of MC dreams where I'm wandering around in a trance and real-life friends and family members appear, trying to snap me out of it. Even dreaming, I feel hugely embarrassed to have them see me like that. Most of my friends and all but one of my family members have no knowledge of my fetish, and I want to keep it that way.

Now, on to flexmatter. First, let me apologize for the obviousness of the plot device; but if Mcguffins are good enough for Sir Alfred Hitchcock (who actually coined the term), they're good enough for me. Besides, scientists really are experimenting with ways to make matter do things it shouldn't be capable of, like become invisible. Who knows what we'll be able to achieve in a few hundred years? Anyway, I'm not the first to come up with matter molding via technology or brain implants that permit telepathy; as far as I know, that was Peter F. Hamilton in his Night's Dawn series. But the term flexmatter is my own; it came to me in a dream.

Lastly, here are some Easter eggs. I certainly hope you got the references to the Trojan Horse. If not, the first paragraph of this Wikipedia article will help; and you'll also want to look up Odysseus' Latin name and the etymology of Philippa. But those are just the more obvious eggs. The one I wouldn't expect anyone else to get is my captain's name. A long time ago (in blog terms, anyway), I wrote about using an old Men at Work song from their Business as Usual album as the basis for my bedtime session. The song was "Down by the Sea," and I chose it because it's so soporific that it would put practically anyone to sleep. Well, it just so happens that in the session's current form, my trigger first appears right after the line "saluting Captain Benbow." And, if you read carefully, you'll note that Lieutenant Olorode actually does salute Captain Benbow...well, at least, part of him does. ;-)

And that's that, except to note once more that the image at the top of this post comes from Kassandra Vizerskaya. The title, loosely translated, is "Helen and Her Horse."

This is not your Wednesday blog entry

It's just a little something extra. After following this link showcasing the 20 scariest movies of all time (just one person's opinion, I guess, but that person has spot-on opinions) I couldn't help marveling that I've seen and/or read the novels behind nineteen of the twenty, the exception being Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. What does that say about me, eh?

Well, one thing I should say is that when I was writing my Peek Beneath the Duct Tape on Union, Reunion, I totally forgot to credit Evil Dead. It's an obvious influence, of course, but so far Sam Raimi's lawyers haven't sued me for failing to cite my sources. ;-)

A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: Love Like Winter

And so...another inspiration for The White Album that I had to wait until now to explain. Oh, I teased you right from the start with this video by AFI, and many of you guessed that Love Like Winter would be the title of the concluding segment (As a matter of fact, my first idea was to use LLW as the title for the whole trilogy, but that was before Jukebox told me he wanted each segment to be a separate story with its own title). What you didn't know until now was just how many ways this song influenced the trilogy's origins.

Watch the video again, if you like. Notice the images, and especially think about the lyrics. Listen to that talk about blood and biting and "drinking my war." Although the symbolism of drained color was part of my idea from the beginning, I did originally plan for a vampire that drank blood. Then, a little later, when I came up with the idea of Dalila's slaves posing like statues and dummies, the line "Press your lips to the sculptures and surely you'll stay" became eerily prescient.



Yeah, you knew the statue/dummy idea was mine, didn't you? ;-) Geoff Coen had the "Jukebox" stamp across his forehead, and the statues and dummies have the "thrall" stamp across theirs. Originally, I was going to take them even further into fetish territory and have Abby dressed in a full-body latex catsuit with goggles over her eyes. But just as we began to write the first mannequin scene, I realized it would be more powerful to have Abby wearing the dress Dalila used to seduce her. So no latex. Sorry. But you know what? I liked the dress idea so much that I don't even miss the alternative.

And you know what else? Even though the statues and dummies have that great big "thrall" stamp, Jukebox still managed to sneak his own signature onto them, too. I've said before that it's almost impossible to talk with J for very long and not have the conversation turn to Dr. Who. Now, I watched a lot of the show in college, myself (mostly Tom Baker, with a bit of Peter Davison and John Pertwee), and even though I don't watch it now, I'm still curious enough to read articles online - and to chat with Jukebox about current developments in the series.

So. Early on in our discussions, Jukebox started raving about the Weeping Angels. At first I thought he wanted to talk about them just because they were really cool monsters, but then I got curious enough to look them up online. I found some pics, some detailed descriptions of the episode in which they first appear, and eventually an extended video clip. By then it was hilariously apparent that where I was thinking mindless minions posed like art, Jukebox was thinking Weeping Angels. Take a look at the clip compilation below, and you'll see just how thoroughly "Blink" worked its way into "Love Like Winter."



And now, one last thing before I hit the "Publish" button. I understand that some people have been...miffed...by the dark tone of The White Album. Hopefully, that doesn't apply to anyone reading this blog; I have to think that if you like my stuff well enough to follow me here, then you're not afraid of the dark. You might actually like it. You might even - and this is my fondest hope - appreciate the pathos of Carly's sacrifice. I think it's a much more powerful ending than if Carly and Abby had just ridden off into the sunset together.

As for those folks who always want fireworks and dancing Ewoks, all I can say is this: I've been posting on the EMCSA since 2002, long enough for regular readers to know my style and know how few of my stories have traditional happy endings. So if you're that scared of getting your feelings hurt, then why the hell do you keep reading my stuff? Go rent Twilight instead.