Friday, February 26, 2010

lascivious spiders, angry corpses, and robotic chessmen

1.) I was injured in the Gulf War by my own gun, the M249 "SAW". I tried to disassemble it with the charging handle cocked (which coils up a massive spring), and when I removed the stock, the steel firing pin blasted out at me, slammed into my mouth, broke two of my teeth, and ricocheted off into the desert. My company commander misunderstood my explanation of the events leading to the injury and talked about nominating me for a Purple Heart.

(It's all true except for the Purple Heart. The Army doesn't reward stupidity... often.)

2.) I've been literally knocked unconscious twice. Once by wrassling with my older cousin, and once by walking into the roof of a porch that had been built by two short guys. . . my father-in-law and his brother.

(My cousin knocked me out. My uncle-in-law's five-foot ten-inch porch only made me cuss my guts out and punch the fender of my car. I'm five-ten-and-a-half -- did I mention?)

3.) After the third consecutive morning of waking up in the woods with spider bites on my lips, I was told by an Army medic that there must be some chemical in my saliva that tastes especially good to arachnids.

(You're gonna hate me for this, but this one's a lie because it was only two nights in a row. Cheap, I know, but spiders DO think I taste good.)

4.) This one time in surgery, I got a bloody scalpel imbedded about three inches in my forearm. The nurse made a sick-looking face, wriggled it out, and we all kept working until the procedure was finished. I bled inside my sleeve for twenty-five minutes.

(Also cheap, but this one's a lie because I only had to bleed in my sleeve for like five minutes. It was a short procedure. Take heart though, friends -- for the rest are anything but cheap.)

5.) Most people won't understand this, but it's actually fairly difficult to lift the body of a deceased patient onto the tray in the bottom drawer of the morgue cooler. They always end up cock-eyed and crooked, and it's a real problem. . . good thing I know a trick. You get down like a runner in starting blocks, and then you slam that sucker shut. Hard! The body kind of rolls up on its side, then flop back down perfectly centered in the stainless steel tray. Works every time.

(Not every time. After one slam in particular, the body ended up wedged way in the back corner of the drawer with his eyes glaring at us all angry-like from out of the darkness. The tech I was with summed it up perfectly, "Oohhhh, we're going to hell".)

6.) My most recent job-related injury occurred while I was retracting a rather large vagina so a surgeon could suture in a bladder sling. He got a little sloppy while he was sewing, and sunk that freaking suture needle deep into the web of my thumb. I was like, "Ouch!... Dude, how could you miss that vagina? -- It's huge!"

(I would never say that to a surgeon -- he felt bad enough about missing the huge vagina without me reminding him. The worst part, though, was that while I was turned around changing into a fresh glove, he kept sewing with the same needle that poked me -- an unprecedented case of 'reverse occupational exposure'.)

7.) My ultimate dream is to learn to play the bouhrain, bouzouki, and penny whistle, and live in a castle tower with Guinness on tap and robot servants made up to look like chessmen who can pour the Guinness and bring it to me. (I would say, 'pour black-and-tans', but that's just a little too unrealistic.)

(Hells yeah! This is the one! It's all true, baby!)

Blog-award-tag-update-post


What you see here is one of my big excuses for only being on page 91 of my latest manuscript -- I have a second job.

In January I started teaching a surgical technology lab at Baker College, and these here are my splenderific students. Shout out to Christine, Lisa, Shawn and Rhonda. And no that's not my hand wrapped around Shawn's waist. It's Pat's. Pat the surgical mannequin. (Shout out to Pat).

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And now the real reason updating so quickly (because for me, seventeen days is practically back-to-back): I was given a tag/award thing. By the charismatic writer/poet/music nut, Kelley Pollark. In her own words, I was given this award "because I'd like him to post more."

So thank you very much, Ms. Kelly, and here is the post you wanted:

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The rules:

1. Thank the person who gave you the award and link them.
2. Add the award to your blog.
3. Tell six outrageous lies about yourself and one truth.
4. Nominate six creative liars ... I mean, writers and link them.
5. Let your nominees know they've been nominated.
Note: I'm breaking the rules a little bit, though. To make it more challenging for the people who really know me, every single one of these things is more or less true. Only of them is completely true. It's okay if I do that, right Kelly? Cuz if I don't mix it with the truth, my wife and my mom will see right through the lies and ruin the fun for everybody else like they've ruined my street cred.

Anyway.

1.) I was injured in the Gulf War by my own gun, the M249 "SAW". Yeah... I tried to disassemble it with the charging handle cocked (which coils up a massive spring), and when I removed the stock, the steel firing pin blasted out at me, slammed into my mouth, broke two of my teeth, and ricocheted off into the desert. My company commander misunderstood my explanation of the events leading to the injury and talked about nominating me for a Purple Heart.

2.) I've been literally knocked unconscious twice. Once by wrassling with my older cousin, and once by walking into the roof of a porch that had been built by two short guys. . . my father-in-law and his brother.

3.) After the third consecutive morning of waking up in the woods with spider bites on my lips, I was told by an Army medic that there must be some chemical in my saliva that tastes especially good to arachnids.

4.) This one time in surgery, I got a bloody scalpel imbedded about three inches in my forearm. The nurse made a sick-looking face, wriggled it out, and we all kept working until the procedure was finished. I bled inside my sleeve for twenty-five minutes.

5.) Most people won't understand this, but it's actually fairly difficult to lift the body of a deceased patient onto the tray in the bottom drawer of the morgue cooler. They always end up cock-eyed and crooked, and it's a real problem. . . good thing I know a trick. You get down like a runner in starting blocks, and then you slam that sucker shut. Hard! The body kind of rolls up on its side, then flop back down perfectly centered in the stainless steel tray. Works every time.

6.) My most recent job-related injury occurred while I was retracting a rather large vagina so a surgeon could suture in a bladder sling. He got a little sloppy while he was sewing, and sunk that freaking suture needle deep into the web of my thumb. I was like, "Ouch!... Dude, how could you miss that vagina? -- It's huge!"

7.) My ultimate dream is to learn to play the bouhrain, bouzouki, and penny whistle, and live in a castle tower with Guinness on tap and robot servants made up to look like chessmen who can pour the Guinness and bring it to me. (I would say, 'pour black-and-tans', but that's just a little too unrealistic.)

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I am giving this award to: Bryan Bliss, Vivi Alden, Mary Paddock, Madison, Mercedes, and K.M. Walton.
To these guys, and to Kelly, and to everybody else reading this: thanks for being true blogger buddies and checking in on me when I don't update, and coming back for those rare times that I do.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

What's up with Ray's writing?

So the last time I posted, which was over two months ago, I was just finishing up the edits for Talonshale. Remember that? All caught up now? Good. I hope you're reading this sitting down, because what I have to tell you isn't very pleasant. I sent the aforementioned, polished manuscript to my agent, and as it turns out, he wasn't exactly thrilled with the book. He liked the characters, liked the world and concept, but thought it needed a new plot.

Yes, you read that right -- it needed a new plot.

The problem was that Talonshale was a murder mystery, and like many murder mysteries, the main characters weren't seriously threatened until the murderer was unmasked. I'd structured the plot to move from clue to clue -- banking on the 'what's-going-on' factor to keep the reader turning pages. And as my agent pointed out, a book like this, for a market like this, should have more action and conflict and tension -- the plot should move from peril to peril. Aiming a murder mystery at teenage dudes wasn't exactly a bad call, I don't think -- it just wasn't the best call.

And I do want to make the best call.

So, like a good lil' writer-man, feeling slightly cowed and overwhelmed, I started working on a new plot. And that, of course, meant writing an entirely new book -- but in the same world with the same characters.

And what I found was that, actually, coming up with a series of escalating perils isn't so hard. What's stinking hard as hell, and what's had me tearing my hair out and wondering if writer's block might not be the myth I thought it was, is coming up with a series of escalating perils that isn't predictable.

Because once I took the mystery element out of Talonshale, I had nothing left but 'kids-in-danger'. Nothing terribly original or terribly interesting. I literally started writing the book three more times. Three additional first chapters, all of which felt plain and listless. (Oh, and did I mention that before the 350 page version, I'd written 170 pages on an entirely different 'adventurer's journal' version which I eventually scrapped? Yeah. So altogether, I've written over 600 freaking pages under the title 'Talonshale'.)

Anyway. In the interest of wrapping this up before I really start rambling and whining, I'll just tell you where I'm at right now, and let you get back to your lives.

Page 63.

But it's a version that I'm actually pretty happy with. It's first person present, darker and bloodier than the previous versions, and it has that feeling of building up its own momentum -- becoming one of those beast-like stories on the verge of breaking free and running wild of it's own accord. And you know, I reeelly hope it does.

Because right about now, I could reeeally use a story that writes itself .