The Guilty Party

For anyone who’s interested or cares, here’s the blog of the one who just bit me.

Psychotic girlfriend Blog

Ouch! Awww…

Hey, my girlfriend just bit me in the ear.

IT MUST BE LOVE! Or lurve. Something like that.

Next time: Girly Sex & Monkey Sex and the difference between the two. Maybe.

On Musical Muses

Before I begin, for the curious, here are links to Big Bill’s and Neil-O’s websites/blogs respectively. They’re real easy:

Home of Big Bill

Secret Home of Neil-O!

That last post about Tori Amos just kind set me off. For those of you who don’t maniacally follow such things (That would be anyone with a Real Life) there’s this story (The details of which I am about to garble) about how Tori Amos–she of the freakishly lyrical and unearthly music–and Neil Gaiman–he of hauntingly original narrative–met and became friends.

Apparently Neil was already beginning to gain some attention for the work he was doing on The Sandman. Tori was just putting her first album–Little Earthquakes–together. One day, while Tori was in LA, she had a friend come over to crash, and said friend brought along The Doll’s House, the second storyline in The Sandman narrative arcs. Tori read it, was utterly entranced by it, and it was just one of the little things that wound through her head as she went on to create her album, ending with her making a reference to the Dream King, and hanging out with Neil. This very same friend took a tape with a copy of the album on him to a convention where he actually met Gaiman. He placed Tori’s number on the tape and Neil took it home to give it a listen. The next thing you know, he’s giving Tori a call, they’re becoming fast friends, and one of the weirder, more talented writers on the planet is chillin’ in da hood with one of the weirder, more talented musicians.

Every time I think of that story, all I can come up with is, “Is that cool or what?”

So this is me putting out a global-wide announcement:

I too want a hip, talented musician friend just on the cusp of fame!

Think of it! We’ll be able to conduct one of those knowing, in-joke laden interviews where people think it’s so cool we’re buddies!

We can name drop!

We can cover for each other’s procrastination in the name of artistic integrity that those bastards in marketing Will Never Understand!

WE CAN PLAY TEKKEN OR DOA EXTREME BEACH VOLLEYBALL TOGETHER!

Just don’t expect me to play bass guitar for your band. I’m Filipino, but I ain’t that Filipino…

The ‘Net Is Creepy…

And here I was thinking that only friends I had announced this to would be commenting on the blog when it was only hours old. Imagine my surprise when I check it out and find other people have left comments too. Which begs the question, “How the heck did you guys find out about it?”

Not that I’m mad or anything, but slightly amazed that something in its infancy was able to attract the attention of total strangers. For the kind commentor that signed off as “Dildo Bugger”, thank you for the website address, that was priceless. And yes, I too have read Bored Of The Rings. I’m still trying to figure out a way to sneak in that line “Would thee kiss me in the dark baby,” somewhere into a story one of these days…

What I Didn’t Do Today

Go to a meeting I was supposed to.

Apologies to my friend Amelia whom I have yet to call.

Some kind of production meeting for which I was supposed to play camera man for a day on a project she needs help on. The meeting was set for the completely insane hour of 11 am. Which doesn’t strike most people as insane, except most people don’t have an average bed time of 8 am in the morning. I’m going to sheepishly call her and apologize, except that she probably already knows the reason; I lay down, told myself I was just going to take a nap, set the alarm, and solidly managed to sleep through it.

That Lesbian Heroine Thang

After consulting the experts (Read, talking to my friends who have actually gotten books into a bookstore) it looks like Artistic Integrity wins out over desperation to get another publishing credit. Most of my Lit. Friends seem to agree; walk away. I guess that’s what I’ll do, since, to be honest, I wasn’t really sure how I’d get a girl as mean-spirited as Jen to suddenly soften up and say “You have the most delicate eyes…”

Not to say that I’m not above crassness however. I’ll submit another short story instead. That one already has a lesbian in it, so it should be just fine. Mercenary tendencies, thy name is Shoeless…

More Lit Stuff For The Scholars

In the future, when I am a mind-numbingly famous writer and people read this blog faithfully and interviews start popping up, and people come up to me with their hands trembling around my books and stutter, “Y-y-you’re so c-c-cool!” (To which the only generous reply is, “Yes. Yes I am.”) one question that will inevitably crop up is “Who are your influences?”

They are, in order of appearance:

Stephen King

Yes, it was inevitable the younger generation of writers would be influenced by someone with that monstrous a presence on the current scene. Most people would be horrified to think that I am firmly convinced he may very well occupy a position in lit history not unlike The Bard, William Shakespeare. The similarities are too eerie. They were regarded by their contemporaries as peddlers of pop-culture junk to the masses, were thought to have no literary value in their time, were highly regarded by said masses, and in the end, it was the people, not the critics who spoke and made them so frighteningly popular. That is not to say that either Shakespeare or King were at the height of literary skill, or represented the very best writing their generation had to offer, but they were a voice for people of the time.

Why King

He taught me about one big thing: Characterization.

It’s like this. As a kid, when I was reading other stories, ESPECIALLY horror novels, the one thing I noticed was this repeating pattern for plot: You’d have some guy, Joe, walking around in the woods. Then a monster would jump out and kill him. You’d go “Ah!” And that was it. Big scare, now it’s over.

Here’s how King did it. He introduced you to Joe as a kid. He showed you how Joe broke his little finger trying to rescue his dog from the ditch and how it never worked again properly after that. He showed you how Joe gave up on college to help his mom with the mortgage when dad died. He showed you how Joe met and married a great girl, only to lose both her and their daughter during childbirth. He showed you how Joe refused to be beaten down by life, how generous and hopeful he was. How no matter how bad things got, he always found time to care. He made you like Joe. He made you want to be his best friend and go out for drinks with him.

THEN the monster jumps out of the woods and kills him. And instead of going “AHHH!” You’re screaming, “NOOOOO!!! NOT JOOOOOOOOOOOEEEE!!!”

For a kid who’s only just learning the subtleties of writing, that’s a pretty big lesson to learn.

William Gibson

Hey, would I even BE here blogging and would you even be here reading if it weren’t for this guy and that crazy ass notion he whipped up in the 80′s called “Cyberspace”?

See, this guy, this guy right here… HE’S the reason I decided to become a writer in the first place. It all started with his collection of short stories, Burning Chrome, that I came across in the library at the oh-so-malleable age of 14. After I devoured that came Neuromancer, then Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Virtual Light and all the others. The man made such a huge impact on me that one day, when he came down to Edmonton, to the Greenwoode bookstore to do a signing for Virtual Light back in the early 90′s, I was that nervous schmuck who came up to him with trembling hands, my dog eared copy of Burning Chrome tightly gripped, and stuttered “Y-y-you’re so c-c-c-cool!” Actually, it was even more embarrassing than that, I told him, “You’re the reason I became a writer!” and practically threw myself prostate on the ground. He politely tolerated me, which I am profoundly thankful for.

Why Gibson

Style. Pure, freakin’ style.

“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

Up until Gibson came along, I’d had this notion in my head that science fiction (A la Heinlen, Clarke, Asimov, etc, etc…) was all about two things: Plot and Ideas. You had these intricate, wonderful plots that were built around really mindblowing ideas and/or technology about the future. You didn’t necessarily care about the characters, and most of the time, you didn’t care what they said or did either, but you walked away with this big mess in your head about the future of humanity, or where this particular technology was going, stuff like that. Gibson changed all that for me. His language was amazing. There was this nasty, vicious, elegant shaping of words that was so incredibly 80′s you could practically hear the hum of blue neon coming from the words and see the Nagel paintings on the walls. The paragraphs were short, but the description was incredibly dense. I had no idea that genre fiction could actually be this beautiful until he came along, and after that, it wasn’t too long before I started thinking, “Damn, I wanna do that.”

And here I am. Nearly, anyway.

Neil Gaiman

Death, Dream, Delirium.

I know SO many people who have at least been marginally touched by Gaiman and what he did for comic books. Again, he broke the mold. No more tights. No more endless plots. There were Narrative arcs. Characterization. NO TIGHTS. Here were people we could care about that had immense personal problems as well as crises that rocked the cosmic pillars of existence’s foundation. Gaiman took us to hell, to the places between worlds, he made death your best friend, dream the angtsy poet he should be, and he wrapped it all up with an explosive endgame narrative that left most readers, in the great King tradition, screaming “NOOOOOOOOOO!!!! NOT MORPHEUS!!!!”

Why Gaiman

I was already starting to get my writing legs under me when I discovered Sandman in university, thanks to my friend Karen Chow (She of the endless wit), and I was a bit worried that my weird, genre-blending stuff wasn’t going to fly.

Then I read Gaiman, and felt much, much better.

If there’s one thing he taught me, it’s that anything really is possible in fiction. His stories went everywhere and yet, within the context of the story, made sense. He tackled huge ideas, but somehow always brought it back to the personal level. He tackled new ideas (Or at least ones that hadn’t been touched in a while) with his revisionist takes on myth and legend, and mostly he just did the one thing that the comics industry had completely failed to recognize up to that point; the kids who read comics were STILL reading comics, but they weren’t kids anymore. And Gaiman treated them that way.

I still go back to the tights stuff every once in a while to see if there’s been any change. Largely there hasn’t, except that maybe anime and manga are starting to have an influence on the art work, but these days, when it comes to comics, I prefer stuff like Alan Moore, Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman and Frank Miller. Those guys are all doing the interesting stuff, and I’ve probably ripped them off on more than one occasion.

My Fantasy Blog Friendship

As stated in the very first post, this Blog was started largely out of a lame attempt to imitate my idols, William Gibson and Neil Gaiman. Neil has been blogging for quite some time and developed an incredibly loyal following, some of whom have never even read his books, but are just fascinated by his musings alone. Recently, (I found this out on Neil’s blog) William Gibson has started his own. It turns out that they actually know each other. When Gibson was coming into his own, he went over to England and was interviewed by Gaiman, who was still struggling at the time.

This of course, set off this massive fantasy in my head. It goes something like this.

Gib: Hey Wayne, I read your blog! I’m really flattered by all the nice things you said about me.

Me: You’re so cool!

Gai: Yeah Wayne, me too! Sorry I didn’t respond to your post in my blog, it got lost, the cat ate it, and I left it in my other pants. But I’ve been reading your blog, and I’ve decided I want to be your new best friend!

Me: You’re so cool!

Gib: Me too! In fact, I want you to call me “Big Bill”! No one else can call me “Big Bill”, you and YOU alone are allowed to call me this. Even my wife and kids don’t have that privilige.

Me: You’re so cool!

Gai: And you can call me “Neil-O!” It’s my secret name! Why don’t you come and have some drinks with us? I’m bringing Tori Amos along, and she wants to write a song for you. She says “Hi,” by the way.

Me: She’s so cool!

Gib: And I’ll be bringing Douglas Coupland along with me. He wants to base a character off you, because you typify the current generation of needlessly geeky, angst-ridden, introspective, annoying, pseudo-intellectuals!

Me: He’s so cool!

Gib & Gai: WE’LL BE YOUR BESTEST FRIENDS FOREVER AND EVER!

Me: This is so cool!

Porn Of The Rings

Hey, has anybody done this yet?

I keep thinking there’s just way, WAY too much fodder here. Enough to make Tolkien roll over in his grave and give Peter Jackson a sufficiently large heart attack to put him in one. There are too many examples to cite for the porn possibilities but to name a few off the top of my head:

In the Shire:

Gandalf: He is seeking it, Frodo. Seeking it with every fiber of his being.

Frodo: What’s your hand seeking in my pants? That’s not my pocket, y’know…

Upon encountering Galadriel at the pool in Lothlorien:

Frodo: What will I see?

Galadriel: My amazing hooters!

(Throws herself into pool and stands up to reveal she wears no bra, then begins to strip)

Bao-chika-bao-bao… (written equivalent of porno wa-wa guitar music)

In The Two Towers:

ANYTIME Gollum says “My Precious” he’s staring at his crotch…

A Meditation On Elves

Thanks to this whole Lord Of The Rings whackiness, every girl and her aunt now has a thing about Elves, this has left most males utterly bemused. “But Elves are pansies!” they protest. “They look like girls, wear green long johns and prance around the forest like a bunch’a Nancy Boys! I don’t get it! Hell, Mr. Spock has pointy ears, how come with the exception of trek girls most females don’t think he’s cool?!? And he’s far cooler than Elves, he’s got that crazy Vulcan nerve pinch, what gives?!?”

Fellow holders of the Y chromosome, here is your answer:

Style And Romance.

I think most females, even if it’s only for 5 minutes of their childhood, go through a phase of absolute Love For Magic. This usually manifests in the incubation stages of the illness as a fondness for unicorns that eventually, if left untreated, will lead to unicorn posters, the collection of lead or pewter figurines depicting wizards, castles and yes, Elves. Once it hits the Elf stage, real guys just don’t measure up. A quick comparison of the Real Man to the Real Elf reveals these alarming facts.

Real Man: Lives to be about 70

Real Elf: Lives to see the next species killing asteroid hit the Earth

Real Man: Camps in forest with tent and makes girlfriend gut the fish, with blunt bowie knife not actually used since his boy scout days.

Real Elf: At one with nature, lives in magnificent tree palaces or other architectural wonders, and can bend the forces of nature to his whim to a certain degree.

Real Man: Plays Everquest to the exclusion of all else. (Amendment: Real Geek Man)

Real Elf: Can cast spells without having to subscribe for $9.90 a month, and doesn’t need a cable connection to do it.

Real Man: Plays Dungeons & Dragons (See previous amendment)

Real Elf: Kills dragons.

Real Man: Interested in sports, cars and drinking.

Real Elf: Interested in romance, enchantment and all manner of wooing and drama.

Real Man: Forgets birthdays and anniversaries.

Real Elf: Senses your needs before you even know you have them.

Real Man: Belches.

Real Elf: Croons.

Real Man: Gets fat.

Real Elf: Gets better with time.

Geez, is it any wonder that women would rather spend time with someone named “Legolas” than “Buck”?

Saturday Night’s All Right For Fighting. And Rioting. And Arson. And City-Wide Conflagrations. And Drive-by Shootings…

I think the real world should be more like Grand Theft Auto III.

For the uninitiated, GTAIII is one of those video games that the traditional, down-home, “can’t-we-all-just-get-along” moral majority keeps blaming for everything from the rise of anarchy to the alarming staleness of bread in French restaurants. It more or less rewards your acts of impulsive destruction like causing 12 car pile ups, beating up people randomly on the street, or shooting at pedestrians with a sniper’s rifle from roof tops. But life would be so much more gosh darn interesting with this kind of happenin’ lifestyle. I’d wake up in the morning, throw a taxi driver out of his cab, run an old lady over with it, take her money, crash it into a traffic light, get out, throw another guy out of his station wagon ’cause he dared to listen to rap music in my presence, start up a fist fight on the street, wait for the paramedics to show up then lob a few grenades at their ambulance while humming “Kumbaya” and top it all off with a relaxing drive around the city before going to the junkyard to trash my car because of the dead body in the trunk.

The only thing I’d be missing is Joe Pesci as my best psychotic friend and life would be sweet…

Let The Delusion Begin:

So this is my very first ever Blog post. Why am I doing this?

Wait, back up. I suppose the first question for anyone reading would be who is doing this, then “why”?

I’m Wayne Santos. I’m a writer.

I’ve been reading too many blogs by my still living literary idols and have decided to imitate them in the inane hope that this will somehow make me interesting too.

At the moment I live in Singapore. I’m not Singaporean though, I’m Filipino-Canadian, though I’m more Canadian than Filipino, since I can’t play the Bass guitar, don’t own any semi-automatic weapons that I break out as a conversation piece at dinner parties, and I pronounce “Fish” with “F”, not a “P”.

I’m hoping very soon to stop being a writer and start being a Famous Writer, ’cause I’ve got a couple of books sitting around at a publisher who’s name I can’t mention, and while the guy who actually received the books seems pretty hot to print them, his higher ups (Who I have been psychotically tracking via their own blogs on the ‘net, just to see if they’re really that busy…) have been unable to reach a decision as to what to do with my books.

Apparently they haven’t known what to do about them for over a year.

Does this happen to Neil Gaiman? William Gibson? Nooooo… they just happily blog away while people throw money at their feet for left over ideas they throw at the masses from the dinner table. Then again they’re geniuses, I am not. I keep forgetting about that part.

Other stuff that might be of relevance:

I have a cat. His name is Zero. He is beautiful and stupid and has a tendency to fall off objects or bump into things. Once he accidently got drain pipe cleaner in his left eye and ran around the house meowing like the apocalypse had come knocking and had decided he was going to buy all the apocalypse products none of the other homeowners wanted.

I have a girlfriend. I won’t mention her name here, but she’s an incredibly talented artist and one of these days I’ll have to buy her a fur coat when I’m not starving to death.

Oh yeah, in true, typical, writer’s fashion, I’m starving to death. Well, to be honest, I’ve only got a few dollars in the bank, am currently unemployed, and am very nearly an illegal alien.

In Singapore of all places.

Bits and pieces of this will make themselves known over the years, but for those curious readers who are actually checking this out, RIGHT THIS MINUTE, you can all tell yourselves, “Hey, I was reading Wayne Santos’ (Y’know, the famous novelist) blog before he even became famous!“

From The Actual News Department:

I should write about something that actually happened today. This is it. After a hiatus of a few years, I finally decided to submit short stories again. I sent one off to a Canadian anthology and got an answer that I wasn’t quite expecting. They told me that they liked the story mostly (NOTE FOR LITERARY HISTORIANS: THIS NEXT SENTENCE COULD BE *VERY* IMPORTANT IN YOUR ANNALS IF I’M FAMOUS), but that they wanted to make a few changes to it.

The story in questions is called The Ghost Girl. It’s about a girl who, not ironically at all, sees ghosts. I actually wrote this short story a few years ago, then turned around and based an entire novel off it, Broken Presences. That novel is one of the ones sitting with a publisher I’m not naming (It’ll all come out once the fame hits, promise…), and it also prompted me to write a few short stories based around the characters from both this initial short story and the novel that came of it.

Problem: They want to make Jen (My heroine) a lesbian.

There was much rapid blinking upon receiving this news.

It would rather break with several years worth of continuity that I’ve already established in all the other stories, and besides, Jen is categorically NOT a lesbian. Attractive women are to threatening her. Much as they are to me, but that’s a whole other load of neuroses… I think it’s something like Hemingway (Yes! I’m about to embark on literary sacrilige!) having “The Old Man & The Sea” read and receiving a comment like, “Man, why does he have to fish? I think this would be a much better story if he played golf, don’t you? It just scans better, the old man and the green, can’t you just hear it?”

At this point Hemingway breaks a bottle of Jack Daniels over the head of the offending commentator, but only after drinking it first.

Anyway, I think I just broke some rule for the size of a readable blog or something so I’ll sign off now and try and find out how I can stop being an illegal alien.