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!