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"Choose Your Own," my '80s NYC queer pagan resurrection story written in an interactive, "Choose Your Own Adventure" format (see the title of the story), is now out in the Winter Issue of Icarus Magazine! Okay, it's actually been out for two months, but I might as well admit that a) I'm a terrible LJ updater; and b) I now live on Facebook. Feel free to friend me there, since I'm on quite a bit (better suited to the two-second-update, apparently my speed).
About writing it: I can't say it was a conscious "choice" (hardy har) necessarily, but something that worked really well was marrying a nostalgic form (those old CYOA books) to the time that form was created, a time that was very nostalgic for me personally as well--the early 1980's, in New York. So many of the locations in the story were already lost to history (A&S, the Twin Towers, Magickal Childe), and, as is the nature of things, so many more have disappeared since I wrote the first draft (Gage and Tollner, Albee Square Mall, and, possibly in the near future, St. Vincent's Hospital). Gone also, of course, are too many gay men to AIDS, or, as it was called at the time, GRID. I wanted to memorialize them, and the queer pagan scene in New York they created.
I'd worked in this format before at novel length in my Buffy book The Suicide King, so I felt comfortable trying to pull it off in again under the extreme time constraints that Clarion imposed. I would have to say that "Choose Your Own" was far and away the best-received of all the stories I wrote there. There really is something to that good old CYOA formula, I guess! You can buy it here.
I first wrote the story during my last week at Clarion, after being told an incredibly spooky story very late at night by one of our two anchor instructors, Kelly Link (the "Sammy" story, for those in the know). We then talked about our favorite Japanese horror movies, mine first and foremost being Ringu. I began to wonder how a short story would read if given the J-Horror treatment, but in first-person, almost in dramatic monologue.
As the last of the East Lansing Clarionites, we'd been staying in the MSU dorms, alongside many foreign students hailing from East Asia; certain patterns of language began to filter into my writing, particularly the usage of idiom that those who are extremely proficient in a second language sometimes display.
I'd also recently read a fascinating NY Times Magazine article about a widespread phenomenon occurring in contemporary Japan involving boys known as hikikomori that shut themselves away in their rooms.... An offhand mention of rental sisters--friendly outreach counselors used to coax hikikomori out of hiding--and voila! Instant story material. I'd originally intended the story to be a J-Horror take on "The Dunwich Horror," but somewhere along the way the story had other ideas...
- Mood:
giggly
It's especially fun after Halloween.
- Location:The BK
- Mood:
ecstatic
Meet Benjamin Iddo Levy, born Thursday, May 29, 2008.
7 pounds, 12 ounces of love.
He's happy and healthy, and home!
- Location:Brooklyn, New York
- Mood: ecstatic
Ate much good food (we did a "foodie" weekend, with many restaurants, snacks, and kitchenware stores to be discussed in great detail in the piece I'm writing and will post as soon as it's ready), so much so that I gained more than a few pounds! Thank god it's gorgeous out in New York, though, so I'm already busy walking it off. Had a lovely birthday as well, where I spent half the day in bed as snow swirled outside our hotel window, and I wouldn't have had it any other way.
I also turned a big corner in the zero draft of Burnt Offerings, and am thrilled that the book is starting to come together as a somewhat coherent whole (hey, real coherence is what the next draft is for). Am really beginning to get excited about this one. It's definitely what I should be writing right now.
Burnt Offerings
Latest words: 2251
Total word count: 27,729
Locale: Home and Brooklyn Writers Space
Random line: "Devil's Bargain. It's kind of high fantasy. Dragons, swords, elves. Sort of a Tolkien rip-off, I guess, but if Rings was entirely set on Endor."
Suffice it to say, I've missed out on a lot of fun goings-on and intend to make up for it! Dan and I are going to Montreal this weekend to both celebrate my birthday and have a last pre-baby hurrah (though it is also a working vacation, as I have a foodie travel piece to write).
If anyone has any suggestions of things to do in Montreal (besides eat--that's all squared away), let me know!
Burnt Offerings
Latest words: 3383
Total word count: 19447
Locale: Home, home, home
Random line: "The world swims out from under me, and I begin to fall."
But until that responsible and adulty time comes I'm planning to get the last of my swerve on, and my current plans for the weekend include attending a drag housewarming party, a birthday dinner, and a brunch with friends from out of town--and that's just Saturday. I'll let you know if this notorious homebody makes it out of here alive.
Burnt Offerings
Latest words: 1904
Total word count: 16064
Locale: Brooklyn Writers Space
Random line: "The bathroom mirror shows my knotted hair and bloodshot eyes, the telltale signs of a restless night followed by a blossoming hangover."
