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actually interesting updates

February 18, 2012 in Asides with 0 Comments

So, I’ve finally got some interesting news worth posting about. Long story short, I have been hired to write at least one, perhaps two Young Adult book series. I’ve presented rough sketches of two stories to my publisher, both of which she liked very much. I’ve since continued to sketch them out, and if I may admit, am feeling pretty damn good about both ideas. One of them, most likely, will be a duology—a word I’m not sure the OED has canonized yet, but, we sling it around enough that they might as well. The other I’ve been able to break up into a trilogy more easily. Current plan is to spend the rest of this month doing some research (I should, y’know, probably read a YA book, so I’ve ordered The Hunger Games, which has come highly recommended even by established, adult-oriented writers) and getting all the prewriting work doing—scripting out longer, 2-5 page outlines of the narrative arc, creating character biographies, writing up some scene blocks, yadda yadda yadda.

Funny thing is, I never imagined my first major writing project would be a Young Adult book/series. If you’ve read anything by me, or know me at all, you know that I’m a Training Day kind of fella—I like the dark, the gritty, the gray. Most of the writing I’ve posted on this website shows as much, with the notable exception, and the only exception that comes to mind, being “The Lighthouse,” a father/son short story I wrote for my own father. Quite honestly, I’ve always maintained a bitter attitude towards the idea of “Young Adult fiction.” I felt it was insulting, and creating an unnecessary bridge between something like, say, the Goosebumps series or Boxcar Children or what have you and reading Star Wars/Star Trek novels or Lord of the Rings in middle school or high school. Though my mother insists otherwise, I don’t remember such a genre existing when I was young, and so my generation was forced to challenge ourselves as readers. But I’m always interested in tackling new challenges, and this Young Adult series provides me with just that—an opportunity to create the sort of fiction I feel, if Young Adults are going to subscribe to this section of the bookstore, ought to be reading. What I’d want to read if I was in their place. It also gives me the opportunity—and hold back your surprise at my sentimentality—to write something for my little sisters, Emily, Elizabeth, and Abigail. To create fiction I want them to read, that is appropriate for them to read (’cause they sure as hell shouldn’t be reading something like “Nazca City Blues” and what it is growing into).

At this stage, I obviously can’t say much about the stories. I hope to get the first book finished by the end of August. But rest assured, whatever the “Chris Holzworth” style and panache may be, it won’t be absent in these stories. It will very much retain my style, my voice, and my attitude. Just. With a lot less swearing, and perhaps less complex prose, heh.

Still, I’m excited. Friends and family are excited. This is a quirky arrangement, one in which I’m selling the rights to my works, but through negotiation my name will still appear on the cover. Honestly, I’m less interested in making any money from this (though I won’t complain about being paid to write these) and more interested in what it can do to help me get into an MFA program, which by December I will be farming out my writing samples to. Furthermore, I see it as an opportunity to get the hang of writing a longer work, constructing a cohesive narrative that spans 150-200 pages, and really just cutting my teeth as an author. It’s my foot in the door. It’s establishing my name. It’s helping strengthen my writing skills so that when the time comes, I can execute Nazca City Blues the novel more effectively—so that it can live up to the standards I want it to.

Naturally, I’ll keep any of y’all posted (as much as I can, at least). But for now, just know that—holy fuck! I’m writing a book! I’ve been hired to write a book! Craziness.

overdue updates

November 29, 2011 in Asides, Editorials with 0 Comments

Okay—I admit to a mild case of neglect. However … as a student, and a recently “self-employed” freelancer, I feel entitled to that. All the same, this is my blog and I ought to be more attentive to it. Especially considering the guidelines I set out for myself. So, yeah. Updates are incoming. New fiction, for one, a story I’ve been meaning to post for a while now but needed to draft a bit more. Despite better judgment, I’ve decided to withhold from posting it until I’ve gotten some feedback from my upcoming workshop. The story is probably the most well drafted “writing prompt” I’ve ever churned out, but all the same, it’s little more than a writing prompt, despite the intimacy of the story itself.

I do have a fairly stable WIP of “Nazca City Blues,” but I don’t think I ought to post that in its entirety, especially as a WIP. So perhaps a snippet in the near future? No promises. Have to play some cards close to the chest. I’m sure you understand.

In the meanwhile, I s’pose this is good as any time to flex teacherly—to begin to embrace the reality that I am not your average student, that I am, in fact, on the  verge of making the transition from student to teacher, and as such, ought to start posting more pedagogically—that is to say, start teachin’ what I’m preachin’. So for a debut? A short sermon on the importance of proofreading, editing, drafting, and preparing a piece for workshop (read: preparing a piece for publication).

The short and the skinny is: If you’re a creative writer, or writing minor, or anyone who takes their writing remotely serious, please, please, please treat the item you are submitting as if it were being submitted to a publisher. Show it to friends, family, whomever—just make sure it has been looked at by eyes other than your own, and please draft it a minimum of three times. The grammatical side of writing is a lot like clothing—it is the superficial layer upon which we judge others. The more chaotic and messy your grammar is, the less likely your readership is to become engrossed in your story. By no means am I prescriptivist. I simply believe that in order to break the rules, as creative writers are wont to do, myself included, you must first have a firm grasp of the rules. So do yourself a favor and pick up any of the countless grammar books that exist out there (except Strunk & White, whom oppose to “they/their” as a singular pronoun in favor if “he/him/his”—fuck their archaic sexism) or take Doctor Epstein’s Modern American-English Grammar course.

Also? Writing is revision. “The first draft of anything is shit” (according to Ernest Hemingway). Hence: My three-draft minimum.

the struggles dealing with death

September 28, 2011 in Asides, Poetry with 0 Comments

I am an atheist. I make no effort to hide this—in fact, I’m rather quite brazen about it, going so far as to sport apparel that declares as much both subtly and far from subtly. But as an atheist, death is. Well, death is an issue. A fear. The Fear in my life. More than once I’ve had panic attacks mid-shower at the prospect of oblivion, nothingness, the quiet erasure of my existence and consciousness that waits for me. Trust me when I tell you that it is an unnerving fate that sends something far more tremulous than shivers down my spine and rattling through my nervous system. I hope to beat it, but hope is just a word, an idea—nothing we can latch on to with a solid grip.

A few years ago, my grandmother, Tracy, died. A few years before that, my uncle Tony, father to the blood-relative I am closest to, also died. Was, as far as I’m concerned, murdered in a DUI-related car crash (in which he was not the driver under the influence, but rather the victim. Naturally, the piece of shit who got behind the wheel all hopped up and twisted on meds that night survived). These are the only two deaths in my family close enough to affect me. And I never got to say goodbye to either of them. In the case of my uncle, neither did his wife or children. All we got was a phone call that grew into a chain of phone calls.

My grandmother, unfortunately, suffered through the very worst final stages of a cancerous death. She was, like her daughter—my mother—a woman unaccustomed to showing vulnerability. She developed a membranous armor over the course of her difficult, colored life. She was not emotionally detached, but she could weather the worst of storms. But when my brother, Jason, and I went to see her in the hospital she sent us away. We never got past the curtain that hid her from us. Never caught a glimpse of her. Only heard her plead that we not see her “like this,” that we not see her weak. Vulnerable.

I can never decide if this was noble or selfish on her part. On the one hand, I’m somewhat. Grateful. That the lasting image I have of my grandmother, from whom I suspect I inherited many of my traits, is of her at our kitchen table, smoking a cigarette, a two-liter bottle of Diet Pepsi on one side of her, a book on the other, and a Scrabble board laid out in front. As odd as it may sound, this is a beautiful image to me. I’ve tasked my sister to sort through the considerably large collection of photographs—classic, developed, physical photographs—that my mother has amassed to find a picture of her like this image, or at least one that’s as close as possible to that image. I suspect, how it was introduced into my life aside, that my newly developed smoking habit is on some subconscious level a nod to my grandmother—a means to keep her alive in whatever you want to call it. In spirit. In my spirit. I suspect I owe her much more than I’ll ever fully realize.

But I never got to say goodbye. And now she’s gone. She’ll never read my ramblings. She’ll never read my fiction, and she was quite the avid reader. So is my mother. It’s why I’m a reader, and why I’m an English major and a writer. This much I am certain of. There is on some genetic level a tenuous link to a writer on my father’s side, but to a man I never knew. A man I never met, but whose name I was given and by sheer coincidence also share a passion of his.

I apologize for the heavy-handed emotional gravitas of this post. It’s a tad uncharacteristic of me. But after a phone conversation with a friend who is more than just a friend, who, for good or bad, did get to make contact before losing someone forever, I found myself compelled to write about the importance of saying goodbye—perhaps without even saying goodbye—as a means of catharsis. The last attempt at connection, conversation, interaction is especially important to folks like myself, who don’t believe there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. No heaven, no hell. No nothing. And please don’t espouse some hokey religious bullshit to me. I don’t subscribe to it. I don’t take comfort in it. I don’t believe in a “better place,” I believe in no place. Respect that.

This diatribe is raw. Unrefined. I’m not going to comb through it with a meticulous eye and repair sentences and tweak and revise and edit. This is stream-of-consciousness, laid out on the table, stripped down and laid bare. And so is the poem that follows, written on the fly, a writer at his desk sipping on green tea (a tad early for rum, despite the need for it) watching a cigarette smolder and decay into ashes like some discomforting and ill-timed metaphor for life. Continue Reading…

updates, ahoy!

September 9, 2011 in Asides with 0 Comments

New semester. New site. New life. Typically, spring is associated with “rebirth” and rejuvenation and newness and all that. Fall, on the other hand, is when (at least ’round these North Eastern parts) the trees turn M&M red then yellow then brown, shed (do trees shed? is there a proper term for the droppage of their foliage? I should probably know this … ) and the skies grow gloomier and gloomier with the onset of winter. In poetry, and fiction as well, fall and winter are metaphors for the end of life and death. And yet, personally, I find this particular fall at least to be one of … rightness. Or perhaps righting. Repair. Feel free to insert other “R” words you’re fond of that roughly mean the same thing.

September 1st kicked off the start of the new fall semester at Rutgers. Lots of interesting classes taken and taught. As is to be expected, well, to anyone who has witnessed my rapid and ravenously-driven interest in detective fiction develop over the past year or two, Detective Fiction—the course—is of course of major interest and a blast. There are a handful of linguistics courses that have me enthralled as well, and the obligatory writing course—Advanced Creative Writing—to help tighten up my prose and give me an excuse to write and work on MFA submissions.

On that topic, there are two primary contenders for my (minimum) 20-page MFA submission. Both stories involve my fantasy noir armchair detective, Naphtali Archeron. The first is a straight up whodunnit murder mystery. The second is something harder to articulate with just a few words. It involves archaeology, more world building, and more Metal Demon combat than sleuthing. I hope to have a solid draft of the latter story completed by the end of this semester. The former is presently on its third or fourth draft.

There is also the matter of a local writing contest that a small, Philadelphia-based publisher is holding. Due date is October 31 and the only stipulation is that it be set in the City of Brotherly Love. I’ve decided to take a shot at it—deviate from my usual fantasy and sci-fi stomping grounds (although, the document I received made no mention of when in Philly it had to take place … ). I’ve actually been kicking around the idea of writing a short murder mystery story set in Philadelphia for a while now, mostly inspired by the film Brick. Well, I’m nine pages in so. Fingers crossed! If I win, my story will be included within the anthology and published, which would go a long way to bolstering the ol’ self-esteem and assuaging personal concerns over whether I’ve got “it” or not.

As for the new apartment, which is wrapped up in this whole “new life” thing, the place is great. We—that is, my roommate, Eric, whom I’ve known for several years now, and myself—occupy the entire third floor of an apartment building a half-block down from 40th and Market in Philadelphia. It’s a welcome change of aural and visual stimuli compared to the doldrums of South Jersey suburban hell. I’ve actually lived in this area before, one street over and a few blocks back, so I’m already familiar with this part of the city and am very much a fan. There’s a certain texture to the outlying parts of a metropolitan area that its core just doesn’t bring to you. It’s that texture, those unseen or disregarded or perhaps even shunned shades of life I hope to soak up while living here.

Oh, right, the website! D’ya like? I’m quite the fan. It’s still a work in progress, but I really think it exudes a minimalistic, elegant, noir vibe. Just the right tone for the kind of fiction I’ll be producing and posting here (or directing y’all towards from here). I hope anyone reading this is as fond of it as I am.

Well, with that said, I s’pose I better mosey off to more productive activities—like working on my goddamn stories!

I take my science fiction and fantasy very seriously, heh (thesis work).

Actually, they’re also part of my–albeit premature–attempt to create a syllabus for a Science Fiction course. You see, Rutgers–Camden offers the course, but according to the English department’s secretary, she can’t remember the last time it was taught. So I’ve taken to reading these, as well as the classics–Bradbury, Clarke, Asimov, Le Guin, and whatever else the course description mentions–in my efforts to pretend I already am a teacher and design a course (which will, btw, include “middle school” and “new school” writers, not just old school ones: Philip K. Dick, Iain M. Banks, Octavia E. Butler, recent short story collections, and Richard K. Morgan if I can squeeze him in).

Yeeup. This is what I do with my spare time.

research, research, research

link August 20, 2011 in Asides, Images with 0 Comments

str8 against h8

July 27, 2011 in Asides, Editorials with 0 Comments

“Like when these niggas call me ‘faggot’ and ‘we homies now’ / But we are not homies, I just keep you around” (“Be Alone”)

“I’m dominant, niggas call me faggot ‘cause they closeted” (“Freaks and Geeks”)

“Callin’ me a faggot when I’m rappin’, that’s hatin’” (“Not Going Back”)

“Black dudes assume I’m closeted or kinda gay” (“Not Going Back”)

“You want a dude who keep it real and stay hood / I’m sorry, babe, but I act me / I don’t act black, what ever that be” (“Not Going Back,” thought continued)

~

This bothers me. Deeply. Not the language, not hardly. Childish Gambino, AKA Donald Glover (the real Spider-Man, former writer for “30 Rock,” star of “Community,” and one of the more noteworthy characters in “Bro Rape“) has the racial right to sling about the N-word as much as he chooses. And, honestly, given the context, I don’t care that he’s dropping the gay F-bomb. It’s that it’s a persistent theme in his EP (3 out of 5 of the tracks contain mention of his being called a “faggot” by, as he puts it and I’m inclined to agree, haters) that gets under my skin.

What we’re basically seeing here, exhaustingly so, is the continued use of the word “faggot” as a demeaning insult for “others.” Based on the lyrics, it seems that Glover was never “black” or “hood” enough, or too “geeky” (he drops ee cummings references along with Dragon Ball Z references, which is about as geekily disparate as it comes) and–of course–middle class (or so I surmise, based on his lyrics. Further investigation may be needed for this). He champions education and wants to be a role model to other young middle-class people of color. He doesn’t front, and he doesn’t put on an air of fabricated coolness. As he says, “IAmDonald is a full-time job.” In other words, being one’s self is a full-time job alone.

Perhaps this is late night, tumbler o’ rum kvetching. If so, I apologize. But I think it’s utterly exhausting that even the most minute meanderings from hardline “masculinity” are grounds to label someone a “fairy” or “queer” or “faggot.” Once again, based on his lyrics, Glover seems to like pussy–quite a bit. What evidence more does one need for heterosexuality than that? Furthermore, this nonsense still indirectly puts women down. If a “faggot” is someone who isn’t masculine, but rather exhibits feminine traits, or is completely effeminate, or is, in actuality queer (gay), this makes them womanly. And it ain’t cool to be a woman. They are, after all, the inferior sex. It troubles me how damaging this one little world is and the multitudinous layers of insult and male chauvinism it contains. I mean, it clearly left a profound impact on Glover’s psyche to be such a reoccurring theme. And all over what? Warped perceptions of race roles, gender roles, and homophobia on the scale of a religious crusade (and backed by Catholic zealots and zealots of other organized religions, no less)? Let’s try to advance, society. It ain’t much. And if it is, then I’m inclined to agree with Gambino–niggas call me faggot ’cause they closeted. If so, then learn to love yourselves, brosephs. And learn to love other people or at least leave them be, bullies.

<3 Childish Gambino. Keep up the great work, homeslice.