Interesting advertisement, in’t it? I came across this on a video game website. I think it’s safe to assume it’s geared towards the young male demographic. From what the ad suggests, the player is rewarded for leveling up by having their avatar undress more and more. This kind of female objectification in video game ads–particular for small, fringe games, is nothing new. But when I saw this I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. The gun(s), obviously, are phallic, and the more “evolved” this particular female police character becomes, the more undressed she becomes, and the more hypersexualized, until she’s all bared midrift, cleavage, and surrounded by phallic symbols.

Grow the fuck up, video game developers. Or perhaps I should say, grow the fuck up whoever is responsible for marketing the product. This is one of the many reasons I find myself distancing from video games. There are always exceptions, but they are few and far between these days. In the meanwhile, in a lifetime of gaming, I’ve only seen them become more and more juvenile, and advertised just as sophomorically. What’s more annoying, though, is that his is what the great Internet thinks I want to see, ever since advertisements somehow became more and more tailored to personal users. Basically, I suspect our Internet browsers must send out information on the websites we browse and somehow the ad coding tries to shape the ads they rotate toward our supposed tastes. Well, fuckers, this ain’t my taste–not the continued degradation of women in the entertainment industry.

I would love to find a way to interpret this as a metaphor for the evolution of female sexuality, and that as our society feminizes and becomes more, I don’t know, modern, the sexual actualization of women is championed and accepted the same as men’s. But let’s be honest: that’s not what this is about at all. This is debasement pandering to the lowest common denominator.

Also: way to spell “fight” wrong on a major marketing campaign. Checked dictionary.com–no such word as “figth,” so unless that’s this lady’s name, uh, yeah. Hate to be a prescriptivist, but seriously. Did they farm this out to a high schooler?

The Matrix. Inception. Source Code. For a little over the past decade the biggest science fiction films to make a splash are ones that deal with the nature of reality—asking us to question, what is real? And while the exploration of philosophical concepts has always gone hand-in-hand with science fiction, it seems this particular “philosophy of the mind” angle hasn’t lost its appeal, what with a remake of 1990’s Total Recall, which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, set to release this summer, now starring Colin Farrel, Jessica Biel, and Kate Beckinsale. Of course, both versions are actually film adaptations of the Philip K. Dick novelette We Can Remember It for You Wholesale. For those of you unfamiliar with Philip K. Dick (perhaps best known, indirectly, for Blade Runner, based off his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? or more recently Stephen Spielberg’s Minority Report), paranoia and the uncertainty of reality were his domain—what set him apart from other science fiction writers and made him a mainstay in science fiction literary canon.

Total Recall tells the story of Douglass Quaid—at least, a man who thinks he’s Douglass Quaid. Bored with his life as construction worker, Quaid visits the “Rekall” company to have false memories implanted to experience a trip to Mars. Unfortunately, the procedure doesn’t go so smoothly, and it turns out Quaid is a spy collaborating with rebels on Mars. Soon, Quaid finds himself waist-deep in a planet-hopping adventure with the fate of an entire planet resting on his shoulders.

Recently, a trailer dropped on Apple Trailers, giving us the first real glimpse of director Len Wiseman’s remake. Unlike the original story and the 1990 adaptation, the 2012 Total Recall deviates from the interplanetary Earth/Mars backdrop and instead grounds the story on Earth, focusing now on the political tension between Euroamerica (self-explanatory) and New Shanghai (formerly China and South East Asia). The trailer emphasizes action sequences over story beyond giving us the gist of the plot, which isn’t to be unexpected—Len Wiseman’s career thus far has been defined by Underworld and Live Free or Die Hard, neither of which are terribly cerebral flicks. We Can Remember It for You Wholesale is, conversely, defined by its cerebral-ness. Wiseman has to step up his game in order to prove himself a director and not hand us yet another popcorn remake that hardly does the original justice. There’s also the remake factor to consider. Hollywood has consistently proven bereft of original ideas. Total Recall is just another in a long line of examples of this. But for sci-fi enthusiasts, beggars can’t be choosers, so when a big budget science fiction film rolls along that isn’t tenuously “science fiction” like Marvel or DC superhero flicks, well, the pickings are slim.

Does the trailer suggest a promising movie awaits us? Aesthetically, yes. As far as originality? Not so much. Many of the cuts are one-to-one parallels to the 1990 version—embarrassingly so. All we’re really given is Len Wiseman’s penchant for dynamic action sequences, which the two-minute, twenty-five second trailer is jam packed with. That, and the recent trend to churn out movies that are dark and gritty, following the footsteps of Chris Nolan’s The Dark Knight (just check out the other upcoming remake, The Amazing Spider-Man—similarly, the trailers suggest a darker spin on the tale of Peter Parker/Spider-Man).

What lies in store for moviegoers this summer is up for grabs. There make has all the potential in the world, both to suck—but with style—or to somehow capture the essence of Philip K. Dick’s original story without the cheese factor of Schwarzenegger’s version (though this is what arguably made it fun). Hopefully, a treat awaits us. But hey, if nothing else, at least there’s a lot of pretty actors to ogle at, no?

~Sam Winchester

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The machine that was once a man sat alone at the corner booth of the bar, nursing a tumbler of whiskey that did very little to ease his concerns. Once, such an indulgence would peel away the layers of inhibition, of doubt and uncertainty, allowing him to meet his missions with a detachment which, these days, now pervaded the inexorable march of daily life. Now, the whiskey was habit—behavior brought on by the ghost that stirred within him.

The bar was a drab, run down establishment, a remnant of South Boston unchanged by the last fifty years—one of the few in the city that didn’t give heavily augmented humans like himself the same look of disdain once reserved for minorities of mere skin tone and gender. But as soon as post-humans, or “once-humans” as they were less than politely dubbed, came into the picture suddenly those differences seemed as superficial as they always were, so Connor Morgan and his kind became the new social outcast class. Work placement? Social acceptance? Forget it. After his tour in the Irish Defense Forces, fighting in the still turbulent North West Frontier—a decision he now fully realized reflected the impulsivity of youth and an ever-growing sense of detachment that raged to the surface after things between Sara and he went tits up—he suffered the wounds responsible for so much of his modification. Upon his return, Connor was left with little else than to sell his services to whomever could afford him, and to whomever’s interests his particular talents most suited.

Totally bought this ’cause I thought it was called Diet Mountain Dew “Supernoun.” Susan corrected me. Apparently it’s “Supernova.” But c’mon, the font doesn’t make it a stretch. I know. I’m a geek.

Daniel was a phenomenal writing instructor, and helped me tremendously getting “Nazca City Blues” where it is today and strengthening me as a writer. He’s always got a book recommendation on deck, and I value him both as an instructor and as a fellow writer/friend. So do yourself a favor and follow his website, too. He has a lot of terrific, informative posts up there.

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.

~

“Do not confuse love with lust, nor drunkenness with judgment.”

~Quotes from The Rum Diary (film adaptation)

But the point of showing you this is to reiterate the importance of drafting, drafting, drafting some more, and ceaselessly, tirelessly revising. As I’ve quoted before, “The first draft of anything is shit” (Earnest Hemingway). Stories usually don’t start to flesh out into something truly worthwhile until the third or fourth draft, and often don’t develop meaning until the fifth. Trust me on this–I’ve consulted a number of accomplished writers about the art of revision, including people who write for GQ. ALmost all of them agree: whether it’s an essay, a poem, or a story, drafting is essential. The way I personally approach the process is to write out the first draft by hand (though not always), print out a hardcopy, and go over it with a blue pen. I’ll repeat this blue pen process every handful of major drafts, applying the changes to the Word document. And when I intend to perform a major rewrite, inserting a hefty amount of new content and revisions, I like to print out the hardcopy of my last draft, open up a blank Word document, and write the story again from scratch, consulting the hardcopy, of course, but avoiding inserting new content like a square peg into a round hole, damaging the flow or cohesion of the narrative. Yes, it’s a time consuming process, but writing generally is (contrary to what some so-called writers might think).

Anyway, here’s Naphtali’s first fight scene from “Nazca City Blues,” revisited:

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Naphtali slipped back through the slums until she found herself on the far end of West Nazca, a few blocks shy of where the city ended and the Wasteland began. Where the Metal Demons lurked, where the remnants of the Ancients laid buried and the Restorians salvaged technology they had no business toying with, like their guns. Like the machine at Zarephath. When she reached the hovel she was last sure Ky kept, she entered without fuss, and climbed up splintered, dilapidated stairs to the fifth floor. At the end of the warped, rotted hall she found Ky’s apartment.

The door was cracked open.

Naphtali hissed inwardly, regretting not swinging by her place for her sword. Still she pushed on, approaching quietly. Reached out and pushed the door open a bit further, rusted hinges whining in strain, and slipped inside.

The place was a wreck. Furniture knocked over, books and lamps and various possessions strewn about. Either Ky’s problems had started here last night and ended back in that alley, or someone had turned this place over, looking for something of value to hock if Ky was as deep in the bindwa trade as Reyne suggested. A habit, if the investigator was to be believed, Wyatt’s knowledge may have contributed to. Naphtali dismissed the thought as quickly as it came. She wouldn’t let Reyne get in her head, wouldn’t let him cast doubt on those she trusted with her life.

As she crossed towards the center of the apartment, a door to her right burst open in a storm of wood splinters and broken framing, throwing Naphtali on her back. She got upright just in time to see a dark-dressed man, face masked by a bandana, coming at her with a short sword. She rolled to the side and kicked one leg out, brutally striking the attacker’s ankle. He cried out and fell to his knees.

“What’re you doin’ here, friend?” she growled at him.

The attacker said nothing. He jumped to his feet and rushed her with unexpected speed. Naphtali quickly realized she was outmatched—for one, he was nearly twice her size. Plus she was unarmed. For a second time, she cursed herself for not picking up her sword. If she was going to come out of this alive, she was going to have to be smarter and quicker than he was stronger.

He swung his sword in a flat arc, which she narrowly evaded. When it cleared she closed the gap between them, locking his blade arm between their bodies. Grabbed his sword arm’s wrist and twisted it viciously until she heard the bone snap and the sword drop.

She swung her elbow, a bone-jarring blow to the man’s temple. He stumbled away, but not before throwing out a wild haymaker that clipped Naphtali’s mouth. She fell to the floor, reaching out on impulse and wrapping her fingers around what felt like a leather-bound book. Sprang back up and smashed it into her attacker’s face just as he thrust his fist into her solar plexus. She felt the air explode out of her lungs. Another burst of pain as his boot crashed into her chest, sending her flying back, dizzy, disoriented.

Naphtali reacted swiftly, closing the distance between them, and struck him across the face with her elbow again, noticing the knife tucked in his belt as she did. Reached out and grabbed it as he doubled over, and dropped to her knees as he fell to his own. She threw all her weight into the thrust and sunk the knife into his stomach at an upward angle. Felt the hilt jolt to a halt against one of his ribs. Her attacker coughed up blood, saturating his bandana with a dark, wet stain. Naphtali wrenched the blade free and buried the it into his femoral artery. He toppled back, gurgling on his own blood as it filled his lungs and throat.
Naphtali fell back on her haunches, breathing heavily. Whoever this guy was, he was far too well trained to be some burglar or bindwa junkie, which meant her intuitions were on track—Ky’s death wasn’t as simple as Fenril implied. She allowed herself a moment to catch her breath, then struggled to her feet, and approached the dying man.

“Just who the fuck are you?”

He said nothing, still choking on his own blood, seeing only what the soon dead can see. She watched the last breath of life leave his lungs, then fished through his pockets. Tore off his bandana. Nothing stood out to her.

Then something caught her eye—a marking. A tattoo, poking just above the collar of his tunic. She ripped the section of cloth away.

Malrain—Malagan rebels. The ink on his collarbone was indistinguishable. When Nazca, and a young, naïve Naphtali with them, invaded Malaga and burned Zarephath to the ground for their magitech, the remnants of the ruined nation naturally formed a resistance. But what the hell was one doing poking around Ky’s apartment, and what could Ky possibly have to do with the Malrain?

“Bindwa my fuckin’ ass,” she spat in a hoarse cough. “What’d you get yourself into, Ky?”

For those of you have give a flying fuck, I have five grad schools lined up for my MFA pursuits: two in California (Irvine and San Francisco), one in Oregon, another in North Carolina, and Rutgers–Camden as a backup. I’m pretty keen on all of ‘em, though RU-C remains my least preferred pick and North Carolina is the last placeI’d care to wind up. Regardless of where I end up, there is something scary about having just shy of a year to get your act together. A year, I might add, that will come and go quicker than I care it to.

In other news, I think I’m finally on the verge of kicking off the Onomatopodcast. My writing friend/cohort/compadre/student Roland will join me for the pilot. After which I have some creative writing teachers lined up to participate. From there? Who knows. But I do so miss podcasting.

Other than academic struggles and finding the focus an drive to get my act together as a writer, life is fairly good. I’m beyond happy with the new apartment, and have no intention to leave until fall 2013 (which is when, prospectively, I might me skirting on over to one of the aforementioned grad schools). I love the apartment, the location.

Anyway, I’m going to wrap this rambling up now. I thought it would be fun to write a blog post with one eye shut tight courtesy of inebriation. Rest assured, however, that I aim to start posting more writing samples and excerpts in the near future. I’m going to strongarm Roland into joining me with the writing samples. Hopefully that will not only improve us as writers, but challenge us.

For the sake of not making this post a total kvetch fetch, I’m going to post part one of an enjoyable Richard. K. Morgan interview he took part in shortly before the release of The Cold Commands. I think it’s fascinating. Granted, my man crush on this particular Brit is the stuff of legends. But still. Sage advice and insight from an extremely accomplished author that’s invaluable for those of us hoping to follow his footsteps:

Watch this video on YouTube.