NerdCon: Stories. One week after.

I recently attended NerdCon: Stories. This is the first time this Con was held, and my first time going to one. I must say that I was more than a little apprehensive going to Minneapolis by myself. But, I'm a big boy, I can take care of myself.
  It didn't start off so well. I had to leave the day before the conference started, which was probably normal for everyone going. What wasn't normal, I'm guessing, is that my flight left the airport at 5:30AM EST, so I had to get up really early, like 2AM early. Things went fine, even thought the flight was delayed in Philly so we could change planes in favour of a smaller plane. Apparently flights going from Philly to Minneapolis at 7AM are not popular.
  So it was that I arrived in Minneapolis at about 12PM, hopped the light rail which I didn't have to pay for because a stranger gave me a valid ticket he had just paid for but couldn't use. So, thank you to him. I then hoofed it the last half mile to my hotel, checked in and went to go get some lunch. The rest of the first day, after I had checked in for the Con, was nothing special. So I reached the end of the day with some trepidation that I would be quite solitary for the next two days.
  NerdCon started on Friday promptly at 9AM, but most everyone was there and raring to go by 8:45. The place was packed, with between 1 and 2 thousand attendees, we filled up most of the auditorium. What followed was two days of sheer geeky awesomeness. From the start with Paul Sabourin's epic retelling of the history of the story (laughed my fool head off), I knew we were in for a great time. The panels were fantastic, though at times rambled a bit off topic, much to my enjoyment. It turns out that when you're somewhere with a thousand other people who like the same things you do and are there for the same reason you are, its very easy to make friends. I had lunch on the first day with a couple who came up from the south and on their way were looking at colleges to attend the next year. I talked to I don't even know how many Librarians, but I should have guessed that since the whole point of the Con was stories. I sat next to and talked with people from Winnipeg in Canada, South Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky, North Carolina, Minnesota, There were even people there from Ireland, though I never met them personally. I skipped the events at the end of the first day to grab some dinner where I talked for about 90 minutes with a woman who was up from Ohio to attend a Mental Health and Wellness seminar and two others who worked locally. We all shared flat bread pizzas and fresh made donut holes with hazelnut cream and basil coulis. I know, it wounds weird, but the donut holes were awesome.
  I left to head back to the Auditorium where I had signed up for a 5 minute slot in the open mic. I was going to tell one of the short stories I had written, and I was freaking out. I ran into five others doing the same thing and we chatted, I calmed down, and we all sat together at the open mic. One of the couples daughters, let's call her Z just for the sake of anonymity, sang and played the Ulkelele. She was awesome, unfortunately she went on right before me. Anyway, here is a video of my story, the audio is a little bad and the video was taken in low light, but you'll get the general idea. Enjoy.

"Next time I'll be serious next time!"

   Well, I guess joining the writers group did not make me post more, maybe I'll set a calendar event or something. The Group is nice however, the mediator (we have one of those) is a research librarian who generates the writing prompts and lends her experience to the commentary on the group pieces.
   Before the last meeting I contacted her (let's call her Miss Librarian), and asked a favor. I wanted to present the book that I had finished to the group and ask for their response. Miss Librarian said she would love to do that, and I received many affirmatives from the group for their willingness to read said story.
   I realized when I read the hook for the story that not only was the hook inaccurate but it was actually bad and sappy. So, I have been working on creating a new hook. I have a few that I've been mulling over and I think I have a couple that may be winners. Here they are:

  Amnesia, slavery, attempted rape, murder, deceit, backstabbing, missing organs, deadly secrets, Monsters, microscopic robots, decapitation, dismemberment, blood and incredible super powers. And that's just in the first two weeks after I woke up in a dark cave wearing nothing but a hospital smock.

   A powerful and well respected company, a prevalent technology, and an unspeakable and deadly secret. These forces revolve around a seemingly ordinary young woman who has no useful memories to speak of, no clues to her identity. Yet she must unravel these mysteries and the only things she has are a strange tattoo, a piece of paper and a hospital smock.

   I'm partial to the first hook, but its first person, not the POV of the book . The second one is OK, but it feels formulaic. Maybe POV won't matter in the hook, we'll see. I also worked on "The Pitch". This is the one sentence that is supposed to summarize the entire novel, entice the imagination and encompass what makes the book stand out. This is nigh on impossible. Imagine condensing "Harry Potter" to one sentence, and making it good enough that everyone wants to read it. Daunting. But here is my go for "The Book":

How do you find your friends when you can't even remember who your enemies are?

   Not bad, it's compact, to the point, pertains to the story and gives just enough hint to make you ask questions. Who are your friends? Why do you have enemies? And why don't you remember who they are? Hmm, on second thought, that's not that bad. I think I'll keep it. 

   I'd really like to post an excerpt from "The Book" here but that would be silly if I ever want to sell it. Maybe if no one touches it, I'll post the first few chapters and list it on Amazon myself, but until then, here is another tid-bit of mine from the writers group:

   

   “YAAAAAA!”

   CRASH! Damn, that hurt! I nurse the top of my head and try to stand as the contents of a curio cabinet rain down around me, small figurines and plates shattering on the floor. I lurch to my feet and stumble over to the computer. Typing in a few quick commands, I shut down the cleaning field. I hit the enter key to issue the last command and the painting I was cleaning, Van Gogh's Starry Night, shudders slightly and topples gently forward off the easel.

   Fear stabs my heart and I dive forward, sustaining another blow to the head and a sprain to my wrist as I crash into the wall. It's all for naught though as I miss the painting by several inches and it crashes to the floor. Heart pounding, I crawl over to the Van Gogh and gently lift it off the floor. Luckily, it's still intact, no damage was done to the canvas. The frame has only a few new blemishes, and since it was “distressed” to look old I figure a few more dings won't be noticed. Sighing with relief, I lay the painting face down on the floor and lean back against the wall, recovering for a few minutes from my ordeal.

   You'd think that after having done this a few dozen times, I would have mastered the re-entry. In my defense I was being chased when I jumped back through the portal, so a certain amount of disarray was to be expected. I've had a few close calls since I discovered what I could do, but none like that. It started some years ago when I invented a new method for cleaning paintings using buckyballs and encapsulated quantum singularities. I found that if I captured the painting digitally on my computer, sprayed the microscopic balls on a painting, and exposed them to a computer modulated EM field, the singularities inside the buckyballs would remove the grunge from the paintings, no mess, no precautions, no damage. I first noticed something was weird when I was cleaning a painting for the Boston MFA and tripped holding a cup of coffee I had just poured for myself. I fell head first and slammed into the floor, coffee flying. I looked up just in time to see the cup disappear into the Monet I was cleaning. Intrigued, I put on a pair of Nitrile gloves and gingerly reached out for the painting. Imagine my shock when I didn't touch the painting! My hand went right through the canvas!

   Ever since then I've been experimenting and taking trips into the larger paintings. This last one, though, was almost enough to make me re-consider my adventures, or at least make me swear off Van Gogh. Sure, those adventures were wonderful fodder for my blossoming writing career. Of course, I had to publish under a pseudonym. It was the only way I could continue cleaning paintings and get fresh material. It meant that I had to stay anonymous, but hey, I was willing to trade off fame for fortune.

   Shaking out of my reverie, I glance down at the painting, glad that I managed to shut off the cleaning field in time. If that thing had followed me back.... The problem with paint jumping was that the worlds the paintings led to were complete un-knowns, brought into being by the artists imagination. At least that's what I thought at first. The truth was these artists were actually quasi-psychics, able to see through time and dimension. At least that's what I've come to understand from my limited research. That stuff about making political, social or economic statements? Total crap. And don't get me started on Escher or Dali! It's amazing those guys never went insane! Well, maybe Dali, just a little.

   At least now I have an inkling why Van Gogh was such a tortured artist. The worlds he saw? Well let's say they make Picasso's look like Sesame Street. The one I just came from, Starry Night, was a hellish world. Humans kept in villages, used for food and bio-electricity, Matrix-esque, by the most intelligently evil creatures ever to grace the dimensional continuum. That big black thing in the foreground? That's actually one of the beasts, a giant mass of tentacles and venom that strangles its paralyzed victims for pleasure. That was what I was fleeing from. I was just glad I escaped with all my appendages in tact. Turing off the portal would have been difficult without two hands.

   RATTLE!! I cease all movement as a wave of cold grips my heart. Please. Please no! I tilt my head slowly down and stare at the upside down painting. It rattles again and shivers on the floor. Dear God. They're figuring out how to open it from the other side! This is so not good.

Don't worry, you're in a safe place.....

   Sounds like the start of some sort of drug, alcohol or anger management group meeting doesn't it? Actually its part of the writers group I just found. I had been thinking that maybe I should try to find a writing convention or symposium or something similar, there's a word for it, but it escapes me at the moment. Don't worry, I'll remember it in time. So I was trolling the Internet to see if anything was happening in my area and LO-AND-BEHOLD! there was a writers group that meets once per month at the library just down the street from me! Awesome! Now I can inflict my pedantic writing on others, not really, but I thought it would be a good place to get some criticism from others besides immediate family and friends, someone who didn't have a vested interest in NOT hurting my feelings.
   Needless to say, I missed the meeting by a few days, but I contacted the group leader and got the stuff for the next session. Then that one was canceled because of poor attendance. The next one I'm going to miss because of vacation. Geez, what does it take to attend a writers group, huh? Well, since there is no one else to listen to what I have to say, I'm going to post it here. Maybe I can convince someone to visit my rather sparsely visited and updated blog and read it over. I thin that once I join this group, my postings will increase. But that's for another time I suppose. An now, without further delay, here is a REALLY short story on the most recent group assignment:
   Topic: The devil needs more people to sell their souls. You have been hired to come up with an ad campaign.

   My fingers ache, and not in a good way. I've been hunched over this computer for far too long. But despite my discomfort, I'm excited, a few more minutes work and I'll have finished the toughest assignment ever to come through the firm of Barton and Farrel. The end is in sight, five more words, three more, two one and PERIOD!

   I lean back interlacing my fingers and stretch my arms over my head, tilting to each side to relieve the strain I feel in my back. My neck cracks as I roll it around in a circle, glorious sharp pain and then relaxation follow the popping. I look down at the glowing screen in front of me, marveling at the complex simplicity of my work. Novelists! HA! Convincing a reader to believe in something using 400 pages is a breeze compared to advertizing! Cramming that much emotion, subtlety, coercion and sex into a sentence? Now that's hard!

Cigarette and alcohol companies have been doing it for ages so there are ways and ways. That's what makes my job so unique, I have to convince people to sell their souls. What university is going to teach that? Still staring at the screen my mind starts to wind down. The lassitude that I have been fighting for the past hour now settles on me like a blanket. I don't fight it, I can relax now. I have just taken the second long blink on the way to oblivion when a knock at my door startles me out of my torpor.

I glance over at the lighted face of my kitchen clock: 1:22 AM. Who would be calling at this hour? I stand up and stretch, loosening my tired back. My muscles protest as I stand, the ache in them screaming at me to go to bed, ignore the door and just fall onto the blissfully soft pillows waiting for me. Trudging over to the door I check the peep hole before grasping the knob and gasp in surprise. There is a woman dressed all in black on the other side! I've never seen her before but there can be no doubt who she works for, the tattered black wings are a dead giveaway. I lean back from the peep hole, contemplating not opening the door. The client can surely wait until morning?

   “Sir,” I hear her voice from the other side of the door, “open the door, or I will.”

   I know I haven't made a sound, but I do as asked.

   “Let me have it.”

   That's it, no introduction, no please or thank you, but this has always been the way with the client, or rather his representatives. Rather than try to be pleasant, argue about the time of night or the complete lack of social niceties, I decide it's easier jut to give her the assignment. I move over to the laptop to print out the slogan and advertizing campaign when she interrupts me.

   “Just give me the computer. We'll pay for a new one.”

   Shrugging I hand over the laptop, and just like that, she's gone. Disappeared in a golden flash. I stare at the place where she was for another second or two, and shuffle over tot he door to close it. Just before the door closes, a hoof sticks in the jamb and the door bounces crazily open again. Oh damn. Its him, the client himself, resplendent in red, a cloak hiding his wings, That's all I can make out, the rest of him is kind of fuzzy, like my brain is refusing to admit it exists. I've been told that would happen as my brain erases elements of this ultimate evil to protect itself. I take tow hurried steps back, trip and fall on by butt. From the floor I hear a voice, both silky and full of horrible tearing gravel. Seductive and repulsive.

   “Where is the assignment?”

   I think I'm in trouble.