Category: Creative non-fiction

I’m Insane

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I’ve spent my life talking to people who don’t exist. No, I don’t mean you, dear readers, who are (to me) digital abstractions of people that could be real, but that point bears touching upon. We spend a great deal of our time online, communicating with other people without knowing much about their personhood—what they look like, or where they live, or how they operate in the moment. These people are bite-sized samples of humans, picked up and tasted in 240 character minipaks or 30-second videos. And yet, I think these fractional-exposure people are far more real than the people…

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An Unfortunate Reality

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I’ve lived a medium-length life, but it’s been highly varied. As a musician, I met and befriended many different kids of people… or so I thought. I had a sad realization watching my social media feeds (other than twitter) fill up black squares, or perhaps more of a recognition of what I already knew: The truth is, almost everyone I have known as an adult is a member of, or is highly submissive to, that psychic cadre we call the death cult. The further I get from it, and the closer I get to real people – whether they are…

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The death cult forgets its mask

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I’m fairly certain they deleted the tweet because they realize they weren’t wearing their mask, so here is a screenshot: Murdering babies is badass you say? Something cool kids do? Too bad those uncool Spanish Christians put a stop to such a badass and admirable practice. Truly, the European man is evil for wiping such a badass cultural practice off the face of the earth. No respect for the religious beliefs of others, those wicked conquistadors. People wonder why I call it the death cult. It’s because they’re obsessed with death and promote it endlessly. If it’s not infanticide, it’s…

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Portland

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Portland is a sanctuary city with no Latinos living in it. That’s a simple statement, but it sums up everything about the city’s culture – it’s all about signaling. And it’s the kind of signaling that’s an inversion of a regular business sign. A sign in front of a fruit stand advertises that they have a certain fruit because they have that fruit want you to come in and buy that fruit. The signaling the people of Portland do is pointed towards what they lack – virtue, taste, uniqueness, and quality. Virtue signaling is always a sure sign that virtue…

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Maybe I don’t “get” writers

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I’m a writer. I write. Seems pretty simple, but I don’t seem to do any of the things that other writers do. I barely use Facebook, but when I do I see posts from a half-dozen writers groups that I joined at some point that instantly make me scratch my head. Posts like, “What is your Main Character’s favorite past time?” “What kind of media do you think your villain likes?” “What kind of food did you put into your fantasy story?” “What would you think about a magic system that is based on the four foodgroups?” (I made that…

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When the Wind is in the West

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There is always a feeling I get during the season changes: the transition from hot to cool, from cool to cold and back again. That’s how the seasons are here in central California – the weather is the same for eight weeks, then transitions for about one or two weeks to a new season. This year the heat has been slow in coming, and I’m not complaining. The feeling is something akin to nostalgia, but different – more like a memory of things that never were. My imagination always goes wild. Dreams get more intense. The sun shows at different…

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Nostalgia Chronicles: Gen Y

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It’s a hot day, and it isn’t helped by the thirty-five pounds of books in your backpack. You walk steadily away from the chaos that is the end of the school day; the swarms of cars and kids move steadily behind you, and the quiet of the deserted streets sets in, interrupted only by the occasional quip from one of your walking companions. One by one the friends of mutual direction peel off, and you’re by yourself, walking through the empty suburbs to your house. There’s never enough trees, and you begin to accumulate a layer of sweat under your…

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Karen the Moneywasher (Dialogue Demo)

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The following is a short scene and a half of a story created on my livestream for the purposes of demonstrating dialogue writing. It begins with two characters who banter, revealing their character traits and also through that dialogue reveal the basic elements of a plot goal – Karen needs to launder money. The second (incomplete) scene introduces a third character, exposes his traits, and further develops the main plot goal. It was quite a bit of fun! Check out the entire stream here, then view the file below:

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Interstellar Dragonships while singing Styx; Skeleton Feet

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My dream: After travelling abroad, my wife and I decided to move to another planet. We packed the house (the literal house, not just our things) into a decently-sized star freighter. It was blocky, but roomy and agile in the atmosphere above earth. That star freighter was taken inside a dock near the “foot” of an immensely large star ship, with a robotic dragon head containing many ion cannons. It was a battle-ready craft, probably a kilometer long. It was colored red and green. The dragonship curled itself into a ball and attached itself to an exponentially larger ship, so…

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The Fable of the Hen and the Wild Turkey

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Each day the farmwife would go out to the chicken pen, and throw out some feed. Each day, the hen would come out of her coop and eat. One day, the farmwife was in a hurry, so she threw a handful of corn hastily through the wire, and moved on to her other business. Some of the feed fell outside of the pen. The hen pushed her head against the wire, trying to get her beak to the pile of fresh feed beyond, but could not reach it. Finally, she abandoned it and went back to her nest. Later that…

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