For the season.

Happy holidays, everyone. Whatever you choose to celebrate or whether you don’t at all, be good to yourselves and your loved ones – and find a reason to be happy, even if only for five minutes. There’s a new year coming, the start of a new decade, and with it the start of so many new possibilities.

Be well, be merry, be bright, and to my friends who read this…even when I’m silent, remember that I love you. Many of you have been with me for nearly ten years, sharing glimpses into your lives and stealing your way into mine, offering encouragement, sharing your own triumphs.

If I had to choose one thing to be happy about, it would be that.

Happy holidays.

Prologue – Perilous Men

These are no longer the days of perilous men.

Think about it. Look around you. Look at your house, your job, your significant other. Any minute, any second they could be taken from you, these creature comforts that make your life soft and complacent, that drive you in the same rhythm day after day. Would you fight for them? Would you give them up for something that mattered more? Or would you take the safe way out?

In 1877, thousands of men walked off the line in the great railroad strikes. They raised torches, burned buildings, destroyed locomotives, made their voices heard. Dozens died–and when they died, their deaths meant something. What will your death mean? Will you go down fighting for something that matters to you, or will you rot away in a nursing home somewhere, waiting for someone to change your diaper, mourning the lost years when you could have done something, anything?

I’ll tell you the choice I made. I chose to look the other way, chose to keep my mouth shut. And here I am, shitting my pants and waiting for Nurse Clara to sponge my ass dry and swap out my Depends. I can barely see this goddamned laptop, the cataracts are so bad. I should have died years ago. I think I wish I had, but I can’t die. If I die, everything’s forgotten.

And some things I can’t stand to forget.

I wish I stood for something. Once, I did. We all did. There were four of us, then. When there were only three, we asked each other what the hell it was all for.

I’ll tell you what it was for. It was for glory. For honor. It was for the magic that comes when you stand for something, when you truly think you can make a difference–because sometimes you do. It’s a risk, it’s a gamble, and we’re not a gambling society anymore. We’re all about the safety nets, the savings accounts, the padded walls that cushion the impact of life.

But sometimes you gamble, and you come up gold. We were gold, I tell you. We were gold.

This is the story of four boys who walked the wire. We thought to be perilous men. Maybe we were never a danger to anything but ourselves.

But for a while, we were beautiful.

——————————————

Not really sure what this is, where it’s going, or if it’ll go anywhere at all. Believe it or not, it popped into my head while I was watching the new Star Trek movie and thinking about how the message of the original show affected not just one generation, but every generation that followed. How it struck a chord with man’s need to explore, to adventure, to experience the unknown – to “boldly go where no man has gone before.”

And somehow that led to thinking of how most people don’t do extraordinary things anymore, wouldn’t even dream of it–because extraordinary things would jeopardize the promotion, the mortgage, the steady paycheck. And suddenly I’m seeing four gangly older boys in long, patched peacoats, scarves swaying, kicking up snow as they walk down a narrow street and rattle two-by-fours against rusted tin trash cans. And thinking, “These are no longer the days of perilous men.”

Musing.

The other day a friend called me a f***ing bastard for critiquing her manuscript. And then she told me she loved me for it.

It didn’t upset me when she said that, but it did make me stop and think. I get that reaction a lot, for a lot of things. Mostly for critiquing manuscripts and stories, pointing out flaws in the writing, characterization, pacing, plot, continuity. Sometimes for talking people through personal crises. I don’t try to be an asshole, but I don’t lie. And it hurts people, yet I rarely lose friends over it. Something about appreciating the honesty, even if it hurts.

It just amazes me that people keep coming back for more.

I tend to enjoy writing characters who are what I call necessary evils – people who do terrible things and are generally reprehensible people as a whole, but it’s never so simple as that…because they do these terrible things for a good cause, and know it. They may enjoy the godawful things they do, but they wouldn’t be able to condone it if it wasn’t for a higher moral reason.

It never occurred to me that I might be one of those necessary evils myself, although on a much, much smaller scale more realistically applicable to real-life situations in which sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. Less evil than unrepentantly blunt.

I can’t be anything other than who and what I am. I can’t say things I don’t believe. And I can’t blow smoke up a friend’s ass when the truth will help them become a better writer – and while the truth may hurt their feelings, the effusive, encouraging lie would harm them far more in the long run.

I guess that makes me a f***ing bastard.

Long live the bastards.

Slippery.

If you ever get the chance to see Cirque du Soleil, take it. We went to the Banana Shpeel show at the Chicago Theatre last night, and I had the most wondrous time. The show was a mixture of slapstick comedy and Vaudeville musical, and was staged with a glee that was entirely infectious. You wouldn’t think you’d enjoy watching people dance and perform borderline inhuman feats of acrobatics so much, but they do it with a certain jubilation that just sweeps you up until you wish you could move with them. The performers are amazingly talented, a few of them with singing voices so clear and pure they leave your chest aching with the beauty of it.

My favorite part was that even when doing choreographed dance numbers, all of the performers had just a touch of individualism. Their costumes weren’t uniform, but had little personal quirks. They moved in synch, yet with their own style that made each stand out on their own; Hikaru wondered if it was just because they didn’t practice the choreography enough and couldn’t keep time with each other. That might be the case…but honestly, I enjoyed that they didn’t. It made each dancer an individual, rather than part of a faceless, robotic mass. And even if they didn’t match each other perfectly, it didn’t seem disjointed and didn’t detract from how smoothly their motions blended with the music.

The performance was only marred by two things:

1. The enormous Herman Munster clone with the giant head who sat in front of me and kept weaving from side to side, making it impossible for me to get a good view of the center stage performance. Not only did he talk loudly over the singing, he also farted copiously and quite fragrantly – and when he got up to leave at the end of the performance, he and his companion had the nerve to look back at us with their lips curled, making veiled and disparaging comments as if trying to pin the blame for his methane-induced foulness on us. Dear Mr. Munster: I don’t know what you ate before the show, but I’d suggest excising it from your diet. Or, you know, performing an exorcism on it. Because kee-rist, your fumes actually stung my eyes. Most businesses have to pay fines for emissions like that.

2. My eyes. With the winter munge creeping up, my eyes keep filming over to the point where not even an entire bottle of eyedrops helped much. I missed the additional nuances lent by seeing the performers’ facial expressions and the finer details of their costumes, but even missing that didn’t detract from the delightful exuberance of the show.

It was still a lovely night out, highlighted by a delicious (if rushed) dinner at the Wildfire Steakhouse. If you ever visit Chicago, I’d highly recommend it. The food is mid-priced, but there’s nothing middling about the cooking; I had the cedar-planked salmon, and I’ve never tasted fish that delicious outside of New Orleans. Also, toasted almond martinis. You know how I am with my martinis. Wildfire’s martinis topped my previous favorite, the jolly rancher martini at the Improv Comedy Club.

That’s pretty much all I’ve got. I’ve got a whole day to write and edit, so best not waste it.

Although is it sad that now I kind of want to write a story about a dance troupe?

Things.

• Crackfic / WAKING MAGIC is now 11k and growing. If this turns into another book, I will be disgusted with myself but quite happy. I mean…seriously. Pissed-off warrior-fairy with shark teeth, gender-swapping, combining magic with bioengineering…what the hell was I drinking when I came up with this?
• Agent blogs are not conducive to finishing work. (Neither is this one, but I waited until I was caught up to post. So nyeh.)
• I’m currently dripping from countless orifices (well, okay, only my nose and eyes). It’s like being a baby again. All the little buggers do is sit there and drip all over everything.
• I’m at once amused and disappointed that so many people retweeted this post, but only one commented. Thank you to everyone who retweeted, though. I wasn’t expecting that kind of response.
• I’ve decided that I’m going to enter ABNA 2010. Probably with the crackfic, not SB – assuming I can finish and edit the crackfic in time. SB…I’m still up in the air about what to do with that, pending response from agents with fulls.
• Still haven’t started proofreading the rewrite. Been too busy reading friends’ manuscripts, plus I want a little more distance from it. Okay, I’m scared of it. Just because it’s rewritten doesn’t mean it’s better, and who knows, this version may end up on the scrap heap.
• Kerry is a bloody awesome writer. I’ll be finishing her manuscript today, after work. There are penguins. Quiver in fear.
• Going to Cirque du Soleil tonight. I’m not sure what to expect, but the show previews had a definite Vaudeville feel. Looking forward to a night out, especially when it appeals to both my cultured and baser pleasures: theatre, well-stocked with man-candy.
• Charles de Lint’s THE BLUE GIRL is a gorgeously written book, and I’m enjoying the hell out of it.
• Everyone’s so quiet. Sihaya, Lessa, Indikaze, etc…granted, it might help if I said something worth responding to.

That’s all.