Writing and Snacks

Hot day in the café

2008-05-17T21:55:54Z

My proposal for the new novels isn't entirely sucky. In fact, my agent really liked my sample chapters, though she thinks the pitch paragraph needs more work, so that's what I've been working on, plus an additional sample chapter just because I kinda felt like writing it. So, Monday it'll go back to her and we'll see what she thinks. My agent is great with editorial feedback, and she gets back to me quickly on stuff, so I'm a very happy client right now. I'm also excited about these books. I really want to write them.

There's a pill for that

2008-05-16T21:38:43Z

"It looks like you're struggling to get it up," my kung fu instructor said. Which was particularly distressing, considering I was practicing with my staff.

Yes, I giggled.

What he meant was, I was using my arm to raise the staff above my head instead of using the momentum of my hips. So, I tried it the correct way, and twaaaa-aaaaang, aggravated the part of my back that I hurt yesterday from sitting in a chair.

Last week it was my shoulder. Hurt it sitting in a chair. Aggravated it by head-banging at the Rush show.

At least when I told people at the kung fu school about the Rush show, I became instant hero to the males between 35 and 45.

I think the real gist of this little missive is, I need a new chair.

Look, it's just a question, okay??!!

2008-05-15T17:00:20Z

What are you wearing?

No evil shall escape my sight ...

2008-05-14T22:52:04Z

I just emailed a proposal for two books to my agent. I'm hoping she thinks it's absolutely perfect as-is and that I'm shopping for my private yacht by the end of the week.

Today's office was the Ocean Beach Pier Cafe, which is that little white speck at the end of the pier.

I was able to pick up bunches of wireless signals, even a couple from Crystal Pier in Pacific Beach, miles and miles away. I wonder if all that open water with no buildings in the way makes the signals bounce or something. Anyway, I couldn't actually sign onto any of those networks, not even the one for the cafe, but it was just as well, because it meant I spent less time websurfing and more time watching the surf.

They weren't really set up as a coffee joint. More as a quaint and salty breakfast/lunch joint. The waitress wasn't quite sure what to do with me in the nearly empty room. She even offered me a refill of coffee, which is so unlike a coffee joint that I'm afraid I stared at her for a while in utter confusion. Ultimately she brought me some water, and I think that satisfied her.

And apropos of nothing, man, I wish I lived on this street in Dana Point:

Phasing out sff.net

2008-05-14T02:29:13Z

Just a housekeeping note:

I'm phasing out my sff.net email address, as well as everything else I've got on sff.net. I've been using gmail for the past few years, and soon that will be my only email address.

So, to reach me:

gregvan@gmail.com

I'll keep the sff.net address for a few more months, but then it'll go away, so please update your records. I'd hate to miss your death threats.

ETA: I'm not actually getting death threats. It was just a joke.

Up on your way, hit the open road

2008-05-12T17:01:02Z

Rush!

Yes, I saw Rush again, last night, in Irvine. This time Lisa got to go, and we used the occasion of the show to have a leisurely drive up the Pacific Coast Highway between San Clemente and Laguna Beach.

In San Clemente a guy in traffic got me to roll down my window and asked if we were, in fact, on the Pacific Coast Highway, and if it would take him to Irvine. I told him we were, in fact, on PCH, and that even though we'd never taken this route, we believed it went to Irvine, as that's where we were headed. Even though the show wasn't for another five hours and we were probably only an hour away from Irvine, and Irvine's a city of almost 200K people and there are many reasons to go there that have nothing to do with Rush, he held up his Rush baseball hat with a questioning look, and then we hung devil's horns and screamed "RUSH!!!" at each other until traffic separated us.

The show was quite terrific. Of course. Even though the crowd was kinda lame. I mean, who sits during Neil Peart's drum solo? Who sits through "Natural Science," for crying out loud???!!

I did quite a bit of head banging, which aggravated my sore shoulder which I made sore last weak by sitting. I'd call this a sign of aging, only I've been doing stuff like this for decades.

The fact that I've been doing this for decades -- 21 years of Rush shows -- now that's a sign of age.

***

On the way up we stopped at a very nice coffee joint in Dana Point, where I finished a draft of a proposal for two books. I used Scrivener for this, and I loved how easy it was to juggle notes, an outline, a synopsis for each of the two books, sample chapters, and be able to quickly display and reference the short story these books are based on. I might try to draft the first book this way. Assuming somebody buys the books.

Free Fiction: Demon, Star, Alien, Cat

2008-05-12T15:01:41Z

Completing a month of free fiction, here's one that appeared in Say ... Was That a Kiss, published by the lovely people at Fortress of Words.

When it first appeared, some people didn't see what my story had to do with the theme of kisses. So, I'm just gonna come right out in say it: KISS!!!!

It helps if you say it while making the sign of the devil.

Demon, Star, Alien, Cat
by Greg van Eekhout

I went at the head with tiny licks and nibbles.

"Goddamnit," the Demon said, throwing his arms up in exhasperation. "That's not how you eat these things. I swear, if it's not a goddamn vegetable or a fungus you guys have no idea what to do with it." He reached for my popsicle. "Hand it over and watch."

I was an Institute-trained engineer with a specialization in archaic technology, but since the Demon's revival, I'd become his designated handler. He lived with me in my two-room dome, complaining every time he bumped his frizzy head on the ceiling. My orders were to watch him, give him whatever he wanted, and help him assimilate to life in 2305.

I gave him the popsicle, a frozen confection we'd made to his specifications. It was shaped like his own head with stylized coloring. White face. Black lips. Black spiky shapes around his eyes. "Beautiful," he declared. And then he showed me the proper way to eat it. He unfurled his tongue and curled it around the miniature icy head and took a long, loving lick of himself. "Just beautiful. We're gonna sell these by the truckload."

* * *

Once Institute archeologists had found the Demon's cryo-tube in the rubble of a Scottsdale, Arizona office park, it took two years of legal wrangling to figure out who owned him. We thawed him out and replaced his heart and within five minutes of his revival, it became clear nobody owned him. In fact, it wouldn't take long before he owned us. Focusing a look of contempt on me, he said, "Get a pen and write this down, kid." He stood for the first time in over 200 years, wincing and wobbling, but remaining on his feet. He was obscenely tall and hairy. "I'm starting up the band again," he announced. And then, more to himself, or to an unseen audience: "We're going to be the greatest band in the land. And we're coming to your town."

* * *

I had to break the bad news to him. We couldn't find his bandmates. By the time he'd died, there were eleven cryogenic facilities licensed to freeze and preserve the deceased with hopes of later revival. The site in Scottsdale was the only one that hadn't been meat-robbed during the Unrest. His bandmates, unfortunately, had been stored in Los Angeles.

I expected him to throw something at me. He was given to towering rages, such as when he learned he couldn't get gasoline to fuel his Bentley, which we had found on display while touring the Smithsonian.

But now he merely patted his furry stomach and popped a strawberry in his mouth. "Not a problem, kid. If I can't wake up the old band, I'll just have to build me a new one. Get a pen."

* * *

In the spirit of cooperating with him (he was insufferable when he didn't get his way), the Institute hauled in cartons of old media and technology capable of displaying it. Videos, audio recordings, books, periodicals, comics. For weeks, I immersed myself in the Demon's venal past. If it could be heard, seen, eaten or rubbed on, the Demon had sold it. I saw common household items from the Demon's day emblazoned with his image and those of his bandmates. Clothing, tooth brushes, lunch boxes, towels, pillowcases, surfboards, guitars, motorcycles, coffins. After a while, I felt sick and heavy, as if I'd eaten too much mushroom cake.

"Why would you need a special box to carry your lunch?" I asked him.

The lab cleaning-bot's head bobbed between his legs. "So you don't have to keep your cupcakes in your pants," he said.

"But ... why does your face need to be on it?"

"Who else would you want on it? Jane Fonda? The Dukes of Hazzard?"

I headwired these references and was no less confused after they'd been glossed for me.

"Look, some kid drags his ass out of bed, has spit wads stuck to his neck by the time he gets off the school bus, his teachers drone the three R's into him for three hours, he gets his ass kicked in PE. But lunch time comes around, and he pulls out that lunch box and sees me and my boys in full make-up and regalia, and for those twenty minutes while he's eating the baloney sandwich his mom makes for him every fucking day of his life, he's in another place. It's a better place. It's a place where he's invincible, where all his parents and his teachers and all the assholes of the world are off in a corner somewhere with their thumbs up their asses. It's a place where his best friends are superheroes and rock and roll rules."

I was even more baffled than before. As with most of his speeches, my headwire couldn't keep up. "But if it's such a good thing to have your face on his lunch box, why don't you just give it to him? Why does he have to buy it?"

He stared at me a while before dismissing me with a wave of his bejeweled hand.

* * *

The Demon held auditions with humans and declared each and every one of them a pathetic mushroom head. I suggested robots, but he struck the idea down, not because artificial elements would make his band a pale reflection of its original formulation, but because it was uncomfortably close to the plot of a certain 1978 made-for-TV movie featuring his original band. "Let's not resurrect those phantoms," he said. So organimechs were the answer. They hadn't been manufactured in fifty years, and most of them had rotted away in storage sheds. But after weeks of searching, I managed to track down the granddaughter of an eccentric collector who had preserved three organimechs in blister packs.

"He kept them frozen," I explained to the Demon.

He licked his lips and chuckled deeply. "Perfect."

The Institute assigned staff musicologists to teach the organimechs how to make the Demon's music. One organimech learned drums. The other two, guitar. It took months, and the noise they produced was unlistenable, but even I had come to believe that this was a matter of taste. Their noise seemed consistent, and they were learning to make it all together at the same time.

The Demon worked them hard. Morning till night, a couple of hours rest (sleep for the Demon, fluid replacement for the organimechs), and then more rehearsal. No one worked harder than the Demon himself. He was tireless, badgering Institute engineers on the quality of their old sound technology reproductions, sketching outlandish clothing for them to make, but mostly calling up glowing little numbers on the air-display and moving them from column to column. This, I took it, had something to do with money.

Whatever campaign the Demon was planning, things seemed to be taking shape. To my eyes, at least. But the Demon wasn't satisfied.

"We're not supposed to be John Denver," he bellowed in the face of the drummer. "You've got to pound those toms like you're pissed at them. And you," he said, turning on the lead guitarist. "You can pull off a sloppy lick here and there, but you have to put your back into it. You're a hero. A guitar god. You're not fucking James Taylor. That thing around your neck is the biggest cock in the land. Stroke it, for God's sake."

He appealed to the singer/rhythm guitarist in desperation. "Do you have any idea what they'll do to me if we suck? They'll assimilate me. They're already trying. Do you know what that means? Have you seen where I live? It's a fucking dome. A two-room dome that smells like a Vietnamese restaurant. I'd rather they put me back in that fucking freezer. Rock saved my ass from being a fucking public school teacher in a corduroy straightjacket, and it's gonna save my ass again." He faced the band. He took a breath. And when he spoke again in his low rumble, I saw a child with a lunch box, many years removed. "God gave rock and roll to us," he said. "And it's our job to wield His thunder."

* * *

The hall was a vast, echoing barn. They'd held beheadings here during the Unrest, and now it was used for picnics during high UV months. The Institute, still bending over backwards to accommodate the Demon they'd brought back to life, rented it out for the night. "A premiere," the Demon called it.

I headwired the unfamiliar word.

It meant a kind of beginning.

"Now, kid, I'm giving you an amazing honor. Really, you should get down on your knees and lick my boots for this. I'm going to let you introduce us to the crowd."

"Oh," I said, "Really, I just couldn't. It's too much. Maybe you could just introduce yourselves after the show --"

He put his big hand on my shoulder. "I know, you're overwhelmed. Who wouldn't be? But you've been real good to me, kid, sharing that awful, godforsaken little hovel of yours. Sure, you got more tail from my cast-offs than you would've had in three lifetimes on your own, but still." He lowered his head and looked me in the eye. "I want you to know I appreciate it, and that's why I'm letting you introduce us on the night of our come-back."

"I don't know what to say." Really, I didn't. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, I hope you survive this noise.

"Of course you don't know what to say. How could you? You're a mushroom head. That's why I'm going to tell you. Get a pen."

I already had one ready.

I was a good roadie.

* * *

The show was brilliant. At least, for a certain value of brilliance I'd learned to judge from studying the Demon's history. The band transformed itself. They wore black fetishistic costumes with shiny metallic bits. They displayed much body hair. Their make-up turned their brutal faces into abstract art.

And they had learned to perform to the Demon's satisfaction. The cat man pounded the drums with consistent rhythm and was very loud. The space alien played his guitar very quickly, striking poses that emphasized the drama of his playing. And the one with the star over one eye made impressive shrieks with a vibrato that the Institute musicologists agreed was not dissimilar to opera.

But it was the Demon who finally convinced me that this band had been worthy of the adulation they'd received back in their time. He played a bass that looked like a medieval weapon. He strode across the stage on boots with fangs. He breathed fire. He vomited blood. He brought down the thunder.

And by the end of the night, I found myself in the wings, sweating and aching and screaming and pumping my fist in the air. I behaved like a vulgar animal, and if I'd had any money, I would have tossed handfuls in the air.

The music and the visuals, I believe, triggered certain hormones that aroused my excitement. The Institute's writing a paper on the phenomenon. But it's all bullshit, as the Demon would say.

Because, really, I got it.

I got what the Demon was doing, and why the lunch boxes were important, and even why it was okay to profit from them.

"You don't have to sell out," the Demon was fond of saying, "so long as you can get people to buy in."

* * *

After the show I approached the Demon in his dressing room. His face was a muddy wash of black and white and flesh. He wore the bathrobe the Institute engineers had fashioned for him. "Where'd the rest of the guys go?" he asked. "Getting some tail?"

"Yes," I said. Though, actually, the three organimechs were off having their fluids replaced.

"I'd call that a pretty decent premiere," the Demon said. "Not a bad way to start a tour. We'll play Detroit next, of course. A few months on the road domestically, and then Japan. We were monsters in Japan. Anything happening on the Moon? Even Led Zeppelin never played the Moon."

I let him go on. A tour was like a war, he was telling me, and now that he'd revealed himself to be the baddest motherfucking warlord on the planet, there'd be no more salads and dome houses for him. The tour would bring in shiploads of cash, and fans, and girls, and merchandise opportunities.

Eventually, I'd have to tell him the truth.

The crowd of thousands he'd played to tonight had consisted of me, a handful of Institute employees, some historians and musicologists, a few sensation seekers, and sixteen thousand holographic projections.

Maybe I'd tell him that later. If I had a chance. The Institute was considering sending him back to the freeze. Obviously, he wasn't adjusting well to 2305, and they wondered if it might not be cruel to keep him alive.

* * *

Seventeen months later, I was peering around the curtain from backstage at Luna Industrial Station Four. In the throng of miners, mechanics, microwave technicians and algae farmers, at least half were wearing make-up. Against white faces, I saw green cat eyes and whiskers, and silver alien masks, and black stars painted around impassioned eyes. Most of the anxious crowd, though, wore the face of the Demon.

Just as I did.

In the end, the Institute had dragged him shrieking and howling back to the freeze, his steel-heeled boots trailing sparks. And after they sealed his tube, not a single original member of his band remained.

I strapped on his bass guitar. Blowing a big, fat, wet kiss to his memory, I got ready to sell some lunch boxes.

--

Demon, Star, Alien, Cat by Greg van Eekhout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

I feel like an Oliver Sacks case

2008-05-11T16:49:38Z

The right channel of my headphones just quit and I feel like I've lost an entire hemisphere of my brain. There's probably a Latin term for this, but despite one year of Catholic school, when it comes to Latin you might as well be speaking Latin.

Day

2008-05-11T03:20:16Z

1. Breakfast at the neighborhood breakfast joint where we've never eaten even though it's literally across the street. I went for straight-forward bacon and eggs, but they have a fine array of Mexican-inflected items on the menu I want to try. It was really good. And it was right across the street. It's going to make me so fat.

2. Shopped for toilet paper and Cheerios. Then got my mom the first Midnighters book and The Lightning Thief for Mother's Day.

3. Hit up a coffee joint and worked on the series proposal I'm hoping to wrap up this week.

4. Happy-hour sushi. Including one-cent sake. Yum. Oof. Yum.

5. Beach.

6. Starship-motortrike.

7. Mississippi paddle-wheel traversing a bay in San Diego between two Polynesian resorts.

Tutti-frutti hat

2008-05-07T22:56:51Z

So, I'm writing a proposal for a series grown out of my story, "The Osteomancer's Son."

Among the dramatis personae are the protagonist's ex, Carmen, and their daughter, Miranda.

I named them Carmen. And Miranda.

This wouldn't make me cringe quite as much if they hadn't already appeared in the story, published two years ago.

ETA: Okay, I must be tired. In the story I actually named her Connie. So I was only about to introduce new error rather than repeat existing error.

The righteous rise with burning eyes

2008-05-07T17:59:56Z

So tired. Rush show was awesome, fun time had by all. Bought a tour shirt, my first since "Hold Your Fire" in 1988. That one was a flimsy, long, narrow tube with sleeves, like a t-shirt made for asparagus. This one is very much more shirt-like.

Since there was miraculously no traffic between San Diego and LA, I never once had to dip below 70mph and made it to Culver City with time to spare, which I used productively at a coffee joint to do some outlining-type stuff on the new novel.

In the news, a teacher is accused of wizardry for making a toothpick disappear.

Desperate plan

2008-05-06T15:18:46Z

I'll be heading up to LA to see Rush today with friends Todd and Lori. After the show, I will get back in my green Prizm and drive like the wind, straining the limits of machine and man.

I'd advise any gleaming alloy air-cars, two lanes wide and otherwise, to steer well clear of me.

Free fiction: Old Heights

2008-05-05T07:10:54Z

Another Monday, another free story. Like the previous two, Carnival Park and Chinatown, this one is from is from "Tales From the City of Seams," originally published in Polyphony 4, and reprinted in Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: 18th Annual Collection.

Old Heights
by Greg van Eekhout

Maybe he's a retired heavyweight who owns a cigar-stained Italian restaurant downtown and still spars with the kids when he runs his youth boxing camp. Or maybe he's a cowboy actor who exaggerates his Texas drawl when he does commercials for his Ford dealership. Possibly, he's an old news anchor who emcees the annual leukemia telethon and does a radio show early on Sunday mornings.

Every town has one, the old local celebrity who represents the people in a way an elected politician never could. Whoever he is, you can be sure he's a raconteur, that he's been entertaining people for as long as anyone can remember. People agree that he's simply the nicest guy in town, though there are some faded rumors about womanizing, and some drunk driving allegations. But those happened so long ago, and anyway, they somehow make him human and better loved.

Around here, for my generation, at least, that guy was the Green Thunder.

The Green Thunder was the grand marshal in the Settler's Day parade.

The Green Thunder visited kids in the hospital.

.The Green Thunder judged the Daffodil Queen pageant.

You remember that commercial campaign the city did? A guy throws his fast food garbage out his car window, and a kid walks up, and he stares at the garbage, and he stares at the trash can across the street, and the voice-over says, "What would the Green Thunder do?" I still think of that commercial every time I see litter in the street.

The Green Thunder once had his cape pressed at my dry cleaner shop. Dropped it off himself, paid cash, and when I asked him for an autograph, he gave me that billion-dollar grin and got out an 8x10 glossy. He signed it, To Sidney, My Dry Cleaning Hero. Thanks! Green Thunder. Drew a little thunder bolt and everything.

His dry cleaning hero? It was the first time he'd ever been to my shop, and I hadn't even pressed his cape yet. He didn't have to do that for me, but that's the kind of guy he was.

And, look, I'm not defending what he said to that reporter. It was dead wrong. I think he was just trying to be funny, and that's how people talked in the neighborhood when guys like Green Thunder and me were growing up. When it comes right down to it, didn't he help a lot of people, no matter who they were? He didn't care if you were black or white or yellow or green. If you needed help of any kind, the Green Thunder was there.

On the other hand, I understand why people got upset. My wife, she's Korean, and when we were driving cross-country on our honeymoon, some of the looks we used to get ...

I keep telling people the Green Thunder was more than a remark made in a moment of bad judgment. He was a real part of this city for a long time.

They say he and that reporter had some history between them. They'd been friends back in the old days but had a falling out of sorts. Something about a signal watch, something trivial.

Anyway.

It's just sad.

I was sweeping in front of my shop the day he left. I heard the boom, the bang, the sound of the sky ripping apart that people who grew up when and where I did had come to associate with hope, and I looked to the sky, and there he was. Not the fast streak of green across the morning blue. Just an old man, slowly passing out of view.

He wasn't even wearing his cape.

Some people get a little upset when they see his photo hanging on my wall. I've had once-loyal customers stop coming in because I won't take it down.

Heck, sometimes I want to take it down myself.

What's the right thing to do?

I don't know.

I don't know what the Green Thunder would do.

--

Old Heights by Greg van Eekhout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Repulsors and picnics

2008-05-05T00:10:00Z

It's been a very nice, bum-around sort of weekend. Yesterday morning the weather was too perfect, so we strolled along the bay and out to the beach and had a relaxing breakfast at Seaside Cantina. Great place to watch waves and people.

Returned home after wading in the surf and caught a showing of Iron Man. I don't think I liked it quite as much as some people, but I really enjoyed Robert Downey, Jr.'s performance, and the suit was totally neat. Sometimes superhero movies turn into CGI cartoons in the last half hour, but there were enough shots of Tony Stark's face behind the helmet that I never felt I'd lost contact with the character and shifted into a different movie.

Stopped at the market on the way home from the movie for sandwich fixings, came home and quickly assembled a picnic, and then headed out to sit on the sand by the bay and munch. I even snuck a beer out there, which you're not supposed to do anymore on account of the hundreds of drunken knuckleheads who rioted last Labor Day. I quietly drank my beer and did not riot.

I've already gotten some feedback on the novel from very-first readers, who caught some stupid things I thought I could get away with, some dumb decisions I made with pacing, and various and sundry. Trying to fix some of that today.

Now, however, I am sleepy.

The squid and the whale

2008-05-04T01:59:37Z

And now for something completely different

2008-05-02T23:55:59Z

Starting a new book!

Just tippy-typing some notes so far, actually.

I'm at a very pleasant coffee joint in Pacific Beach. I like this neighborhood. It's far enough north from Garnet Ave. that it might not be full of bar-hopping knuckleheads at night. And I can see ocean when I look down the street. Definitely an area to check out when the current lease runs dry in a few months.

Morning after

2008-05-02T17:46:43Z

I AM TOTALLY AT LOOSE ENDS!

I am forcibly giving myself a day off writing to recharge. Figured it would be a good time to start screwing around with Scrivener, because my next book will require keeping track of things like characters and settings and timelines, and Scrivener looks like it might help me do a good job of that, and also I'm freaking sick of Word a little bit.

Also, I am blasting Metallica very loudly. Old Metallica, when they were still good. Cliff Burton-era. "Ride the Lightning," to be specific. Rar.

Done done (for now)

2008-05-01T21:59:27Z

Many thanks to everyone who commented with nice things about the almost-finished draft of my YA novel, Flotsam. I spent the last two days going through it, doing the meatball surgery that will get it to the Army hospital in Tokyo. Now, it goes off to the Blue Heaven workshop in June. I think I'm going to give my brain a day or two to rest, and then I start work on a proposal for my next book. But right now, I drink beer.

Why am I wearing a hat, you ask? I think the better question is, why aren't you?

Meatball blogging

2008-05-01T16:19:20Z

I'm making pretty good progress going through my book. About a hundred more pages to go.

Came across a telling typo:

Slug-like creatures slithered at my feet among truck tires and safety cones, fish skeletons, gelatinous blogs, undigested leftovers.

It wasn't a chicken, it was a baby!

2008-04-30T17:00:45Z

I do not have a complete draft of my YA novel, but I have typed the first word of the first scene (the) and the last word of the last scene (laughed), and all the words in between. The reason why this doesn't constitute a first draft for me is because if I sent it out in the world in this shape, even to trusted first readers, it would die. The lungs are hanging on by mere threads. The heart is sewn onto the elbow.

So, what's required now is what they used to call meatball surgery on M*A*S*H. It's not polish and perfection. It's more stuff like, if the heroes employ a mummy in the climax to save the day, I have to actually go back and write in a mummy for them to employ.

This is a dangerous time for me. The language is clunky, the characters inconsistent, some of the plot business completely nonsensical, and not being able to fix all these things before people read the draft can push me pretty far out on the ledge of shame and despair. But I don't have time to fix all these things. I only have time to shove the heart into the chest cavity and hit it with my fist and scream, "Live, damn you, live!" Alan Alda-style.

Second in a series

2008-04-28T16:53:40Z

Working from home means I can play all the goddamn Journey I want.

Free fiction: Chinatown

2008-04-28T14:02:08Z

I think I'm going to post some free fiction on Mondays for at least a few weeks. As with last week's offering, this week's piece is from "Tales From the City of Seams," originally published in Polyphony 4, and reprinted in Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: 18th Annual Collection.

"Chinatown" was inspired by the Han folktale about a family of brothers, each with a special ability. I'm sure I must have read The Five Chinese Brothers when I was a kid, but I was more directly inspired by Margaret Mahy's The Seven Chinese Brothers.

Not to be outdone, I put eight brothers in my version.

Chinatown
by Greg van Eekhout

I used to work for a plumbing supply wholesaler in Chinatown, and the best part of my day was always lunch. I'd walk by the window displays of tobacco-colored ducks strung up by their necks, the scents of grease and ginger trying to draw me in. But I was like a man passing a row of prostitutes without interest, secure in the knowledge that a more desirable lover awaits him at home. Lady Sze's Golden Crown Café was my destination, the only place in town where you could get a bowl of soup that had been simmering for a thousand years.

A thousand years was actually a bit of an exaggeration. A forgivable fib of marketing. Truthfully, the thousand-year soup had been cooking in its pot for only eight centuries, born in the latter days of Genghis Khan. The great Mongol warlord had been displeased by a subordinate, one Lu Ch'eng-Huan, in some small way forgotten to history (although the most recent Lady Sze once suggested to me that it had something to do with a concubine, a canary, and a paintbrush). Wishing to discipline Lu Ch'eng-Huan, the Khan had his head removed and boiled in a golden pot. The Khan kept the skull as a trophy, but, not realizing Lu Ch'eng-Huan was a sorcerer, permitted Lu's wife to claim the pot, the water, and the gray film floating on top. After taking it back to her home village, she added salt, leeks, onions, and garlic, and made a soup of her beloved husband's dissolved head. Every day she would add some more water, more vegetables and seasoning, and thus the soup was kept going.

Hundreds of years later, when Lu's descendents came to American shores, they brought the soup with them, keeping vigil over the cook fires on the deck of the brig Prometheus.

I had no idea how much of that was true, but the soup tasted wonderful and kept me cold-free, and Lady Sze (her actual name was Michelle) charged only three bucks a bowl.

One day as I sat in the restaurant savoring my lunch, a man in an ivory suit came into the place. His head was as white and hairless as an eggshell, and when he spoke, every syllable came out twisted into an odd shape. I think he was Belgian. "Daughter of Lu Ch'eng-Huan, far removed," he said, "I have grown impatient with your truculence. I have dealt with you in good faith. I have offered you riches -- gems and antiques, property and estates, significant shares in profitable concerns -- but you have mistaken my generosity for desperation. If you will not part with the soup in a fair exchange, I shall have to take it by force."

Michelle Sze was over at a corner table, taking care of some accounting matters. "Get lost," she said.

The white man smiled tightly. His blue eyes darkened as through glazed over by a layer of ice. "Boys?" he said, and, on cue, two men entered the restaurant and stood behind him. Their faces were broad, with mouths so wide their lips seemed to curve back behind their huge ears. Long-fingered hands twitched down low near their bowed knees. I somehow knew that these were not true men, but monkeys grown and reshaped to pass as men. They leered at Michelle Sze, rocking on their strange, short legs.

Michelle Sze barely glanced up at them. "Brothers," she said. And five men came out of the kitchen. They stood shoulder to shoulder, forming a wall. "To get to my soup," Michelle said, "you will first have to overcome my brothers. This will be more difficult than you might suppose. First brother is like stone. His flesh cannot be penetrated. Second brother has the strength of ten men concentrated in his right hand. Third brother is tireless and needs neither food nor water, neither sleep nor breath. Fourth brother can outrun a horse, a hawk, an arrow shot from a bow. Fifth brother, though he still walks among us, is already dead and cannot be harmed. Sixth brother can see a moth twitch its antennae from a hundred miles away. Seventh brother can hear the creak and groan of grass growing." Michelle wrote something on her spreadsheet. "Let's see your monkeys get past them."

The white man smiled as though Michelle Sze had said something cute but stupid. And then his smile faltered. "Wait a minute. Seven brothers? I count only five."

"Yes. Sixth and Seventh brothers took the soup out the back door as I was introducing you to First through Fifth." She scratched out something on the spreadsheet.

"Then you are defeated," the white man said, "for I had more monkeys posted in the alley."

"Yes," Michelle said, "and Eighth brother of the poison touch took care of them."

"Ah," said the white man, shutting his eyes. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Ah."

A silence followed. One of the monkeys scratched its ass and sniffed its fingers.

"Well, then," the white man said, finally, "another day."

"Another day," Michelle agreed.

And the white man took his leave with all the straight-backed dignity he could muster in the face of this setback, his monkeys ook-ooking behind him with disappointment and confusion.

The brothers stood around grinning at one another for a few moments until Michelle snapped at them to go back to work. Chagrined, they filed back into the kitchen.

I tipped my bowl to drink the last of my soup. "That turned out pretty well," I said.

She released a long, sad sigh. "Not really. We've been here for three generations, but now we're done with this city. We'll have to move the restaurant."

I choked on the broth. "Move? But ... Why? Your brothers ..."

"The Belgian will be back. And he can make monkeys faster than I can make brothers. So, we move." She got up and flipped the Open sign to Closed.

"But ... where will you go?" I asked, knowing I wouldn't like the answer.

"Far away. Across one ocean, perhaps two. Now, if you'll excuse me, sir, you've been a good customer, but I do have some arrangements to make ..."

And that was it. By the very next day, Lady Sze's Golden Crown Café had been abandoned. A week later, a donut shop had replaced it.

It took me months to find another regular lunch place, but I eventually settled on a Texas barbecue joint on the south 400 block of Milton. Their secret lay in the heated rocks that lined the bottom of the barbecue pit, brought here by way of Texas and Mexico. They were fragments of an Aztec pyramid and had been splashed with the blood of more than a thousand human sacrifices.

The ribs are pretty good, but I'm more a fan of the pulled pork sandwich.

--

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Weekend plans

2008-04-26T17:28:09Z

Driving up to Los Angeles in a bit. Most likely we'll be hitting the LA Times Festival of Books on the campus of my alma mater, UCLA. I've never been to the LA Times Festival of Books. I'm hoping to find books there, people engaged in all things books, and parking. I'd hope for fried chicken, because I used to love the fried chicken at the Treehouse, which I would order with the mashed potatoes and gravy and chicken-fried potatoes, and then the cashier would say, "You sure you got enough starch on that tray, sport?" and I'd mumble something grumpy and incoherent as I was wont to do when I was a college student and dig into my chicken while trying to dodge the calcified chicken feathers. But there won't be any fried chicken, because the Treehouse is long gone, alas.

Plans afterward include an outing with friends to an Irish pub and a stage play. Then, tomorrow, we'll drive my parents around so they can buy things like cheese and cat food and whatever else they need. Then, back home and write and write and write.

Or, we might spend the entire weekend in traffic. Heat wave in Southern California might mean everyone flees to beaches and air-conditioned shopping hangers. I need to find the subterranean express road. Then I'd just have to shoot Morlocks.

Shark attack

2008-04-25T18:38:39Z

A swimmer got killed by a shark this morning at Solana Beach, my very favorite San Diego-area beach and the site of my Mystery Dream House. Apparently a lot of seals and sea lions have been beaching themselves in the area, which they do when there's a big predator out there.

More people die from coconuts falling on their heads than get killed by sharks, so it's not like I'm worried about getting eaten by a shark. Still kinda freaky, though.

Huh?

2008-04-24T05:17:46Z

Woo! The fantasy podcast site PodCastle is buying "The Osteomancer's Son," my story about bone magic in Los Angeles. It'll probably run sometime next month.

And today I got my contributor's copies of Spin, a Finnish science fiction/fantasy magazine, containing "Kirjailijatalo," a translation of my story "Authorwerx."

The podcast of "Authorwerx" was in Escape Pod last year.

Now I need to get "The Osteomancer's Son" translated into Finnish ...

***

We in the USA are now assaulting teens with ultrasonic noise weapons. Because if there's one thing teenagers can't do, it's retaliate by making noise of their own. And it's always a good idea to antagonize those who will be responsible for our care in a few decades, isn't it? Our nursing homes will be pits dug in the ground. At least we'll be able to gum our earthworms.

I'm an old man with the knees of Geezer McCreakster, but I have the hearing of a young adult. I'm immune to these assaults, but not by much. I did have the Lakers game on when I took the test, though, so for all I know these emitters will melt my geriatric brains.

You are about 20 years old

The teen repellent will no longer foil you, but you can still hear some pretty high tones.

The highest pitched ultrasonic mosquito ringtone that I can hear is 16.7kHz

Find out which ultrasonic ringtones you can hear!