The Story That Still Insisted

♦ July 7, 2014 ♦ Leave a comment

About a month ago I wrote about a story that that insisted on being written. So I finally wrote it, after the concept had been moving around in my mind for a few years.

During the weekend I edited and revised the same story. It hadn’t been knocking on my door quite as loudly as it had been before I wrote the first draft, but after a break of about a month, I felt called to work on it some more.

Just like last month, I’m unsure to what end I’m working on this piece. I keep telling people it’s not my usual type of story, and now that it’s polished I feel the same about it. The disturbing parts are no less disturbing now that I’ve edited it, though there does seem to be more light shining from the ending than before. I can’t decide intellectually if the end justifies the rest of it, but on an emotional level I have to say it feels as though it does. On that level, I find the story satisfying, something of which I can be proud.

Yet even now I don’t feel immersed in it. Even now that it’s revised and edited I don’t get that feeling relief and admiration for having at last completed a story idea I loved and appreciated from day one. It feels more like having served on a jury and done what i thought was right; I wouldn’t line up to be in a jury, and would find some aspects of being so uncomfortable and inconvenient. Yet I would not bend over backwards to get out of it, either, in most cases. It’s something that should be done when it is asked of me, and that’s how I feel about this story.

How does one perfect such a story? When I’m, for lack of a better phrase, “in love” with the material there is that moment when I know, “I’ve got it,”. Does that moment ever occur when you feel responsible for a story you wouldn’t have chosen for yourself? I’m thinking that it is at least possible, since I can in fact detect improvement between the first draft and the current state of the piece. Perhaps I am able to view this story from a more detached perspective and will know all the earlier when I’ve “nailed” it. That is my hope, at least, because I don’t want to go on feeling this story is unfinished for years to come.

Even if the “nailed it” moment comes, then what? Do I wait to see where this story “wants” to go next in terms of publication? Do I post it on my Wattpad and have done with it, or do I do extra research and try to find a match in places i don’t normally look for submissions? Or do I just hold on to it forever and share it with nobody?

I doubt it is the last one, as after all of this I have gone through with it, I at least want someone to read it to tell me if it’s anything. But that doesn’t solve much, because I don’t know who this story is for. Granted, I’m not as precise with my target audiences when writing as most authors are, but in this case I really don’t know who the audience is. It seems mostly literary. Sin and redemption would be the broadest theme I could ascribe to it. It’s under 4,000 words. Certainly it’s dark for much of its length. But not horror, and not Gothic.

What is this story??

I assume I am getting closer to an answer, as I’ve completed one set of edits, and will probably proceed with the next set in the near future. Already I have some suspicions as to what it may all really be about, though when i sit down to work on it, those reasons seem to vanish, and I once again find myself wondering why i wrote this.

That’s probably why it seems so detached, and the answer so elusive…one of those times when it’s so obvious I miss it.

If I do figure out more, I’ll let you know.

*

There is no mystery, however, to the purpose of my recently published short story collection. If you’d like a copy of Thank You for Ten: Short Fiction About a Little Theater all you need is 99 cents, and one of these links. For Kindle, for Apple, and various formats from Smashwords.

An Open Letter to My First (And Worst) Bully

♦ July 3, 2014 ♦ Leave a comment

For the purposes of this open letter, the addressee will be referred to as 45217. A subsequent person will be referred to as Jake. -Ty

Dear 45217,

One of the least surprising things I ever learned in my life some years ago was that you ended up in prison. Robbery, was it? I don’t remember exact details, but I think it was for 15 to 20? That would mean you’re still locked up. Whether you in fact are, or if your rich parents once again did something to help you out of trouble, I don’t know. I do know you probably deserve to still be in prison for any number things other than that for which you were convicted. And wherever you actually reside now, you still warrant no further identification from me than a prison number.

I’ve known several people in my life who I believe in my heart are psychopaths. Most are simply without morals, but have adjusted to society in such a way as to not cause much trouble. You obviously never made that adjustment, but then again you are not merely a psychopath; you are evil. I have no compunction at all about saying so if you are no different than you were as a child.

That label, evil, obviously means nothing to you, being what you are. So I expect no regret, and indeed would expect you to be somewhat entertained as I remind you that you were not my only bully, but you were the first, and the absolute worst. I would assume that if you could remember who I am, the memory of the psychological torture through which you put me on a daily basis would put a smile on your face, even as you sit rotting in your prison cell.

It’s probably the exact same smile you had on your face every day in grade school when you would see me coming: your friends, and those who pretended to be my friends in tow, just before you launched into whatever relentless verbal assault you had planned for me that time.  A smile that gave birth to the words you shouted, whispered, hissed and vomited onto me from however far away you were when you saw me. The smile that increased every time a friend walking with me would laugh at what you said instead of defending me in some fashion, as though such laughs were returned investments in your bank of emotional violence.

That same smile that you wore when, in 8th grade, you were already manipulative enough to convince teachers that it was only harmless teasing, and that it was in fact funny. The smile you wore when they walked away from you, either saying nothing or laughing with you at some of your comments you’d used to once again talk your way out of any punishment. The smile that even as you said nothing, and faced no consequences once again, was in and of itself more torture to me as I observed it from a never-quite-safe distance of a victim; a victim who was told time again by authority figures things like, “it’s just words,” or “he doesn’t mean it.”

My guess, though I can’t be sure of it, is that you wore the same smile when you got home from school, having escaped from trouble because your wealthy parents had once again marched into the office with their furs in springtime and their Rolexes reflecting the fluorescent school lights back in people’s faces and issued reminders of how much they contributed to the school in addition to your tuition. The same parents who would be thanked profusely in the annual report, all the event flyers and at many school assemblies and evening programs. Each thanks being yet another way your very existence tortured me without you having to say a word or even so much as look in my direction, making the brief times when I didn’t have to see you just as painful as the many, many times that I did.

The smile was also present with agonizing frequency when teachers and staff praised your alleged “giftedness,” though in what, I’ve never understood. Perhaps they meant in the “gifts” your parents gave the school all the time, because I noted no particular intelligence in you to warrant the example everyone made of you of, ” being gifted” to the rest of us.

I’ve wondered at times, 45217, if that smile was anywhere to be found when you committed the crime for which you were at last arrested. Did you show it when the idea for your crime was first hatched, as you pondered who your victims would be? Was that smile there when you thought you’d gotten away with it, and did it appear at any point when you met your lawyer? (Undoubtedly the best money could buy.) How about your mugshot, are you smiling in that?

Truth be told, I don’t much care. Smiling or not, you were put away and there is some satisfaction for me in that. Even a psychopath would rather be free after all. What I’d really like to ask you about is something from years and year before that.

I’d left the school in the middle of my 6th grade year, due in no small part to your bullying and your smiling. But in the final year or so I was there, I met your younger brother. I was convinced that the two of you would make up some kind of double-team of bullying. That fear nothwtihstanding I couldn’t help but notice from the first moment I saw him that though there was familial resemblance, he seemed, for lack of a better word, fuller. More complete as a life form. The prospect of him being around still worried me, but until I saw him in comparison to yourself, I didn’t realize that he possessed some sort of consciousness of the world behind his eyes, whereas you had only a violent vortex into which you sucked up all of the emotional turmoil and pain of innocent people you created. I wouldn’t have put it that way as a child, of course, but even then I knew there was something vastly different between you and Jake, and that he was closer to decency.

Sure, he was more sarcastic than he should have been, laughed a few times at someone tripping up the steps when it wasn’t the nicest thing to do, so I avoided him. Yet unlike you I didn’t find him lying in wait for me. If he saw me, he saw me, didn’t usually have much to say to me when he did. I don’t think he put any effort into finding me. And what is most significant, he did not torture me.  True, he didn’t as far as I know, try to stop you from doing it, but he didn’t assist you either.

When the school started a bowling league, he joined it, as did I. Though I don’t think he and I were ever friends, (he was still a few years older than me) he actually had constructive things to say to me. Tips on how to bowl better. Where to place the ball, when to let go. “You just need a little more spin to it,” he would say to me and many of the others over and over again. I can still hear him saying it today-the small but enthusiastic nod toward his student, his hand twisting slightly at the wrist on the word, “spin.”

He didn’t smile as often as you did. If I recall he smiled less often than a lot of us, and yet I found more humanity in that slightly distracted expression of solemnity he seemed to carry than I ever found in you as you smiled.

I almost liked Jake. Maybe I would have eventually if I had stayed at the school longer, I don’t know.

My question to you, 45217; did you have that fucking smile on your face when you killed him?

Oh, I read the newspaper accounts like everyone else  a few days after I found out. (Someone at my new school had heard about it and told me, as they were also acquaintances of your family.) How you were both out hunting in a nearby field with a rifle, (with nobody else.) How your brother had turned slightly at the exact moment you dropped the gun on the ground in front of you, and how it went off right into him.  How you called for help and began CPR. How it was ruled an accident, and how you were not held responsible for it. I’m aware of the official accounts. To tell you plain, 45217, sitting here today, I don’t believe them.

You see, knowing what I know of you and your capacity for inflicting pain, victimizing the weak, and showing no remorse for doing so, and given that I still have scar tissue on my soul from your assaults to this day, I have all the evidence I need to conclude Jake’s death was no accident. At very best you were goofing off and kept waving the gun around at him threatening to shoot when it went off by accident in your hand, or you were firing warning shots at him for something and got to close. At worst, (and what I suspect most of the time) is that you had a gun, your quieter, more civilized brother pissed you off somehow, you were in a field without witnesses and you shot him Then, as so often was the case with you, you got away with it.

Are you smiling now?

I can say you were not smiling the last time I ever saw you. It was the very day the news broke, may have even been the very day it happened, I’m not sure. My mother had picked me up from my new school and taken me back to my old one, where I had dealt with you for so long. I don’t know why. She probably asked me if I wanted to go, or suggested that I do and I agreed, though deep down I didn’t want to go back there. The place was understandably like a funeral parlor when I got there, everyone milling around in tears and shock. A few of my so called “friends” came up to me briefly to discuss things, but that was the last time I ever saw most of them.

Then I saw you. You were in the office, for whatever reason. As I said you were not smiling, and your head was down, and your eyes sort of half-open in what appeared to be fatigue to me. I’m not one to judge someone’s grief, if you were in fact grieving. But I did wonder why you would be there, at the school, once again the center of attention only a short time after such an event. I won’t assume much, but again, if you are anything like you have ever appeared to be, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was all part of an act: a chance for you to try on “grief” and see how it worked.

Jake did not deserve to die, however it happened. Your parents, obnoxious and condescending as they were, did not deserve to lose a son. Yet in my estimation, they have in their life actually lost two sons: one of them to death at the hands of the first, and the first to whatever warped sense of  reality that you projected onto the rest of existence. A reality that justifies any action and any thought so long as you are entertained or advanced by it. Nobody anywhere deserves to be subjected to that, and that includes me.

Could I be wrong? Could you be now, and as a child when you knew me, merely a lost soul? A soul who remained unable to attach, to love and be loved? Someone who never found a way to be a productive human being? Is it possible you are a gifted soul not properly nurtured within the cradle of wealth and privilege into which you were born? Might you have really dropped that rifle, and continue to mourn your brother to this day?

I don’t know, but frankly in the time I knew you I never got the impression, even for a moment, that you are anything but a sick, heartless waste of human DNA capable of anything and everything. For years I looked at you, and felt you looking at me and sensed nothing approaching even troubled humanity. I’m willing to risk being incorrect about that, especially if for a moment it tortures you.

Go to hell.

–Ty Unglebower

 

This post is part of the Open Letter Continuum.

 

Nine Days Out: The Self Publishing Experience (So Far)

♦ June 30, 2014 ♦ 2 Comments

Unless you happened to just today discover me and this blog, you already know that my short story collection, Thank You for Ten: Short Fiction About a Little Theater launched a week ago Saturday. It’s my first self-publishing experience and while there is still much to do to promote and sell copies of the book, I have in the last ten days had a bit more time to take in the experience, and asses my feelings on same.

To begin with, despite the work that remains, (the work only just begins once you launch) I can’t help but feel some degree of relief since the launch itself. There is no more formatting or techie stuff to deal with. It’s all been approved, and the file clearly works on all devices I intended it to work on. It’s clean, professional copy with very few oddities to speak of. It’s been priced and posted correctly. My sales reports are reflecting sales, as they are supposed to. As I’ve said before none of that was as bad as I sometimes feared it would be before I started it all, but I’m happy that for this book it’s done.

I was telling a friend the other day that it can be a bit of a time warp. Not unlike getting to opening night in the theater. You put all this work into a project, and while you’re doing so any given day seems like drudgery or endless work that isn’t leading anywhere. Then one day you wake up and you realize it’s complete. The book is launched, in this case. In the first few days I found myself mentally checking off things I had to do to prepare for the launch, forgetting for a moment that i had already in fact launched the book. I can go to the page and see it sitting there on Amazon or Goodreads. (And most recently, on iTunes as well, if that is your preferred location.) It won’t sell itself, but it’s there! (And there, and there, etc.)

I’ve posted about it in several; free directories so far, and have a few more to look into over the next few days. It can’t appear i too many of those. One never knows where the person who will tell all of their friends about this great short story collection may happen upon it first.

For the first few days I was fierce in promoting it every few hours, as I knew I would be. At this point I mention it about once a day on my Facebook feed, and maybe twice a day on Twitter. The slight awkwardness with self-promotion that I sense I would feel is in fact present. It may become more so as time goes on, depending on the medium. But it had not crippled me, and i have been able to justify it most of the time. I probably still err on the side of “not enough self promotion,” but it’s greater than zero, and I’m all right with that for now.

The most significant result of my first self-publishing experience may well be the comfort it brings me as I think about my second self-publishing experience. Barring some major change of plans, that experience will be my first official novel, Flowers of Dionysus which I intend to have out late spring, 2015. It of course will take longer, but as it is still a simple structure with no pictures or charts, the process for formatting it should be much the same as my experience for this collection of short stories. Much of the intimidation such things have is in their total newness. I’m sure there will be problems along the way the next time I do this, but none of those problems will be related to the novelty of the experience. The proof is there that I’ve done this once, start to finish, within the deadline I set for myself. That fact will be half of what i need to get through the process the second time.

In conclusion, there is a huge amount of work that goes into something like this just to get to launch. There is even more work to do to promote and market and convince others to buy the book and talk it up. (You can help, blog readers, by please buying a copy and spreading the word for me!) Still, there’s an undeniable satisfaction in concluding this process successfully, and within the time frame I wanted. I do feel empowered moreso than i ever would be going the agent route, and control and power are important things to me in my creative endeavors. The difficulties are not lost on me, but they are the difficulties I chose to subject myself to, as opposed to those someone foisted upon me.

In conclusion, this first experience in self-publishing has for me been neither magical nor shameful. It feels right now exactly as it is; a creative work into which I put much effort and imagination that has now come to at least the initial stages of fruition. Though I have nothing with which to compare it right now, I have to feel that I’ve made the right choice.

Stay tuned for periodic updates on how the experience is going.

 

On Deck, 2014

♦ June 26, 2014 ♦ Leave a comment

You may have noticed that i didn’t post on Monday. Having posted on both Friday and Saturday as part of the official launch of Thank You for Ten I thought it best to take a step back from the blog for a few days, and meet up with everyone today instead.

I want to eventually give my initial impressions of the launch now that it is underway, and books are being sold. But I want to put some more distance between the launch and my post about same, so look for that probably next week.

Today I want to mention briefly what I’m up to next besides promoting  Thank You for Ten. (Posts about the promotion experience will certainly be written as time goes on as well.)

To begin with, I will return to the Open Letter Continuum next  Thursday. I commandeered in regular spot every other Thursday in order to talk up the launch and the prep leading up to it. Now that that has evening out, I’ll resume regular programming for those days, so keep checking back for those.

I’ll be tinkering with my daily schedule a bit, starting next week, so I can make time for various projects, large and small, that I want to get done by the end of the year.

For example I already posted recently about the future of Novel 2.

I also want to resume work on my stage play, which for the time being on the blog I will refer to as Five. Just before I started to final push on Thank You for Ten I finished up act one of this play. One of my writing goals is to complete a first draft by the end of the year. I’ve got some outlining to do before I start the actual writing. I know where I want the play to end up, and act 2, as for most plays, will be shorter than act one, but I’m not yet sure how I will get to the ending yet. And I also want to make sure I have some character development issues in there. I hate rushed scripts. So that’s Major Project Number 2 at the moment. (Novel 2 would be major project 1. It’s okay to be confused, as it hardly matters outside of my mind.) 

Then I have a robust goal of writing about 125 more short stories of various types by the end of the year. In some ways short stories are more difficult to complete than the longer fiction. I’ve said before that I’m behind in my writing goals for 2014, and nowhere more than in my short story production. I have a few ideas for literary pieces that I’ve been meaning to get to. And then there is my adventure series on Wattpad. That series is more for fun, and in theory was supposed to be something to work on at a relaxed pace with less pressure between more pressing short fiction projects. I think I need to be having more fun with them going forward.

I also intend to make good on a long standing promise to myself concerning my other website. Yes, I have one. It’s called Always Off Book. It’s my theater-oriented blog, and I’ve had it for nearly eight years. Each year of the last few has seen fewer and fewer posts, however. That’s mainly because I haven’t been in a show for about three years, and most of what I posted there related to my thoughts about rehearsals and performances. I didn’t think it would be that much time between shows; that is in fact a source of sadness to me. But I have resolved several times to begin writing more theater-centric posts there between shows. Articles that express my views and feelings on theatre issues, particularly for the actor. Advice for actors, responses to theatre posts I find elsewhere. I’m starting to collect such ideas and bookmark such posts online. Slowly but surely I’ve been posting there more frequently, though its reach has never matched that if this website in terms of followers. (The followers of that one are just as quiet and stingy with comments however…) So I hope to be writing on theatre matters more often.

On the subject of theatre, this isn’t technically a writing goal but I’ve written a one-man show that incorporates Shakespeare. It’s been written since early this year, but I still have to memorize it, and tweak it as I go. I can no perform act one without referring to the script. I’ll be working on memorizing act two in the coming weeks and months. Ideally, it would be performance ready for at least some kind of preview audience by autumn of this year.

And I hope to keep writing my form poetry. That, whoever, is under no specific deadline.

So that’s where I am outside of the book launch, in case any of you thought I was doing nothing else with my time and energy.

But I still want you to buy Thank You for Ten, either here or possibly here. You’ve got 99 cents someplace, and I’d be honored if you spent it on my short story collection.

What are you hoping to accomplish creatively with the rest of 2014?

Launch! “Thank You for Ten” is now live!

♦ June 21, 2014 ♦ 3 Comments

Friends, the time is at last here. If you are reading this blog post now, you can, as of this minute, purchase your own electronic copy of Thank You for Ten: Short Fiction About a Little Theater.

If you would like to purchase it for Kindle devices, go here. If you’d like to purchase it for something other than Kindle, go here. For you non-Kindle types, it should be directly available in various other online stores over the coming days, including Apple and Kobo. But it’s the same file and such that you can purchase in the above link, which can be read in most non-Kindle devices.

The price is 99 cents wherever you choose to get it.

I won’t belabor points and observations I’ve already  made about this process and this product right now. (Though don’t expect me to stop mentioning it!) I have marketing work and other things that I need to continue to do in the coming time, for such is the life of a self-published author. Yet today is about the launch, and at last letting all of you know how to purchase it.

Today is also about thanks. Almost nobody who self-publishes does so without other people along the way, especially during their first time. I want to thank friend and fellow author, J. Lea Lopez for all of her advice and work on the cover. (And no jokes from you, Jen, about helping someone with their “first time”.)  Her help has been invaluable in the last two months, and without her, the book would not be possible at this time. Do buy some of her own work to enjoy as well. Jen, in the future, I will work harder to not let you down again!

I’s also like to specifically thank Bee Javier, photographer and designer of the cover image for the book. (By way of selfpubbookcovers.com/beejavier) As I shopped for a good image to use, I knew almost right away this is the one I would choose to project just the right amount of theatricality to the cover. My thanks to you again. I hope you consider my words an acceptable compliment to your design!

I thank all of you, my blog followers, tweeps, and especially my friends, for not disowning me as I talked so much about the book the process of publishing it over the last few weeks. I tried to strike the proper balance between effective promotion and obnoxious spamming. Believe it or not, I did blog and tweet about other things during this time. And as I said, I have much more talking and promoting still to do. But those who buy the book will hopefully find it worth all the talk I’ve put into it.

Also, I thank all relevant Divinities up/out/over/in/ there for the ability and chance to do this.

My thanks to my supportive family as well.

And I thank myself. Yes. I owe myself some thanks for being willing to commit to this process.

But no more reading my blog, for today, go read my stories! And if you like them, if they speak to you or move you in some way, the biggest compliment you can ever give me is to tell other people about the book, and recommend they get it as well. Writing positive reviews wouldn’t hurt either, as that helps visibility, but word of mouth is still the best, and most satisfying way to succeed at such an endeavor.

I close with officially asking you to please go purchase my book. They say people still like to be asked, after all…