Lost Story Followup

Lost Story Followup

A follow-up from yesterday’s post: Long Lost Stories.

Yes I did go looking for my notebook when I got home last night. And yes, I did find it.

What? You’re wondering, perhaps, if I opened it up and took a peak? If so, was it any good.

You know what, I have to say it wasn’t too bad. There are some parts I would change, but it was supposed to be a first draft anyway. You know what, how about I just open up the bad boy and show you what I found.

Excerpt from the long lost moleskine reporter’s journal that has gathered dust in my bedside table since 2006 (as much as it kills me, I’m writing as-is, not cleaning anything up):

Luke awoke from his dream with a single thought in his head: I have to visit Mom and Dad and find my Dinosaur Encyclopedia.

Already the details of his dream were fading like an ice cream headache; what just a moment prior felt so urgent was now just a memory. What remained was a desire to hold the favorite book of his childhood once more.

Luke contemplated calling his parents at that moment and asking them if they knew of the whereabouts of his book. He quickly changed his mind once he realized it was 3:23 AM and a call at that time would probably kill his mother. Luke had once called his parents at 12:30 AM on New Year’s Eve to be met by his father’s voice frantic that his mother had seen Luke’s phone number on caller-id and had fainted, thinking something horrible must have happened to him.

Luke turned off his nightlight and fell back to sleep, this time dreaming he had won the World Series, only he wasn’t one of the players but was instead the baseball and had felt extremely lucky the opposing team consisted of tiny infants who were up way past their bedtime. Luke remembered none of this upon waking the following morning though he did wonder why he was suddenly so cross with his baseball bat.

Okay, I lied. I did clean up some of the more egregious writing. Not all, but some.

If my counting was correct, this notebook contains roughly 14,000 words. I don’t know for sure why I abandoned the story, but most likely it was because I hit a wall. Maybe if I read through it now, after all these years I can make something of it. It’s worth a shot, I suppose.

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong – A Comic You Must Read

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong – A Comic You Must Read

From the About page of Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong, a new webcomic by Prudence Shen and Faith Erin Hicks:

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong is a graphic novel collaboration between author, Prudence Shen, and comic artist, Faith Erin Hicks. The comic will be updated for free to read here at nothingcanpossiblygowrong.com, leading up to the release of the print edition coming May 2013 from First Second Books!

—

You wouldn’t expect Nate and Charlie to be friends. Charlie’s the laid-back captain of the basketball team, and Nate is the neurotic, scheming president of the robotics club. But they are friends, however unlikely — until Nate declares war on the cheerleaders, and the cheerleaders retaliate by making Charlie their figure-head in the ugliest class election campaign the school as ever seen. At stake? Student group funding that will either cover a robotics competition or new cheerleading uniforms — but not both.

Bad sportsmanship? Sure. Chainsaws? Why not! Nothing can possibly go wrong.

Page 1 - Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong
Page 1 – Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong

 

Above is the first page of Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong. I dare you to try to tell me that doesn’t make you want to read more.

I’ve known about Faith Erin Hicks’ work for a while now, having first heard about her excellent webcomic Friends With Boys a while back via boing boing. Recently, another of her works, The Adventures of Superhero Girl had gone into print. What had somehow managed to escape my attention, however, was that she has another webcomic, Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong, which she is working on and serializing at this very moment.

How I discovered Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong, is kind of a funny story. I was on the aforementioned boing boing and saw mention that they were hosting a new podcast: Tell Me Something I Don’t Know. Pretty cool, I though. I enjoy podcasts. Then I saw mention of Faith Erin Hicks, also cool. Then I saw that my college roomate, Jasen Lex was one of the hosts of said podcast. Sold! Note: listen to the podcast, it’s quite good.

So, back to Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong. Having first heard of it on Monday, I went over to check it out and managed to blow through all of the 220-ish pages in one sitting. It’s that good. The art is fantastic and unique. The characters are funny and the story is just enjoyable.

What I want you to do is go over there and give it a try. I bet you’ll be hooked too. Then, go ahead and pre-order Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong. My only regret is I can’t read the entire thing RIGHT NOW.

Long Lost Stories

Long Lost Stories

This is gonna be really meta, but I promise I’ll bring it back around.

So I still have my old site, strugglingwriter.wordpress.com, which still maddeningly garners 60 to 100 pageviews a day (sorry, I said I was gonna get meta). I say maddeningly because this is the site I’m most focused on right now, and I get 10 pageviews here on a good day.

Anyway, I saw a huge spike yesterday and today on the old site and after investigation I discovered that a post I had written in 2006(!) had been linked on a tumblr post about writing help. The somewhat odd part was that the post of mine that was linked, Plot Help, was actually me asking for help with my plot, not me offering any kind of writing tips.

Now, I went back and read that post. There’s not really anything exciting about it on the surface and in fact it’s kind’ve blah. However, there is this:

I am at a point in my novel that is key to the whole plot of the work. If I screw this up, there is no going back. 48,000 words will be wasted.

My plot involves a 23 something guy who visits his parents looking for one of his favorite books of his childhood. He doesn’t find the one he is looking for, but does find one that looks interesting that he didn’t remember. As he opens the front cover he sees something written inside. It is a note to himself he wrote when he was eight years old urging him to do or remember something.

Well, I’m sorry to say that the novel did fail. I have almost no recollection of it at all, other than I think that’s the one I wrote in a Moleskine notebook. Sure enough, that is the one. I even have a post where I say I’ve given up on the story and another where I’ve posted pictures of my handwriting.

What gets me most, other than I have a LOT of content over on the old blog, is how foreign all of that stuff feels to me. It’s like it was written by another person. Bizarre.

I wonder where that notebook and story are? I’m hoping, but not positive, that they are still in my nightstand where I left them. I really hope they are, actually. That is my homework to myself today. To find that notebook and see what it contains.

The Things They Say

The Things They Say

I was just cleaning out my wallet because it’s gotten to that point where it is so full of stuff it’s unable to close. And no, the “stuff” in my wallet is surely not money.

It’s mostly notes to myself, lost and forgotten story ideas, or lost and forgotten receipts. However, in all of that stuff was something awesome. It was a quote of something my daughter (now six and a half) said when she had just turned four. Amazingly, I actually had the forethought to write the date at the top. I share with you now what I had written on said lost note, because it is funny, and also because it needs to be saved somewhere.

I hope there’s a lot of boys in college because I want to get married and have some babies.”

Ah yes. That’s my girl. I would like to state for the record that I hope there are lots of boys for her to meet in college and that none of them break her heart. Now about that babies part…

Things That Should Have Existed: Heat Vision and Jack

Things That Should Have Existed: Heat Vision and Jack

I’m possibly late to the party, but I still had to post about this because it is too awesome not to. So, this was a real television pilot proposed in 1999 and turned down by Fox (another reason other than the cancellation of Firefly to hate Fox).

Just look at this description:

The on-the-run adventures of astronaut Jack Black who gets superpowers after a space accident, and fights crime with the talking motorcycle named Heatvision (voiced by Owen Wilson), powered by the mind of his unemployed roommate.streaming movie Transformers: The Last Knight 2017

Tell me that was not written by the gods of comedy themselves.

Just read these character descriptions (via wikipedia):

  • Jack Austin, a former astronaut. He was exposed to inappropriate levels of solar energy, giving him superintelligence. He appears to lose this intelligence at night, requiring only Earth-normal levels of daylight to reactivate it. His catchphrases are “I know EVERYTHING!” and “Knowledge is power… for real.” Played by Jack Black.
  • Heat Vision, a talking motorcycle. He was created when Jack’s unemployed roommate Doug was shot by a ray, causing him to merge with his motorcycle. He is capable of speech and can fight by ramming into opponents. He is unable to use doorknobs and is unable to right himself if pushed over. Voiced by Owen Wilson.
  • Ron Silver, the main villain. He works for NASA, and will stop at nothing to capture or kill Jack Austin, but he also dabbles in acting, perhaps as a diversion, perhaps as a cover. He appears to be invulnerable, shrugging off the threat of being shot and later displaying great annoyance but no injury or pain when he actually is shot. Played by himself.
  • An unnamed sheriff, played by guest star Christine Taylor. Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor, now husband and wife, met on the set ofHeat Vision and Jack.
  • A cook named Frank, who becomes possessed by an alien broadcast and thereafter calls himself Paragon. Played by Vincent Schiavelli.

Lucky for us that although this gem never saw the light of day, the pilot survives thanks to the Internet. Tell me you wouldn’t have watched the crap out of this. I dare you.