The Nightmare Before Easter

The nightmare before Easter
When Jesus was dead
The devil was sure he had won
Even Jesus’ followers probably thought the same
When the Son of God is dead what can you hope for?
but ultimate desolation

All was lost
Even so, God’s plan was in action
He was not dismayed
Only He knew what would happen on the third day
not that it was a secret
He had said he would rise from the dead
but who could believe real and full life
could still come after real and actual death?

Yet the Son rose with the sun
He is risen indeed
Now after death is defeated how could we lose hope?
How can we expect anything other
than ultimate consolation

After He came through death
After eyewitnesses saw Jesus alive after he was dead
Why wouldn’t we believe that He will come through for His people now?
but it’s been so long ago
The original eyewitnesses and their grandchildren are long dead
The world seems to sink away from the light
like in the days of Noah before the flood
Father, restore our hope that your plan for good is still in action when all seems lost

The Hound of the Clock in its Walls

One thing I’m generally pretty bad at when I’m writing stories is showing characters’ emotions. And I noticed something else tonight related to that.

I just finished watched a 1950s adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles with my mom. One thing I noticed that came through much better in the movie than in the book was the emotional reactions of characters (partly because actors overacted everything in the 50s but only partly), which made the two “bad guys” seem more suspicious from the beginning. I remember when reading the Sherlock Holmes stories, not much emotion is shown in those stories in general because of the writing style.

This reminded me of another movie I watched recently which was also based on a book I read: The House With a Clock in Its Walls. I read that book when I was a preteen and liked it, so I reread it recently. When I reread the book, I didn’t care for it as much, partly because it seemed like the boy in the story was just being really stupid. But in the movie, the boy’s emotions came through better*, so I could understand better why he wanted to prove himself and impress the other kid so badly. That aspect came through better in the movie than in the book.

(*despite the kid who played him not being a very good actor)

Then I wondered if I’m bad at interpreting the emotions of characters I read about because I have aspergers, or if it’s just because emotion is easier to show in a movie. …Or some of both. Probably some of both.

PS: My dog is grinding her teeth in her sleep as I write this. I hope the movie (with a very badly treated dog) didn’t disturb her too much…

My Interest in Scary Stories

I don’t remember her exact words, but recently my mom asked me a question roughly to the effect of “Why do you have a sudden interest in horror movies and shows?” Here’s my answer.

There’s nothing sudden about this interest. I’ve always been interested in monsters, ghosts, and other creepy aspects of stories. You may remember one of my first short stories, written when I was a preteen, was called “Monster World” and featured an evil glowing skeleton as a villain. Another of my first short stories from that time was a Ghostbusters rip off taking place in a haunted house. My very first novel written as a teen featured more gruesome monsters including a fairy child who was corrupted by evil magic and had his head ripped off and replaced with an orc’s head. I also remember a creepy scene with a pair of demon-possessed masks hanging on a wall in an abandoned house. Once I started taking my writing a little more seriously, the first novel that I completed a rewrite of was Out From the Darkness, in which evil fairies give kids nightmares and the main character goes to a goblin city where headless horsemen ride the streets each night. In fact, almost every story I write has at least some touch or trope of horror in it. What makes you think this is a new interest?

The only thing that changed recently when I started watching more horror movies was that I realized I had grown to a point where I could easily handle watching scary movies without having nightmares.

Unspeakably Awesome Indescribable Love

Ephesians 3:14-19
To comprehend, with all the saints, the length, width, height, depth, and duration of the love of Jesus
…is a tall order.
According to the riches of His glory, may He grant …that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith as you are being rooted and grounded in love.
Rooted and grounded in His love that has no end and no limit to its length, width, height, depth, or duration.
Yes Lord!

I am reminded of H.P. Lovecraft who often dwelt on the unspeakable, indescribable nature of the universe,
and the unfathomable-ness of the possibilities of unknown realities.
He, as an atheist, imagined it as fearsome and evil, but it strikes me in a completely different way
because we as Christians know the infinite universe is made by, filled with, and exceeded by, a good and loving God.
So we know the known and unknown universe is filled with the unspeakable, unfathomable, indescribable GOOD of God’s love.

So God, remind us always and again of what your amazing love is like.
Then we can encourage others with love and hope to fight and overcome the cynicism, fear, negativity, and despair thrust on us by this world.
To infinity and beyond

A Bit of My Writing History (with two morals)

I wrote my first novel starting at the age of fifteen, finishing the first draft at the age of eighteen. I showed it to a few friends. The ones who hung out with me more said it was pretty good, but the most knowledgeable one said it was terrible. He was right (the way he said it could’ve gone better, but that’s a different story). He proceeded to give me a lot of good advice about how to get better. He clearly had good intentions, but what I took from the way he gave me that advice was something like “If I want to be writer, I need to do this and this and this and this. It’s going to be a lot of hard work, and I’m probably not up to the task.” To be clear, that isn’t really what he said. That’s just what I heard.

Because of this, I thought maybe I’d write a little as a hobby, but didn’t take it seriously for a while because I didn’t think I had what it took to be a real writer. Several years later, when I started taking my writing more seriously, I started doing what he said I needed to do to get better. The primary parts of this were finding a critique group and reading the two books he told me to read: The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler and Tricks and Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight Swain. (Both are very good books, but Swain’s attitude and style was a bit annoying.)

At this point, I’ve written several novels (as first drafts) and I’ve rewritten and revised a couple of them. I have nothing published yet, but I have one novel that I consider to be ready to show publishers and another I think could be there with another layer of revising. The story I’ve been writing now is set in (almost) the same world as my very first novel. Both involve the main character going from a somewhat mundane modern setting to a fantasy world, although otherwise my new story has very little to do with my original story.

The 2 morals of this post: 1) The first draft of your first story is going to be very bad, but don’t throw it away. You may be able to either rewrite it or at least use something from it later. If nothing else, you can look at it in a few years and see how much you’ve improved since then. 2) People need both encouragement and good advice. One without the other isn’t going to be enough and could end up doing harm instead of good.

The Four Carpet People of the Pop Eclipse

The following is an excerpt from a very silly story I wrote for July NaNoWriMo over ten years ago which I felt like posting because it has something vaguely to do with the eclipse. (This is from the same story as the dreaded “Nate Cookingham.”)

Bart ate his barbeque sandwich as they stood around the twins’ car in the parking lot of Butch Cookingham’s Pork and Beef Barbeque. The sun went behind a cloud. The traffic thinned and suddenly the streets seems deserted, even the parking lot they were in was emptying out. “Something’s happening,” said Kadee.

They noticed a masked man in dark clothes prying up loose floorboard in the sidewalk. A cat chased a dog down the street. A mouse howled at the moon which had come out early and passed in front of the sun. A flock of red herrings flew over their heads. They watched as a portal from another world opened up and out of it came three four spectacular beasts. First came a black pregnant hog, second was a gorilla with hair the same color as Tim’s, and the third was a midget minotaur which was no more than five feet tall. The fourth beast was a depressed zebra.

The sun re-emerged from the clouds. Cars started coming to this part of the road again. The masked man and the loose floorboard had disappeared. Everything was back to normal except for the four beasts which were walking up to them.

They watched in awe and apprehension until the four beasts were standing in front of them. The gorilla smiled and handed them a flower. The minotaur was wearing a chef’s hat. The hog had a lit fuse for a tail, and with its solid black color it looked like a bomb. The zebra spoke in a language none of them knew.

Kadee didn’t know what the zebra said, but she recognized the language, “How did you learn the language of unicorns?”

The minotaur answered the question. He was the only one who spoke English, “He is a unicorn who’s lost his horn.”

“Looks like a zebra to me,” said Carl.

“Yup, he’s got two ears,” said Tim, “so he surely can’t be a unicorn.”

“What happened to his horn?” asked Kadee. Bart was dumbfounded by the things had just happened and couldn’t bring himself to say anything. He just stood there
holding the last few bites of his barbeque sandwich in his hand.

“Well,” said the minotaur, “Accually he never had one, but he insists that he’s a unicorn (he does know the language) and we’ve been looking for a horn to give him.”

“Hey Tim,” said Carl, “The things that Kadee called unicorns were those horseys with seashells on their heads.”

“Yeah,” Tim put two and two together, “The zebra must think it’s one of them, and I have a seashell that looks like one of those horns.” Tim got the seashell out of his backpack and gave it to the zebra. They never noticed before, but there was still a sea animal inside the shell. It bit the zebra’s nose, attaching itself to the zebra’s head. The zebra winced at first but then whinnied happily and did a little dance.

The hog, the ape, and the rather short minotaur watched the zebra receiving its unicorn horn. Then they looked at the twins and Bart and Kadee with renewed respect. The zebra spoke again in the Xafeni language. “You have done us a great service,” said the minotaur, “How can we repay you?”

“Who or what are you?” were the first words out of Bart’s mouth.

“We’re the four unofficial carpet people of the pop eclipse,” said the minotaur.

“Cool,” said Tim.

“What?” Bart wished he hadn’t asked. Kadee laughed.

“Is there any official carpet people of the pop eclipse?” asked Carl.

“Um, no,” said the minotaur chef, “We just got together about a year ago with some help of a powerful raymet named Quick Nickle, but we’re not official.”

“That’s our grampa!” said Tim.

“Quick Nickle is your grandfather?”

“yeah,” said Tim and Carl together.

“Wow, you finished the work that your grandfather started.” The gorrila made some apelike noises and waved a flower around, the hog stomped its foot, and the zebra said something more in the unicorn language. “Ah yes,” said the midget minotaur, “We have to introduce ourselves. This is Miracle Cure,” the minotaur gestured at the zebra, “The hog is called Baby Boomer.” The black hog with the fuse for a tail showed them six little piglets hanging on to her underside. “This is the Peace Ape,” the gorrila handed them another flower, “And I am the Short Chef.” The hog made a noise, and the minotaur continued, “No, not the Short Order Chef, the Short Chef.” The hog made the noise again, arguing. “I’ve been having trouble coming up with an appropriate name for myself,” the minotaur explained, “We have a counter for Pestilence, Death, and War, and I’m supposed to be the counter for Famine, but my name should also have something to do with what I look like. I started out as the Puzzled Chef because a maze is a kind of puzzle and minotaurs live in giant mazes, but they didn’t like that. But I’m even shorter than most adult humans, not to mention being short for a minotaur, so I thought of being the Short Chef, but I’m still trying to think of something better.”

“How about the Amazing Chef,” Tim suggested, “It has the word ‘maze’ in it.”

“That’s what I wanted to use first,” said the minotaur, “But there’s a show on the cooking channel called ‘The Amazing Chef,’ and I didn’t want to copy it.”

“You should be The Amazing Feast Beast,” said Carl.

“The Amazing Feast Beast,” the Minotaur thought it over, ”I like it. Again our thanks, how can we repay you?”

“Help us find the man who killed our Grampa Quick and stole his second place trophy,” said Tim.

“Someone killed Quick Nickle?” asked the Minotaur. The hog made an angry noise. The zebra unicorn snorted and reared up, pointing its seashell horn. The gorilla wasn’t paying attention, it was busy tying a flower into Kadee’s hair. “We must find him and teach him not to steal and kill people,” said the minotaur, “..and make dinner for him too.”

Bart braced himself for another bizzare answer, but he was too curious not to ask, “Why do you call yourselves carpet people?”

“If you ride horses you’re called horsemen,” said the Minotaur, “So since we ride flying carpets, we must be carpet people.” Each of the four beasts got out a persian-looking flying carpet.

Bart hid his head in his hands and started to cry because he felt that his brain had finally turned into marmalade jam. They weren’t in a fairyland anymore. These things couldn’t possibly happen in his country. He closed his eyes and convinced himself that when he opened his eyes there would be no four carpet people of the pop eclipse. He took a deep breath and opened up his eyes, and there were the black hog, the flower-waving gorilla, the zebra with a seashell horn, and the vertically challenged minotaur. Bart hid his face again.

“What’s wrong?” asked Kadee.

Bart upper body shook with his sobbing. The gorilla tapped him on the shoulder. When Bart looked up, it smiled and gave him a flower. It didn’t help. Bart sobbed into his hands again.

“I think he needs a nap,” said Carl.

“We can’t take him home,” said Tim, “We have work to do.”

“Let’s take a short break,” said Kadee. She started singing in the mysterious magical language fairies use for healing songs. Simply translated, the words meant, ‘Don’t panic, you’re not going crazy, ..really you aren’t.’

Gradually, Bart’s crying stopped. Now, when he looked up, it wasn’t so bad to see the four presumptuous beasts there, as long as he knew that he didn’t have meatballs in his noodle.

“Come on, Bart,” said Tim, “We’re going to ride over the town on their flying carpets and look for Mr Cookingham.”

“He can’t be too far,” said Carl, “If it was him that gave us the bag with the chickens and it probably was.”

So each of them shared a flying carpet with one of the four carpet people of the pop eclipse. Kadee was with the unicorn zebra, Tim with the minotaur cook, Carl with the Peace Ape, and Bart ended up with the big black pregnant hog.

They flew around the area of Johnny Appleseed’s Fruit Shop, which was Mr Cookingham’s last known location, looking for their villian. As the flew, they saw two high school boys fighting. The Peace Ape flew down on his magic carpet, stopped their fighting and gave them each a flower. Soon afterwords, they saw a homeless man with a sign saying he was hungry, so the Amazing Feast Beast flew down and gave the man a twenty dollar gift certificate to each of five different nearby resturants. When the minotaur had took to the air again, Bart asked, “Aren’t you supposed to cook him some food?”

The minotaur snorted, “Sure when I can, but I can’t take my kitchen with me everywhere.”

They saw a sick woman who had been having to blow her nose about every two minutes. The Miracle Cure zebra flew down and somehow cured her, touching the seashell on its head to the woman’s face. Bart thought Quick Nickle must have given that power to the zebra, but he didn’t know how the seashell could have had anything to do with it.

Bart looked down at the hog he was sharing the carpet with and wondered what it could do. “The gorilla can try to stop fights, the zebra-“

“Striped unicorn,” corrected the minotaur.

“..the striped unicorn then,” Bart continued, “can heal sickness, and you can give people food (or a means to buy food), but what can this hog do? I mean, if you’re trying to counter the four horsemen, shouldn’t the counter to Death be able to bring people back to life or something?”

“Well,” said the Amazing Feast Beast, “The counter to Death itself is a tough one. We can’t bring people back to life, not even a raymet can do that, so obviously Quick Nickle couldn’t give us that power. And feeding people, stopping fights, and curing sicknesses is already saving lives. So we had to think of an alternative for the counter to Death to do, and, you see, some things have more than one opposite. When you think of the opposite to death, the first thing you think of is life, but birth can also be an opposite of death. So the specialty of our counter to death is giving birth.”

The hog suddenly made a booming sound like a bomb had gone off. The carpet shook and Bart had to grab hold of the Baby Booming hog to keep from falling off. It started making excited noises and it momentarily turned on its side to show that it now had seven little piglets when before there were six.

The Feeling of a Story

Recently, I filled out a little questionnaire for authors. The one question I remember was “What do you consider to be the most important part of a story?” It was a multiple choice questionnaire, and the choices were “plot”, “characters”, “setting”, and “theme” (if I remember correctly), with an option for “other _____”. I had to choose “other”. Without doubt I consider the most important thing about a story to be the feelings it gives to the reader.

The last two books I read left me wanting something more. The two books were about as different as two novels can be, but both of them seemed lacking in the area of making me feel like I’m in the story. One was called Chronicles of Krystonia. It’s a light children’s book about a fantasy world, but it hardly had any plot. It’s seemed like the author just wanted to do an exercise in world building using a series of anecdotes about his fantasy setting, but without much of a story at all. I didn’t actually finish it and I’m not sure if I’m going to bother finishing it. It had an utter lack of making me care, which is pretty much the worst thing you can say about a book.
The other book I read recently was Dickens’ Great Expectations, and as classic literature, my expectations were a bit higher for this one. I thought it was good, but not great. I cared about the characters, but it didn’t give me what I like in a book. The feeling of it, as with most of Dickens’ work, was rather dreary. It had interesting characters and a decent plot, and the ending was good and satisfying enough, but it never really drew me in to the story.

So I started a new book today. Maybe it has something to do with the last two books leaving me hungry for something better, but I’m loving this one so far. I love the kind of the writing that makes me feel like I’m there with the characters and gives me a feeling of haunting and wonder, making it hard to put down or sleep until at least an hour after it’s finished. And that’s what this book does. (Well, I can’t be sure about the latter part because I’m only on chapter six, but judging from what I’ve read so far I wouldn’t expect anything less.) It’s called The Forbidden Library by Django Wexler. I had never heard of it until I picked it up while browsing at my local library the other day, thinking it looked interesting. (I love libraries.) I’m glad I found it.

The Key of Dirt (part 2)

don’t listen to it
all my fear, fury, and pain made audible
yes, you’ll want to cover your ears
You don’t want to hear this
it’ll be reddish brown soundvenom
that enters through your eardrums
and oozes inside your head
and if you let it, you may get a taste of what I feel
listen closely enough to all that drives me
you might just recognise something deeper
it’s something I’ve denied
something I think you share
it’s hope that the impossible might yet happen
That the dead might yet live.

(This poem is written by Alisha Kamil’s subconcious. Alisha is the main character of The Sacred Key. She has a violin and she knows how to use it.)

Soundtrack to this post:

Zooming Out / A Path to Many Worlds (another dream)

Every once in awhile I have a flying dream. I had on this morning, but this was not like other flying dreams.
In this dream, I flew through the roof and I flew higher up. As I flew higher, it was like zooming out on my view of the world, and I began to see structures that were too large to have possibly been build by any human. As I flew higher still I noticed that these structures were objects and buildings and highways for a race of giants. Finally, I saw one of the giants. In our measurements, he must have been something like ten miles tall, but in the scale of the building I saw around me now, he appeared to be the average size of a man. I was the one who was the size of a gnat to him.

I flew around the giant town and saw the signs of businesses I recognised, including a McDonalds, and I saw some which had closed down in our world over ten years ago (I don’t remember the names of them now).

I went back and told people what I saw. Of course, no one believed me, but some were willing to come and see for themselves. So somehow I put some people a clear plastic box and carried them up when I flew. This time, when I flew to a certain height, I seemed to hit a roof, but then I saw a line of daylight getting bigger so I flew toward it. Once outside, I realized that my town was inside of a giant’s garage. And I flew around and showed the people the giants and how we were the size of tiny bugs here.

Then in the evening, I decided to fly still further out. Like zooming out on the view again, the giant town seemed to grow smaller and I noticed another line of brighter light on the horizon. I flew toward it and higher again, coming out of another giant garage. And I saw another level of giant buildings, so that the other giants would seem like gnats in this place. Soon, I saw yet another line of brighter light on the horizon, and found a place which they called Avalon, a path to many worlds and each world opened up into the next.

What Were They Laughing At? (The Dream I Had This Morning 7/30)

My family was on a road trip and stopped at a travel center for lunch. There, we got sub sandwiches, and, while we were eating, we heard several people, including my dad, comment about a certain special map. Some local artist had done an artistic map of the area, which the public could look at using a public computer at the travel center. So, I went to the computer to look for this artistic map, but while I was on the computer, I got distracted by other things to do on it, and never got around to looking at the map.

In the next part of the dream, we were still eating our sandwiches in another part of that travel center, when the people around us started loudly acting out some kind of weird story which seemed to be in the genre of comedy-horror. We went to yet another part of the travel center to escape this, but it seemed that everyone there was taking part in this act. There were definitely some amusing and funny parts to the things the people were doing and saying, but my parents were getting very annoyed because the act was loud and going on all around us, so my dad got on his phone to complain to someone about it. In a few minutes a lady arrived to speak with my parents about the complaint. The lady said something to the effect of, “I’ll regester your complaint with the authorities, but first let me show you this short informational film…” The film was shown as from a projector on a wall next to us, and told about the reason for the act. This day was apparently the anniversary of certain events in that town which people remember by putting on this loud and hilarious act. The film showed a picture of a older man, then showed a picture of three children, saying the man was convicted X number of years ago for _____ -at that point the audio on the film stopped, and I only assumed that the man had killed these three children, but judging from comments from the people around us, the criminal soon came to his just end in some very humorous way. So from that point on, people put on this act to basically make fun of this horrible criminal. I remember some people had doubled over laughing from the act that other people were putting on, but my parents were not amused, so we finally left that travel center.