WHERE DO WE GET OUR IDEAS?

Legend says Keith Richards, lead guitarist and co-founder of the Rolling Stones, woke in the early hours of May 7, 1965, turned on a tape recorder and laid down a riff. He dozed off, and when he woke some time later, hit playback and heard about 30 seconds of music followed by 45 minutes of snoring. He’d played the riff while half asleep, on an acoustic guitar, at a slow speed. Mick Jagger said it sounded like country music and not something the Stones would play. Keith refused to give up and continued playing with the riff. By May 10, 1965, that half-minute riff was on its way to becoming the Stones’ greatest hit: (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.

 

Did Keith dream the riff? Did some rock and roll angel (or alien) implant it in his brain while he slept? Who knows?

 

That’s how it happens with writers, too. JJ and I would be driving to the grocery store and one of us would say, “Hey, I just had an idea. What if…” And then ideas started bouncing all over the car.

 

When back-to-school supplies were on sale, we’d stock up on spiral notebooks. There are now notebooks all over the house with parts of scenes, lists of ideas, names for characters… I keep a small notebook in my purse so I can jot ideas that come to me when I’m doing errands. Stop at a red light and make a note. Get to a supermarket parking lot and make a note. Sometimes I spend more time sitting in the parking lot writing ideas than I do shopping. The other day I sat in the bank and wrote a full page.

 

A piece of music can inspire a scene. A cut from the soundtrack from the video game  Mass Effect 3 inspired the scene where Foster… Oops, no spoilers! JJ typed with her headphones on, listening to music on You Tube. The group Two Steps from Hell (particularly Archangel) became major inspiration for both of us. Song lyrics can also inspire a scene or a character’s motivation. The line “Like a rollin' thunder chasing the wind” from the song Lightning Crashes inspired a description of a thunderstorm in book 4.

 

TV shows or movies inspire. Some shows are incredibly formulaic and predictable. You know exactly what’s going to happen, and hope the writers took the story in another direction. They didn’t. So you begin to think, “What would have happened if the character chose path B instead of path A…” Another great idea.

 

One of my grade school teachers posted a picture on the wall or played a piece of classical music, and we were to write whatever it inspired. We were graded on spelling, grammar and punctuation rather than subject, and it was fun. A black and white photo hanging in our living room inspired a scene of a foggy night with pools of light at the base of street lamps and an old fashioned car on the road. A Michael Parkes print in my bedroom inspired the beginning of a story about gargoyles.

 

So to tell you where we get our ideas, I have a simple answer: I don’t know.

 

Sometimes we do get some satisfaction.

WHERE DID SWAGGER VASA ORIGINATE?

By now three books in Swagger Vasa Chronicles have been published and are available on Amazon.com. Book four should be out in 2015, and book five is well on its way.

But let’s backtrack. Who is Swagger Vasa, and how does he merit a five book (at least) series?

If I said “Star Wars”, you’d scratch your head and say, “Uh, so which episode was he in?”

Swagger wasn’t actually in Star Wars, but was born in a series of fan fiction stories JJ wrote. Like a lot of writers, JJ was exercising her writing muscles by sharing fan fiction on the internet. She and a friend were writing a Star Wars themed series based on the video game Knights of the Old Republic, also known as KotOR.

JJ created an original character—an assassin named Swagger Vasa (whose last name was inspired by a brand of bottled water), who gathered quite a fan base. The character’s name was based on the swaggering walk of the Apprentice in another Star Wars based video game: The Force Unleashed.

JJ switched gears after her collaborator moved on to other things, and Swagger moved into another series based on KotOR. This series featured a clueless Jedi named Cal, who took everything literally, and the droid HK-47 that had a disdain for “meatbags” (humans) and a wicked sense of humor. Bounty Hunter/assassin Swagger had been hired to track Cal down, and their encounters were quite entertaining.  

Here’s an edited sample of Swagger and Cal:

“There’s a huge reward on your head, Cal, and I aim to collect.”

“Last time I paid you more than my bounty and you let me go.” Cal hoped the bounty hunter remembered.

Swagger arched a brow. “If you can pay me that much, sure. I haven’t made it official yet since you just walked into my space.”

“Wouldn’t you prefer Facebook or Twitter?”

Cal was the main character, but readers encouraged JJ to take Swagger mainstream. I joined their ranks after reading her fanfic, but she demurred, saying it was a daunting undertaking and she didn’t think she could handle it on her own. After a bit, however, she asked if I would collaborate, as we had done on several Miami Vice fan fiction projects. I told her I’d give it some thought, and as I had some vacation time coming, I’d take a few days off to read what she’d written so far and discuss storylines.

Long story short – her first chapter was so daunting that I wasn’t sure I could match her research and intensity. Then my job went away, and I realized I had enough time on my hands to help out. We were off and running.

I was a bit intimidated by Swagger, who changed somewhat from JJ’s original fanfic character, but I soon got a handle on him. Then we started adding more original characters.

But that’s another story…

I'M BAAAACK!

Couldn't just end the blog. There's so much more to talk about!

This will be about writing, and that means writing anything. Three installments of Swagger Vasa Chronicles are available on Amazon as ebooks. The first, A Sirius Condition, is also out in paperback. I'm currently formatting books two and three into paperback.

I'll be doing this alone because, as many of you know, co-author (and my partner of 25 years), Julie Jones, "JJ", passed away on September 18, 2014. My promise to her was that I'd finish the series, and I'm working hard on doing just that.

I thought it fitting that I resurrect The Write Vision with the blog JJ started but never got a chance to finish.

The Birth of Swagger Vasa

Okay, so I always thought having a blog might be pretentious, but that was before I came to the realization I actually have something to say. I am an artist and writer. I have seen my dream of publishing my first book come true. It came about by an insidious means. I started out writing fan fiction on fanfiction.net. I chose Star Wars, to me the most fearsome media, because Star Wars fans are sticklers for details. Frankly, the tech frightened me and then I started reading other stories and I found out a good story embodies a good story with characters the reader cares about and you can have all the technology and battles with lightsabers and blasters you want and it still doesn’t net you reviews. I was lucky and honored to receive positive reviews.

I created an original character called Swagger Vasa—actually a pretty nasty individual, a bounty hunter that took the heads of his prey and had no friends other than one called Kit Flynn. I found reviews coming my way that begged me to have more stories about Swagger and I obliged until I had a cult following—small, but avid. And then, when it looked like Swagger had seen his day because I just could not think of any more stories to write for Star Wars that could include him, people gave me the idea of taking him mainstream. Thus, by a stroke of fate, Swagger Vasa was born.

I now can proudly say Swagger Vase Chronicles - Book One - A Sirius Condition, co-written by Karen Howard who is my roommate and BFF, has been published on amazon.com kindle. How many will there be? Well, we have enough material right now for books two and three, which we are in the process of doing final edits, and book four, which is already close to one hundred pages. EIGHT?! Possible. Probable.

The process of changing Swagger to mainstream, changing his world from Star Wars to another from our own imaginations and creating a whole crew, background and twisting, convoluted plots, has been the biggest challenge, but I think we have succeeded. Amazon.com is featuring the first five chapters for free so I urge anybody reading this to take a peek.

 

And this is it for my first posting. In my next, I will discuss how the art for the covers changed as well as the character and my other fan fiction endeavors.

WHEN DOES CRITIQUE BECOME BULLYING?

This article is the result of a conversation with friends who submit original artwork or fan fiction to various websites.  Comments on their work have ranged from, “Wow, this is great!” to “Your drawing of (actor) was good, but you didn’t get the mouth quite right” or “Your story was excellent, but you need to work on your grammar.”

But recently the bullies arrived.

In the last couple of days I’ve read some foul and scathing “reviews”.  One artist was accused of being a thief—stealing another artist’s work (which I know for a fact is untrue)—and at least one writer was told “Your story sucks.”  Critique is one thing, but these “opinions” were downright cruel.  The language used belongs in a back alley, not on a website where people share creativity. 

I believe “those who can’t pick on those who can”, so I imagine these critics are probably jealous.  That, however, is no excuse for cruelty.  I see the reactions of the artists and writers—I hear their sobs and see their tears and listen as they say, “I’m a failure. I should just quit.” 

The dictionary defines criticism as “the act of criticizing, usually unfavorably” whereas critique is defined as “the art of evaluating or analyzing works of art or literature.”  One is mean, the other constructive and helpful.

Reviews in Psychic-Magic are expected to state why the reviewer liked (or didn’t like) the book, deck or CD.  Reviewers are expected to be respectful and professional. 

This blog is simply a vent; I felt the need to get some things off my chest because friends have been hurt.

 

KEYSER SÖZE & HARRY ANGEL

Now there’s an unlikely pair.  But if you think about it, both are involved in convoluted plots that keep us riveted. Kudos to the writers.  These plots have lessons to be learned by those of us striving to be great writers.

Keyser Söze is a character in the film Usual Suspects, written by Christopher McQuarrie and directed by Bryan Singer.  In 2003, Keyser Söze was listed as villain #48 on the American Film Institute's "AFI's 100 years...100 Heroes and Villains".  For the curious, villains 1-5 were Hannibal Lecter, Norman Bates, Darth Vader, the Wicked Witch of the West and Nurse Ratched.  Somehow I don’t think they’re all on a par with Söze. 

When asked about Söze, Verbal Kint (excellently played by Kevin Spacey) says:  “Nobody ever saw him or knew anybody that ever worked directly for him, but to hear Kobayashi tell it, anybody could have worked for Söze.  You never knew.  That was his power.  The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.  And like that, poof.  He's gone.”

Harry Angel is a private detective in William Hjortsberg's novella Falling Angel, later made into the movie Angel Heart starring Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro, and Lisa Bonet.  Yep, that was the role that got Lisa kicked off The Cosby Show.  Angel Heart hit theaters in 1987, but when I watch it today, I still find symbolism I’ve missed.  Can you do that in a book?  Yes.  Although Falling Angel is a compelling book, the movie takes the plot and goes farther, deeper.

The plot centers around private detective Harry Angel who is hired by a mysterious client to find a pre-World War II crooner named Johnny Favorite.  In the book Angel's search for Johnny Favorite takes him to seedy of locales in mid 1950s New York.  In the film Angel follows the trail to New Orleans, where we aren’t surprised to find witchcraft, voodoo, and unspeakable rituals.  So much symbolism!  You can spend days reading about it on the internet.  Rotating fans appear in virtually every room Harry enters.  We see one going forward, slowing, stopping, going backward.  Time stopping and then reversing?  A hint that something evil has been (or will be) done?  Rumor has it, the fans represent one never shown scene where a character is killed by decapitation by an industrial fan. 

Even minor characters in both films had great depth, something that’s missing in many books, movies and TV shows.

Angel Heart’s Louis Cyphre has some of the most breathtaking lines:   

“Alas... how terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise, Johnny?”

“They say there's enough religion in the world to make men hate each other, but not enough to make them love.”

“No matter how cleverly you sneak up on a mirror, your reflection always looks you straight in the eye.”

“You know, some religions think that the egg is the symbol of the soul, did you know that?”

So as we write our great masterpieces, it behooves us to really get into our characters.  Make the most of them.  Like Louis Cyphre and Keyser Söze, let them frolic on the page.  Let them “stir the pot” and take the plot down paths most characters are afraid to travel. 

SAMPLE CHAPTER FROM SWAGGER VASA CHRONICLES

The process began when they removed his gloves and he was manacled to a steel wall.  The freezing metal bit his flesh.  His skin temperature dropped.

Within a few seconds, the palms of his hands were a chilly, painful 60°.  Instinctively, the web of surface capillaries on his hands constricted, sending blood coursing away from his skin and deeper into his torso.  His body was allowing his fingers to chill in order to keep his vital organs warm.  His fingers numbed slightly.

Human adaptations to cold are mysterious.  They brought in a treadmill and he was handcuffed to the bar and the setting was pushed to a high level.  His body temperature rose as he jogged on the treadmill.  Blood started seeping back into his fingers.  Sweat trickled down his sternum and spine.  He felt the bite of the minus 30° air on his face.  The monitors showed his core temperature was 100.8°.  And then they came in with their enviro-suits and their helmets on and took him off the treadmill and chained him to the wall again.  The frigid air pressed against his tired body and sweat-soaked clothing.  The exertion they had put him through was now working against him.  His dilated capillaries carried the excess heat of his core to his skin and his wet clothing dispelled it rapidly into the glacial wall behind him.

The lack of insulating fat over his toned muscles allowed the cold to steal that much closer to his warm blood.  Within a few minutes his temperature plummeted to the normal 98.6° and then slipped lower.  At 97° his neck and shoulders tightened into the pre-shiver muscle tone.  Sensors within the brain signaled the temperature control center.  The entire web of surface capillaries constricted.  His hands and feet ached with cold and he tried to ignore the pain.

Forty-five minutes passed—at 95° he was entering the zone of mild hypothermia.  His body trembled violently as his muscles contracted rapidly to generate additional body heat.

They returned and doused him with a fire hose until he was soaked.  He screamed obscenities at them, but they did not acknowledge him other than to glance briefly at the monitors on the wall.  He sank back against the wall, his heat draining away at an alarming rate.

Why were they doing this?  Who were they?  But his mind could not concentrate.  The cold rendered the enzymes in his brain less efficient.  With every one-degree drop below 95, his cerebral metabolic rate was falling.  A stray thought told him he should start being scared, but fear was a concept that floated beyond his immediate grasp.  Apathy at 91°; stupor at 90°.

He had now crossed the barrier into profound hypothermia.  His core temperature was 88° and his blood was thickening like oil in a cold engine.  His oxygen consumption was down by a quarter.  At 87°, if a familiar face had suddenly appeared in front of him, he would not have recognized it.

At 86° his heart was pumping less than two-thirds the normal amount of blood.  The lack of oxygen and the slowed metabolism of his brain triggered visual and auditory hallucinations.

He saw a room with a fireplace and heard the crackling sound of the flames.  The chains fell from his wrists as he struggled to put one foot in front of the other.  Hours later, or maybe just minutes, he had still not reached the warmth he craved.  Exhausted, he stopped moving, deciding to rest for a moment.  When he lifted his head, he was there, lying on the floor in front of the fireplace.  The fire threw off a red glow.  First it was warm, then it was hot, and then it was searing his flesh.  His clothing was on fire!

With a body temperature of 85°, in a strange, anguished paroxysm, people freezing to death will often rip off their clothes.  This phenomenon, known as paradoxical undressing, is common enough that urban hypothermia victims are sometimes initially diagnosed as victims of sexual assault.  Though researchers are uncertain of the cause, the most logical explanation is that shortly before loss of consciousness the constricted blood vessels near the body's surface suddenly dilate and produce a sensation of extreme heat against the skin.

All he knew was that he was burning, and he clawed off his hoody and T-shirt and flung them away.

But then, in a final moment of clarity, he realized there was no fireplace, no room, nothing.  He was still manacled and alone in the bitter cold, naked from the waist up.  His discarded clothing had not come all the way off because of the chains.  He tried, but could not find the strength to pull them back on.

At 0600 the next day, the men in the suits found him huddled in a fetal position on the floor, his gloveless hands shoved into his armpits.  The flesh of his limbs was waxy and stiff as old putty, his pulse nonexistent, his pupils unresponsive to light.  Dead.

But those who understand cold and know that, even as it deadens, it offers perverse salvation.  Heat is a presence:  the rapid vibrating of molecules.  Cold is an absence:  the damping of the vibrations.  At absolute zero—minus 459.67° Fahrenheit—molecular motion ceases altogether.  It is this slowing that converts gases to liquids, liquids to solids, and renders solids harder.  It slows bacterial growth and chemical reactions.  In the human body, cold shuts down metabolism.  The lungs take in less oxygen, the heart pumps less blood.  Under normal temperatures, this would produce brain damage.  But the chilled brain, having slowed its own metabolism, needs far less oxygen-rich blood and can, under the right circumstances, survive intact.

Setting her ear to his chest, one of his rescuers listened intently.  Seconds passed.  Then, faintly, she heard a tiny sound—a single thump—so slight that it might have been the sound of her own blood.  She pressed her ear harder to the cold flesh.  Another faint thump, then another.

They carried him into the adjoining room.  With a “one, two, three”, the doctor and nurses slid the man’s stiff, curled form onto a table fitted with a mattress filled with warm water.  They knew they had a profound hypothermia case.  Usually such victims could be straightened from their tortured fetal positions.  This one could not.

Technicians scissored the man’s clothes off with stainless steel shears.  They attached heart monitor electrodes to his chest and inserted a rectal thermometer that flashed digital readings:  24 beats per minute and a core temperature of 79.2°.

The doctor shook his head.  “I can’t remember seeing numbers so low.  They kept him in there too long.  I’m not sure how to revive this man without killing him.”  He was aware many hypothermia victims died in “rewarming shock.”  The doctor looked down at the man, compassion in his eyes.  “Strap him down.  The slightest movement can send his heart into ventricular fibrillation.”

“Why is that, Doctor?”  The voice was young, female.  She was new to his team.

The doctor had worked at a teaching hospital and obliged her with a little more knowledge.  “The constricted capillaries reopen almost at once and cause a sudden drop in blood pressure.”

“78.9,” a technician called out.  “That’s three-tenths down.”

The doctor rapidly issued orders to his staff.  “Intravenous warm saline.  Heat the bag in the microwave to 110°.  Just to raise his temperature one degree means we need 60 kilocalories of heat.”  Before she could ask, he supplied the new nurse with the answer, “A KC is the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of one liter of water one degree Celsius.”

“Even with the warm saline, that’ll only raise it 30°, Doctor,” one of the technicians said.

“I know.”  The doctor fought down a surge of irritation.  “That’s why we have the cardio-pulmonary bypass machine.  We’ll pump out his blood, rewarm and oxygenate it, and pump it back in.  That’ll raise his core temperature by one degree every three minutes.”

Moments later the patient’s stiff limbs began to relax and his pulse edged up, but the doctor watched the jagged pattern of his heartbeat on the EKG machine and shook his head.

“He’s got a J line.  Be ready to defibrillate.”

Over the next hour nurses and EMTs hovered around the edges of the table where the patient lay, centered in a warm pool of light, as if offered up to the sun god.  They checked his heart.  They checked the heat of the mattress beneath him.  They whispered to one another about things they were never supposed to discuss.  They were being monitored and they would be reprimanded severely by the facility head of operations if they were overheard.

Slowly, the patient began to respond.  Another liter of saline was added to the IV.  The man's blood pressure remained far too low, brought down by the blood flowing out to the fast-opening capillaries of his limbs.  Fluid lost through perspiration and urination had reduced his blood volume, but every 15 or 20 minutes, his temperature rose another degree.  The immediate danger of cardiac fibrillation lessened as the heart and thinning blood warmed.  Frostbite could still cost him fingers, toes or an earlobe, but he appeared to have beaten back the worst of the frigidity.

For the next half hour, an EMT quietly called the readouts of the thermometer, a mantra that marked the progress of this cold-blooded proto-organism toward a state of warmer, higher consciousness.

“90.4...  92.2...”

E-book currently available on amazon.com.  If you like, I can post other samples.

ANIMAL MESSAGES

When animals come to us in weird ways—either acting strangely or perhaps an animal out of place (like the python outside our sliding glass doors)—there’s a message in it. Time to look up that animal and see what message it might have for us.

My job went away in April 2009 and by December 2010 my collaborator and I had written the first draft of three Swagger Vasa books. We edited book one, A Sirius Condition, copyrighted it, and were getting ready to publish it when I suddenly got “cautious”. I found every excuse not to publish. To say I was dragging my feet is putting it mildly.

And then the turtles appeared. We live in an area that has rivers, canals, and woods, as well as Florida’s Turnpike and I-95. I was driving down a quiet street one afternoon when I spotted a huge turtle on the side of the road. The big guy was really moving! I didn’t think a turtle could move that fast.

“Message!” I decided, and looked up turtle symbology. One book on Native American animals told me turtle is the symbol for strength, fertility and perseverance. Okay, I had my meaning.

But a few days later, another turtle showed up. This one was every bit as big as the first, and moving equally fast. It was in a completely different neighborhood, so I doubt it was the same turtle.

“Oops! Didn’t get the message!” When I got home, I checked the internet for “turtle symbology”. This time I was told that turtle carries the world on its back. That’s a lot of weight and responsibility. Maybe I was carrying the cares of my tarot clients and needed to leave them behind. Okay, message received.

But the turtles kept appearing, and it was obvious I wasn’t getting the message. It was frustrating. Then one day I passed a church and read the message board: “Take a lesson from the turtle: You won’t get anywhere if you don’t stick your neck out.”

Wow. That hit me right between the eyes. Here I was, procrastinating about publishing the first Swagger Vasa book, and turtle was telling me it was time to stick my neck out. Lesson learned. Book one of Swagger Vasa Chronicles is now available on amazon.com. And we’re hard at work editing books two and three.

So if an animal attracts your attention, look for the message.