Novel Idea: The Boy who Grew Up on the Moon

A boy of three has been abandoned on a moon of a distant gas giant. The moon is human inhabitable, self-sustaining with strange flora and fauna. He grows up here and learns about the nature of the universe and his place within it. He has faint memories of Ma, the larger being who once took care of him. He remembers a clean place. In his old age, Ma returns. She is still the same age as when he last saw her. As the story ends, she weeps in his arms as he consoles her.

Although the story does not spell it out directly, what has actually happened is that a disaster occurred when an scientific expedition was exploring the moon, and the son of a researcher was left behind in the tumult. The spacecraft escaped, but travelled through a worm hole which took them light years away in an instant. They immediately returned for the boy upon discovering he had been left behind, but since time moved much slower for the spacecraft travelling at light speed, an entire lifetime has passed on the moon, in which the boy has grown into an elderly man. When the mother returns she is the same age as when she left but her son has aged 75 years.

Ma was young, and naïve, but beautiful to behold. She was one of his kind, his mother, and he felt a bond between them like a vine. He could not explain why she had not aged while he had grown into an old man. It was mysterious, but that did not trouble him. There were mysteries in this life one could never know. By this time in his life he understood that she was not the Ma of All Things, as he had once believed. No, she was only his Ma, much like the relationship that had existed between Bruha and Gardi. Yet as he knew, the smallest thing contains the largest, and the other way too, therefore one day he would know the Ma of All Things. It followed. Suddenly he felt an overwhelming compassion for Ma as she wept against his shoulder. He could see in her eyes that she had much to learn about the world. He wept too. In that instant he felt so grateful for his life, for the wisdom and understanding it had given him. And he felt sorrow for Ma and the others of his kind. He felt sorrow that they would live their whole lives and never think about the things he had thought, or feel the things he had felt, or know the things he had known.

Kills and then feels pity for the suffering of his kill. Journeys to the mountain, to reach the planet above, where he believes Ma lives, but realizes there is a limit to human endeavor. Walks around the moon (takes 7 years) and eventually comes back to the place he started. Is lonely among the animals, wants someone to share the ideas and feelings with, but can find no one. They seem unmoved by the suffering of others. Creates a code (the Way) to live by then realizes the sorrow that can come from living by a code. Destroys the clay tablet he had written his code upon. Meets a strange chameleon-like creature that changes form, at first he thinks he has met another of his kind. A famine comes and he sacrifices himself for the other creatures of the valley. Soon they want nothing more to do with him, so he goes to live in the crater plains, near the place where Ma left him. His whole life he has resented Ma, who he feels abandoned him. The anger eats him up. When she returns, she says, "Forgive me," and although he does not understand her words he consoles her and we know she is forgiven.

"That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust. Be ye therefore perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect." - Jesus explains God by using an example from the natural world.

Incorporate frog dream.

Form minimal, sparse, short. Think Camus Stranger crossed with Out of the Silent Planet.

Novel: The Wisteria Hotel and Bar on 23rd Avenue

Story: Told in three parts, each one a first-person account from a different character. This is a novelization of a short story I wrote way back when called Thirty Silver Pieces.

Part One: Jefferson Canute

A mysterious, disturbed young man narrates in a strange voice.

"Tobacco. The smell of it. The smoke rising from the open shop window, down on the block. A thick, rich fragrance. Had it all before: cigars, cigarettes, pipes, dip, snuff. Even those miniature cigars. Those literal cigar-ettes. The smell of tobacco smoke always promised something more than it gave. That’s all I know about it, and all I need to know."

"How can I explain how the Wisteria felt to those who walked past it's womb-like glow on those cold, November evenings? It was like only it was truly inside. Everything else was outside."

Jefferson has been having nightmares about his mother for weeks, we learn. In his dreams she is angry at him. His friends tell him to find a man named Rickshaw who keeps a room at the old Wisteria Hotel. Rickshaw can help with things like that, they say. But you have to be prepared to leave something valuable with him, and not money. Something personal. Jefferson learns his room number and discovers that Rickshaw has committed suicide. The only clue he has is a photograph of a boy with a unique old hunter's hat standing with his mother.

When the time comes he jumps into a wish fountain in the middle of the park and steals handfuls and handfuls of change. A security guard chases him down an alleyway. He eludes the guard and makes his way to the Wisteria. Part One ends as he enters the bar.

Part Two: Pat Hennigar

This part tells the story of an old writer who has just sold his first novel to a science fiction publisher. He is out alone celebrating at the Wisteria, remembering the trials and tribulations he went through. He has sold out. He wrote something from the heart, something "cosmic and true to life" but the publisher kept requesting changes, so he modified it and modified it until it no longer resembled anything he loved. The story concerned a spring on a distant planet whose waters restored youth to those who bathed in it. So what at first seemed a celebration becomes a mourning. "I am the cliche, sell-out, Judas of the world," he scribbles on a napkin. The writer is in love, or something, with a waitress who works at the Wisteria. He wants to take away the sadness he sees in her eyes, take away the memory of her drowned son. But he can never make a connection, it seems. This part ends with him missing a chance to talk to her, as the young man from part one enters the bar and shouts, "Drinks all around!"

Part Three: Rosemary Wehn

This part is from the perspective of the waitress. She tells the story of the night after the strange young man comes into the Wisteria with pockets stuffed with old change and buys drinks for everyone. She makes a lot of money and has a couple drinks herself. She has a crush on the old writer who is always there, but he never talks to her. Finally he leaves. She ends up dancing with the young man who came in. He reminds her of her drowned son Gabe. At the end of the night she takes him back to her apartment. He reminds her so much of her son that she doesn't want him to leave. They go to bed. She has a memory of one bright day in the park, at the fountain, when her son was still alive. "I never wanted that day to end," she remembers.

The Builder VS Hunger

I've been thinking about The Builder since I watched it today, and now that some time has passed, I think it is a good film. Having some preconceptions about its subject matter negatively influenced me at first, but it really is a good film.

And any fears that it would cover the same ground as Hunger have been put to rest. It doesn't.

The story of The Builder is essentially one half of Hunger -- the path where you know what you are meant to do, but go along with what everyone else expects from you. It's pretty tragic, and one aspect of the concept that I hadn't thought about before is the utter indifference of everyone else to your goal. That is an insightful observation, and one that should be incorporated into Hunger.

Of course, what Hunger has that The Builder does not have is the Choice, and because of that we get to explore the other path -- the path where you follow what you are meant to do, and experience things both bad and good which proceed from that. Things like being ostracized from the village and, on the positive side, the understanding that what you are doing is ultimately for the common good.

So it makes me hopeful, and in a way validates the power of the subject matter Hunger will soon explore.

Novel: Mutiny on the Frozen Sea (working title)

Now that I'm basically finished with Trinidad, I've started thinking about what other books I could write. The horror story is one, but I have problems with writing it. I'm not sure I want to write something so blatantly fantastic. I am more interested in taking realistic stories and revealing what is mysterious about the world through them. I think I'd like to take on the sea again.

The origin of Trinidad was like this: take a classic sea story and place it within a modern setting. The story I chose was The Stowaway.

I think I would like to do the same thing again for another type of story, this time The Mutiny. I have only a vague idea for the story, but I think I have a setting.

In Arctic waters, they have vessels called icebreakers whose job is to clear frozen waterways in rivers and the sea. I would love to set a story there, a story about mutiny in a sea of ice. Unfortunately I don't have any first hand experience with working on an icebreaker. But I like the atmosphere it conjures in my mind very much.

Story about a captain who abuses the crew, but is considered a great, feared leader. In the story a deck hand is killed in a work accident, and the captain changes. He becomes kind-hearted, but this leads to the crew rising up in mutiny and taking the command from him. The head mutineer is the brother of the deck hand who was killed. He blames the captain for it, and for this reason leads the uprising. They throw the captain overboard onto the ice plains. During the mutiny the vessel catches on fire. As they try to put it out, the captain watches the boat sail away. He says a prayer for the burning vessel, and that's how the story ends.

Things you don't come back from

to come...

Novel: The Dark Heart of the Sun

Tonight I have come up with a name for a novel I am thinking of writing:

The Dark Heart of the Sun

I like this name. It is much better than The Well, which was the original title. You need a good name. I need a good name to do anything. I can't write a story without knowing what it's going to be called first. The name serves as my base camp, the place I can always return and regroup.

The story is about a young monk who has left his monastery and returned home to live with his mother and father. As the story begins you do not know why he left, but later you will learn that he was disturbed by a scientific article which has found dark matter at the center of the sun. For whatever reason, he sees moral implications in this and therefore questions his belief in God.

At the story's beginning, the former monk has really begun to debauch himself. He frequents bars and hires a prostitute. Perhaps he should be trying to test the assumptions of his moral foundation in a deliberate way. That may provide the outward conflict that is missing so far.

During this time the man goes for walks in the woods behind an old college near his parent's house. Here he discovers an old well and becomes fascinated with it. He does research and learns it was built hundreds of years ago by the founders of the school, who had also founded Miskatonic University.

The central conflict should perhaps be not wanting to accept the world as it is. He resents the lifestyle of his family, particuarly his mother and father. He sees himself as opposed to the world and family life, and once he goes insane, ironically it is an old letter his mother wrote to him when he turned ten years old that brings him back sanity and then to God. At the end of the novel he returns to the monastery.

It should be established that the monastery for him is a place of peace and understanding.

Perhaps I should mention that this is going to be a horror story. The first horror is the old well and what he finds down there. Not sure yet, most of it's going to be exploring the mystery. Whatever is really down there ought to go unexplained or at least very indefinitely described, like in a Lovecraft story.

The second horror is after he returns to the surface, his change. Something has infected him and it is growing inside him.

This is what directly leads to his eventual breakdown and entering the hospital...etc, where you learn that the horror portion of the story never happened. The well is just a common well. He has been an unreliable narrator basically. But there should be some question of whether it was real.

This story, like Trinidad, should be mostly on the surface. I'm not interested in writing psychological stories. Continue the form you established with Trinidad, where we are kept outside of people's heads.

The book will be divided into three parts with a kind of play on words:

1) The Well
2) The Sick
3) The Well

I really enjoyed The Men Who Stare at Goats

I just watched this film and was impressed by it's fun tone with something to say. It reminded me in that way of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series of books, which is perhaps not that bizarre considering the filmmakers and author are English.

The lightness of touch with which the story is told is the most impressive thing to me. It's an effect I've only seen achieved a handful of times. I think of films like MASH, Annie Hall, and Three Kings (also with Clooney). To illustrate what I mean, I want to talk about one throwaway scene in the middle of the movie, but it requires a bit of set-up.

Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) is going through training to become a psychic soldier in an experimental branch of the US Army called the New Earth Army. This is basically a group of soldiers who are to be trained to fight with love and new age-y concepts instead of the typical violence and destruction. As nutty as that might sound, it's even nuttier. His drill seargent is Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), playing his role with just a hint of The Dude.

At one point Django has the men all free-style dancing in a big room. Everyone except Cassady is dancing. He's just standing there looking around until Django comes up to him and orders him to dance. "I don't like to dance," Cassady replies with a scowl. "Yes you do," Django answers, "you just forgot."

Then there is a flashback which shows Cassady as a kid doing a goofy dance to a record in his room. His father walks past (a stereotypically repressed businessman from the fifties), sees his son dancing, and throws a can of beer into the room, knocking the record off the player. "Stop dancing, you look like a queer!" His father says as the boy frowns and becomes still.

The flashback ends and, after a direct order from Django, Cassady joins the others and begins dancing in the same goofy way he did when he was a kid.

Fantastic film, you should watch it.