a sense of joy and then a panic

So hey!  asakiyume is making me do this meme.  It's going to be terrible because I am not actively working on this novel (all I can manage are little short stories, and even those I can't really manage).  Nonetheless!  I am committed to the effort of someday writing this story, and I continue to modify it ever so slightly in my sleep.  Also I am totally re-doing the series of books I wrote as a high school student and turning them into a treatise on the religious right.  You heard right.  But first, after-the-apocalypse.

What is the title of your book?

Junction Rally, followed by Pleading the Blood and On Fire for God (again: this is not the religious right trilogy). 

Where did the idea for the book come from?

You don't want to know.  In its current permutation, however, it came from stories about non-white children who are taken away from their parents and raised "white."  Also: from being intrigued by post-apocalyptic scenarios and then confused as to why none of them went in the direction I would have gone in.  Also: being angry at humanity, and this song: "Wield it wisely, and wield it ruthlessly."  Fun fact: that's how I strive to wield that sword.

What genre does your book fall under?

Fantasy.  Horror?  Probably some kind of Fantastic Horror, but I'm sure it would be put next to the other grim, ashy post-apocalyptic books with lonely men carrying guns in a bookstore, never mind that on my cover the man would be pointing the gun at himself. 

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I am actually one of those annoying TV-generation writers (when I first started writing I saw everything as a movie, which is why my writing was so terrible and why my mother was like, "uh, are you sure you don't want to be a cinematographer?) who has a whole cast sketched out, but they would all be either dead or old or in rehab by the time this gets made.  Nonetheless, I would want my main character to be played by someone like Joaquin Phoenix in Signs, managing to be earnest, passive, and dopey all at once, and my main antagonist to look like Channing Tatum pretty much at any time.  Oh, and my morose primary female character to look like Eva Green in Womb. 

What is a one-sentence synopsis of the book?

Trapped in one of America's last villages, a young "demon" tries to be "good" in the hopes of being accepted as a human.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I would want an agency, but this is so far down the road, I don't even...

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

About six months of pretty solid devotion to writing (and schoolwork).

What other books would you compare this story to in your genre?

Well, this is my never-ending problem, because I basically read literary fiction, and usually non-contemporary literary fiction at that (1920s-1960s precisely), and I have a lot of issues with most post-apocalyptic fiction especially.  I can tell you that despite the social conservativeness of many of the more loutish characters, it is the anti-Under the Dome.  That said, of the books I love, I would say it aims for something that harks closest to O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away, the Ibsen plays An Enemy of the People and Ghosts, and McCarthy's Outer Dark.  I can't emphasize enough that I am not saying I can write like they can.  If we can go to other media, though, it's kind of 100% Battlestar Galactica set in a small town in Nebraska, then smashed together with Twin Peaks. 

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I have no idea.  I felt it was an important story to tell, for whatever reason.

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?

Exorcisms (fake and real), cannibals, small-town politics, baby-ghosts, wolves, (heavy) gender politics, moonshine, mundane evil, social analysis, moral conundrums.  That's just in the first book!  Even more shit guaranteed to go down in books two and three, including but not limited to angels, demons, "dragons," California, decapitation, dysfunctional families, and true love.

Include the link of who tagged you and this explanation for the people you have tagged.

Any writers who see this are welcome to do it.

I'm moving on the 24th, so I probably won't be on LJ for a while - sorry!  I will be more available via email.  I'm flying early early in the morning on Wednesday, and we all know what that means: Air Crash Investigation marathon! 


Also, I just watched Up In The Air and I'm pretty sure it's like the anti-Fight Club, which I found pretty amusing (along with the scenes of Omaha's airport).  I think if you combined those two movies (forming some poppy monstrosity that would involve lots and lots of airplanes nose-diving and then flattening out just before hitting the ocean), you would get my approach toward life. 


So, this is that meme that was circling around - I commented on people's memes, then they gave me five questions to answer, so if you want questions to answer, just comment on mine.  Like "hey" or "give me questions!"  Of course, I may not get back to you until next week. 


From cucumberseed:


1) Form of entertainment in which you have the hardest time seeing value.  I actually looked up wikipedia's listing of "Entertainment."  I'd probably say, out of that list, daily comic strips.  And talk radio.


2) (Recycling one of Sovay's questions) What was the first music you bought for yourself?  Depends on the meaning of "bought for yourself."  The first thing I picked out for myself and had my dad buy for me was The Lion King soundtrack (he probably thought thank God because before then I was trying to sing "Circle of Life" very badly all by myself.  The first thing I bought with my own money - allowance money, that is - is a harder question, but is probably Garbage's Version 2.0 based on "Push It."


3) Secondary world you dislike the most.  I'm not a huuuge fan of Narnia, but that's mainly because I'm so contrarian that I'm all "No!  I want the White Witch's Narnia!"  I do like lawless sea-Narnia a lot, just not kingdom-Narnia.  Generally when I run into secondary worlds that feel very didactic and obvious to me, I push back against them. 


4) If you could remove one aspect from any piece of fiction, what piece of fiction and what aspect?  I don't know if I would, honestly.  Generally it's not just one thing that makes a piece of fiction not work for me. 


5) Substance, fictional or real, you find most terrifying.  Garmonbozia!   Or poisonous gas/airborne disease clouds, more realistically. 


From squirrelmonkey:


1. What's your favorite dream skill (that is, a skill you only possess in dreams)?  I very rarely have skills in dreams.  Maybe the power to teleport effortlessly across space?  In dreams it's more like changing channels, but eh.


2. Which writer described your favorite version of a real city, and which city was it?  I'm enjoying Erik Larson's The Devil In The White City, about 1890s Chicago, though that's non-fiction. 


3. If for the rest of your life you could only watch movies by a single director, who would it be?  Werner Herzog.  I would say David Lynch, but I can't imagine that would be good for my sanity.  Herzog would be very good for my sanity.  A little on the glum side, I suppose.


4. What book would you write if you were sure it will come out as good as you imagine it to be?  I'm going to skip the one I'm writing now and go for one that I've only envisioned in my head - my "Nusantara" trilogy (The Hotel California, Running Up That Hill, Tremble Burn Die), which would be a magical realist take on Indonesia's transition from a stable dictatorship to an unstable democracy from the perspective of American expats living there during each period.  It would be incredibly difficult for many reasons - the main characters in the second book would be based on my parents, for one.  For two, expat life is very hard to write about well, in my experience. 


5. What's your favorite reality show?  I like professional reality shows (Chopped, Project Runway, and Top Chef are tops), but get kind of tired of them after a while.  So I'm going to say Locked/Banged Up Abroad.  I know it probably sounds bad, but it's one of the most heartfelt, nervewracking documentary-recreation shows out there.  The producers are making the new SyFy show Paranormal Witness, which is probably the best thing PW has going for it.  I think LUA should be part of high school Civics classes.  Because clearly there are still people out there who think the solution to unemployment is a trip to Peru to smuggle cocaine.  I also grew up on Bangkok Hilton, so there's that. 

Taken from handful_ofdust, who had some great answers. Seriously.

Day 1- Your first horror movie: I'm sure it was some Chinese horror movie that I saw on the Indonesian RCTI channel.  Something with jiang shi - jumping vampires, most likely.  These guys.

Day 2- The last horror movie you saw in the theater: Either Insidious or Scream 4.  Both recommended, both better than I thought they'd be.

Day 3- Favorite classic horror movie: I actually don't know that many classics, but I do like The Innocents, which is a delicate, almost "lacy" creep-fest, and The Curse of Frankenstein, which IMO depicts Victor Frankenstein as the slimeball that he is. Does War of the Worlds count?  Because I enjoyed that as well.

Day 4- A horror movie you thought you'd love and didn't: This is relatively rare for me because I tend to like horror movies almost by default.  But I didn't love The Prophecy (thought I would because I like religious horror and Constantine) - mainly I just couldn't retain interest in it - and I didn't love The Quiet Family (thought I would because I love Happiness of the Katakuris, Takashi Miike's bizarro remake) - I think it was almost because it didn't live up to Happiness.  

Day 5- Favorite horror remake: Tough question.  I absolutely love Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre.  One of the first truly beautiful horror movies I saw - kind of remade what horror could be, for me.  But I also really like Happiness of the Katakuris, Alexandre Aja's The Hills Have Eyes, Jack Finney's 1978 Invasion of the Body-Snatchers (Donald Sutherland's final scream?  Scared.  The.  Shit.  Out of me.), Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead, the 2010 The Crazies, and of course, Thir13en Ghosts, which is just too much fun.

Day 6- Favorite vampire movie: Interview with the Vampire, probably.  I also really like Blade.  For some reason I don't really consider Herzog's Nosferatu to be a proper vampire movie...

Day 7- A horror movie you think no one has seen: I'm not very good with obscure movies.  I think not a lot of people have seen The Ceremony, which is the best low-budget/indie horror I've seen in a while.  Has anybody here seen Bungalow 666?  It's Indian.  Circle of Eight is a horror movie I wish no one had the opportunity to see, because it is that bad (it served as an antidote to Ju-On).  Apparently Bloody Disgusting thinks that Halloween III: Season of the Witch is obscure, and that movie rocks!  "Six more days 'til Halloween!  Halloween!  Halloween!"  Yeah, I drive people nuts with this movie.  I don't know, though - Screen Rant's list of obscure movies is hilariously sad (Suspiria?  Audition?  In the Mouth of Madness?). 

Day 8 - Favorite foreign horror: Something Japanese - probably Noroi: The Curse.  It's become my favorite of its ilk.  I also really like Ringu (but so sad!) and One Missed Call (cheesy-wheezy, but has screams).  Oh God, and Retribution.  Or basically anything by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

Day 9 - Favorite supernatural horror movie: What the heck kind of question is this?  Pretty much every horror movie I love is supernatural.  Okay, how about Candyman.  There!  It's my welcome-to-grad-school movie.

Day 10 - Horror movie everyone loves but you don't: Too easy: Pan's Labyrinth.

Day 11 - Favorite horror/ comedy: Probably Shaun of the Dead.  This is the first horror movie I ever saw that actually made me ROFL.  Me and Yue were basically going nuts while watching the scene I linked to.  Runner up: Cabin Fever.  Bronze: Trick 'r Treat.  Tin: Infection (I know it looks like pure horror, but it's really absurdly funny).  And we already know I love Happiness, right?  Right.

Day 12 - Your most disturbing horror film: I agree with handful_ofdust - Martyrs is very disturbing.  Also disturbing to me were Marebito and Ju-On.  Marebito is unsettling, and Ju-On just fucks me up.

Day 13 - Favorite zombie movie: Probably 28 Days Later, although I am also very fond of Pontypool and Romero's borderline brilliant Land of the Dead.

Day 14 - Favorite indie horror movie: I'm really bad at figuring out what's indie.  I'll say Lake Mungo.  Which I am VERY ANGRY that they are remaking for an "American audience."  It is Australian.

Day 15 - Favorite monster movie: Cloverfield, or Alien.

Day 16 - Horror film with a great soundtrack: I love The Hills Have Eyes' soundtrack (the 2006 one) and The Shining theme scares me the most, but for this question I'll go with Mulholland Drive.  Which, yes, counts as a damn horror movie.  I really, really love Angelo Badalamenti's scores.  This is Lost Highway's, and this is "Laura Palmer's Theme."

Day 17- Favorite 80's horror: Just a horror of the 1980s decade or horror that somehow represents the 1980s?  The Shining, probably.

Day 18 - Favorite horror movie filmed in black and white: See my answers to the classic question.

Day 19 - Best use of gore: The Descent.  I'm normally not a fan of "extreme" cinema, but it worked for The Descent, which isn't exploitative and feels realistic (the characters that manage to fight and embrace the gore are the ones with the most baggage/issues). 

Day 20 - [One of your f]avorite horror character[s]: Lim Ji-oh of Whispering Corridors.  A total BAMF of a high school girl (without being sexy), an artist, and an individualist of the Luna Lovegood variety.  I also really like Richard Dees of The Night Flier, although he's kind of a douche.

Day 21 - Best horror franchise: I'm going to go out on a slight limb (because the third one has not been released), and say Rec.  Rec 2 builds very well on its punch-in-the-face predecessor.  There's no mistaking Rec world.

Day 22 - Best death scene: I'm going to say the first death from Ringu / The Ring (honestly, I like both movies).  It scared the SHIT out of me the first time I saw it - and continues to scare me to this day - but I just love the transition from "two high school girls gossiping about boys and death curses while alone in a house at night" to "wait one of them really is cursed" to "the phone!" to "oh, it's just her mom" to "SON OF A BITCH THE TV JUST TURNED ON."  Coupled with the actual death scene, of course.  Anyway, this is what I mean.  Or Ringu, if you prefer.

Day 23 - A great quote from a horror movie: "Born in lust, turn to dust. Born in sin, come on in." - Storm of the Century

Day 24 - Horror movie character that describes you: I've always felt a little bit of kinship with Trish Jenner from Jeepers Creepers.  Slightly hysteria-prone but still able to get shit done, some anger issues, willing to sacrifice herself for family members.  Likes poli-sci majors.  Etc.  I think I also have a bit of Marlena Diamond in me, from Cloverfield.  "Sarcastic outsider," you know?  But I suspect that a quiz would call me Clarice Starling.  We have a lot of the same issues.  I think we're both deep rollers.

Day 25 - Favorite Christmas/ holiday horror movie: Gremlins!  Gremlins until to the end of time.  But, the original Black Christmas is also wonderful.

Day 26 - Horror movie for a chicken (subtle or non-gory horror?): The Others, The Changeling, The Blair Witch Project, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Signs, Insomnia, The Skeleton Key, Paranormal Activity.  Of course, what I consider a "subtle" horror movie is usually a serial killer movie (like Zodiac, or Perfume: Story of a Murderer), and those are always gory...

Day 27- Your guilty pleasure horror movie: I have a lot of these.  Silent Hill probably takes the cake though.  I mean, you got the hate coming from horror movie aficionados, from the video game's fans... and I'm all "whatever."  I also like the Resident Evil series more than I should.  If Deep Blue Sea counts as a horror movie then that is also included.  And a lot of the After Dark Horror Fest movies - Gravedancers, etc.  Rose Red is another one that I really enjoy, even though I know it has serious plotting issues. 

Day 28- Horror film you'd like to see remade/ rebooted: Pumpkinhead deserves a reboot.  I would be willing to help.

Day 29- Worst horror movie: Well, there's a lot of dreck on SyFy, but that stuff is kind of expected to be dreck, and forgiven for it.  However, I'm not a fan of the Amityville franchise.  Partly because of the whole "hey this is fake even though we all said it was true" thing, partly because of the involvement of the Warrens, and partly because the story itself is just ridiculous.  I also really dislike 1408.  I sort of can't believe how many people think this movie is great when it reads like a bland, passionless joke of a horror movie.  

Day 30- [Three of y]our favorite all time horror movie[s]: Candyman, Noroi: The Curse, and... Kwaidan, since that was really what got me started on "good horror."

It's my birthday.  Yes, I share a birthday with Obama.  I'm 24.  I've gotten used to it because that's what I wrote when responding to craigslist housing posts, because I'd be 24 when I actually moved in. 

You Would Rule with Wisdom

You make others feel at ease immediately. You understand where each person is coming from. You could spend a whole weekend studying philosophy or interesting religions. You crave enlightenment. You are more intellectual than people realize. You don't go out of your way to flaunt your depth. You naturally always seem to end up with a lot of friends. You find common ground with all sorts of people.

From lilpocketninja: "The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up? Bold the ones you’ve read! Italicize the ones you’ve partially read!"  Basically, this is another one of those quizzes that shows how not-well-read I am - or maybe a quiz that shows the discrepancies between my taste and the English "Canon."  Yeah, let's go with that.  Bonus Broadway segue at the end!

01 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
02 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien [A/N: Currently working on this... slowly.]
03 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
04 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling [I was only really engaged Books 1-5.  Speed-read Book 6.  Wikipedia'd Book 7.  Still going to the midnight Nov. 18 though]
05 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
06 The Bible
07 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
08 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
09 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame [A/N: one of my favorite books in the world]
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville [A/N: but where is Billy Budd???]
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro [A/N: great movie, though]
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton [A/N: EB is ew.]
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams [A/N: I really need to finish this one.]
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare 
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo [A/N: But I have the musical MEMORIZED.  It was one of the first CDs I listened to with devotion, at age 8, and I can honestly say that it had a significant philosophical impact on me.  "Plumet Attack" is my favorite song, IDK why, although overall "At The End of the Day" and "Look Down" are probably the best.  And I keep linking to the Broadway cast because that's the version I grew up with.  Sentimental attachment.]

Several weeks back I told my mom I'd give her $20 if Lee "Black Hole of Talentlessness" DeWyze didn't win American Idol.  Guess what?  I'm keeping my $20!

Anyway, a music meme:

First, make a list of your top 8 artists overall. Then, for each of these artists, add the 7 most similar artists to your list. Delete any duplicates, count up the number of entries in your library and this will give you some idea of how eclectic your listening habits are. The higher your score, the more varied your music is.

(Note: Don't include the band members as solo artists, or with another band)

USE LAST FM!

You like the exhortation to use Last FM, right?  

( COME WITH ME INTO THE TREES )

* Because Rammstein should do more covers of Depeche Mode songs.

I've done these before, but I was reminded to do them again by cucumberseed's post. I decided to do the twelve days of Christmas one (which I hadn't done before). I think the results are actually kind of funny.

But it's a quiz about vampires!  The password = lamia.

Grrarrrgharrr!

Mine looks like some world-beat/jazz "fusion" that my mother might listen to if she heard a sample on All Things Considered.

I was hoping for something more bad-ass, but what can you do?

iTunes on shuffle -> first line of first twenty songs (I skipped the instrumentals) -> a "poem", with the first song's first line as the title

my third verse is definitely the worst - the other three seem plausible as verses - I particularly like the last one, although "We don't need no education/ Hey, I'm feeling tired" is basically my life right now.

He met her in the fall

Gonna feel like hell tonight
It's happening all the time
Words like violence break the silence
We don't need no education
Hey, I'm feeling tired

Sometimes is never quite enough
Deep inside of a parallel universe
You and me we were the pretenders
Hut, two, three, four, keep it up
Do you remember the first kiss?

Hey, Mr. DJ - put a record on
Roll on up Jerusalem
He's stupid
I am watching the rise and fall of my salvation
A lost seafarer, alive

Fitter, happier more productive
I slipped away
I'm gonna be a mighty king
I'm on a roll