Since I frequently tell stories about my family, it stands to reason that some of the events I write about are preserved in family photo albums. I recently uncovered a collection of photos of me, and thought I’d share them with everyone who has been reading me over the years.

The above picture is me on prom night, when this horrible series of events took place. If memory serves, this is just after I chased my date’s wheel chair down a hill before it could fly off into the marina, but just before sitting down to eat.

 As you can see from the time stamp, this is my eleventh birthday party. I am wearing the same Viking Helmet mentioned here. I never did find out what happened to it… but I have my suspicions and they involve Rachel. Despite the golden locks you’ll be happy to know I imagined myself to be a quite imposing male Viking named Grundle Hammerswing.

Big-brothering in Universal Studios.

Getting so good at taking care of the kids that I can read at the same time.

I’m probably thirteen in this, and I appear to be teaching my little sister that hands are hilarious. I also appear to be succeeding… because dude, what the hell is up with hands?

 Me and a llama… I think this was something that was brought to my pre-school… but I’m unsure.

 Swords! This sword has not been mentioned in any of my sword stories (Like this one, this one, or this one)

I have about seven stories that could go with this picture. One involves projectile vomit and mistaken identities, another involves my suspicions that a building is about to blow up, and another involves corporal punishment. I am not an athlete and I have no idea why my Grandpa sent me here when I explicity said I would do anything to go to Space Camp.

My real name is Andrew for those who are wondering. Need I say more?

This is the “Zorngo” mentioned in this story about wanting to become a super hero. I drew this in I believe kindergarten or first grade. I used to draw Zorngo on the backs of all my assignments.

This is Captain Z-Ray who kills aliens and puts flags on planets. I think this picture explains pretty much everything about who I am as a person today.

Almost every single member of my family is aware that I write stories about them, and those that aren’t are generally unaware due solely to poor memory (or, in several cases, illiteracy and poor memory). While a few family members are angry about it, as when my mother disowned me for five weeks, it’s not a visceral rage. Let’s face it, I could put a gun to my parents’ heads and couldn’t get them to read a stop sign. They’re not going to use “internet voodoo” to read stuff I write. The same is more or less true across the board. I don’t come from a clan of readers and am therefore empowered to write whatever I want without any thought to what my family is going to think.

The blot in the ink of course is this: I seem to have infected my little brother and sister with a love of books. They love to read. Furthermore, they are intensely curious as to why I’m always pounding away on a keyboard. This has put the idea in their heads that they should read whatever it is that I’m writing.

While I imagine that at some point in the future they will open up this site, and read all the stories herein, I do not think that would be appropriate for them at their present ages. But still… their inquiring little minds want to know. They want to read something that I wrote. So, I’m writing something for them. Since I’m already writing it, I thought I would put it up here in case anyone else wanted to read it.

To put it simply, Gray Bolt Ascending is a book about being a hero that I will be releasing chapter by chapter every Friday. Specifically, it’s about a sixteen year old half-Mexican/half-caucasian boy named Homer who discovers that Fate has plans for him. It’s a book about the cost of doing the right thing, and what it means to accept who you are deep down. Of course, there will be a myriad of fart jokes as well.

It’s probably best suited for fourteen to sixteen year olds, but I think it should be accessible to all ages above that… or at least it will be after I’ve edited it so many times my eyes bleed. I plotted it out over the course of a week, and unless I need to split some of the larger action sequences in half, it should clock in at twenty-one chapters. So far, I’ve written out to chapter six, and everything is working out just as I planned.

I wrote a lot of long fiction when I was younger. A lot. In fact, my first million words were probably pounded out writing stories about wizards. While this isn’t entirely new to me, this will be my first real book. As such, I imagine people will encounter all sorts of ugly, embarrassing things in its pages. I’ll do my best to catch all of those, but I’m publishing a first draft on-line here, so cut me a break and send me your advice if you have some. I’m a quick learner.

So why am I publishing it this way? I write best when I have gun to my head. You, my readers, are the gun, and your angry e-mails are the bullets. I like to be kept on my toes. It’s more fun that way. Also, I don’t think I’m ready to submit to agents just yet. I need to get into fighting form.

Now, for those of you who are already rolling your eyes, wanting to know if this is going to affect my update schedule, don’t worry. I doubt it will. In fact, I’m probably not ever going to mention it again, except for the occasional brief update. I know my core audience might not like this project, so I’m keeping it unobtrusive. You’ll have to click on the shiny link up top to get to it. A new chapter should be quietly posted there every Friday until it’s done. And not another peep about it.

I’ve wanted to write “the book to end all books” since I was old enough to use a pencil, but as I’m not good enough for that yet something else will have to do. “Gray Bolt Ascending” will be “a book” that I’m going to write, which if hated, will not destroy my will to live and leave me an embittered crazy person. Consider this exercise on the way to the Olympics.

LINK FOR FRIENDS TIME:

Now, on a much more interesting note did you know that I am e-quainted with an alternative porn star? It’s true, and awhile ago I gave her some advice about writing which I guess has now helped her advance her career in that direction. To my knowledge this is the only advice I have ever given to anyone that has panned out. She now writes for the site Random Salad, and you can add her on Myspace if you are so inclined.

I’ve mentioned this story several times in passing, but I gave it the full work-up at Violent Acres.

The Worst of All Possible Vaginas

A story of horror, revulsion, and the things we wish we had never seen. Don’t read on a full stomach.

Now, in a completely natural and healthy act of transition, just a reminder that I’m starting serialization of Gray Bolt Ascending tomorrow.

As a professional, I can tell you that killing a human being is about the easiest thing in the world. The rules are simple, and if you follow them the risks are almost zero. I should know. I’ve taken a hundred contracts, and the cops have never come close to me. Follow the rules. Don’t be dumb. You don’t get caught. It’s that easy.

Always take your payment in advance. Lots of people think they can weasel out on you once the job’s finished, like you would hesitate to take them out or some stupid thing. It’s a mess, killing people for free. Don’t do it.

Make sure your money is untraceable too. Getting caught by some bank whiz kid is about the most amateur thing you can do. After that it’s even easier. Find the mark outside some time when they’re isolated, and then a silencer and a slug to the head later you’re vacationing in Malibu for the next two months. Don’t use names, shut up if you don’t have anything to say, and don’t get attached to anyone. The only way you get caught is if you try to make the job fancy. Keep it simple, don’t get romantic, and it’s easy as apple pie.

Rosie, my cat of five years, meowed into my ear as I belly crawled from behind the garage to my sister’s play-house, interrupting my grim ruminations. “Shush!” I whispered at her, in panic that she would blow my cover. She probably thought I wanted to play He-Man and Battle Cat, which I was apt to do every time she was near and had something at hand I could pretend was the Sword of Grey Skull.

“Oh my God, Rosie! Leave me alone! I’m trying to plant a bomb!” The bomb in question was hidden inside my Superman back pack, consisting of two boards, and about forty 3.5V batteries usually used in walkie talkies. I had saved for two months to buy all the components. Having my assassination attempt botched by my cat was having a severe effect on my ability to pretend I was an internationally renowned hit man.

After gently throwing Rosie, back across the yard, several times since she seemed to enjoy it, I quietly got back down on my stomach and belly-crawled the rest of the way to my sister’s playhouse. At the age of ten, I was just small enough to slide under it. Once underneath, I was dead silent as I went about setting up the bomb. While I believed that this particular device would in fact explode, I pretended it was a small nuclear warhead just for fun. As an internationally renowned hit man I always made sure the job got done.

I owed the plans for the device almost entirely to my cousin Vincent, who had told me last Thanksgiving that if you stuck two walkie talkie batteries end to end, given five minutes they would explode like a propane tank on a bonfire. This was before I had decided he was a big liar for going into a lengthy diatribe on his death touch pressure point technique, so I figured it had to be true. Thereafter, it had not taken me long to save enough money to buy forty batteries. Killing a human being may have been easy for an internationally renowned hit man. Killing Rachel? I was sure that was going to take some extra fire power.

Buying the batteries was a minor obstacle, that I overcame by mowing lawns and doing yard work for my grandparents. The hard part had been figuring out a way to stick them together all at once. To that end I had cut two pieces of ply wood. At regular intervals I had glued twenty to each board, spending hours to make sure that the alignment was perfect. When it came time to detonate, I didn’t want a delay that would leave me in the blast zone.

As a lonely child, I had, over the course of years perfected a number of characters to keep myself company, and developed a fitting voice for each one. The Scotsman was my personal favorite, as I enjoyed being able to thickly roll my r’s so that no one could understand what I was saying. The Irishman, another favorite, was more whimsical, given to reflecting upon old Eire and the farm where he had grown up. To kill my sister, I drew upon my Russian voice, who strangely enough had a Mexican name. Diego Freelance. An assassin from the Eastern Bloc, who loved “wodka” and had a scar that dragged from the bottom of his cheek up to his hairline. This scar changed colors depending on the availability of markers, and on rare occasion Diego had an eye-patch should one become available by some miracle.

I assembled the explosive device quickly. I had spent a long time practicing for this moment, and my fingers knew where to move before my mind could give orders. I could hear Rachel and her friends stomping on the floor above me, cursing in hushed voices. Her friends had never really done me any wrong, but that could not be helped. Diego Freelance understood that sometimes collateral damage was unavoidable. His parents after all had been burned to death in a bombing meant to take out dissidents, leaving him orphaned on the streets of the Soviet Union, to survive any way he could. I pieced this history together out of MacGyver episodes and various action films.

My hands shook fervently as I put my them on either side of the plywood, prepared to jam my bomb together. “I have waited for this moment all my life,” I said in my best Russian accent. I sounded like one of Clint Eastwood’s cohorts from “Firefox.” When I slammed the weapons together I could not stop the tears that slid down my cheeks, but I could not afford to reflect. I had a firework show to attend. Diego Freelance did not ruminate when he had a job to do.

The belly crawl from under “Rachel’s Ranch,” was quicker than the crawl to it, as I was unburdened by explosives. Driving me on was the deep concern that the bomb would go off before I had a chance to clear the blast zone. When I rounded the corner of the garage, I stood up and dashed inside to the nearest window, standing on top of the table saw to watch the inevitable kaboom. I waited for ten minutes.

My back started to hurt. I was reminded of the time I had spent in the Gulag in Siberia, when I had waited for the guards to switch guard so I could escape. Longing for the explosion that would send my wicked sister high into the sky, I made a mental note to make sure to ask for an eye-patch on my birthday. Eye-patches are a go to symbol of the expert assassin.

I waited for half an hour. Then an hour. I saw Rachel leave and come back. Two hours. I began to cry. I saw Rachel go inside for dinner, done playing for the day. I began to get the sneaking suspicion that walkie talkie batteries do not explode when you connect them end to end. Hearing me sob, Rachel turned to flip me off.

Vincent, you liar. You goddamn liar.

Diego Freelance and I vowed revenge.

Guess what happens today? Well, probably a bunch of really important things are happening today like babies being born, people getting murdered, and their murderers getting married, but for the purposes of this entry we shall say that: The mid-season finale of BSG airs this night, and I won’t have to (voluntarily) do this again for seven months!

However, do not worry. I already have a very exciting project planned that will fill the Friday time slot and ensure that everyone has something interesting to read, since for some reason beyond my control I have a readership. I will now announce that project, so you can send me angry e-mails if I “pussy out.”

For the past couple of months I’ve been working on an adventure book, which will consist of 21 chapters. It takes place in the real world, with real people, and there’s no magic so no one freak out. It does however deal with the idea of people being “heroes” even if they don’t have powers. I have extensively plotted and outlined the whole book, and already have four of the chapters written. I’ve been cranking out chapters at a rate of about one a half a week in between writing other entries, so everything is looking good. God damn are my fingers tired.

I wanted to create a buffer so I would have time to do exhaustive edits of chapters in between posting. I’ve written fiction before for my own private enjoyment, and quite long fiction at that, but this will have a more campy exciting vibe to it that everyone should be able to enjoy. Why am I not submitting this to a publisher or an agent? The reason is very simple: I have incredibly low self-esteem. So you will get to enjoy a free book.

Also, Violent Acres yelled at me for a really long time the other day, so I should have a new piece going up on her site in a few days. Unless she got mad at me and changed her mind. She’s very tempestuous. If she reads this for example, I have no doubt I will be scolded for it.

Now prepare to have BSG sneak up on you like a John Hodgman joke, take you by complete surprise, and leave you in a state of shocked wonder that anything could be so subtle. Continue reading →