Looking ahead

I hadn't told many people that I was in a metal band this year. I wanted to wait until it seemed like more of a sure thing. We finally named ourselves and were about to perform a few songs at an event...when I suddenly parted ways with them last weekend.

That left me eager to start performing again. That was one of two bands I've been working with, so I do have more opportunities. But I'm also thinking about writing and recording some new songs on my own, inspired by classic metal.

Before I get to that, I definitely want to finish the novel I started last year. I plan to start working on my second draft in the next week or so.

I also have thoughts about writing a novel aimed at teenagers, since my twins will be teens soon.

Plenty of fun work ahead!

The elusive type of story I always look for

Usually when I look for something to entertain me, I have a set of criteria I use in my search, no matter the medium. It comes from my days as a youth inspired by G.I. Joe. I'm usually looking for something with military action that has a cohesive team, so the typical war movie often doesn't quite get there for me. And it should not include superpowers, magic, or aliens. Those are my criteria. Seems like it should be simple, but it's really not at all. It's hard to find anything in any medium that fits my simple criteria, especially outside of film. So please don't think I'm boring by always looking for the same kind of thing. Because it's surprisingly hard to find, which makes the search fun.

My favorites that meet this description so far, in each category of entertainment, are as follows:

Novel: One Rough Man, by Brad Taylor

When I found this 2011 novel a few years ago, I knew I'd finally found the series I'd been looking for. So far, I've only read the first two books and a related short story. I got distracted by other things. But I definitely plan to go back. One Rough Man was the first of the series (kind of ironic that my favorite team book has that title), and it introduced a small team that works in secret for the U.S. government, conducting black ops and keeping us safe. A major difference from G.I. Joe is that the Joes were usually fighting domestic terrorism, whereas the Task Force in Taylor's books (such a boring name for an exciting team) does their job in other countries. The second book was good, too, but I was already starting to see a formula, and that's how most series novelists tend to go, sadly.

Runner-up (outside Taylor's series): Combat Ops, by David Michaels

Side note: I'm finally writing my first novel. I'm nearly 100 pages into my first draft. My novel will be closer to G.I. Joe than any novel I've read, apart from the one book from the G.I. Joe "Find Your Fate" series I had as a kid, obviously.

Film: The Expendables 2

When The Expendables came out, I was in heaven. I love stories about mercenaries, and this had a whole team of them. It was brutal and interesting and fun. And I loved the second one even more. The opening scene was everything I'd ever wanted to see in a movie. The third film was a bit disappointing, but I'd definitely watch a fourth one if it came along.

Runner-up (outside The Expendables): The Marksman (more like G.I. Joe from the comics than the live-action G.I. Joe movies were)

[EDIT: How could I forget the Chinese film Operation Red Sea? It's one of my favorite movies! Ranks right up there with The Expendables 2.]

Live-action television: Soldier of Fortune, Inc.

I'll admit I haven't seen this show since the nineties, so it might not hold up well. But I've had trouble finding a TV show that meets my criteria. Granted, I've never watched SEAL Team, which certainly might do it for me. I just don't give much time to TV shows because they're so time-consuming. Anyway, the premise of Soldier of Fortune, Inc. is more interesting to me than a SEAL team show anyway. And I was crazy about this show when it came out. Again, I love mercs. And it had a very Joe quality to it.

Runner-up: Last Resort

Animation: G.I. Joe: Resolute

I only watched this once, but it was pretty great and hit all my buttons as a G.I. Joe animated movie made for adults. It's so much better than the live-action movies, and unlike those films, it stays true to the Joe lore.

Runner-up: G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero

American comics: G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (Marvel Comics)

We're getting into Captain Obvious territory now, but I didn't read these until my mid-thirties. They were everything I'd hoped they'd be and more. It started with a small elite team and grew from there. I read every issue of Larry Hama's run from the early '80s to the mid-'90s. I adored it, even when it got a little silly.

Runner-up: Team 7 (Image Comics)

Manga: Black Lagoon

I adored this series, too. I read it up to the latest book a couple of years ago, and I don't know how much more was published after that. This is a gritty series about a small team working with risky clients in a dangerous part of the world. They're kind of a cross between mercs and pirates. And they ride around in an old military boat, which I love. The dialogue gets pretty deep. There's an anime series based on the manga, but I haven't watched it.

I just this week found out about a manga series I'd somehow missed called Jormungand. It seems to have a similar premise as Black Lagoon. I plan to read it this spring. It also has an anime.

Runner-up: Marginal Operation

Which of these have you read or seen? What are your thoughts? Do you know of other good ones that would meet my criteria?

Ideas for Writing Methods and a New Story

Crazy idea last night: I wonder if anyone has ever tried to write a good short story, then expanded each sentence into a paragraph? Assuming a twenty-page story, you'd end up with a whole novel. Expanding each paragraph into a chapter would give you a whole series of novels! But would they be any good? It would certainly be an interesting project. It's sort of similar to the "snowflake method" of writing a novel.

This idea was inspired by a story idea I had last night that got me excited. Well, not so much a story idea, but a character, a setting, and a few scenes. That doesn't really make a story, and probably the reason I haven't written many stories is because they don't come to me naturally. I love coming up with settings, but the stories are usually forced.

My proposed character is a Christian man, a pacifist, during the Texas Revolution in the 1830s. His grandfather was loyal to the Crown during the American Revolution, and this man just wants to be left alone with his family. But he's forced to take up arms against authorities and bandits alike. It's similar to a story I began to write a couple of years ago about a Syrian missionary in 1st-century Tibet, except this new character has a family and he's not as outgoing. There would be plenty of violence and maybe even elements of mild horror. It could even be developed as a series of stand-alone stories, like for a pulp series or comic book.

I've already thought about developing a script for a webcomic based on this idea, as my 1st-century story was meant to be. If an actual plot comes into my head, maybe I'll put my novel on hold and write a comic script or a short story.

Last week I really wanted to find a western-styled band that sang about the violent, scary stuff I see in spaghetti westerns. I found everything I was looking for in the band Ghoultown, even costumes (though I suspect they dress this way more often than not), and I got all their albums. Can't believe I never heard of them before. I've listened to about half their songs now, from their earliest album up to 2004, including this one:

Ghoultown - "Carry the Coffin" (live)

Oklahoma Biotech Research Uncovers a Familiar Name

Man, my life is fun sometimes. I decided to place the main character of my novel in a more commercial atmosphere versus a university, so now he works at Research Park in Oklahoma City, a facility I got to know a bit in its early stages (I met with faculty and had classes there three years after its first building opened). I quickly found an old classmate after just a few minutes of searching the Web for what's new at Research Park. She's the managing director at several start-up biotech companies founded by her mentor, who taught a few of my classes in grad school. I had to write her and congratulate her--that's pretty impressive. I won't put her in my novel, of course, but some of my characters will work in her building.

I also found out how some of these start-up biotechs get access to taxpayer dollars, in the form of NIH funding as well as tax credits from the state. That will be a key point of my story. According to Biotechnology: Law, Business and Regulation (2001 supplement, pp. 7-146 – 7-147) by Michael J. Malinowski (thank you, Google Books!), Oklahoma provides a 20% tax credit to capital investors in small business investment companies and a 20% tax credit for investments made in R&D ventures in conjunction with these companies. The Oklahoma City Investment Board invests in venture capital firms that take equity positions in biotech firms. The Urban Renewal Authority and Presbyterian Health Foundation offer incubator space at no or below-market cost to early stage companies at Research Park.

That's probably no big deal to the average reader, but for those of us concerned about market manipulation by the state, it's an issue. In Maryland, nearly a quarter of a million dollars in tax credits is offered by the state as incentive for investment in biotech companies. It's an investment by government officials, using taxpayer dollars, for which they expect a return, to be distributed as they see fit. Hopefully I can write about this clearly in my book, and anyone who reads it can form their own judgment.

I started giving more thought to the "dirty cop" of my story, too. He needs a way to justify what he does so that he's not a cardboard evil dude. I've had plenty of conversations about police on Facebook, so I'm pretty familiar with the justifications for their actions! But of course this cop will take things a step too far. Still many readers may find his actions totally acceptable, and that's fine. It should be up to the audience to decide which actions are right and which are wrong.

Wrap-Up of the Week

On Tuesday I worked on electronic percussion for my new song, and I got all the way through it with snare and kick drum. I didn't add any other percussion, but I did add an ugly-sounding "distorted guitar" synth sound, using the root note of each chord. It sounds terrible, but it will be great for practicing with. Before I do anything else with the percussion, I want to take my beats to the basement and play along with my guitar. I need to make sure I'm developing the skills to play the song as I create the recording, before I get too deep into adding things like cymbals and toms. The rhythm guitar part is only four chords, but it's a crazy, haphazard composition, and I'll have to play it rather fast. But playing punk riffs quickly is my biggest strength on electric guitar, so I'm playing to my strengths.

For Wednesday my goal was to create some character profiles for my novel, and while I felt like didn't get very far, I then gave Tara a lot of information about my main character, so I got some good work done. I know where he grew up, where he trained as a scientist, what he does in his spare time, and what he's working on in the lab. I found a scientific article by a group in India that helped a great deal and fit in extremely well with my story. That was a great find. I know what he looks like, too, because he's related to an actual person, a football player in the '60s.

And the female love interest had been changing from a white girl to one who's part Mexican. But then I came across a name in my project at work that turned out to be a common Brazilian name. It just happens to be the last name of the man who was shot seven times in the head by London policemen, who wrongly suspected him of bombing a tube station there in 2005. Since my story involves villainous policemen, I just had to use that name and make her part Brazilian. There's a Brazilian cafe in Oklahoma City, so there must be Brazilians in the area. Anyway, I visited a Brazilian community in Massachusetts last year, so they're not a total mystery to me.

Thursday I woke up late but managed to read another chapter of Ghost Recon. I'm pretty close to the end now. That was a good chapter, and I don't know if the main character survived it. Pretty safe gamble he did, though. Although when I play him in the video game, he dies every time, so you never know. 

I also managed to squeeze in G.I. Joe #72, wherein starts the Cobra civil war (or so I hear). It was really cool to finally see the inside of Pit III, but disappointing to see how lax the security is there! I guess when you're in the middle of a Utah desert, some things go by the wayside. Our heroes are in deep doodoo now, though. 

On a separate note, I just heard the trailer for the G.I. Joe sequel will be out next Tuesday! Will Snake Eyes' mask still have lips? Tune in next week! Looks like Roadblock, Lady Jaye and Flint will be in this one, which is nice. Roadblock will be played by The Rock! Also, RZA plays the Blind Master! And the guy who played Thor is Firefly. And Bruce Willis is the original G.I. Joe! Rock on! But a character named Mouse will be in it too, whom I never even heard of before, played by one of the guys in Social Network (the kid from Jurassic Park!). Ridiculous. Also, no Scarlett or Cobra Commander, but that's not the film creators' fault. The actors didn't want to play those parts again, apparently. Can't say I blame them.

Finally, this morning I finally watched a kung fu film I've wanted to see for ages, Master of the Flying Guillotine (1975). And what a pleasant surprise. It's the best kung fu movie I've seen so far, and one of the best martial arts films I've seen. The action, the story, the costumes, the fighting styles, the weapons and even the music were great fun. It certainly must have inspired the King of Fighters video game series that I love so much. What a great film. I think it may help inspire the sound of my album in some way.

I got excited this week about a tiny college in Idaho called New St. Andrews. I like what they're doing, and my favorite reformed pastor is a faculty member there. I found their required reading list, and I want to make it part of mine after I finish Smiley's People. I've read a few things on this list (crossed out below), but not much (I found out this morning that Tara read a lot of it in college, much of which I'd never heard of!). I definitely want to add some Hemingway novels to this list, too. 

Since there's no guarantee the list will stay on that Web site, I'll paste it here:

THEOLOGY (Lordship) Anselm, selections (read The Proslogion) Athanasius, On the Incarnation Augustine, City of God Augustine, Confessions Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion Irenaeus, Against Heresies Luther, Bondage of the Will (Principia) Luther, 1520 tracts New Testament Old Testament (History) St. Benedict, Rule (Traditio) Anselm, Proslogion and Monologion Aquinas, Selections from the Summa NATURAL SCIENCE (Lordship) Darwin, Origin of Species (Nat. Phil.) Euclid, Elements Newton, Principia (selections) SOCIAL & POLITICAL SCIENCE (Traditio) Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations Aristotle, Ethics and Politics Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers Hobbes, Leviathan John of Salisbury, Policraticus Locke, On Civil Government Machiavelli, Prince Marsiglius de Padua, Defensor Pacis (selections) Marx, Das Capital or Communist Manifesto Plato, Republic Rousseau, Social Contract U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence Weber, Protestant Ethic HISTORY (History) Bede, Ecclesiastical History Herodotus, Histories Plutarch, select lives Thucydides, Peloponnesian War William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum Henry of Huntington, Historia Anglorum EPICS (Traditio) Beowulf Chaucer, Canterbury Tales Dante, Divine Comedy Homer, Iliad Homer, Odyssey Milton, Paradise Lost Ovid, Metamorphoses Spenser, Faerie Queene  Vergil, Aeneid

DRAMA (Traditio) Aeschylus, Oresteia Aristophanes, selections Euripides, selections Shakespeare, selections Sophocles, Theban plays NOVELS (Traditio) Austen, representative title  Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress Cervantes, Don Quixote Conrad, Heart of Darkness Defoe, Robinson Crusoe Dickens, representative title Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov Faulkner, The Sound and The Fury Goethe, Faust Melville, Moby Dick LETTERS (Rhetoric) Aristotle, On Rhetoric Plato, Gorgias or Phaedrus Pseudo-Cicero, Rhetorica ad Herennium Cicero, De Inventione Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria (Traditio) Aristotle, Poetics Montaigne, selections Plutarch, Moralia (selections) ART & ARCHITECTURE (Traditio) Palladio, The Four Books of Architecture Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, On the Abbey of the Church of St. Denis and its Art Treasures Vitruvius, On Architecture PHILOSOPHY (Traditio) Aquinas, selections fromSumma Aristotle, selections Berkeley, selections Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy Duns Scotus, selections Derrida, selections Descartes, Meditations Hume, selections Kant, selections Leibnitz, selections Locke, selections Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil Plato, selections Russell, selections Plotinus, selections William of Ockham, selections Wittgenstein, selections

To cap this off, Melt-Banana has been a huge influence on my musical creativity lately. Here they are playing "Lost Parts Stinging Me So Cold" in England a couple of years ago:

Story Advancing

Currently hearing: The Black Rose EP by Blindside (2007)

I slept in a bit today, but I did manage to add several interesting details to my story, including more bad guys and more death. This is becoming something I might even read myself! I even did a little research, deciding on a novel antioxidant produced by a rare phytoplankton as the story's MacGuffin.

Next week I plan to start making character profiles. I asked Tara what my main character's name should be, describing him as a boring scientist my age. She suggested Brian. I think that makes sense. Maybe I'll make him slightly eccentric and name him Bryan.

Story Coming Along

I didn't get a lot of time to take down notes for my novel today, since the girls woke up really early. But I've been doing some of my best thinking in the shower lately. I've added a couple of important characters, more shooting and more dying. I also altered the ending so it's not quite so depressing. Now it's a western. But I've also added a layer of mystery by deciding why the evil city folk in the book want to keep their activities secret. Now the reader will have to figure it out along with the main character. Now we have a story of western intrigue!

The one-sentence description hasn't changed since last week: A scientist goes up against a dirty cop and a crooked politician to defend a rural landowner. I'm very happy with how this is going so far. I even thought of a potential title this morning: "Ten Acres of Blood". Eh, it's a working title.

Great Punk Rock and a Classic Samurai Film

Song that rocked me today: "A Waste of Time and Space" (2008), from the album of the same name, by Michigan duo Man at Arms. Can't find a stream, but here's a video of a song from the same album. Pretty cool!

Man at Arms - "Swamp Things"

Yojimbo was so great this morning. I had always heard that A Fistful of Dollars was a total ripoff, but you can't know how total until you've seen them both. It's the same movie with swords instead of guns. And it even has one gun. I guess Sergio Leone just hoped no one would notice, or that when they did it would be way too late for anyone to care. He just wanted to make a cool movie and a little money; he had no idea what a legend he had created or that he had birthed an entire subgenre of westerns with his little ripped-off movie.

Clearly there never would have been spaghetti westerns if not for Akira Kurosawa and Yojimbo! Of course, there would be no Star Wars without Kurosawa's influence, either, and therefore possibly no summer blockbusters, so where would we be? Who could've known that one Japanese director with a fondness for samurais would have such a huge influence on Western filmmaking!

As I watched the film, I realized that the novel shaping in my head would be a lot better with more violence. I need more characters, because a few people gotta die. I really want it to be a western clashing with a story of city corruption, with the main character caught up in the middle.

Oh, here's the one sentence I gave Tara last night for what the book will be about (subject to change, of course): A scientist goes up against a dirty cop and a crooked politician to defend a rural landowner. We'll see how much that morphs as I go along.

Wrap-Up for the Week

Monday morning, in the shower, I had a small idea for a song, mostly just a guitar/percussion riff. Just one measure, really, but not 4/4 (I haven't counted it yet). I spent the next hour-and-a-half converting electronica samples from 24-bit to 16-bit, sadly, since my old tracker won't interpret 24-bit samples.

But that came after an interesting moment when I was unable to install the latest version of Audacity to my new work laptop due to lack of administrator privileges. How could I possibly record and mix my music for free without Audacity? Options ran through my head for five to ten minutes: I could quit writing music altogether and focus on writing novels; I could forget recording and just perform acoustically at coffee shops and open-mic nights; I could save money and buy equipment or my own computer. At last I remembered that I had downloaded an older version of Audacity to my previous computer. I tried that on the new one, and it worked just fine. Whew!

Tuesday morning I devoted more time to converting samples. I still have a lot more to convert. But this week I've begun to understand how drum-'n'-bass/jungle samples are created. If I take a standard hip-hop sample and play it faster, poof, it's a jungle sample. So all I have to do is create a hip-hop beat in my tracker in which all sounds are played a few steps higher/faster, and then speed up the sample in the tracker. Piece of cake and will save a lot of time vs creating a hip-hop sample, speeding up the whole sample in Audacity and then bringing it back to my tracker. We're on our way now.

On to Wednesday morning. I sat staring at a blank Word file for a few minutes before I finally started jotting down ideas for my novel. I now have a basic premise and some characters! Essentially the story will be about a younger scientist and an older professor with very different ways of doing things. No, that's not it at all. It's about a corrupt city official who will stop at nothing to acquire fame and power. No, that's not quite it. It's a boy-meets-girl story in which tragic loss make the relationship ever stronger. Ok, it's all of those things, really. Hopefully next week I'll be better able to describe it in a sentence. And I also want to add some mysterious elements, which is why I don't want to give away too much here. Not that anyone's probably going to read this anytime soon.

I'm enjoying the process so far. It's not my first time to get serious about writing a novel, but it may be my best idea for a novel so far. Maybe I'll get past the first two chapters this time, since I respect the idea of the novel a little more.

And my reading this morning was the G.I. Joe Yearbook #4 (1988), the final Yearbook. It's an interesting story in which the man posing as Cobra Commander is found out. The best part for me was the use of the Joes' two SEALs, Wet-Suit and Torpedo. Wet-Suit is probably my favorite Joe, and it was great to see them perform a covert beach landing on Cobra Island, changing from scuba gear to camo gear, complete with face paint. They don't accomplish much, but they survive, and seeing them run into the October Guard and fight alongside them was great fun. Almost as much fun as G.I. Joe Special Missions #8 from a couple months earlier, in which several of the most interesting Joes, including Wet-Suit and Beach Head, parachute into Southeast Asia on an ambush mission!

In the morning I'll probably finally see Yojimbo, on loan from Netflix, unless Tara decides to watch it with me soon. She actually remembers the character Yojimbo in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! If she wants to see it, I'll watch something from my spaghetti western collection tomorrow.

Novel Idea: Western Intrigue

Just after going to bed last night I had an idea for a story that excited me. It would combine the ruggedness of a western with the intricate, weblike plot of a John le Carré novel. I would set it in modern day Oklahoma City, the city I'm most familiar with, creating characters in places I knew well when I lived there. It would contain corrupt government officials and police. One character would live in a rural area and would make his living from a natural resource. Someone would be lied to and cheated. The hero, whoever he is, would be shot at the climax, but not fatally. Perhaps he'd lose the use of his hand.

That's all I have so far. I'll need to chart out a bunch of nameless characters and figure out how they're all connected before I can even know what the story would actually be about, or whom the main character would be. One thing I like a lot about this idea is that it can't be nailed down to a genre. It would just be an American novel, which is exactly what I want to write. It would be gritty, suspenseful, character-driven and full of great dialogue (hopefully).

We went to Beehive Books yesterday, to get the girls books for their birthday--a new birthday tradition. I saw a novel from last year called A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan. It's about an aging punk rocker and a woman he employs, and it visits their interesting history. It reminds me very much of a crazy action story I had recently begun to write. I quit when I realized it was way too far-fetched to keep my interest, as my aging punk rocker was nearly immortal due to a serum he'd been given in the '60s. I had been keeping the idea of an aging punk rocker handy, though. So this Goon Squad novel interests me.