The Dark Days of Me and Him

It's February 1.  The beginning of the end.  The Dark Days of Me and Him is live.  Be gentle.

Writing About Something

About two years ago, I wrote a three-part post on YA and Sexuality.  Mostly it dealt with my struggles and talked about why literature for gay youth is so important.  

One of the things I've been trying to do in my own writing is be inclusive of different sexualities, different races, different cultures, without drawing attention to that fact.  Mostly because that's how I grew up.  I briefly "dated" a black girl in high school and never thought it was strange.  Actually, the strangest part of that sentence was that I dated a girl ;)  But my parents never made a big deal out of other races or cultures.  I grew up in an environment where those things didn't matter.  So that's the world I've tried to show my readers.

But it's naive of me to think that people don't struggle.  That gay teens don't struggle.  Hell, I just read another article last week about a gay teen who killed himself.  When I was developing The Dark Days of Me and Him, I had some frank conversations with my friend Margie about the story.  In a small way, it's based around the myth of Orpheus and Erydice.  I don't think I'm spoiling anything by giving that bit away.  I knew I wanted to retell that story of Orpheus losing his love and traveling to the underworld to get her back.  From the moment I conceived the story, it was always about Charlie Hudson and Theo Jackson.  But I worried that I'd be alienating a huge chunk of my audience if people began to think of it as a "gay romance."  Margie and I went back and forth, and at the end, she told me what I already knew:  that I needed to stop worrying about the audience and write the best story I could.

Back when I wrote that post about YA and Sexuality, a couple of people, one in particular who knows who he is, told me that I needed to write MY story.  I still don't think people would be interested in my boring life, but The Dark Days of Me and Him is as close as I'm ever going to get to writing "my" story.  It's about more than Charlie and Theo.  It's about how far someone will go to save a person they care about.  It's about bullying.  It's about fear and small town loneliness.  It's about feeling like there's not a soul in the world who could ever understand you.    It's about feeling small and falling in love and fitting in and ending the world.

It's about Charlie and Theo.

It's about time.

The Dark Days of Me and Him

February 1, 2012

http://www.thedarkdays.com

 

The Dark Days of Me and Him - Teaser

On February 1, the website will go live and the first two chapters of THE DARK DAYS OF ME AND HIM will be up.  Two weeks after that, another two chapters will be up.


But for now, here's a teaser from the first chapter:

Charlie Hudson drinks his morphine through a straw and decides that the next person who tells him how lucky he is to be alive is going to get a rectal thermometer shoved up their nose.

His mother sleeps in the corner with one leg stretched out in front of her and the other turned at an uncomfortable angle. Charlie hasn't seen her sleep so soundly in years. He tries to sit up and nearly blacks out from the pain. Never in his life did Charlie think a three inch incision in his belly could hurt so damn much. Even with a gratuitous helping of pain killers coursing through his body, Charlie still feels everything. The stitches tugging at his skin, the throbbing hole where his spleen once took up space doing whatever it was spleens do, the ends of his broken tibia rubbing together minutely every time he moves. No one has signed his cast yet. It is moon white and itches, though not enough for Charlie to do anything about it and risk waking his mother.

Good Samaritan is quiet now. The last time he awoke, people ran in and out, immediately poking him and shining lights in his eyes and asking him questions he didn't know the answers to. Dr. Echols told him he'd rattled his brain pretty good and didn't seem surprised that he had trouble remembering what had happened that night. Charlie doesn't know what time it is. He looks down at the pale outline his watch left behind wonders where it is. Not that it had any sentimental value, he just feels naked without it. Maybe the paramedics cut it off when they zapped him.

Charlie Hudson flinches at the memory of the accident and retreats back into the narcotic haze. It's a little like trying to recapture a dream when you've just woken up. Part of your brain remembers the world you left behind while the other part is happy to remind you that daylight is just on the other side of your eyelids. Most times, dreams slip away, but for now Charlie lets go of the real world and drifts for a little while longer, trying to forget all that he's lost.

The Dark Days of Me and Him

In the claustrophobic town of Blackpool, Tennessee, Charlie Hudson dreams of escape, Audrey Allen dreams of being a star, and Theo Jackson no longer dreams at all.

After Theo Jackson's apparent suicide, Charlie Hudson only wants to play his guitar and watch the world burn.  He doesn't mean to start the apocalypse, but then again, he didn't mean to fall in love either. 

When Audrey Allen meets Charlie and invites him to join her band, she doesn't realize the high price she'll pay to see her dreams come true.  But she doesn't know how to stop the coming darkness...or if she even wants to.

As the world unravels, so do the secrets and lies surrounding Theo's suicide.  They say the dead can't speak for themselves, but that's not always true. 

The Dark Days of Me and Him is an experimental serial story told in bi-monthly installments over the course of 2012.  It follows the lives of Charlie Hudson, Theo Jackson, Audrey Allen, and the residents of Blackpool, Tennessee, as they try to solve the mystery of Theo's death and mend their fractured lives–even as the world whimpers to its end.

The beginning of the end starts February 1, 2012 at http://www.thedarkdays.com

The Point of It All

Why does this scene deserve to exist?

If your answer is not something along the lines of–because the story would die without it–then you must cut it.

I go through manuscripts multiple times before turning them in.  Each time, I mark my favorite passages and favorite scenes.  The ones that make me stop and say, "Wow! I love this."  I do that because I know that by the third or fourth read I'm very likely going to cut them.  

To be a writer, you also have to be part sociopath.  Keep the lines you cut as trophies or bury the bodies at the bottom of the ocean, but gut your work ruthlessly.  

On February 1 I'm going to unveil a secret project.  It's a free serial novel.  I'll be releasing 2-4 chapters per month until it's complete (which will likely take through the end of 2012).  It's an apocalyptic love story.  I'm not going to call it YA.  You might, but I won't.  The main characters are teenagers though. I also shouldn't call it a love story even though there is love.  The one thing I can say for sure is that there is an apocalypse.  But not in the way you may think.

 In addition to that, I'll be running a mirror image website for writers who are interested in the process.  I don't like teaching or preaching or whatever it is I feel like I've been doing on this blog for the last couple of years.  Because the truth is that I still struggle as much as the next writer.  On this mirror image site, I'll be releasing my rough drafts, character sketches, outlines.  So that anyone who is interested will be able to see how I got from my crazy scribblings to my finished page.

So, if you want to watch a sociopath work, check back next week when I'll release more details.  

Double Spaces in Writing

Don't we have better things to worry about? I keep seeing this issue pop up.  I even read a really self-rightous article about the double-space pop up in Slate, that went on to damn and demean anyone still putting two spaces after a period.  The nerve!

Here's the thing:  I learned to type in 9th grade.  We used computers with monochrome screens.  Before that, I was a hunt-and-peck specialist.  My typing teacher was a strict old dame who used to remove the letters from our keyboards so we couldn't cheat and look at our hands.  She was the person who taught me to put two spaces after ever period.  She practically horse whipped it into us.  It's more than habit, it's muscle memory.

Is it outdated?  Yes.  Does it need to be done anymore?  No.  Am I going to retrain myself to type with one space despite 19 years of writing with two?  No.  I'll put two spaces after my periods until the day someone drowns me in a lake.

"But, my editor prefers one space after a period," you say.   "What's a poor writer to do?"  Write your damn book.  When you're done, use Edit and Replace to replace all your "  " with " ".  I just did it.  4,797 replacements in 5 seconds.

Everyone is happy.  Problem solved.

Now, let's talk about the Oxford Comma...

And 2011

Last post of the year...better make it good.

Or not.

2011 was a struggle for me.  Lots happened.  Most of it was amazing.  Some of it was annoying. 

Now I'm looking forward, moving on. 

But before I do, I want to share a couple of 2011 greatest hits.

READY PLAYER ONE by Ernest Cline.  It's not going to win awards for being intensely deep, but this was my favorite read of 2011.  Fast paced and fun, READY PLAYER ONE was the book I needed to sail out of the reading doldrums I'd been stuck in.

STICK by Andrew Smith.  I'm beginning to think he's going to have a book on my list every year.  STICK is more than a great book.  It's experimental and sweet and the kind of book that you'll want to read again.

EVERYBODY SEES THE ANTS by A.S. King.  As a kid who faced bullies during his middle and high school years, this book spoke to me.  I've had trouble connecting to some of King's other protagonists, but Lucky Linderman was awesome.  And the writing, as usual, was brilliant.

INVINCIBLE SUMMER by Hannah Moskowitz.  What can I say?  I'm a Hannah fan.  She has a way of writing families that makes you ache.  And her sophomore effort was better even than her debut, BREAK.

Now that that's out of the way.  What am I looking forward to in 2012 other than the end of the world?


PASSENGER by Andrew Smith.  Another Marbury book?  Yes, please.


GONE, GONE, GONE by Hannah Moskowitz.  A gay romance set to the backdrop of the DC sniper shootings?  If anyone can do it, Hannah can.


PIECES OF US by Margie Gelbwasser.  I've already read her amazing book but I'm dying for others to read it.  The story of 4 fractured teens will break your heart.


SOMETHING LIKE NORMAL by Trish Doller.  I've been hearing about Trish's book forever and I can't wait to get my hands on it. 


KATANA by Cole Gibson.  Ninjas?  Samurai?  Shopping?  I've read some of this and can't wait to read the rest.




What books are you waiting for in 2012?

The last bit of business is that the blog and website are going to undergo a major change in 2012.  Over the month of January I'll be redesigning my site and changing the focus of my blog.  The truth is that I feel I've run out of things to say that are worthy.  The thing about blogging is that anyone can do it and few people actually have anything worth saying.  I feel I've become one of those people.  When I began blogging, it was to chronicle my journey on the path to publication.

Now that I'm published and part of the machine, I don't know that I have anything left to say...or rather the things that I do have to say shouldn't be said.  Publishing is a business like any other, and just like I wouldn't blog about the goings on in my day job at an IT professional, it wouldn't be cool to blog about the goings on between my publishers and I. 

But that doesn't mean I'm done blogging.  Just that I'm going to change my focus.  In 2012, I'm going to begin a project.  An ambitious project where I'll write a book on-line and publish it like a serial under a Creative Commons license with a 2 chapters per month goal. 

My blog and website will have two areas.  One for people who just want to enjoy the story.  I'll talk more about the story in January, but it will feel more like a television show than a book, because of the medium in which I'm going to tell it.  The reader area will have the chapters, info about characters, a place for people to discuss what's happening...stuff like that.  The other area will be a writer's area.  A place where I'll post the first drafts of each chapters along with notes.  How I go to the final draft.  My outlines and all the little bits of how I write.  The process of every writer is different, so reading self-important posts by other writers about what you should and shouldn't do in a novel are kind of pointless.  But maybe by sharing my process, someone out there will find something useful to them. 

I was aiming to launch this January 1, but obligations to my publisher and my day job have kept me too busy to keep that schedule.  So February 1 is my new launch date. 

And that's it.  That all I've got for the year.  I hope everyone has a safe and happy New Year, and I'll see you back here in January.