I’d be thinking that Osama bin Laden actually died somewhere around the Tora Bora caves in 2002. And when U.S. Special Forces killed him, or maybe he died from his famously diseased kidneys failing without dialysis available, they found a trove of videos that were recorded shortly after 9/11 that bin Laden intended to release intermittently. They would be vague enough to always sound like they were describing current events, but really they were just reflecting whatever contingencies the top Qaeda leaders considered likely. After all, their need for publicity might be occasionally at odds with their ability to distribute their message.

The U.S., of course, knows a thing or two about the value of propaganda. These videos could serve America’s cause as well as they could serve Al Qaeda’s. There’s nothing quite as unifying as having a hissable villain to close ranks against, a la Goldstein in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. So the American military kept bin Ladin “alive” and arranged to have his tapes released via Al Jazeera. Far fetched? Sure. But that would explain why we’ve never been able to simply trace the chain of evidence back from the Arabic news network. I mean, somebody at Al Jazeera had to have a connection to whomever was sending those videos, right? And the sender had to have a link to whomever recorded them, who had to have a link to bin Laden himself. And yet, after almost ten years of surveillance, we couldn’t connect these dots?

Anyway, the videos did their job. George W. Bush won the 2004 election. (I prefer that construct to “George W. Bush won re-election,” which presupposes he was elected in 2000, but that’s an entirely different paranoid fantasy.) Unfortunately for the Republican Party, the videos lost their shelf life after that. The American public wearied of war as they realized that we’d spent less time in World War I and World War II combined than we’d spent in the Global War on Terror — and actually won both of the first two! And no amount of impotent rage was going to mask the fact that millions of people had lost their jobs practically overnight, the entire nation’s investment portfolio was in the toilet and, by the way, your house is now worthless.

So the Republicans lost the White House and, thus, control of the videos.

But that’s OK because they were losing their luster anyhow. Maybe there weren’t any prerecorded bin Laden rants left. And even if they were, the newly installed Nobel Peace Prize laureate and newly elected President Barack Obama had little appetite for continuing the GWOT. I leave it to your own political leanings to inform you whether this is due to his being a Muslim, having sympathy for the Islamist cause, he’s just plain evil and can’t be trusted or (my personal favorite as outlandish as it sounds) he realized that the most effective way to deal with the budget deficit is to end the war.

Now here’s where the planning goes out the window and the White House starts improvising. (Nothing goes according to plan for this long.)

Donald Trump revives the birther canard. There’s really no point arguing with him. No amount of evidence is going to stop people who want to think the worst about someone from thinking the worst. And the evidence that Obama had filed with the Federal Election Commission in 2008, the so-called short form, was all that was required by the government to stand for high office or, for that matter, to get a passport or driver’s license.

But then Obama gets the word that the CIA has located a high-value target outside Islamabad, Pakistan.

It’s obviously not bin Laden. He’s a long time dead from gunshot wounds or from fatal quantities of potassium and calcium in his blood, and it’s in a suburban setting, which is clearly not bin Laden’s style. Still, it’s somebody else we want dead. But we don’t want the whole neighborhood dead, so we have to send in the Navy SEALs rather than another drone.

Suddenly Obama’s long-form birth certificate finally materializes.

The SEALs do their job. They kill the bad guy. Then they put out the word it’s bin Laden.

The proof? Their word for it. The word of the CIA and of a covert operations team. I don’t want to disparage either of them. They’re both highly professional, highly effective organizations doing difficult jobs in the interest of defending their nation. But one of the pillars of that nation is freedom of expression, so I find no sedition in asking: What is it they say is the “first casualty of war” again?

Where’s the body, one might ask. At the bottom of the ocean. Which ocean? We can’t say. Do you have a picture of the bullet-ridden corpse? Maybe. If so, we’ll release it later. (What? Did their PhotoShop license expire?) How come he was able to survive with kidney failure all this time? Oh, he never had kidney failure! You didn’t hear us right — we said he had kidney stones. Can’t you provide any other proof that bin Laden died according to your account, Mister President? Hey, I just showed you my birth certificate — you people are never satisfied!

So now Obama is a shoe-in for reelection. Bush kept “chasing” bin Laden for more than seven years because it served his purposes. Obama “killed” him in less than two-and-a-half because that served his purposes.

The only part I don’t get is the media’s acquiescence to the narrative over the past 12 hours. I know we all want to believe this. But it’s somebody’s job — and I don’t know if it’s the legitimate press’s or Fox News’s — to start asking follow-up questions. Really, why is everyone reporting bin Laden’s assassination as a fact? It might very well be, but why isn’t anyone adding phrases like, “according to the Pentagon” or “according to the Obama Administration”? I’m not asking for cynicism here, just some healthy skepticism.

Because I’m someone who believes in freedom of the press, but who also believes that responsibility comes with that freedom.

Like I said, I’m not a conspiracy theorist.

So I’ve got my face out there as well as my name. I have a 254-page business card that says I can write a novel. So it’s time to start taking this seriously.

My crit partner Jake Packard pointed out that, at this past weekend’s I-Con, I used the term “hobby” more than once to describe my relationship to genre writing. For tax reasons, I’m 100% right in using that word; I earn a living at my corporate day job and have a nice, little side business doing financial journalism, which pays much better per-word than fiction ever will. The royalties I get from LTIL are unlikely to ever pay back the travel expenses I racked up going to cons over the past 13 months. If I were to have written off those expenses on my 2010 IRS forms, I’d have been begging for an audit. The same is going to apply for 2011.

But Jake is right in that I need to get that bothersome fact out of my head. It’s time to get serious. All the people I’ve met since this journey began — all the big-name authors who have inspired me, all the mid-listers who may be in a position to introduce me to the people who helped them find their ways into the pro ranks, all the fifteen-percenters, all the publishing honchos — wouldn’t be in a position to help me right now even if they wanted to. I simply don’t have a big enough body of work.

So that’s what I’m starting on now.

Step 1: Finish Mighty Mighty already. The first draft is a half chapter away from completion.  Then do a second draft, and don’t take more than two weeks to do it. Then send that second draft out to the volunteers who kindly agreed to be my beta readers. While they’re looking it over, network and hobnob and get the first three chapters into as many hands as possible in the publishing world.

Step 2: Work on my short game. Part of the reason nobody has read my stuff is that I don’t have anything in the anthos or magazines. That mainly because I prefer to write in long form. But if I’m going to break into genre fiction, I’d better start pounding out some stuff in the 3,000- to 5,000-word range to get it into the kind of markets that the genre-fiction scenesters read.

Step 3: Ya know, steps 1 and 2 are about all I can handle right now.

In the meantime, please check the blog roll for the link to Suvudu, the DelRey/Spectra site run by webmaster David Pomerico and, if you’re interested in my report from I-Con 30, view my vlog on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvkQmntnEPg

Nicholas Kaufmann: Actually, the expression wasn’t originally about shooting heroin, it was Cantonese slang for inhaling heroin smoke out of a bowl, which is how opium was consumed for centuries before it became modernized in an injectable form. Later, “chasing the dragon” became a catch-all expression for heroin use. I had heard the expression before From Hell, but I’m at a loss to remember where and when. I’m pretty sure it was not the 1996 Lifetime TV movie of the same name starring  Night Court’s Markie Post as a suburban junkie mom. Though that would be an awesome story if it were.

WF: I’m sure you have any number of projects in folders on your desk or loops in your mind. What was the impetus for writing this particular book rather than pursuing another creative outlet?

NK: A writer’s mind tends to be a fertile playground for ideas, but the deep, dark secret no writer will ever admit is that the great majority of the ideas we get every day — like, nine out of every ten — are terrible. Just total crap that we’re embarrassed we thought of in the first place. But some ideas show a decent amount of potential and stay with me. Unfortunately, I’m not like other writers who can work on numerous projects at once. I tend to focus on one project at a time, so some ideas have to wait quite a while before coming to the fore.

However, Chasing the Dragon didn’t have to wait long. The idea came to me in 2008, at a time when I was focusing on novella-length
work. I’d published  General Slocum’s Gold the year before and been nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for it, and had just finished
another, still unpublished novella called In the Shadow of the Axe when the idea for Chasing the Dragon hit me. I started work on it pretty much right away, though in this case starting work meant doing research on heroin, addiction, and dragon mythology from around the world, before writing a single word.

WF: I understand how you’d research dragon lore, but what are the steps to researching heroin addiction?

NK: I should probably clarify so you don’t get the wrong impression! I researched online what items are needed to prepare a fix, how to actually shoot heroin, the physical and mental effects of the drug, and the side effects of jonesing. I just hope the NSA wasn’t tracking my Google searches those particular days!

“I just hope the NSA wasn’t tracking my Google searches”

WF: One thing I found remarkable about Chasing the Dragon was the way it sewed together so many seemingly disparate elements: dragons, drugs, Americana, zombies … Zombies? Really? Zombies?

NK: Ha! Yes, zombies. Here’s the thing. Over the past five or ten years, I’ve grown tired of zombies. Really tired. It’s like they’re everywhere now, and while I know there are still lots of people out there who can’t get enough of them, I’ve reached my limit. But it’s not really the zombies themselves I’m tired of, it’s that they’re being used the same way over and over again. In my opinion, the whole mindless hordes of gut-munchers thing has become overdone to the point of boredom. (I love you, George Romero, but what hath thou wrought?) I don’t see many people trying to do new and exciting things with zombies, other than inserting them into classic literature for comic effect, which also got old pretty damn fast. I had been wanting to do something different with zombies for a long time, and to that end I actually wound up going back to what zombies were originally meant to be. Rather than flesh-hungry corpses reanimated by a virus or a nuclear waste spill or what have you, original zombie lore had them used as slave labor by an evil mastermind. Even though that’s an age-old take on the trope, it felt fresh to me again after four decades of Romeroesque zombies eating the field barren. In Chasing the Dragon, I wanted to show just how terrible the Dragon is through her ability not just to kill people, but to infect their dead bodies with her will and use their reanimated corpses to do her dirty work for her. I don’t know how successful I was, but I hope I was able to make zombies — or at least my zombies — a little more interesting for readers.

WF: Which of these elements did you start with? And from the point of view of craft, which came first for you: theme, plot, character?

NK:I started with the title, actually! I rarely do that, usually a character or a plot thread comes first, but something about combining the legend of St. George with heroin and calling it Chasing the Dragon really appealed to me. From there I developed Georgia Quincey, the last living descendant of St. George, and her strange and tragic predicament. (By the way, bonus points to anyone who can figure out the secret reason I gave her the last name Quincey!) [My guess is it has something to do with Thomas De Quincey, author of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, but that's based on 0.13 seconds of research on Google. - wf] Oddly enough, the Dragon and her ability to control the dead came last for me. I didn’t know what the Dragon looked like or even what her goals were until I was well into the initial draft of the book! I tend to roll my eyes a bit whenever writers say they wait for their characters to tell them who they are, or that books sometimes write themselves, but even if it sounds goofy there’s some truth to it, more so with Chasing the Dragon than with anything else I ever wrote.

WF: What are you working on now, and how far along are you in the process?

NK:I’m just finishing up a fantasy novel that takes place in contemporary New York City. It’s like a quest fantasy, only our band of heroes are questing on the Upper West Side of Manhattan instead of through some imaginary medieval kingdom. It’s the first in a projected series, and I’ve got three books mapped out already. If it sells well enough, I would be happy to keep it going past that. I really like these characters, and I love writing about a hidden, magical New York City that most New Yorkers don’t know about, a city where an ancient dragon lives in the sewers and goblins hold midnight rituals in Prospect Park.

WF: You’re a member of a crit group [known as "Who Wants Cake"]. How does that help you as a writer?

NK: Enormously. I put together my own crit group back in 2003, hand picking writers whose work I admired and from whom I was certain I could learn. (It helps that I live in New York City, where there are no shortage of writers to become friendly with.) Luckily, all the writers I approached were interested. Since then, some members have left and new ones have joined, but it’s been amazing and gratifying to see how far we’ve all come. Several members have gone on to have successful careers as novelists. A few got published for the very first time. But most gratifying, to me, is how much I learned from everyone in the group. I wouldn’t be half the writer I am today without their help and support. I love them like family, and half the fun of crit group night is going out to dinner with them afterward and just chewing the fat.

WF: How closely does your group mirror your target audience?

NK: Very closely, in that they are all avid readers. I wish everyone read as much as these folks do. Most of us write speculative fiction –horror, fantasy, sf — but not all of us. We also have a couple of amazing literary fiction writers in the group, and their input has been just as amazing. They tend to focus their crits on character and emotion issues, something genre writers like myself sometimes forgot to pay proper attention to because I’m so busy working on the plot.

WF: What would you — or they — say you need to work on as a writer, and what are you doing to build yourself up along those lines?

NK: I know I struggle with dialogue sometimes, trying to make it sound as realistic as possible and frequently falling short. Luckily, this is where revision comes into play, cleaning up all the stilted dialogue that finds its way into the initial draft. It’s the same with pacing. In early drafts I sometimes tend to babble on, resulting in passages or conversations that can definitely stand to be condensed in revisions. But G.I. Joe was right, knowing is half the battle, and by being aware of these issues I can keep an eye out for them while I work. I’m one of those writers who believes every word you write makes you a better writer, even if that word gets deleted down the road, so with each project I hope I’m growing and evolving.

“every word you write makes you a better writer, even if that word gets deleted down the road”

WF: Looking forward, do you expect to stick with the dark fantasy subgenre or will you be branching out?

NK: I like to keep the door open. I started out in horror and seem to be edging toward dark and modern fantasy, but I also have ideas for mystery and suspense novels. What they all have in common, of course, is their focus on the darker things in life. I guess I’m attracted to that, at least when it comes to what I write. In real life, I have a much sunnier disposition!

Nicholas Kaufmann’s blog www.nicholaskaufmann.com can direct you to outlets through which his books are available.

McCarthy also has the dubious distinction of being my own community’s representative to Congress. I live in one of those suburbs of a large city where people identify strongly with the Republican party even though, if you ask them about their beliefs issue-by-issue, they actually support Democratic platform planks. (Such doublethink is endemic in America, as you can tell from the healthcare debate redux.) It might not surprise you to learn that our Dem congresswoman registered with the GOP  once she was old enough to vote. McCarthy remained a registered Republican even after she was elected to the House as a Democrat, and re-elected, and re-elected again. (She finally had the operation done in 2003.)

What’s unique about McCarthy is the reason why she ran for office on the ticket of a party with which she had never identified before. It’s because of her stance on gun control. When her husband was killed and son wounded by a crazed mass murderer on a commuter train in 1993, she took on the cause with, literally I suppose, a vengeance.

So, knowing full well that she’d be painted as a politician who won’t let a good tragedy go to waste, she launched her current campaign to ban the high-cap mags that had been illegal for 10 years under the assault weapons ban.

As a good constituent, I “liked” my representative on Facebook a few months ago. As you can imagine, her page has become a bulletin board for her gun control positions over the past few weeks. It has also become a magnet for Second Amendment proponents to contradict her positions. Some of them are quite eloquent and many of their arguments are well-constructed and worthy of inclusion in any synthesis of ideas.

But some are just, plain, loony. (Same could be said for both sides, in all candor.)

Like this gem from yesterday, posted by somebody who identifies himself as Patrick Onesty, whose Facebook page indicates he lives New York’s Hudson Valley, not far from where my cousins grew up outside New Paltz. For those of you who don’t know the area, making customized Hacky Sacks to be sold in parking lots of Phish concert venues is a major local industry.

Anyway, here’s what Onesty (a Switchboard.com lookup suggests this is his real name, though I bet he gets a lot of skepticism) had to say in response to McCarthy’s posting of a Washington Post editorial supporting her proposed ban:

Imagine a lone survivor in a fire fight trying to defend himself and his wounded comrades with a 6 shooter. Get real Carolyn, don’t be an ass!

And here’s what I had to say to him:

“Lone survivor in a fire fight”? Patrick, your FB page says you’re in Pine Bush, N.Y. I got family from around there. Who would you be shooting at, dude? Hippies? Before you waste your ammo, the term “shotgun” means something different to them.

 

A few days earlier, we heard from a frequent troll on McCarthy’s page who identifies himself as Kevin Morris. According to his Facebook page, he recently attended community college in southern Arizona. So I figure he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to his right to be armed to the teeth. Morris’s main complaint is that McCarthy keeps posting policy-level support for her positions without offering data from studies that indicate gun control saves lives. And that’s a fair criticism, but I don’t recall Morris ever posting any evidence in support of his position, either. (Others have.)

Here’s where he inadvertently baited me into the debate:

Is it logical to support a bill that will have no impact on crime or homicides? How about we step up and ban fast cars? Alcohol? Kitchen knives?

Thank you. My response:

Glad you brought up cars.

Yes, we ban fast cars.

If a car’s sole purpose is to race, it is generally not permitted on public roads except as towage.

But for the vast majority of cars that are permitted, there are maximum and minimum speed limits, safety requirements mandated at point-of-sale and safe operation laws that must be obeyed.

I believe (although there may be an exception or two) that every state in the Union requires a a title transfer upon transaction. And that only permits you to have the car towed onto your property, where you are free to drive it around your back yard as much as you want.

But if you want to park it on a public thoroughfare, it must be registered and inspected. If you pull away from the curb, you must be licensed, requiring you to prove knowledge of road rules, manual dexterity adequate to operate the vehicle, and visual acuity adequate to ensure that you can read the signage and be aware of objects and people in the road. You must also carry proof of insurance.

Inspection standards, drivers’ test emphases and insurance requirements do vary state-by-state, as it should be.

If your point is that gun ownership is akin to owning that other deadly weapon that is so ingrained in American culture — the automobile — and ought to be similarly regulated, then I agree, but I don’t suppose that is your point.

One more thing about the car analogy: It’s often a bad idea to own one if you live in the city.

Morris had one other parting shot in his posting:

I suppose some of you people also thought the Titanic wasn…’t going to sink? And that men read Playbo[y] for the articles?

This guy is just the gift that keeps giving. Please, Arizona GOP, run Kevin Morris for Senate.

Oh, and Kevin, since the advent of the Internet, the articles really are the only reason to buy Playboy. ;-}

Mike, I’d like to talk with you about your creative process, and I think that has to start with your motivation to write. Your work in progress is a dark fantasy/political satire. What can you tell us about this project?

MICHAEL A. VENTRELLA: Bloodsuckers is about a vampire who runs for President.  Here are the first two lines:

“Norman Mark was a politician with skeletons in his closet.

Literally.”

The main character, a cynical reporter covering the election for a small-time newspaper, finds himself in a life-and-death struggle against a powerful conspiracy. The reporter is a disillusioned liberal, but this new candidate Mark has him interested. Crazies on the right are accusing Mark of not producing his birth certificate, of being a socialist and an atheist, of murdering his opponents in order to get the nomination… and of being a vampire.  No one pays any attention to these wackos, of course, since everyone knows vampires don’t exist.  (Turns out, all the things they are saying about the candidate are true).

When the reporter gets too close to the truth, he finds himself framed for the attempted assassination of the candidate.  He runs and goes underground.  In order to prove his innocence, he will have to prove not only that vampires exist, but that there is a grand conspiracy of them who have been running things behind the scenes for thousands of years. There’s more to it than that, though — not all of the vampires get along, for instance.  Some don’t want Mark to have such a prominent position and will do anything to stop him. And of course, keep in mind that this is a work-in-progress.  As any writer can tell you, it may change in significant ways by the time it’s published.

WF: Have recent events changed your work-in-progress significantly? I’m thinking of Tucson, but the unheralded productivity and cordiality of the lame-duck session also turned politics-as-usual on its head. Either event could make any political satirist nervous about the relevance of the point they were trying to make.

MAV: No, I don’t think current political issues will change the book much, except to emphasize the divide we have in this country right now — which are really over minor, stupid things. I mean, seriously, both conservatives and liberals want a strong economy, peace, justice, and the best America that there can possibly be. We just disagree on how to get there. Compared to the difference between, say, us and Islamic terrorists, liberals and conservatives are practically the same. It’s very sad then when one side treats the other as an enemy instead of as someone who simply has different views.

WF: As an author with strong political convictions, what is the statement you’re making with it?

MAV: A “statement” is secondary to entertainment.  I’m more interested in writing an exciting page-turner than an editorial.  And I certainly don’t want to preach to my audience. But there are some interesting questions that I hope to address in the book:  Would we be willing to put up with some evil if we can accomplish a greater good?  Do the ends justify the means?

WF: “Willing to put up with some evil”? Is that a question that even needs to be asked? Don’t we do that all the time?

MAV: I suppose, but the question is the degree in which we do so. Imagine a politician who did everything you wanted, and who would make the country prosperous and fight for the things you wanted — would it bother you that he sometimes killed people and drank their blood?

WF: I voted for Bill Clinton, so I suppose it wouldn’t. Never really put much stock in the character issue. But let’s steer the conversation toward process. Which came first for you: the plot? The main character? Or was it the message?

MAV: The title. I overheard someone commenting that Congress was full of bloodsuckers, so I thought “Hey, what if that was true?” It began with the idea of a vampire running for the Senate, but then I realized that President was better.

My original outline was more political — How would someone who had no problem killing off his opponents and using his vampiric powers to control and charm people win an election? I always wanted him to be someone I’d agree with politically, because I wanted to explore the Machiavellian issue. “Yeah, I kill people and suck their blood, but my opponent is a tool of the huge corporations who is going to ruin this country in ways you cannot imagine. Besides, with my powers, I will bring about world peace. Give me a few minutes alone with our enemies and they’ll suddenly decide to get rid of their nuclear weapons, free their political prisoners, abdicate their position, and install a democracy.”

I also had fun putting real people in there. I have Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow debating the candidate, and a funny appearance on the Colbert Show…

However as I wrote it, I felt that it would have a limited audience like that. And I wasn’t feeling the excitement I wanted. Too much message, too little adventure.

So it went through a big change where the political stuff is still there but now it’s more of a thriller.

WF: I always loved that theme: distinguishing between one’s own best interest and some metaphysical “good”. So now that the story has got
that theme plus the main character to carry it, how hard was it to go from message to adventure? What did you have to do as a writer to turn it into a thriller?

MAV: Mostly I went with my gut. The original book was more “West Wing” than “bat wing.” It had lots of dialog and little action — It consisted primarily of people talking about politics. I enjoyed it, but, you know, this is about a vampire! It should be scary and exciting. It should read like an adventure, not a Huffington Post op ed.

So I did what you should always do in a good book: Take your main character, place him or her in a serious conflict from which there is no turning back, and then throw in a bunch of obstacles the character must deal with. Conflict is necessary in any story — and the more dangerous, the more exciting. A conflict can be something as simple as an unrequited love or it can be the end of the world. Earlier drafts had the conflict merely to expose the truth and reveal the character as a vampire. But even I would get bored reading just that story. My other two novels (and my short stories) are all adventures, with twists and turns, and death always a possibility. That’s what I like to read, and that’s what I like to write. So that first version didn’t last too long.

And trust me, I can still make points about politics while lives are in danger!

Once more, a disclaimer: This book is still being written. It will be a while before it’s available for purchase.

WF: Is there anyone else involved in your writing process before you send the manuscript out into the publishing world? Do you have beta readers or a critique group? Does your wife, Heidi Hooper, read your early drafts? If you do have such a support system, what proportion of feedback is well-considered and constructive, and what proportion do you have to tune out?

> MAV: I think I’ve become much better over the years because I listen to advice from experienced authors and editors. You can always get better after all.

It’s important for writers to get professional advice as opposed to just friends and family. The big difference is that nonprofessionals (like my wife) can give me general advice like “This part isn’t working for me” or “I don’t think this character is acting in the way he should” but can’t always tell you how to fix it. A professional, on the other hand, can offer very useful advice.

I tend to give my first draft to Heidi, who may notice things I don’t, but then I want someone else to do a thorough editing. I had an excellent editor on my second novel, and she has continued to assist me in my new work, which I also appreciate.

This doesn’t mean I agree with all of her advice. When it comes to grammatical corrections and obvious flaws in descriptive prose, I definitely pay attention. After all, if she can’t tell what is going on in the scene, it needs to be rewritten. However, there are times where she may disagree with the plot, and then I say “No, I know what I am doing.” For instance, she tends to want to give away too much information too soon — and since much of my work involves mysteries and plot twists, there is a balance that must be met for it to work. Give away too many clues and there are no surprises.

You need to also have someone who understands the genre as well. You don’t want someone who hates science fiction to analyze your short story “Captain Spike Strongarm and the Attack of the Martian Love Gods.” (Now that I think about it, with a title like that, you might not want anyone to analyze that short story.)

WF: Thank you, Mike. Looking forward to seeing you this weekend at Arisia.

Maybe it wasn’t politics. Let’s be honest, whatever Loughner’s shortcomings, he had excellent taste in obsessions. Nobody else wants to say it, fine. I’ll say it: Gabby Giffords is a hottie. Well, maybe not at this moment with half her skull in a freezer bag, but three days ago (and hopefully again, soon) she might as well have walked around in stiletto heels and a sash that read “Miss Capitol Hill”. I could be wrong, but maybe Sarah Palin’s whole issue with Giffords boils down to who’s prettier. It’s absolutely no contest. Giffords is better looking than Palin, Michele Bachmann and Christine O’Donnell put together. I know how wrong it is to come right out and say it but, damn, Gabby is one sexy lady. (At least by popular standards. My personal tastes run more toward Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who looks good without giving the impression that she’s working that hard for it.)

My point is, maybe the Giffords shooting had less to do with Bobby Kennedy’s and more to do with Selena’s.

Not that I believe it for a second.

Before we get into motives, though, let’s be clear about this Loughner character. He is beyond stupid, beyond incompetent. He makes the Times Square bomber and the Underwear bomber look like a couple of Caltech department chairs. I mean, how dense is this guy? He sets out to shoot a Democratic congresswoman but ends up killing a Republican judge. And not just any Republican judge: the highest-ranking federal judge in Arizona, a guy who stood as much a chance as anyone of being named to the Supreme Court if fellow Arizonan John McCain would’ve won the 2008 presidential sweepstakes. Not only that, Loughner also kills a precious, adorable nine-year-old girl. And, again, not just any precious, adorable nine-year-old girl. She’s the granddaughter of a World Series champion, born on 9/11.

He does end up shooting the congresswoman, point-blank in the head, and fails to kill her. For all we know and as we all hope, she’ll make an astonishing recovery for someone who sustained a 95%-fatal wound and whom NPR reported uncontested for 20 minutes as having died.

I’m certain this isn’t the last evidence of Loughner’s incredible idiocy, but it’s the last one I can think of right now: If it takes you more than two bullets to kill somebody, find another hobby. This community college washout takes 62 rounds on the errand. Excuse me, but if you’re bringing that many bullets on a mission like this, I have to assume that the last one has your own initials carved in the casing. This was a suicide mission. This dim bulb even failed at that. A bunch of old codgers who hang around an Arizona Safeway early on a Saturday morning sat on you until the cops came. Great job, shit-for-brains. You’re thicker than a ten-dollar milkshake.

You wanted attention? You got it. The President of the United States called the Director of the FBI and ordered him to personally fly out to your dry, dusty hometown and take personal charge of the federal, high-crime investigation of your sorry, self-medicating, stoner ass. Your teabagger buddies like to complain about wastes of taxpayer money? I’m with them on this one.

And that’s where motive comes in.

It’s OK for knuckleheads like me to jump to the conclusion that gunsight imagery, senatorial candidates who invoke “Second Amendment remedies” if people who think like her lose at the polls (like Sharron Angle herself did) and other violent imagery that moved from the Wingnut Right to the Just Plain Folks Right over the past couple years fueled Loughner’s preexisting paranoia. It’s not a far stretch. I entirely believe it to be true. But I can’t prove it.

But I don’t have to. I’m just another guy with a two-bit opinion.

Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik is in the business of gathering facts he can prove in court. He has no business spouting off about “vitriol” and “bigotry” in the media in the current context. If, once this case is over, he wants to make civility on radio and TV his mission and go on a lecture tour about it, I’ll buy a ticket. Ditto if he wants to rail against Arizona’s practically non-existent gun laws. (It’s still legal for a school to ban firearms on campus but, outside of that, anything goes in the Grand Canyon State.) I really do appreciate that a born-and-bred Southwesterner with a half-century law enforcement career who came of age before the Civil Rights struggle should be so progressive on issues like these.  But, respectfully, the sheriff shouldn’t be opening his cakehole about any of this. To start with, he runs as a Democrat and this leaves him open to charges of partisanship if he’s speaking out against the Rush Limbaugh wannabes of the world. More importantly, he blurs the line between fact and opinion in what are the most eagerly attended press conferences in a long while.

In that first presser, he brought up the state of the national discourse by himself, not even in response to a question. I figured he knew something I don’t about Loughner’s specific motives. Maybe Loughner had a suicide note on his person. Maybe they impounded his computer and found a string of militia movement web sites in his favorites list. Maybe he had every Glenn Beck episode ever broadcast DRVed. Maybe they turned on his car radio and Savage Nation came blaring out.

Any and all of that might be true, but Dupnik isn’t saying. I give him credit for going on Fox News to clarify his position but, if all he has to say to Megyn Kelly is, “That’s my opinion, period,” he shoud keep that opinion to himself until the investigation is complete.

Just another reason I’m just as likely to vote for a conservative as for a liberal for local office.

Dubnik should leave the opinions to those in a position to present opinion as just opinion. Which isn’t to say he’s wrong, just inappropriate (much like this entire posting).

What’s also wrong is the conservative media’s assertion that there is no link between rhetoric and action. If evidence of a direct link is eventually established in this case  then, much like climate change and evolution, it will still be “debunked”. Those with long memories  recall how we had exactly this same dance in 1994 after G. Gordon Liddy refused to walk back his “head shots” comments in the wake of the Oklahoma City attack.

And let’s not forget that, although the preponderance of violent imagery comes from the right these days, the left isn’t blameless either. Keith Olbermann, if you ever again ask your audience to “get out your pitchforks and torches,” then you, sir, are full of shit.

If you want to know the true meaning of Channukah — or if you just want to laugh at my attempt at singing — visit the Land That I Love YouTube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/LandThatILoveNovel?feature=mhum

Also, I just got the first cut of my programming schedule for Arisia. If you plan to be in Boston over MLK weekend, come on by. Details are on the Appearances page.

Wow. Almost time to pester the springtime con organizers. This year has really flown!

I’m a little embarrassed that I haven’t updated this site in a couple weeks. In addition to having a busy time at the day job, I’ve been trying to finish my superhero spoof Mighty Mighty and that’s taken all of my writing juice. So maybe I’ll combine the two by posting a clip of my work-in-progress here.

In this world, superpowers are a result of a fairly common genetic trait. A small percentage — but a significant raw number — of people have special abilities. And they tend to squander them. Much like those of here in the real world who know they could be doing more with their talents.

So much for theme. This excerpt introduces the three characters who most centrally drive the plot. Orville is a scion of elite heroes who was destined for great things but, due to his learning and socialization disabilities as well as his rather disgusting power (high-explosive snot), is working as a mall cop. Kevin is someone who tests out as having high potential, but doesn’t ever seem to actually make anything happen; he’s an erstwhile professional student who can’t seem to get traction in the real world. Missy is a doctrinaire feminist (in theory) and a mousy pushover in a dead-end retail job (in reality) who is given a classic, mythological blessing/curse: she is awarded a superpower for her efforts to mediate among the goddesses, but it’s absolutely the last power in the world a Smith alumna who majored in women’s studies would ever want.

There is a bit of a love triangle going on between these three, but I throw enough monkey wrenches in the works that there’s no way it can be resolved. Because that’s not the point of the story. The plot is how these three and their compatriots redeem themselves by saving the society that had judged them as being of little merit. M2 is a comedy in both senses of the word: a) it’s intentionally funny and b) the protags win in the end. So I’m not giving anything away by saying that, through their actions and with each others’ help, Orville becomes a fully functioning human being, Kevin becomes a hero and Missy becomes a leader.

But that’s not how they start out …

##

It was 10:37:09 a.m. It was also a Tuesday, but that is not important.

It being 10:37:09 a.m., Orville Ortley was walking past the Chesterfield Mall’s Cinnabon and approaching the Auntie Anne’s. Orville did this every morning at that tick. It was a point of professionalism. He was a proud member of an elite profession.

Orville was not an imposing looking man by any means. Only five-foot-five, 140 pounds, he looked like his arch-nemesis could be a snugly torqued lug nut. From appearances, one would not expect that Orville Ortley was one of the most powerful superbeings on Earth. He wasn’t – one of the most powerful, that is. But he was still a superbeing whom most mall shoppers would be ill-advised to confront.

Despite his modest appearance, Orville did have a certain bearing about him. His TSA uniform was starched and pressed, the shirt the kind of white that only daily bleaching could produce; the shirt was worn and frayed, but it was plenty white. The patent-leather uppers of his rubber-soled shoes were polished to the point of being just a little creepy.

His scalp was obscured from view by the headgear that marked him as a mall hero, as opposed to a run-of-the-mill mall cop. Choice of headgear had always been a highly personal choice among mall heroes. Some years before, they were pressed into the Civil Service and the choices of facial concealment became more limited, but that only affected the newbies. Orville, who had been taking the pace between Cinnabon and Auntie Anne’s every work day at 10:37:09 for the preceding 1,981 work days, was able to take advantage of a grandfather clause.

Orville went with the cowl, partly in homage to his idol, Colonel America, but also because he was a little self-conscious about his thinning hair. That is, it was thinning when he first took up the hero mantle; by this time, all that was left to him were a few stubborn follicles combed over a smooth scalp and a good memory.

How the cowl covered Orville’s face, though, was unique in the hero field. His forehead, cheeks and slate-gray eyes were clearly visible, as were his mouth and jaw. His cowl would have been little more than a bathing cap if not for the crystalline green band that stretched across his nose.

Orville had little life outside the job, so the purpose of this accoutrement had nothing to do with hiding a secret identity. It had everything to do with hiding his nose. His nose, incidentally, was hardly a source of embarrassment. It was pronounced, distinctive, without being outsized or gaudy. It was a regal nose, suggesting a man of lofty origins and a destiny of his own making. This was not a nose one would deliberately hide.

But it was a nose from which others must be protected, for it was …

“Base to Unit One,” crackled Orville’s walkie-talkie. Yes, they still used walkie-talkies. “Disturbance at women’s wear in Macy’s. Are you in the vicinity?”

“Unit One to Base,” Orville replied. “Negative. My ETA for approaching the second floor of Macy’s is 10:48:30. Suggest you contact Unit Two.”

He maintained stride.

“Orville, get it in gear and head over there now!”

Orville hesitated. On the one hand was his duty, the thrill of foiling a crime in progress, his dispatcher’s urgent plea. On the other, his obsessive-compulsive disorder was quite severe, and he forgot to take his Paxil that morning.

“Now!” the walkie-talkie repeated.

“On my way!” he replied. Now that the decision had been made for him, he obsessed about how to get there in the shortest time, using the most direct route, and taking the fewest steps possible. The parents of the children frolicking in the play area were not amused. Nor was the salesman from the car dealer raffling off the Porsche.

At the other end of the mall was a hallway with no stores along it. It was for the offices. Closest in was glass block, marble and mahogany enclave for the managing partners of the investment trust that owned the mall. Nobody was ever in it. Behind that were somewhat less plush offices hosting the group that managed the property. Behind that were the hardscrabble cubicles of the people who provided the computer and network services that kept the retail transactions running between the mall and the banks. Behind them was the janitors’ closet.

Behind that was the security office. It didn’t make any sense. That’s just the way it was.

Sheldon Shapiro considered himself the demon responsible for that deepest circle of hell – as consigned to eternal damnation as any of the poor souls who found themselves punching his clock. Shel felt that the only difference between him and a true minion of Satan was that he actually felt badly for his charges.

So it was with some chagrin that, immediately after telling Orville, “Now!” he acknowledged the young man in front of him with the clipboard packed an inch thick with filled-out forms.

“I’m gonna have to monitor this situation, but we can get started with your application, Mister Keller.”

“Please, call me Kevin.”

Twenty-something Kevin Keller sat in a permanently unfolded folding chair to which the 40-something dispatcher gestured. Kevin handed over the clipboard, took back his pen. Somewhere in the background, there was the sound of a keyboard being tapped, a laser jet printer engaging, and a soft, indistinguishable voice muttering as quietly as it could.

“And I’m Shel. Listen, I won’t keep you in suspense. I have to hire you according to the Triple-A. I just want to get more of a sense of how long you expect to stay in this job,” the dispatcher said, then paged through some of the sheets on clipboard. “College boys like you generally find better prospects after a while. Anyway, says here you go by ‘Count Karma’?”

“On second reference,” Kevin said earnestly.

“Say huh?”

“The full moniker is ‘Count Karma, Comma, Master of Arts’.”

“What arts exactly are you a master of?”

“Economics.”

“Uh, right,” Shel said skeptically. “I thought that was a science.”

“It can be. It can be an art, too.”

“No. I remember on the first day of class, the teacher called it ‘the dismal science.’”

“You took economics in high school?” Kevin asked a bit too archly.

“Yeah. So what?”

“Well, I took it for four years as an undergraduate, then two years as a grad student at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. I was graduated this past May with an M.A. in economics. So I’m a Master of Arts.”

“But don’t most guys …,” Shel started just as his base station crackled with Orville’s voice. “Hold on …”

Meanwhile …

Mousy, mild-mannered Missy McGinnity was inwardly bemoaning her fate, outwardly counting sweaters on a table display. A graduate of one of the best fine arts programs on the East Coast, here she was working retail for sub-minimum wage. She had interviewed for an assistant buyer position with Federated. They bucked her to the Macy’s chain, which she was all in favor of. When she got the job, she could almost smell those pretzels and roasted peanuts sold by the pushcarts along 34^th Street. Maybe they would let her decorate the windows for Christmas. Maybe …

No.

They had over-hired that year. Still, Human Resources liked the earnest, creative Smith magna cum laude and told her they would find her a temporary position somewhere on the Macy’s management team. Would she accept relocation?

That was more than two years ago. Still “temporary,” they never gave her a nametag of her own. For the past 26 months and two days, she had been walking around the floor of the Chesterfield Mall Macy’s store in greater St. Louis wearing a pin that said hello my name is trainee.

Being a trainee might not have been so bad, under other circumstances. In the retail pecking order, a manager trainee still outranked an assistant manager. But Missy was an assistant manager trainee. She still outranked the crew, but even that was a matter of perspective. They were hourly. If one of them failed to show up for a shift, that employee would simply not be paid for the missed time. But someone would have to work that shift. That someone was usually the most junior member of the management team, i.e. Missy, who was paid a joke of a salary. Everyone connected with that store – in fact, everyone connected with Macy’s nationally – made more per hour than Missy McGinnity.

She had a talent for fading into the background, not that this was her superpower – far from it. Missy could turn her career around with one little taste of her true ability, but she had her reasons for not using it on the job. And because she had no intention of using it on the job, she checked no response on the application’s question inquiring about special abilities. Triple-A set-asides were not for her.

So when the disturbance occurred at the Petite register, she was able to observe it from the obscurity of Plus. One middle-aged man at Petite could have been shopping for his wife … or daughter … or, uh, niece. Two men could have been enjoying shopping together during liberated times in which such self-expression was celebrated – though not so much in Missouri. But what were three men doing together in Petite? And dressed that badly, in hoodies for pete’s sake.

At first they seemed to be haranguing the cashier about something. Missy went about folding the sleeveless frocks for those size 18 women who insisted on kidding themselves. She ignored the three men as if they were customers.

Two of them then drew guns – not the usual Colt pistols or cheap, improvised zip guns wielded by run-of-the-mill bad guys – but Ruger Super Redhawks whose high-end appeal was beyond the grasp of most cash register robbers or, for that matter, most mall shoppers. Missy viewed them with a derisive headshake. She knew that this Ruger model had won the Shooting Industry Academy of Excellence’s prestigious Handgun of the Year Award … last year. Long, silver-barreled firearms were just too flashy to wear with any of the more practical ensembles Macy’s was selling that season.

The guns were, however, a signal. Only people without superpowers used firearms. These were probably just regular villains, although what they were doing robbing the Petit counter – with back-to-school volume still a month away – was open to speculation. Still, armed robbers were a concern of local law enforcement, not for Missy’s alter ego.

Unless …

The third one didn’t draw a pistol. Instead, he removed his sweater’s hood to reveal … a turban. Missy recognized him instantly from a newscast a few months earlier. It was The Incomprehensible Singh.

She knew not to look directly into the ruby that adorned Singh’s turban. It was a mind control device. She was actually aided as the two gunmen – make that henchmen – waved their Rugers around and each fired off a warning shot. One shot sailed just past Missy. It did, however, slightly graze a woman who would have been unharmed if only she could still fit into the 14s she was looking at.

Missy crawled unnoticed out of range, then ran to the inconvenient and poorly marked ladies room. It had been quite some time since she used her abilities, but this was the moment. She never could admit to herself that she enjoyed it but, really, who wouldn’t?

She burst into a toilet stall, cried out, “Sorry, ma’am,” and burst into the next toilet stall. Then she began the brief ritual: dropping to her knees, supplicating  Aphrodite, praising Lakshmi, adoring Ishtar, sticking her finger down her throat and coughing up 16 ounces of Kona blend and that morning’s blueberry bran muffin.

It only took an instant, but Missy’s experience of the transformation was slow and painful. Through gritted teeth that quivered as they grew whiter and more evenly spaced, she let her other self take over. This superpowered version of herself had experimented with many names, none of which were entirely satisfactory. “Amazon” was Missy’s first thought, but she quickly dispensed with it; the name connoted an eagerness to battle, which just wasn’t her. She couldn’t take a goddess’s name for risk of offending that goddess – or some other goddess, jealous type that they are. She tried “Bovary” and “Kerenina” both of which were just to high-brow to take. “Rappacini” was also too obscure and, she was surprised to learn, already taken. But that at least pointed her in the direction of the name she wanted to be known as now: Georgiana. It has a ring, Missy thought, you don’t even have to get the literary reference.

Georgiana raised her head. She got off her knees. She flushed.

She then emerged from the ladies’ room completely transfigured. The Charter Club ready-to-wear pantsuit was mystically transformed by the goddesses into skintight blue-and-gold leotards. Her figure, fit and attractive to begin with, was suddenly rendered corset-perfect. Short brown bangs were replaced by a blond, Farrah-esque mane.

And she could fly.

##

Bear in mind, this is an early draft. There are already a couple things I spotted that, in light of passages that have been written since, must be changed. But not a lot.

Hope you liked it. Hope you’re interested in the other 100,000 or so words.

Here’s the link: http://joandelahaye.wordpress.com/

In this post, I present a tongue-in-cheek midrash on the first day of creation, and how it applies to tomorrow’s U.S. midterm elections. Hope you enjoy this piece of flash, and stay tuned for more blog tour announcements!

Here’s the YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGyUjt__ZrY