My Leg Lamp - A.K.A. 1 word in 50 is a big deal

So, a several months ago (5/27) while I was going through my standard list of writing blogs hoping for the sparkling jewel of information that would help launch my writing career, I came across this post (http://litsoup.blogspot.com/2009/05/f-competition.html):

F&SF Competition
Jenny Rae Rappaport

I am about to run out the door to meetings and BEA stuff, but my lovely client, Carol Pinchefsky, has requested that I post this. Carol is one of the contest editors at The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and informs me that you have TWO days left to enter this. Follow the instructions below!

COMPETITION #78: THE SECRET HISTORY OF F&SF Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine, originally titled The Magazine of Fantasy, was founded in 1949 by Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas…or was it?

Describe, in 50 words or less, the secret origins of F&SF. Alternate histories, imagined conversations, and science-fictional (or magical) twists on the truth are more than welcome. Another welcomed element: funny.

Example: Shirley Jackson and Theodore Sturgeon leave a little basket on the doorstep of Anthony Boucher with a tear-stained note: “Please take care of our baby. Raise it as if it were your own.”

You have six chances to rewrite history before midnight EST, May 28th. Send your entries to carol@cybrid.net. Please remember to include your telephone number and snail-mail address. PRIZES: First prize will receive a sub- scription to F&SF good for the next sixty years along with a copy of The Diamond Jubilee. Second prize will receive advance reading copies of three forthcoming novels. Any runners-up will receive one-year subscriptions to F&SF. Results of Competition 78 will appear in the Oct/Nov. 2009 issue. Judges are the editors of F&SF, and their decision is final. All entries become the property of F&SF.

I thought I’d toss my hat in the ring and quickly realized writing something witty in only fifty words was really hard. It reminded me of ‘A River Runs Through It’ where little Norman is repeatedly sent back to rewrite what he’d written in half the space. After several hours and many revisions, I had my six submissions ready and I fired them off.

A week later, I received the following email:

Hi, Daniel.

And the winner is...you.

Mazel tov. You've just won 60 years of Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine.

Thanks for making us laugh.

Sincerely, Carol Pinchefsky
Editor, F&SF magazine




> 3. “The tea on the right enhances your appeal to women. The
> tea on the left will help you create a tome of the science fiction and
> fantasy canon,” the old gypsy cackled before disappearing into the
> night.
> Francis turned to Anthony.
> “Was that her right or our right?”
>
>
> Daniel Geilman
(My winning submission next to the >s)

What a happy, happy day! I had won something! Not by luck, not by chance, but by the sweat of my creative brow, I had won something. True, it was for a magazine I’d never heard of before entering the contest and with the way print media is heading, when I am 90 the magazine will probably not be around anymore but the fact of the matter is - I had won. This is my leg lamp – all due to my ‘mind power’.

Weeks of dopey smiles and personal pride passed as I waited for the Oct/Nov issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine to arrive so I could show family and friends that I had actually accomplished something with writing. My name would be in print and no matter how small and unread as it might be, I would have something to put on my query letters as a writing credit.

So, the magazine (that is actually more like a paperback book) arrived and I found the page with the winning entries to read to my oblivious children and ‘worshipping’ wife.

I said, reading aloud –

“ ‘Congratulations to Daniel Geilman, who wins 60 years of bragging rights to go with his 60-year subscription.

First Prize:

“The tea on the right enhances your appeal to women. The tea on the left will help you create a tome of the science fiction and fantasy,” the old gypsy cackled before disappearing into the night.
Francis turned to Anthony.
“Was that her right or our right?” ‘

That doesn’t sound right, does it, Anna? What’s wrong with it? Did I leave something out?….NOOOOO! They left out ‘canon’. They left a word out!”

It’s been several weeks now and it still hurts. I have 60 years of a free magazine and 60 years of bragging rights but to anybody taking the time to read page 319 of the Oct/Nov 2009 edition of Fantasy & Science Fiction, I look like an idiot. So, my name is in print and I have something, howbeit small and inconsequential, to put as a writing credit on my query letters to agents but should I use it?

I know mistakes happen and I bear no ill will towards the nice people at Fantasy & Science Fiction but come on!

My leg lamp came with gout and diabetes-blackened toes.

I think sci-fi, therefore I am sci-fi.

My wife is a saint. I say this not because of her unending patience or her ability to find lost things like good ol’ Anthony of Padua. I say this because she puts up with me and my hobby.

My wife does not enjoy sci-fi. Consequently, she encourages me to write things other than science fiction. She is loving and supportive of my writing and wants me to do well but honestly, would be much happier reading my work if it focused around widower or middle-aged-never-been-married pastors that live in New England with eccentric parishioners and women that awaken a longing for a ‘complete’ life. That’s what she would enjoy and if that’s what makes her happy, then I hope the Mitford series continues indefinitely and that Gilmore Girls will be resurrected. Unfortunately, that’s not me. I don’t think about quaint towns where everyone knows everyone’s business and there are no grocery stores because every morning there is a farmer’s market with everything from fresh cream to haggis.

She asks me why I don’t write sweet things. (Asks, not nags. She never nags, just to be clear.) She tells me I’m funny and I should focus on that. Everybody likes funny, she says. I nod my head and agree with her because it’s true. I am funny. At least, all signs point to me being funny. I know it’s not my asymmetrically retreating hairline and overripe pumpkin figure that keeps her with me. I know it’s my ability to make her laugh.

I tell her it’s because when I think about quaint towns, I picture destroyed buildings, no farmer’s market because there are no farms and then I begin to wonder what happened. Then I think about comets and asteroids and what would happen if we tried to blow one up and the physics required for the comet to break into a million pieces that strike the earth over a period of twenty-four hours and what if each piece of comet has a hyper-magnetic core that survives the intense heat of atmospheric penetration and is so strongly polarized that they are pulled toward industrial centers and cities because of the high concentration of metal and how strong of a magnetic force would there have to be for the comet fragments to be diverted from their gravitational descent and…now I’m writing a new book.

Before I know it, it's three in the morning and I have fifty pages of hand written notes and questions to find answers for and the poor widowed pastor that my wife would like to read about finding love and a renewed sense of life is trapped in a box canyon with mutated survivors trying to preach the gospel to those that have seen the wrath of heaven.

That’s why I write sci-fi. It’s because I think sci-fi. Blame reading it when I was a kid. Blame the physics, mathematics, chemistry and engineering courses I had to take to get my degree. Blame whatever you want but at the end of the day, when I’m thinking about whatever I want to think about, it’s science based and it’s not happy. Maybe some dialog might be funny, maybe a character or two might reflect a hilarious friend or I might throw in story of an old rooster named Earl that was too slow to catch the hens so he settled for a fat white duck named Spike. Who knows, any of that could happen. But at the end of the day, when I take the time to collect all of my errant thoughts and imaginings, two things are constant.

One – I scare myself sometimes.

And two – I think sci-fi, therefore I am sci-fi.

And now the exciting conclusion! Zero-Matter Chapter 13-Epilogue

Chapters 13-Epilogue of Zero-Matter, my 71,000 word Science Fiction Novel.Please see ‘The Basics’ on the right for the rules and thank you for reading.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/18501029/Zero-Matter-13-Epilogue

Zero-Matter Novel Excerpt - Chapters 9-12

Chapters 9-12 of Zero-Matter, my 71,000 word Science Fiction Novel.Please see ‘The Basics’ on the right for the rules and thank you for reading.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/18395336/Zero-Matter-9-12

Zero-Matter Novel Excerpt - Chapters 5-8

Chapters 5-8 of Zero-Matter, my 71,000 word Science Fiction Novel.

Please see ‘The Basics’ on the right for the rules and thank you for reading.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/18105138/Zero-Matter-5-8

Sci-Fi Movie Mash-Up

I’d like to start a game here on Spandex Monkey. I realize that with virtually no readership, this game will probably become a geeky version of solitaire but I’m going to throw the idea out there any way.

Naming suggestions will be welcome as part of the game but for now, I’ll just call it the “Movie Mash-Up Experiment” or “Everything’s Better with Sci-Fi.”

Here are the basics:

1. Think of a terrible movie that you’ve had to endure either at the request of a significant other, friends or someone you hardly knew but wanted to impress with how sensitive you were in hopes that they would be turned on by that. It can be any genre except sci-fi or fantasy. You must remember enough of said movie to offer an intelligent synopsis. If it was so bad that your mind has blocked all detail except the knowledge that Movie XYZ = pain, go to imdb.com for a refresher unless professional therapy counsels against empowering the suppressed memories.

2. Think of a science fiction movie, good or bad. Same rules apply for Step 1.

3. Combine the premise of the two movies to make something else, something fantastic, something magical

Example:

1. Terrible Movie – ‘Runaway Bride’ starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, a movie so bad that the only justification in making it was to give Ms. Roberts and Mr. Gere roles to fill in order to cash in ten years later on the success of ‘Pretty Woman’.

Basic story: Ms. Roberts gets engaged a lot and then when walking, riding, trampolining or whatevering to the altar, she gets scared, turns tail and runs. Mr. Gere’s character writes about her in a newspaper which leads to hate which naturally leads to love because women are great at the forgive, forget and fall in love with the man they hated thing, which results in him getting jilted at the alter, Ms. Roberts finally figuring out how she likes her eggs (I am not kidding. That is a major plot point.), and finally, the two of them getting married because they understand each other even though she is a country girl that makes lamps out of electrical conduit and junction boxes (how quirky) and he is a jaded New York City columnist.

Let me just say, I love my wife very much.

2. Science Fiction Movie – ‘Species’ with Natasha Henstridge, Ben Kingsley, Michael Madsen, Marg Helgenberger, Forest Whitaker and Alfred ‘Doc Oc from Spiderman 2’ Molina. Already shaping up better, huh?

Basic plot – Aliens make contact with directions for combining their genetics with human genetics, resulting in Natasha Henstridge with an over-the-top reproductive drive that makes a twenty-seven year old single girl at BYU look like she’s luke-warm on the whole baby thing. So Ms. Henstridge goes on a run of seeking possible mates only to kill any man that has a ‘genetic’ weakness like diabetes or uneven baldness. Unable to find a better man in a city of several million, she ends up hooking up with Doc Oc, has his baby after about thirty minutes of gestation and is then killed by the rest of the crack scientific team.

Not the best sci-fi movie but it deserves points for trying.

3. Super Fantastic New Movie – “Runaway Species” starring Natasha Henstridge, Richard Gere, and Sir Ben Kingsley.

Now, instead of trying to destroy little girl Ms. Henstridge when ordered to by the army, Sir Ben takes her and hides in a rural farming community where she learns to love and respect mankind. And since she was raised with old fashioned American values, she decides that she must be married before she can mate. And because she has American values, she doesn’t kill her suitors that don’t meet her criteria; she just leaves them at the altar. Enter Mr. Gere as a conspiracy freak obsessed with tracking down Sir Ben and Ms. Henstridge. He meets her and falls in love/lust with her before discovering that she is the alien mating machine. Romantic hilarity ensues for about thirty seconds before she kills him for the genetic failing of being Richard Gere. Enter Jason Statham, who Ms. Henstridge decides is good enough for her eggs (eggs? Eggs? Like Julia Roberts? nevermind…) despite his male pattern baldness because it’s Jason “The Transporter” Statham and they get married on a mountain top and then their offspring goes on to destroy all of humanity because it's one quarter alien, one quarter Henstridge and one half Statham. Mankind would not stand a chance.

See, everything is better with Sci-Fi (and Jason Statham).

So there it is. Simple enough. Follow the blog rules (keep language, sex and gore to a PG rating) and have fun. Post your Mash-up in the comments and when we have fifty entries or once I realize nobody else is playing, I’ll post the top five and open voting to the public for a winner. The prize will be determined at that time but don’t expect too much.

Zero-Matter Novel Excerpt

Novel Excerpt – Zero-Matter

Pebble number two. Follow the link below or to the side to the first four chapters of my 71,000 word novel Zero-Matter.

Please see ‘The Basics’ on the right for the rules and thank you for reading.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17142924/Zero-Matter-1-4

Short Story - Soul Jumping

Here we go! Dropping a pebble into the bottomless pit. Follow the link below to a pdf of my short story (20,000 words) Soul Jumping. Please read, hopefully enjoy, and post comments, opinions and suggestions in the comment section of this post.

Thanks to any and all of you willing to give my writing a chance.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17326100/Soul-Jumping

Welcome to Spandex Monkey’s Variety Hour.

For those of you who have known me for a long time, you might recognize Spandex Monkey as the name I’d hoped to use for a) a production company or b) an alternative rock band. As I’ve grown, I realized that ‘Spandex Monkey’ would be better for a punk band so option ‘b’ went out the window. There are still hopes for option ‘a’ but since I live nowhere near L.A. or New York, have no contacts in television, film, or the music industries, odds are I won’t ever have a production company either. What I do have, however, is a fresh new blog that needed a name so I went with what I had.

As for the ‘Variety Show’ part of the name, that is a direct reference to the content of this blog. There may be anything posted here from tips on preparing roast beef to memories of obstinate pygmy goats, roosters with duck fetishes, or stupid dogs named Molly. But mostly, I hope to use this blog as a tool for writing.

I love writing, always have but have never done anything but play with ideas, jot a few notes and occasionally pounded out an unpublishable novel read only by my wife who hates sci-fi.

The things I think when I finish a piece - What if it’s awful? Not just bad but really excruciatingly, teeth-grinding terrible? What if I am so lost and deluded that I can’t recognize the torture I am putting to page? What then? Am I wasting my time? Is it time to get a better hobby? Am I an idiot? And so on until I find myself watching P90X ads at two in the morning.

These thoughts keep me from sharing with as many people as I should and consequently, keep me from improving as a writer.

I need feedback. I need lots of feedback - Good and Bad. Good to keep me writing what works and bad to help me fix what doesn’t. So many of you are wonderful, cuddly, considerate people and are just too nice to tell the whole truth. I appreciate you all for your kind souls but it’s not what I need. If your response to my writing is positive, of course let me know. If it is negative, absolutely LET ME KNOW. If a character is unrealistic, if a logic jump is too great, if dialog sounds like five renditions of the same person arguing with themselves, I need to know.

By the time I think something is ready for others to read, I’ve been through it so many times that I lose perspective. I don’t recognize what’s on the page because I see my thoughts and can’t remember that you don’t see what I see. You have only the words on the page or screen and I need to know what those do for you.

So, basically, this blog is me begging. I am begging for your help. I am begging for your honest opinions. If you don’t want to read science fiction, you don’t have to. Stories and chapters will be posted to the side if you do care to read. If you don’t care for sci-fi, but are curious as to what goes on in my balding head, please read. If you like sci-fi, definitely read.

I need your help and I hope, sincerely hope, that if you take the time to read you will enjoy it. If you don’t, then take pleasure in giving me your honest opinions. I may sulk. I may whimper. But in the end, I will be grateful.

Thank you for your time and please, be honest. Remember, this is for posterity. (Okay, maybe not so much but it seemed like an appropriate quote to end with.)

Dan