The Burly Man Grabbed My Hand

  • by jenshook it till it rang
  • I don’t know you, and I don’t want to
  • shaped like a yellow submarine
  • a first look at the primate HQ
  • “Oh, and David Copperfield too.”

The burly man grabbed my hand and shook it till it rang, clanking all my metal bracelets together and causing me to think, “I don’t know you, and I don’t want to!” When he finally released his grip, the back of my hand sported a bruise shaped like a yellow submarine, only not the one the Beatles sang about. It was shaped like the canary yellow submersible the undersea explorers used when they finally, after years of searching, located the lost aquatic gorilla habitat and got a first look at the primate HQ complex. I’m sure you’ve seen the video.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” the burly man said, trying to look down my blouse. When he noticed my boyfriend standing right beside me, he added dismissively, “Oh, and David Copperfield too.”

That’s when my boyfriend, who is named David, but not Copperfield, punched the burly man in the eye, leaving a mark that more resembled a map of Antarctica than any underwater vehicle I’ve ever seen.

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Rune Skelley’s Women in STEM

r-avatarThe future well-being of humanity depends heavily — maybe entirely — on our net proficiency in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Viewed in that light, the under-representation of women in those fields isn’t just unfortunate, it’s disastrous. Half of our potential for advancement is stymied, when the species needs all the help it can get.

Here in the writing cave we try not to be too soapboxy about stuff. Rune Skelley writes about what fascinates Kent and Jen. We don’t make those choices based on any agenda beyond “make it awesome, and then add a bunch of amazing up in there.”

With all that being said, we looked back over our projects and discovered that Rune Skelley has a damn good track record of strong female characters who rock the STEM. These ladies include an electrical engineer, a computer programmer, a geneticist, and a pair of medical researchers. It wouldn’t count for much if these were just labels we stuck on them, just part of their backstory or shorthand for “she’s a nerdy chick.” These are not walk-on roles, either. We’re talking about protagonists and major supporting characters. And in each case, if not for their expertise, depicted on the page, the plot could not move forward.

Other female characters in our novels have brainy jobs outside of STEM: an author and an investigative journalist, for example. (And a couple of them are murderers with special powers. They make a formidable group!)

The guys in our books represent too, of course. But we’re not here to talk about them today.

Our team being gender-balanced, and biased toward the geeky end of the scale, probably goes a long way to account for all this. It’s just art imitating life: Jen has a BS, whereas Kent limps by on his measly BA.

To learn more about women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, you can start here.

They Have No Lawyers

  • k-avatarthey have no lawyers
  • No wonder she attracts me
  • to see up close how he builds
  • nocturnal emissions
  • examining the dead sailors

They have no lawyers in this country. Instead, disputes are settled with feats of strength, and with games of chance.

They have no lawyers, but they have judges. Someone must decree the victor, proclaim which is the stronger or luckier man.

Grizelda is a judge. They are all women, the judges in this country, but Grizelda is the only one I know of who is also a prostitute. No wonder she attracts me.

When presiding, she always spends one night with each man. This allows her to see up close how he builds his rationale, and gives her the opportunity to read the truth in his nocturnal emissions.

Examining the dead sailors bobbing next to my lifeboat, I hope Grizelda will take my case.

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Good Morning!

  • by jenwe’re crawling into your bed
  • with new ice cream flavors like
  • five men, all Danes
  • she sank into my uncle’s arms
  • In the sea, yes.

Good morning! We’re crawling into your bed to tempt you with new ice cream flavors liked by many the world over, according to our prognostications. Do not be alarmed! We are five men, all Danes, and as everyone knows, Danes are the happiest people on Earth! Just yesterday we visited your neighbor with our new ice cream flavors, and she was so excited she fainted, and in doing so she sank into my uncle’s arms. That gentleman on the left, with the mustache, is my Uncle Hans. He is the one who discovered the new ice cream flavors, and you’ll never guess where! The recipes for these delicious new ice cream flavors were recorded in the sunken library of Atlantis! In the sea, yes. I can tell that you are surprised. But not nearly as surprised as Auntie Birgit when Uncle Hans brought home his little waterlogged book of mermaid recipes and asked her to make these delicious new ice cream flavors. Which is your favorite?

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It’s a Process

r-avatarA few weeks ago we were struggling with getting the old fiction engine fired up. After a little bit of tinkering with various wrenches (both monkey and goose), and the jumpstart of realizing we already had 11,000 words, we’re happy to announce that Son of Music Novel is spluttering to life. Our hands will stay greasy for the next little while as we make fine adjustments, but soon enough the chapters will come chugging out.

Mechanic Jen finally remembered how this whole stub-manufacturing process works, and has begun cranking them out. A stub, as faithful readers know, is a sort of detailed scene synopsis, the step we use between the outline and the first draft. While Kent has been letting his imagination run free, composing prose like a boss, Jen has been wrestling with the outline. As we mentioned, it’s 26 pages long, and quite detailed. She needs to feed that, point by point, into the maw of the fiction machine, let it whir and grind for a few minutes, and catch the proto-first draft nuggets that emerge from the other end.fiction-machine

As with every step in the process, the output becomes more refined. While toiling away, Jen has discovered that some of the points in the outline don’t really require an entire scene (which is a good thing since we don’t want this novel to be a billion words long). She’s found ways to merge what were originally envisioned as multiple scenes into one über scene, and ways to distill the single pertinent fact or event from an otherwise superfluous scene for inclusion elsewhere. It’s really an extremely early form of editing, and it will save us hours of labor.

Now that the fiction machine is running more smoothly and the fumes are being cleared from the writing cave, we expect Son of Music Novel to progress quickly. We’ll keep you posted!

Yolanda Hated Mr Wong

  • k-avatarwounded by betrayal
  • Mr Wong smiled at her
  • — amputation, tongue-cutting, excisions
  • nothing but a festering rat king of malware
  • such a dreamy, vacant expression in his eyes

Yolanda hated Mr Wong. He had no right to look so happy.

It was no surprise to see such a dreamy, vacant expression in his eyes. After all, his cybernetic brain was nothing but a festering rat king of malware. She had contemplated ways to fix him, but they all entailed great effort and expense, and he would just download all the same garbage into himself as soon as she booted him up. He was an addict, and he didn’t want help. Yolanda therefore contemplated ways of punishing him — amputation, tongue-cutting, excisions of random chunks of his body — but these were just idle fantasies, unvented spleen. Really, she was just bitter.

Mr Wong smiled at her. Somewhere deep in the fetid sewers of his CPU, he could still appreciate irony. He was a teacher and a scientist, built with lofty aspirations. Yolanda was a sexbot. She turned into his nurse, a protracted good deed for which she could be dismantled. They weren’t supposed to interact. Their arrangement made both of them fugitives, but only she would be in any real danger if they were caught.

Her only choice was to abandon him and hope his incoherence would prevent him from leading anyone back to her. And, hope that happy Mr Wong was too far gone to be wounded by betrayal.

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I Stand in the Rain

  • by jencan’t you hear the thunder?
  • “You shut up!”
  • one gold, one black
  • brown skin and a flat skull
  • Leonard is a strange person

I stand in the rain, gazing at the man beside me. Leonard is a strange person, but undeniably attractive. His eyes entrance me, one gold, one black, nestled in brown skin and a flat skull like faberge eggs in an ornate display case.

I try to tell him I love him, but he leans in close. “Can’t you hear the thunder?” he whispers in my ear, making me shiver. “That rumbling is Zeus’s way of saying ‘You shut up!’ to us mortals.”

I try once more to speak. Leonard’s ornately colored eyes hold mine and he lays his finger across my lips. “Shhh,” he breathes, “you don’t want to anger Zeus.”

And he’s right. I don’t. I lean in and press my lips to his just as a bright bolt of lightning illuminates the sky.

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Son-of-Music-Novel Project Status Update

r-avatarWe have officially turned the corner.

Jen has created three genuine stubs, and Kent had a research deliverable that bears many of the hallmarks of a stub. Now that we’re pedaling again, the bicycle doesn’t seem so scary.

Another thing we’ve done is watch movies. (For research, honest!) It’s been a mini-marathon of films that deal with combinations of elements similar to what we’re concocting for the new novel. Our aim is to learn the landscape, so we can avoid this scenario:

Rune Skelley: “So that’s our pitch!”
Agent: “A remake of _____? Not interested.”

So far we haven’t seen anything that significantly resembles our story. Our ideas tend to be weird (although it’s more flattering to call them original), so there’s probably not a serious risk of overlapping too much with something that’s already out there. But saying we need to make sure lets us thin out our Netflix queue and deny that it’s procrastination.

If next Friday’s collaboration post consists of us screaming and pulling our hair out, you can blame Lars von Trier.

Frank Asked For a Moment

  • k-avatarstraddled the embalmed cadaver
  • borne upon the arms of demons
  • gymnastics for the monkeys
  • he buckled, confessing all
  • turned toward the Plexiglas window

Frank asked for a moment to collect his thoughts. Then he drew a deep breath and began speaking as he picked up his sword belt, which he buckled, confessing all that we had heard was true. He explained why he’d straddled the embalmed cadaver, that such contact with the remains was his only means of learning the killer’s identity. How his consciousness was borne upon the arms of demons to the nether realm to converse with the deceased’s spirit. That, knowing we wouldn’t understand his methods, he first arranged for us to attend an exposition of gymnastics for the monkeys that roamed the parking lots at night, hoping it would distract us long enough for him to complete the mission and return. But the monkeys hadn’t held our interest, and we returned too early, which is how we came to watch nonplussed as Frank turned toward the Plexiglas window and said, “I can explain.”

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Pembroke’s Parents

by jen

  • enter the full bloom of his awkward rebellious phase
  • half hidden in a heap of brown leaves
  • carry their lunches in clamshells
  • college campuses everywhere
  • annoyed at the tone taken by the anthropologists

Pembroke’s parents dragged him along on a very long and thorough tour of northeastern universities, convinced they would discover the perfect scholastic garden in which their darling son could enter the full bloom of his awkward rebellious phase under the watchful eye of learned professionals who would keep his intellect from going to seed.

“College campuses everywhere look the same in the fall,” Pembroke grumbled. “They’re all just a bunch of brick buildings surrounding squares of grass half hidden in a heap of brown leaves.” He kicked at a crack in the sidewalk.

Pembroke’s mother did her best to distract him from his sullen mood. “Look Pemmy, the sorority girls here carry their lunches in clamshells! Isn’t that adorable?”

“You sound like a clueless anthropologist, Mom.”

Pembroke’s mother smiled indulgently, but inside she was annoyed at the tone taken by the anthropologists‘ teenage critic.

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