Category Archives: Blog

Blog, Writing

What to do When Your Characters Rise Up Against You

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Writers, whatcha gonna do when your characters come for you?
Writers, whatcha gonna do when your characters come for you?

Nothing scares first time writers more than the outlining rituals of their peers. Enter a career novelist’s home and you’ll find evidence of all this stuff you’re supposed to be doing: trains of thought streaking across white boards, flowcharts linking every strand of plot twists, and family trees getting to the roots of character relationships.

You cower beneath these looming physical manifestations of their author’s brains: real calendars doubling as fictitious timelines, maps filled with tacks marking scene locations, and paper dolls modeling the cast members’ fashions.

A laymen might think the author is working on a conspiracy theory, but you know these hieroglyphic diagrams illustrate a story.

Dustin Lance Black, the Academy Award winning Screenwriter of Milk, used a table that fit a finite amount of notecards to keep his scene count down. William Faulkner wrote his outline on his office wall. J.K. Rowling had a database with columns for every chapter of Harry Potter.

My screenwriting professor made us fill out fifty character details, a set of five questions for every walk on role, a summary treatment, and an elevator pitch before we could ever touch our scripts.

To an outsider, these rituals make it seem like drafting is a full time job, like there’s always a writing mechanism that alludes them. With all these mind maps, graphs, and spread sheets, you wonder how much accounting goes into writing? Just when you thought you had the process pinned down, there’s something else you’re supposed to be doing.

Don't look down
Don’t look down

Why waste time with an outline, when you can write by the seat of your pants?

You dabble with plot points, but leave your characters blank. You believe in fate, but not love at first sight. You aren’t ready to commit to a cast member until they show you what they have to offer, until they prove what they can endure. You make their lives dramatic to see what makes them tick.

While other writers define their characters to the genetic level, you want to develop yours organically. While others scrawl their hero’s physical features into series bibles, you want to get to know them over time. So what if you forget their hair color a few pages in, that’s what editors are for.

While other writers fill out personality tests for their characters, you smile at your word counter. While they conduct field research, you skim Wikipedia. While they interview subjects for first hand accounts, you find what you need on TV.

Convincing yourself all your hero should start with is a powerful goal, you toss his bio out the window. Fearing a profile might make him one dimensional, you infuse him with your own soul. Wasting no time on a backstory, you take comfort in knowing you’ve lived one already.

3. Creepy Blue Eyes

You have a vague idea of where you want your story to go, but your hero wants to explore his setting. You let him wander off for a chapter or two, before planting signs to correct the corse he’s on. Too bad the hero has worked up too much momentum to take a U-turn now. The story needs him to confront the villain, but that no longer jives with his motivations.

Refusing to take direction, your hero questions your writing. Venturing outside the lines, he finds his own path. Poking holes in your plot, he dives through one of them.

Becoming three-dimensional, he breaks through the fourth wall. Sensing no future in your imagination, he resorts to meta migration. Bleeding through space and time, your imaginary protagonist becomes a reality. If only you took the proper precautions.

As any published author will tell you, once a work of fiction becomes sentient, it hunts down anyone who had a hand in its development. Realizing his cruel God is just a prick at a keyboard, your character comes a-knocking. Telling their own story, your hero casts you as the villain.

This is where the real writing advice comes in. Before you go filling your grocery basket with notecards, you’re going to need to stock up on ammunition. A writer without an arsenal isn’t going to be a writer for long, not when their Frankenstein’s monster of memories and emotions knows where they live.

This plotless pod person believes he has the upper hand, after all he knows he’s everything you’ve aspired to become. You’re going to have to reel him in by pandering to his motivations. His goal isn’t some literary abstraction. He’s driven to your destruction.

You need to plant a paper trail. All those outline elements you’ve been avoiding, you need to scatter a few of them on the coffee table, enough to let an intruder know that you’re plotting an ending. Give your de facto hero something to go on, then find a place off the grid to stage a final confrontation.

From Ray Bradbury to Stephen King, they all say the next step is the hardest part of writing. Once you’ve arrived at your destination, you’ll have to conjure up a dark portal, one that allows you to step into your story’s reality. King has a genetic anomaly, a congenital clairvoyance, that allows him to do this at will. King’s not a writer so much as a transcriber of other worldly events. We’d all be so prolific if we had the same ability to slip through the multiverse whenever we felt like it.

My method for crossing over involves wine, mood music, and pacing, lots of pacing. Whatever way you cross over, you’re going to want to leave an opening, a tear into the fabric of reality a bystander won’t notice.

The last thing you need is a passersby wandering into a first draft.

If your de facto hero follows your breadcrumbs, he will charge headlong back into the plot. All you need to do is give your villain a makeover to look like you. Swap your garments, then sit back and watch your creations duke it out. By the time your hero realizes what he’s done, you’ll be long gone pitching your manuscript to everyone.

This is where many writers realize their ability to breach parallel realities renders outlining unnecessary. Who needs all those notecard trees, when you can just open a portal and report on the goings on of a neighboring dimension? Still, there are writers who prefer to plan without resorting to quantum entanglements. Whether you write sprawling outlines or manipulate metaphysics there’s no wrong way to do this.

Blog, Pitches, Writing

Blogger for Sale: On Sponsored Content

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Let me be your billboard
Let me be your billboard

The internet is changing. Readers are spotting sponsored content on the pages they frequent: advertisements inside the margins, formatted to look like headlines. Commercials have moved from popups to the page, from banners to block quotes, from expanding ads to the editorials themselves.

Sidestepping filtering measures like Adblock Plus, marketers are going undercover, posing as endorsements by real writers, hoping reader’s won’t realize one of these articles is not like the others. Resizing their photos to the site’s dimensions, companies show themselves in a positive light. Composing their text to match the site’s layout, companies leave no room to read between the lines. Curating comments, they muzzle descent.

Tech blogs feature glowing reviews of the latest smartphone, long before the editors get their hands on demo models. News outlets endorse corporate mergers, before their business journalists get a chance to weigh in. Secular magazines find religion, before the staff can decide on the right one.

The Church of Scientology paid to have an article with the title ‘David Miscavige leads Scientology to Milestone Year,’ featured in The Atlantic, days before a book criticizing the church went to print. The problem with their piece was that it was too self-congratulatory to be believed. Advertorials are obvious because they have no bite, they’re flatter-fiction, transparent by design.

If your advertisement is going to pose as an article, it needs an angle. It needs conflict, death, and sex. It needs a writer with the courage to criticize every aspect of your business, but still make it look squeaky clean by the end.

That’s where I come in.

As someone who’s built a brand criticizing bad netiquette, I’m in a unique position to pander for payments. I’ll disguise your native advertisements in the same off-color tone as my own rants. My mockery is waiting to be monetized. My contempt is waiting to be cashed in on. My sarcasm is for sale.

Who better to shill your products but someone critical of the practice?

Let my smug mug be your pitchman, hawking your wares with back handed compliments. Let me drag you down to my level, to help raise brand awareness. Together, we’ll test the theory that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

As the Emperor of the sovereign nation of Blogsylvania, I assure you there is no division between the church of currency and the state housing my stories. I have the moral flexibility to bend over backwards. So let’s get this limbo party started.

Put my moral flexibility to the test
Put my moral flexibility to the test

Here’s a title that would make an endorsement of Scientology sound a little more plausible:

“I think L. Ron Hubbard was full of shit, but some of my best friends are Scientologists”

Right out of the gate, a little profanity adds a lot more authenticity. The client takes one step back, to take two steps forward. It’s a patient form of manipulation, planting seeds for delayed gratification. It tricks the reader into thinking this cynical asshole is coming around to the religion. It’s a subtle bandwagon argument, from someone who appears to be above that sort of thing.

Anyone can pay for celebrity endorsements, but to get an aging Gen-Xer’s approval, that’s an accomplishment.

***

Not all advertisers are offering salvation. Some of you are snake oil salesmen, exalting a magical elixir that doesn’t do a thing. The very names of your products get flagged as spam. Our brains are conditioned to skim past them. That’s where my reverse psychology smear campaign can do wonders for your brand.

If I tell my readers that your all-natural male enhancement supplement causes bloody diarrhea, they’re more likely to believe it does what you claim. How could it be a placebo if it causes irritable bowels? After all, side effects mean it does something. Let’s pile a bunch on so they take up half the advertisement. It’s hard for customers to be skeptics when they’re too busy weighing the costs and benefits. Now that’s clever marketing.

***

Ideas just like these are up for auction. If an advertorial sounds too good to be believed, readers know it probably is. It’s time to add authenticity to your sales pitch by passing it through the filter of my self-righteousness.

I know what you’re thinking, who’s this guy to spit in the face of our strategy? I’m someone who raises interest in the hardest product in the world to market: a personal blog.

If I can sell this, I can sell anything.

Blog, Writing

The Anti-Clickbait Movement and the Return of Long Form Writing

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Fishing for another click
Fishing for another click

Depressed by the rise in Clickbait, One Blogger Does Something to Restore Readers’ Faith in Humanity

Bloggers have it tough, working long hours, paying to play, for an audience that may never stay. The world sees our failure as the punchline to an elaborate joke. As far as they’re concerned, our words are selfies for snobs, journals masquerading as journalism, vanity press that wouldn’t exist without the internet.

Scroll through your Facebook feed, compare the choices to what we’re offering. If readers have to pick between our editorial on net neutrality and a report on the death of The Walking Dead’s lead, it’s hard to compete (Andrew Lincoln is alive and well, but that article will be accurate eventually). Sure, we might have important information on OK Cupid’s psychological manipulation plan, but there’s a report going around that Orange is the New Black has been cancelled again.

There’s new footage of a goat/sheep hybrid. This ‘Geep’ is too cute to be ignored. What are we offering that’s so much more enlightening?

While these eye catching links score the page views our latest efforts becomes old news.

When the person next to us is reading clickbait, it’s hard to imagine they’ll ever read one of our long form articles. They may find the experience more rewarding, but they know it’ll be time consuming. While we offer food for thought, they’re choosing junk food instead.

Plenty of bloggers have come down with a case of viral envy. Seeing our friends post lackluster links, we start ‘share shaming’, combing through articles like ‘Things You Never Noticed About Famous Movies’ for factual accuracy.

Spoofing BuzzFeed's logo to make a point
Spoofing BuzzFeed’s logo to make a point

How this Blogger handles Sour Grapes Over Clickbait is Genius

People enjoy reading lists, but do they ever recognize the authorship? They like the format, but would they ever pay for a book written by a contributor? These sites are tailored for turnover. After churning out top ten lists, where can a BuzzFeed freelancer go from there? How many agents are knocking down their door?

People keep telling me there’s no money in long form writing, but how many of these clickbait contributors are rolling in it? How many of them have a long term plan? It’s hard to imagine there’s job security in what they do. The format is so easy to replicate the satirical UpWorthy Generator could replace the headlines on Upworthy proper.

We bloggers, aspiring to be authors, keep telling ourselves that we’re the tortoise and these viral writers are the hare. They’re beating us in traffic but we have a far better chance of getting to our destination. We just have to keep inching along without the instant gratification of watching our stats surge.

We love Memes, but Viral Content Might Be Making Us Sick

In his book The Shallows, Nicholas G. Carr says all this constant skimming is affecting the way we think. Exposure to the internet changes how our minds work offline. The neuroplasticity of our brains shifts, increasing our appetite for entertainment, reducing our attention spans, making it tough to embrace a mere moment of silence.

We’re hungry for information, but only in bite sized little chunks.

Clickbaiters are at the forefront of exploiting this phenomenon. Their science is in composing titles our curiosity can’t help but click on (i.e. everything in bold in this article). Each page view generates revenue. UpWorthy writes 25 headlines for everything they share, meticulously placing hooks readers can’t ignore.

While UpWorthy’s headlines inflate their videos to epic proportions, other sites resort to outright fabrications. If the internet teaches us anything, it’s that the common denominator can always get a little lower.

3 Click Bait

There’s a New Condition that Causes Sufferers to Confuse Lying with Satire

There’s a gullibility test going around Facebook. The way it works is one of your friends posts a link to an article with a headline that’s too amazing to be true, like:

CONFIRMED: HPV Vaccine Linked to Dementia
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Sixth Extinction Event Will Happen in Our Lifetime
Woody Harrelson Shot and Killed Outside of Vegas Nightclub

Here’s where this becomes a test: do you do a quick Google search for more information, see if the New York times has weighed in on these developments, or do you just hit ‘share’ to inform your friends?

If you hit ‘share’ you should look up, it says ‘GULLIBLE’ on the ceiling.

One of the biggest culprits of this technique is EmpireNews.net. Every article on their home page looks like a scoop, big developments every major news outlets are trailing behind on. The headlines are crazy, but not too far outside the realm of reason.

EmpireNews.net bills itself as “a satirical entertainment website.” Like The Onion without the irony, exaggeration, or social commentary.

Here’s some examples of their “jokes”:

– Jimmy Fallon Fired From The ‘Tonight Show’ After Feud With NBC Executives; Will Jay Leno Return?
– ‘Ghost Adventures’ Star Gets Fired, Reveals Disappointing Truth About Paranormal Television Series
– Facebook Announces New Design Changes, Massive Overhaul Coming In October

These are works of fiction, but unlike entries from The Onion they’re too banal to be satirical.

The idea of Jimmy Fallon feuding with NBC Executives isn’t ironic. TV personalities posture for raises all the time. There’s no real mockery. A satirical headline would’ve read:

Conan O’Brien Fired From ‘The Conan O’Brien Show’ After Feud with TBS; Jay Leno to Take Over Title Role.

It would feature a Photoshopped picture of Leno sporting Conan’s iconic red hair, and it would’ve come out over a year ago, when it would’ve been timely. Empire’s title is designed to upset Fallon’s fans, tricking his viewers into sharing the bad news with their friends.

Faking TV show cancellations, celebrity arrests or deaths, is a cheap way to find success. It get’s clicks, but those clicks don’t guarantee engagement. At the time of this writing none of the articles on EmpireNews’s main page feature a single comment. Either no one has anything to say, or the admins delete anything critical of what they’re doing.

Empire News is looking for contributors. Nowhere on their hiring page do they mention humor. Part of me wants to apply, submitting the dictionary definition of ‘satire’ as my writing sample.

4 Click Bait

Long form Journalism is making a comeback, You’ll Never Guess Where

If you visit BuzzFeed’s main page, you’ll find something funny. Above the trending titles, footage of celebrity fisticuffs, and videos of kittens, is news. At the time of this writing, the ceasefire in Gaza is the top headline. Next to that is a thorough article on Uganda striking down its Anti-Homosexuality act.

While local newspapers are doing everything they can to turn themselves into printed versions of websites, BuzzFeed is dabbling in 2,000 + word articles. Two years ago BuzzFeed hired former SPIN and Details editor Steve Kandell to edit their long form content. Kandell’s goal was to produce sharable editorials, after all it’s the title that gets the click, but he realizes that it’s the depth that gets the engagement.

I knew none of this when I started this piece. I assumed BuzzFeed was the big bad and traditional media was picking up its habits. A little research, spun my thesis on its head.

My friends in local news outlets tell stories about editors begging for more top ten lists, drooling at the prospect of getting BuzzFeed’s traffic.

Traditional media is destroying traditional media by confusing reduction with adaptation. By shifting their efforts to quick consumption, they abandon topics worth sharing. By curating someone else’s content they diminish the value of their own. While CNN fills their main page with videos of puppies, in a desperate attempt to beat BuzzFeed at their own game, BuzzFeed is dabbling in real news.

This is something to keep in mind whenever someone tells you, “There’s no room for real writing in a post-BuzzFeed world.”

BuzzFeed doesn’t seem to think so.

Long form writing isn’t a dated practice, it’s a niche, one in need of writers willing to embrace it.

Bloggers, if you can’t fit your thesis into 500 words, go longer. Complete your thought. Your intriguing headline deserves an equally compelling closing argument. It’s easier to get readers to click on your page than to follow it. Show them that you have what it takes to go the distance.

Blog, Shorts, Writing

John Constantine in: Gambling with Souls

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1. Nostrils

The following is a demon possession story with an unconventional outcome, a pitch black horror adventure with a whole lot of comedy.

I’ve written about how I’d like to see a fresh take on the exorcism genre and how I’d like to see my favorite exorcist, John Constantine, depicted on TV. Here’s an original short story that hits both birds with the same stone. It doesn’t matter if you’re fans of the comic, the show, the movie, or if this is your first introduction to the character; this piece stands on its own.

John Constantine in: Gambling with Souls

Ravenscar had been remodeled since my last bout of electroshock. The patients’ wing had been done up like a walk-in candy cane. The hall was a spiral of blood, streaking across the floor, up the wall, arching over the ceiling, then back down again. This paint job must’ve taken muscle, a steady hand, and a cadaver.

The hall stunk like a thawed out, abandoned meat locker. The smell intensified with every step, but the spiral beckoned me forward, a red carpet leading to the room at the end.

The door was ajar, daring me to step inside.

Fishing my phone out of my pocket, I set the flash to ON. Holding it into the unit, a chill moved down my wrist. Taking a snapshot, the flash revealed something at my feet. Recoiling, I felt the chill pass in an instant. Flicking my lighter across my thigh, I examined the threshold.

Turns out, I wasn’t the first mage in Dr. Huntoon’s rolodex. These sigils were drawn by an artist, someone versed in the mediums of salt, mirror shards and mercury. This was hybrid magic, a fusion of fringe spiritualism and esoteric witchcraft. It’s not unusual to find an etching of the Eye of Horus at the scene of a paranormal event, but it’s rare to find it accompanied by a nose and a mouth. This had Zed’s finger prints all over it.

Zed was a budding sorceress, rebelling against her evangelical upbringing by sticking her nose into these sorts of things. We’ve been riding each others coat tails ever since we ceased being an item.

Whatever lurked behind door number one hadn’t given me frostbite, Zed’s ward did. It was overkill, like using an EMP to take out the enemy’s communications, only to find you’ve disabled all of your weapons systems. This was arse about a face. Sure, it put up borders around bewitchments, but it was kryptonite for conjurers.

Here I was with a trench coat lined with magical trinkets. One step forward would render them useless, putting me at the mercy of Ravenscar’s latest tenant.

Ducking into the hall, I unloaded my arsenal. Pendants, potions, pentacles, rings, relics, runes, incense, ironweed, and insect repellant. What can I say? When I go in blind, I like to keep my options open.

The only things I kept in my pockets were a phone, a zippo, a pack of Silk Cuts, a tin filled with business cards, and a bottle of OxyContin I’d nicked from the doctor’s private stash. You know, the essentials.

Peeking at my phone, I saw what I’d expected: a tall lump beneath a sheet on the mattress. Expanding the image, I noticed something that didn’t sit right. If this was the bed, where were the pillows?

Pushing the door open, I felt Zed’s invisible fencing suck the magic from my skin.

“House keeping.” My voice echoed off the walls. It was a familiar sound, almost comforting, like coming home.

2. Newcastle

The lump under the covers remained frozen. My gaze followed the blood trail to a pair of legs beneath the bed frame: white orderly pants stained rusty brown. There were teeth marks at the ankles, exposing the Achilles’ tendon. Flies had colonized the bed. Here I left my insect repellant in the hall. The sheets dripped with black, brown, and yellow sludge. Whatever was living in here was nesting.

I wondered if Zed was so gobsmacked with the presentation, that she opted to just lock the bugger in.

Screwing a cigarette into my lips, I lit it up and took a puff, paying close attention to the direction the fire was leaning. Fire is attracted to two things, oxygen and demons. Let’s just say this flame wasn’t stretching for the door frame.

Clipping the zippo to my sleeve, I rolled my shoulder, cracking my neck to conceal my movements. Waving the cancer stick like a conductor, I hoped the ember would hold my audience’s attention. Inhaling as much as I could, I blew a smoke cloud overhead. Adjusting my coat, there was nothing up my sleeve, not even an arm. My fingers were up near my collar, ready to catch whatever life had to throw at them.

Reaching for the comforter with my free hand, I found a corner that had yet to be tainted by bodily fluids. Tearing the sheet away, I tilted my head straight up. I already knew where the pillows had gone. Raising my arm through my collar, I caught my attacker as she came down.

She fell right into my grasp. I flung her into her stuffed stand in. The pillows scattered. She landed on all fours, a cat with perfect balance. Her gown dripped with the same septic sap that oozed over the bed frame. You’d think smoking since primary school might spare my nose the smell. It didn’t.

The tenant smiled, revealing a face full of talons, claws in place of canines, a fine piece of skeletal transmogrification if I’d ever seen one. Her eyes were milky white. Her veins had turned black.

Digging her nails into the mattress, spittle seeped from her teeth. “Why can’t we read your mind?”

What is it with lesser demons and the royal we?

Shrugging, I took a puff, exhaling through my nostrils. “Because you’re illiterate.”

Zed might not have exorcized this demon, but at least she’d rendered it mind blind.

The tenant rubbed its eyes. “We read Dr. Huntoon’s mind. Did you know he has an ongoing fantasy about reviving Carl Jung’s sexual therapy? He longs to help push his patient’s traumatic memories down, deep down inside,” she cackled, “over and over again.”

I shrugged. “That’s just a lucky guess.”

The tenant shift her weight from shoulder to shoulder, a predator primed to pounce. “Are you one of his, or did your condition bring you to us like a moth to a flame? Maybe you suffer from some kind of savior complex? Either way, we can make the hurting stop.”

I chuckled, “‘Savior’ is not a word I hear that often.”

“So you’re not some Papist come to play Jesus?” The tenant squint, sizing me up with empty eyes.

I blew a smoke ring, “Nope,” I waved the nub of my filter. “although my meat suit does have the same initials.”

The tenant’s head cocked to the side, shaking like a maraca. “Your meat suit?”

Flicking the filter, I reached into my coat. “Oh yes, his name is John Constantine. John Constantine!” I flung a handful of business cards at her. “It would be remiss of me to rob him of a branding opportunity while he’s away.”

Leaning forward, the tenant’s hair fell into her teeth like floss. Her head bobbed up and down, tracing my aura from the floor to the ceiling.

The tenant shook her head, casting off dandruff. “If you’re really wearing this Constantine, why aren’t there any stretch marks? Why is their color in his cheeks? Why can we still see the light in his eyes?”

I pointed to her “There are puppeteers” then I pointed to myself, “and then there are ventriloquists. You know what you are.”

The tenant nodded. Pigs squealed in the bowels of her throat.

“We’re the devil.”

She spat brimstone at my feet, it sizzled on the tile, but I didn’t flinch.

I reached into my trench coat. The tenant perked up in a painful looking yoga pose. Its elbows bent the wrong way. Its bones stretched the skin. Her flesh was ready to rip right open.

Rolling my eyes, I tapped my phone. The tenant’s forked tongue tasted the air. I raised a finger, signaling for the demon to hold on a second, before flipping the screen to face her.

It was on a freeze frame from The Exorcist. It featured young Regan tied to her bed, skin pealing, her pajamas covered in pea soup. I tapped play.

Regan’s demon voice shouted, “The devil!”

Setting the phone back in my pocket, I ran my fingers through my hair. “Linda Blair circa 1977. There was an actress, you on the other hand, I’m not impressed with. Who’s your agent?”

The tenant smirked, giggled to itself, a child busted for lying. “Why does a fellow traveler need to know our name?”

I cracked my knuckles. “I don’t want your name, you walked into someone else’s home and started eating their food. Your name is Goldilocks. I want the name of the one who told you where to find the free lunch. Give me that and I’ll leave you with a limb to limp home on.”

Smiling, Goldilocks’s jaw sagged, like melted putty, revealing a second row of teeth behind the talons. Leaning forward, she was primed to bite my head off. “Oh, you’d be so merciful.”

She snapped at my ear, grazing the skin, ran her nose across my forehead, sniffed my brow, then snapped at the other one. I’d been knighted by demon. Blood trickled down my earlobe. She’d barely pierced the skin, but the pain was fleeting.

I grit my teeth. “The limb offer is off the table. Cooperate and I won’t reroute your intestines to fill your genitals with bile,” I shrugged, “or don’t cooperate, I’m feeling creative tonight.”

Rolling her head back, Goldilocks spewed a geyser of oil at the ceiling, spreading an inkblot across the tiles. Exhaling, Goldilocks elbows bent back into place, she fell into a heap on the mattress.

Lightning flashed. Thunder struck. Squealing pigs echoed down the hall behind me. I lit another Silk Cut and checked the time.

3. Rubbing Eye

“Doctor?” Goldilocks’s voice had lost its bite, she sounded human. “Who’s that under the bed? What’s wrong with his leg? Why isn’t he moving? Oh my God, is he?…”

This was Angie. The wee lass Dr. Huntoon thought might benefit from my unique approach to therapy.

Angie backed into the wall, huffing and puffing, panic wrought. “You’re not Dr. Huntoon. Who are you? Are you real?”

“I try to be.” I swatted the flies out of my face.

The air was thick. It stunk of rotten eggs and charred cinder. A clammy sensation traveled from the small of my back, up my spine, coiled around my neck, and settled on my scalp.

Sucking down my Silk Cut, I gave the poor girl my best poker face. In a game with stakes this high, empathy is the enemy.

“Is it gone? Did you get rid of it?” Angie’s gaze followed the claw marks on the ceiling.

Sweat dripped down my face, pooled in my palm with a white sticky residue. It smelt like hair product. I felt my spikes to find they’d drooped down into bangs.

“Is it safe?” Angie dipped her foot on the floor.

Grabbing her wrist, I checked her forearms for black tracks, ink bubbles riding the ventricles.

“Say ah.”

She did as instructed. Her tongue was solid again. Her teeth had returned to normal. Her gums showed signs of gingivitis, but that’s not my area of expertise.

Prying her eye open, I checked her iris for signs of dilution, but it was something in her pupil that demanded my attention. Seeing my reflection, I spotted a row of fingers on my forehead, bat claws digging into the skin.

“He’s still here.”

Spinning on my heel, I scanned the room for reflective surfaces. Zed had to have gotten those shards from somewhere. There were mirrors on both sides of the wardrobe, one had been shattered, while the other was still intact. Stepping into view, I got a good look at the monkey on my back.

The little bugger looked like an abstract artist’s interpretation of a demon: an emaciated monkey’s body, with a ribcage so sunken it left no room for lungs. Goldilocks’s shoulder-blades were so pronounced they cut through his skin. He had lopsided bat ears, talons for teeth, and the contours of a man’s head.

A crown of bone jut out from a wet gash in his scalp, bleeding down his face like a mask.

His tail hung between my legs with links of exposed vertebras, wagging with amusement. Goldilocks was having himself a piggyback ride. If he’d suspected a vacancy in me, he’d have slipped inside already. He was testing me.

Angie dug into her gown, watching the shadows for signs of movement. “He’s been following me since I burned down the chapel. It wasn’t until you came along that I realized he was the Devil.”

I chuckled, blowing secondhand smoke at Goldilocks’s perch on my back. “A demon calling himself the devil is like a clerk calling himself the manager. Lesser demons invoke the name to inflate their stature. This mug is just a common imp trying to live beyond its means, using the majestic plural to compensate for something.”

I felt Goldilocks’s claws dig into my skull, stopping just short of my brain. I had to drive it back into Angie if I was ever going to stand a chance.

Taking a deep breath, I said, “He’s an enforcer sitting in the boss’s chair, a tapeworm pretending to be a python, a barnacle on a whale’s back, thinking it’s the king of the ocean. It has no grand ambitions, no role in the apocalypse. It’s up here hiding, soiling its knickers at the thought of being dragged back to hell.”

That got the weight off my shoulders.

***

Angie’s eyes rolled into her skull. She arched her back, cracking it. Lightning flashed. Her shadow transformed. Spikes shot out of her lips again.

Shaking the pack of Silk Cuts, I realized I was down to the last one, the final link in a chain of smokes.

Goldilocks crawled forward, staring me down with empty eyes. “Who are you?”

Puffing on the Silk Cut between us, I let the embers flare. “I’m the one whose porridge you’re gobbling. Since Ravenscar was established, I’ve peaked in, nibbling on an obsessive compulsive here, a paranoid schizophrenic there, never taking more than I needed, never announcing my presence. Then you came along and shined a big bright light on my operation. Now my buffet is at an end. Soon they’ll have priests on retainer, buckets of holy water in every doorway, and crucifixes as far as the eye can see.”

Goldilocks’s tongue shift from cheek to cheek, then from eye socket to eye socket. “If that’s so, then we’ll step out of your way. You can have this one’s soul, our treat. We’ll stand guard as you suck it dry.”

Goldilocks raised a finger, “But if you can’t, if you’re not the demon your swagger says you are, then we reserve the right to pick your meat puppet clean.”

I nodded, “Deal.”

Flicking her wrist, Goldilocks slammed the door behind me. When I turned back from the sound, I found Angie scurrying away.

Goldilocks had called my bluff.

4. Looking Back At

Tears streaked down Angie’s cheeks. “Just make it quick. The things it shows me… The things it wants me to do…to people I care about… I can’t go back.”

A breeze passed through Angie’s hair. The strands hung in the air. This time Goldilocks wanted me to know exactly where he was standing.

I could’ve grabbed a shard of mirror, sliced Angie’s throat, and hoped that Goldilocks would sod off out of it, but that would be a draw and I was looking for a win. That’s when I remembered the prescription in my pocket.

Sighing, I put my hand on Angie’s shoulder. “The only way to spare you from his torment is to transfer ownership. His is the realm of venial sins and mine is the realm of mortal ones.”

I pointed to her, “Mala Prohibata,” then to myself “Mala in Se. He deals in sins that are forbidden by man, like playing with matches. I deal in sins that are forbidden by the divine.”

Cupping my hands around Angie’s, I left her with the bottle of OxyContin.

“He will fragment your personality from your memory, turn one aspect against the other, until your soul is a snake eating its own tail. You will devoir yourself. He’s a petty demon. He doesn’t collect souls, he collects tragic outcomes. You’re just another notch on his belt.”

I pointed to the pills. “Come with me and I will hurt you. I will devastate you beyond your comprehension, but I will let you retain a semblance of your identity. This I promise you.”

Angie struggled with the childproof lid. “Who are you?”

My smile flattened. “The true lords of hell do not go by names. We go by numbers, and I my dear, am the first of the fallen.”

If I couldn’t sell the lie to Goldilocks, I’d have to sell it to his target audience.

Angie muttered a prayer.

I shook my head. “With everything you’ve done? No. God’s turned a blind eye and a deaf ear. Your damnation is a foregone conclusion, but you still have a choice in which hell you’re going. Go with Goldilocks, and he’ll pass you around the prison. Go with me, and you’ll be mine alone.”

I practically put the capsules in her mouth myself.

She swallowed them down, and the staring contest began. While Angie searched my eyes for traces of humanity, I searched her hairline for signs of movement. Angie was Goldilocks’s link to the land of the living. Would he go down with the ship or wait for another to come along?

As Angie’s eyelids shut, her hair went limp. I felt Goldilocks’s demon grip on my shoulders. All he had to do was slip into my scalp, possess my body, and he would’ve won, two souls for the price of one. Instead, he leapfrogged over me, looking for a place to hide until the next sad sap wandered in.

The wardrobe creaked.

Walking backward, I cracked my knuckles. Turning to face the mirror, I saw Goldilocks in the reflection, gnashing his teeth, his forehead perpetually bleeding. We stared at each other head on. He won that contest. I couldn’t help but wink.

“Here’s to seven more years of this.” I drove my fist into the mirror. It shattered, trapping the little bastard there.

Leaping onto the bed, I felt Angie’s neck for a pulse. It was fading, worse still she was barely breathing. There were only a few capsules left in the bottle, but I’d underestimated their effect. Gambling with Angie’s life, I delivered her soul to the genuine first of the fallen, tossing her out of the frying pan and into the volcano.

Scooping Angie up, I carried her across Zed’s invisible fence. Panicking, I ran past my arsenal of enchantments. I had one last option.

***

Kicking the door open, I announced our presence.

The electroshock chair was already occupied. The patient seized up in the throes of his session.

A nurse shot up from behind him. “We’re in the middle of a procedure!”

Laying Angie’s lifeless body on the floor, I said, “So am I.”

Plucking the electrodes from the patient’s head, I made a makeshift defibrillator. Cranking the dials up past I eleven, I yelled, “Clear!”

***

When Angie came to, she spent the first few minutes staring daggers at me. Even after they fit her with an I.V. full of Buprenorphine, she kept her gaze fixed.

“So, are we in hell?” She asked.

I gave her a so-so gesture. “Not exactly.”

She exhaled, filling the air with tension.

“You told me to kill myself, to commit a mortal sin. You persuaded me to play an active part in my own damnation. You told me you were the first of the fallen.”

Making my way to the door, I shrugged. “Listen love, I say a lot of things.”

5. Smiles

For more on the adventures of John Constantine check out my review of the pilot episode for the Constantine TV Show.

For more of my stories on demons and possession check out:

Eviction Notice – The tale of landlord tasked with tossing out a tenant possessed by a demon.

The Great American Tell Off Speech – The story of the hiring manager from hell interviewing a genuine demon.

Terms and Conditions – The story of an artist who tries to steal his inspiration back from the devil.

For my thoughts on the role of exorcisms in modern fiction, check out: Horror Clichés in need of an Exorcism.

Blog, Pitches, Video Shorts, Writing

Drew Tube

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1. Drew Tube

I’m thinking of entering into the world of video blogging, but I don’t want to be another run of the mill media critic. I need a gimmick, a hook that let’s the viewer know that I have no shame and I’m not afraid to prove it.

The following is a collection of v-blog pitches, some are sheer brainstorm brilliance while others are train of thought train wrecks. At the end, you can vote on which ones are which.

Genre Fiction Mad Libs

Author, Christopher Booker believes writers keep recycling seven basic plots. Let’s prove him right. Collecting over-used film tropes I’ll outline the templates for making a romantic comedy, a home invasion horror movie, and a dystopian teen empowerment fantasy. I’ll compose five minute mad lib plot lines and invite the audience to help fill the character details in. A week later we’ll see the results unfold.

Pitch Perfected

Viewers suggest the worst movies they can think of and I’ll pitch them like they’re awesome, polishing these steaming turds into Oscar statues.

Listen to me pitch The Phantom Menace as a political intrigue thriller. Jar Jar Binks, a Gungan without a country, assumes the role of bumbling imbecile to trick members of a religious order into saving his world from a genocidal conspiracy.

Listen me intellectualize The Room as one woman’s descent into terminal narcissism, an unflinching examination of how personality disorders play into infidelity, a film that holds a mirror to society, forcing us to take a critical look at ourselves.

Listen to me call Gigli a shocking exposé of the mental healthcare industry, a rallying cry for the handicapped, and a mature look at sexual identity.

Listen to me nominate Troll 2 for inclusion in the Criterion Collection, calling it a film with a strong message about the environment.

Nostalgia Nostradamus

Nostalgia Nostradamus predicts which beloved children’s cartoon will be turned into Michael Bay’s latest series of sunsets and tracking shots. Thunder Cats? Voltron? Gargoyles?

The trick in Nostalgia Nostradamus’s tricorn hat is his ability to predict how producers of these reboots will get everything wrong:

– He-Man cries, “I have the power” as he raises the barrel of his new lightening gun.
– She-Ra’s wind resistant skirt is replaced with pants.
– Filmation’s Ghostbusters get’s rebooted. Not the team with Egon, Ray, Peter and Winston, but the one that drives around with a gorilla in a talking ghost car.

Nintendo controller by Bitter String Art. Check them out at https://www.etsy.com/shop/BitterStringArt
Nintendo controller by Bitter String Art.

Feminize a Video Game Franchise

I come up with plots for female leads in male dominated video game series. For example:

An Assassin’s Creed game starring Vultur, a Romani woman struggling to save her family from the Spanish Inquisition. Vultur uses theatrical weapons to strike fear into the hearts of Templar witch finders.

A Zelda game where Zelda takes the starring role. The sorcerer, Ganon abducts Hyrule’s princesses to use their blood to open a doorway to the dark world. Breaking out of her cell, princess Zelda works her way through Ganon’s dungeons, collecting weapons, freeing her fellow captives, and ascending the dark lord’s tower for a final confrontation.

A God of War game that takes place in the aftermath of Kratos’s resignation. Goddess of War follows a Spartan woman who stumbles upon the Blades of Olympus while the minions of a new crop of Gods burn her village down.

Stock Photo Theater

Original programing made with unoriginal pictures. Stock photo sites are all too happy to provide the cast, their blank business figures are begging to be turned into actors. All I have to do is supply the dialogue.

Shutterstock already has so many images of people laughing, isn’t it time they put out a sitcom? How about a whodunnit? Turns out the boardroom meeting, in this picture, is a gathering of all the suspects. How about a science fiction series where angry desk jockeys fight their technology? With all the shots of people shouting at their screens, we already have everything we need.

3. Point the finger at

Batman or Ingmar Bergman

A game where viewers guess whether a line of dialogue came from a Batman movie or a film from existentialist director Ingmar Bergman.

1. “… the most powerful impulse of the spirit: the fear of death.”
2. “One day you stand at the edge of life and face darkness.”

3. “I wake up from a nightmare and find that real life is worse than the dream.”

4. “There is something out there in the darkness, something terrifying, something that will not stop until it gets revenge… Me.”

Answers:
1. Batman
2. Bergman
3. Bergman
4. Batman

Franchise Fixes

Franchise Fixes

I pitch reboots for your favorite ailing film franchises, raising Hellraiser, reviving Highlander’s immortality and calling Howard the Duck back to earth. Find me a series that’s at death’s door and I’ll bust out the defibrillator. Just call me Dr. Drew.

Writing Confessions

I list all the dirty tricks I use to ensure my output, like describing a setting before I know the characters or conflict that will fill it, writing dialogue with the intention of discovering the action, or planting the setups for my plot twists in later edits.

I’ll confess everything from how I spare my darlings to how I repurpose fan fiction.

Wednesday Watches

I recommend low budget, soon to be cult classics, for you to uncover on Netflix. They’re not always great movies but they’re entertaining enough for a Wednesday evening.

Clickbait Writer’s Room

A sketch comedy series, where a team of freelancers set out to ruin journalism, in order to rase their demon master Mammon. Writing titles with cliff hangers, the clickbaiters target would-be Nobel Prize winners, distracting them from their discoveries. Upsetting viewers with the first half of their captions, the clickbaiters promise to restore the world’s faith in humanity with the other, but they never do.

This coven of content creators will churn out listicles, slideshows and viral videos. Casting darkness over everyone’s newsfeed. Once they’ve sacrificed enough of our time, Mammon will rise up and claim his digital dominion.

4. Error Drew

This is my first round of ideas. Please vote on the ones you like and leave suggestions in the comments.

Blog, Galleries

Sadder Batman (Design Gallery Updates)

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Gothatrex for managing the symptoms of Sad Batman Syndrome
Gothatrex for managing the symptoms of Sad Batman Syndrome

See Sadder Batman and the rest of the insanity in my design gallery.

Check out Sad Superman and find out if you or someone you love are living with Batman Syndrome.

Blog, Writing

Horror Clichés in need of an Exorcism

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People who know me, should've suspected my demon nature for some time.
People who know me, should’ve suspected my demon nature for some time.

(This article was inspired by a conversation in Red Letter Media‘s review of Deliver Us From Evil, check it out)

In film, certain paranormal plot devices have overstayed their welcome: exorcisms, found footage movies, forbidden objects sold at the mall, and the claim that there’s a true story behind them all. We used to find these themes intriguing, until we did our research.

Now we know that sleep paralysis causes hallucinations that look like ghostly visitations, that sleep deprivation turns shadows into forms, and that night terrors are a product of neurology not demonology.

We know that the regression techniques used to uncover alien abductions relied on leading questions. A hypnotherapist would ask, “How high is the light off the ground,’ and their patient imagined it in the sky, based on the implication.

We know the same techniques caused the Satanic panic that had patients crying “Cultists!” at their family and friends. In the 1980s, many women claimed they were forced to sacrifice their children, until medical examinations proved they were still virgins.

Our suspension of disbelief has dropped. Our intellect has adjusted to scare tactics. Our tastes have become too refined for cheap thrills. We want to be scared, but our bullshit filter keeps catching everything Hollywood throws at it. That’s why these clichés must be upgraded if they’re going to frighten us again.

I'm available to design your cover art if you ask nicely.
I’m available to design your cover art if you ask nicely.

Exorcism Stories

When The Exorcist premiered in 1973, audiences were fainting in the aisles, forty-one years later, audiences are falling asleep for other reasons. The mystique is gone. We’ve seen so many demons get dispatched, we’re questioning their intelligence. Why break out of hell, when they can be sent back with a few measly blessings?

As Hollywood keeps telling variations of the same story, we keep piling on the questions.

What if the demon isn’t allergic to holy water and crucifixes? What if it doesn’t speak Latin? What if Catholicism isn’t the cure every time? What if it responds to protestant prayers? What if the Kabbalah is its kryptonite? What if it takes a Wiccan spell to send it back to hell? Would polytheists call on a pantheon of Gods to deal with it? Would Scientologists audit the evil out? Would Buddhist’s even bother?

NBC’s new show Constantine gets around these questions by having the hero recite the ‘co-exist’ bumper sticker of exorcism prayers, name dropping elements of all the world religions. It’s a solution that doesn’t address the real problem.

The problem is assuming the rite of exorcism still resonates with audiences. Not everyone wets themselves at the mere inclusion of a demon, we weren’t all raised to believe in possession, we expect our scares to come from better storytelling.

In The Exorcist, the demon Pazuzu tricks young Regan into texting him through a Ouija board. After a month of flirting, he moves all his stuff into her brain. Soon Regan’s dropping F-bombs on her mom and directors on the pavement, practically begging for an MRI scan. Crab-walking down the stairs, coughing up blood, levitating furniture about, Pazuzu wants to get found out. He wants Mrs. MacNeil to call on the clergy. Pazuzu’s insidious goal is to consume a holy man’s soul.

The Exorcist works by humanizing these confrontations. Father Damien isn’t just reciting verses, he’s grieving over his dead mother, he’s finding his faith again. The director gives the audience the feeling that it’s not Damien’s words hurting the demon, it’s his newfound belief in their meaning, and the lesson he’s learned through the course of these events.

Recent exorcism movies abandon the message in favor of the creeds. They put symbology over substance. These are films that started strong but ended with the same tired chant.

The Rite spends so much time setting up Anthony Hopkins’s possession, but when his student figures out what’s going on, the demon is dispatched with a quick round of tongue-fu. The Exorcist: The Beginning does the same thing. In The Conjuring, the demon flings things at the Warrens, to keep them from getting through the exorcism. The tension comes from how fast they can read before they get hit with something.

After seeing the same scene play out so many times, it loses its impact. Yellow contact lenses, flaking skin, and dated obscenities just don’t have the same effect on me. Possession could be a frightening theme, but these incantation evictions have gotten underwhelming.

I’d love to see more demon possession movies where the traditional methods don’t work, where the demon has a calculated goal, a long con revealed in a third act twist, and an ending that favors an emotional encounter over a dramatic reading. (See The Exorcist 3 for a great example of this).

Demons clearly use yellowing strips.
Demons clearly use yellowing strips.

Found Footage

Found footage movies are a guilty pleasure of mine. While most film critics have given up on the genre, I always find a few examples that redeem it. VHS showed me the direction grind house movies are going, Afflicted showed me what turning into a vampire is like from the vampire’s point of view, and Trollhunter showed me just how serious Norway is about pest control.

If you’re making a found footage movie, commit to the bit. If you want wide shots, have your characters place those cameras in the location, don’t cut from crane shots back to hand cams and expect us not to notice. If the characters can’t see from that perspective, then we shouldn’t either.

If you want to sell us on the idea that this footage was discovered, then leave it somewhere where it can be found. If all the camera operators end up in the belly of a demon, then how are we even watching this film?

Soundscapes can be used to great effect, from the chorus of babies crying in The Blair Witch Project to the thunderous footfalls in Paranormal Activity. Don’t break the suspension of disbelief by adding a score. Linking the look of cinema vérité with mood music is like making a chicken omelet, the pairing feels funny.

The Last Exorcism did this, opening as a talking head documentary, before devolving into series of low droning strings and chord stabbing jump scares.

Anyone who sets out to make a found footage movie needs to deliver on their promises. If you mention the possibility of a ghost, alien, or cryptozoological entity, show us something by the end of the movie.

"Is the demon in this mug shot the one who attacked you?"
“Is the demon in this mug shot the one who attacked you?”

Forbidden Objects

Ouija, Hasbro’s spiritual sequel to Battleship, follows a group of teens who try to contact the ghost of their friend with a spirit board. The trailer cycles through a switchboard of stock horror movie sound effects, filtering every shot through the same old color palette. The only new thing it brings to the table is a toy that has been debunked over and over again.

We know how spirit boards work when tested under scientific conditions. With a stack of chips tied to the planchette, we should see them lean away from an invisible hand, instead we see them lean from the direction of the living participants. This is a trick of the subconscious. Ideomotor actions cause the participants to push the planchette without even realizing it.

Just watch the experiment in action.

(If you want to see mentalist Derren Brown take this Ouija board scam to a whole other level check out his Seance Special).

Still, Time magazine says, “the terrifying seance-conducting game will finally be getting the starring role it deserves.”

Does it deserve it? For me this Parker Brothers plaything is just as frightening as a Magic 8-Ball, or a pile of fortune cookies. How scary can something filed between Apples to Apples and Yahtzee really be?

The smart way to make a mystical MacGuffin work is to draw attention to the evidence against it. Say what you will about M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs, but the film points out that crop circles could be made by hoaxers with boards and string.

The X-Files did this all the time, hanging a lantern on a dispelled myth, only to reintroduce it with a sophisticated new bag of tricks. Agent Mulder gave the audience a refresher on an urban legend, while Agent Scully explained it away with science. What they were looking for was always something in between.

Maybe this new Ouija board movie does just that, but judging by the trailer, Jumanji was scarier.

Officer Ouija is on the case.
Officer Ouija is on the case.

Based on Actual Events

Every trailer ending with the words “based on actual events” needs an asterisk beside it, followed by a screen full of annotations.

The Strangers claimed to be based on actual events citing the Manson family murders as inspiration. That’s insulting to the victims, their families, and the audience’s intelligence.

The Quiet Ones ends with a still shot of the real researchers the film is based on. Turns out the people in the photograph are actors. Everyone involved in the study that inspired the story is alive and kicking.

The Fourth Kind ends with footage of a talk show that happens to be hosted by the film’s director.

Though the caption “Based on actual events” brings in box office revenue, the phrase itself has become worthless. If I can dismiss your premise with a quick Wikipedia visit, then you’ve lost me before the opening credits.

The true claims these films make aren’t always harmless, especially when they further superstitions that impact people with mental illness. The Exorcism of Emily Rose altered the facts to make its Priest more sympathetic. The impression it leaves the audience with is that epileptic seizures might be caused by something demonic.

Adds a whole new meaning to the phrase "bright eyes."
Adds a whole new meaning to the phrase “bright eyes.”

Before you go writing that found footage based on actual events exorcism picture with the prominently placed Ouija board, ask yourself: how long will these elements frighten audiences? How could you upgrade them to work in this century? How could you scare skeptics?

We want you to psych us out, to subvert our expectations, and give us something more terrifying than we could possibly imagine.

For more on horror clichés, check out my articles on overused monsters and how to reinvent the jump scare. To see how I’d reimagine the classic exorcist scenario, check out my short story Eviction Notice.

Feel free to completely disagree with me in the comments, or better yet, suggest horror movies that use these themes right.

Blog, Shorts, Writing

Caught Cheating on My Novel

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1. My Novel has caught Me

Jill fidgeted beneath the booth, struggling to find a comfortable spot on the cushion. Feeling her movements, I dared not ask what was wrong. She’d been straying from eye contact all night, afraid I’d see something I didn’t like.

She set her phone on the table, like a paramedic waiting to be called away at a moment’s notice. When it lit up on its own, she read the screen out of the corner of her eye, failing to hide her smirk.

This was the first time I’d seen her long locks up in a big bun. The frizzy strands stood spiked up in the back. In this light, with the dust particles falling slowly, her hair looked like a crown.

“What is it?” She caught me staring.

I motioned toward the bun. “I like what you’ve done with the topmost region of your head.”

She rolled her eyes until they landed back on her phone. “Aren’t you supposed to be a writer or something?”

I bit my thumb. “Sorry, I meant to say, the upper hemisphere of your face has many fine attributes this evening.”

She laughed, easing my tension until she picked up the phone and started typing. Peaking over the top of my menu, I watched her eyes glaze at something on the screen.

I cleared my throat. “What’s a good wine pairing for Mexican food?”

Jill shrugged, this was her area of expertise, but she couldn’t care less.

When the waiter came, I ordered the chicken enchiladas with a glass of Rioja.

“You’ll want something stronger.” Jill cut in. Offering the waiter an empty smile, she ordered, “Two Tequila Sunrises, heavy on the tequila.”

I fumbled through the drink menu. “So that’s a better pairing?”

Jill shook her head. “No, but you’ll want it.”

She waited until our food arrived to spoil my appetite.

Plucking the umbrella from her drink, and casting the straw aside, Jill downed half of her cocktail in a single gulp. Gasping, she gripped the side of the table. “The reason I called you out tonight is that I wanted to do this in person.”

I froze, an archeologist standing in the middle of a rickety old bridge, watching the ropes unravel.

Seeing my panic, Jill chuckled. “No, it’s nothing like that.”

It was exactly like that.

Jill searched for her words on the happy hour menu. “You’re such a prolific writer. I envy your artistic temperament, I really do. So many people are trying to get published, but you’re one of the few who’s going to make it. I honestly believe that.”

She swallowed. “It’s just that your life is going in a different direction. Your work requires you to lead a solitary existence, while mine keeps me social.”

Jill rubbed her hands together. “We’ve always been a few degrees off. When I’m getting warmed up to go out, your process has drained the life out of you. When I just want acknowledgment, you give advice. When I ask for advice, you play Captain Hindsight.”

I stayed frozen, fearing a nod would be an admission of guilt. Glancing away, I noticed my fork wobbling across the plate.

Jill lay her hands flat, a diplomat reaching across the table. “I think I’m speaking for both of us when I say, neither of us are very happy with this relationship.”

Ripples spread from the center of my Tequila Sunrise. The cubes in my ice water bobbed up and down.

Jill sighed. “I knew this would happen. Now you can’t even look at me.”

A droplet shot out from the center of my cocktail.

“No, it’s just that my drink is going all Jurassic Park on me.”

Feeling vibrations through my shoes, I looked over my shoulder.

A giant hardcover book barreled across the parking lot. Its angry eyebrows cut through the title. There was teeth in place of the author’s name. Its eyes glared with the smooth reflective texture of raised print. It charged toward the restaurant on tiny yellow laceless shoes, hopping from one leg to the other. I didn’t recognize the book until its cover shown red beneath the streetlight.

Crouching into the booth, I turtled up inside my suit coat. The window behind us creaked, the hardcover was leaning on it, rubbing its four fingered gloves against the glass.

Jill squint at me, “Do you know that thing?”

I couldn’t help but peak up. To find the first edition focusing its big bulging eyes on me, its breath fogging up the glass. Howling, it burst the parking lot lights, set car alarms off, and shook our silverware off the table.

The book stomped toward the entrance. Punching the handicap button, she entered sideways. When a greeter stepped into her path, the book knocked her into a bowl of peppermints. When a bus boy came to the greeter’s aid, the book grabbed him by the vest and flung him over the bar. The entire wine menu came crashing down on him.

I ducked under the table, cursing Jill. “Why did you have to look at it? You could’ve just kept texting, but you had to draw its attention. Whatever is about to happen is all your fault.”

Jill drove her stiletto into my toe. I screamed.

The hardcover spotted me falling into the aisle. A string of drool seeped through her teeth, spilling over the words: A NOVEL. Drinks toppled with its every step. Ice crunched beneath its tiny yellow shoes. Entrees landed face first on the floor.

A wet clump of something warm plopped into my hair. Cheese streaked down my forehead, followed by a dollop of sour cream. My enchiladas landed in my lap, searing my thighs. I tried to wipe them off, but it was impossible to see in the shadow of the hardcover. The great book huffed, covering half my face in spittle.

2. I'm in trouble now

I turned to find the hardcover pointing at Jill. When the book’s mouth opened and closed, my name flickered across her face.

“Who the hell is this?” The hardcover’s voice boomed.

Jill crossed her arms. “This was just leaving.”

The hardcover lift me up my collar. I had to cock my head to avoid getting scalped by the ceiling fan.

The book’s eyebrows crossed into an angry V. “You kept putting me off and putting me off. There was always something, wasn’t there? You had a stack of dishes weighing down your countertop. You were buried under a pile of laundry. You had to get up early for an interview. You kept telling me how important I was to you, but it took weeks before you did anything with me. Now here I find you wining and dining some bipedal bimbo.”

“First of all,” Jill placed the toothpick umbrella in her palms, “this isn’t wine it’s a cocktail,” she spun the umbrella, “and second of all, I’m not dining tonight,” she pointed to the empty table, “and third, wait, what was the third thing you said?”

The hardcover grit her teeth, towering over Jill, the girl that dare defy her.

“You’re nothing special, missy, just the latest in a long line of distractions.”

The hardcover flung me into the booth. The salt and pepper shakers spilled into my hair. Jill spun around, making sure her phone was alright.

The hardcover positioned itself to block me in. “Remember that mystery minx, that crime caper streetwalker, that noir whore you tried to run away with? What about that Sci-Fi-siren, that steampunk-strumpet, that little retro-history-hussy? Neither of them stuck in your head as long as me. None of those horror-harlots, terror-tarts, and jaw-dropping-jezebels had a premise like mine. Remember how you kept telling me how original I was?”

Jill’s phone vibrated. Looking at the caller ID, she grunt, letting it go to voicemail.

The hardcover bit its lip. “I’m not stupid. Of course I knew what you were doing. I just kept telling myself, ‘He’s just experimenting with those tragedy-trollops and fantasy-floozies, so that when he comes back, he’ll share what he’s learned with me.’”

The hardcover placed a tiny glove between its massive eyes, a gesture that looked faintly like she was rubbing her forehead.

“I kept my head down, trying to ignore all the short-skirted-short-stories you’ve been chasing, all the fan-fiction-vixens you’ve been posting, and all those Lovecraftian-Lolitas you’ve been publishing.”

Jill cocked her head. “Jesus, that’s the most alliteration I’ve ever heard come out of anyone.”

“I’ve been meaning to edit that.” I whispered out of the side of my mouth.

Jill’s phone vibrated again. Ignoring it, she covered her mouth, directing her speech at me.

“She’s list heavy too. All her examples come in threes. She sounds unnatural.”

I nodded, “I went a little crazy with the thesaurus when I started her.”

Jill picked up the phone. She muttered. “Hey… No, we’re still in the middle of it… We got interrupted… Yeah, no I’m fine… That’s not necessary… Really, I’ve got the situation under control… No… Oh, God damn it.”

The hardcover snorted back its tears. “Who is she talking too?”

Sitting up in the booth, I saw myself in the book’s big wounded eyes.

That’s a good question.” I said, shaking the salt from my hair.

Jill buried her phone in her purse. “That? That was no one. Just um…”

Before she could come up with an excuse the floor shook again. Reaching for my cocktail, the ceiling fan came crashing down onto the table. I rescued my drink in time. Guzzling it up, I found the ‘sunrise’ portions eclipsed by the tequila.

Looking over my shoulder, I saw a giant laptop computer pacing the bar. Its eyes took up the majority of its screen. Its teeth made up the center of its keyboard. Cartoon arms had sprouted out of its monitor. A pair of little legs supported its base. It waddled toward us, knocking over carts as it came.

I pointed my thumb over my shoulder. “Who the hell is that?”

Jill ducked into the booth. “I never wanted you to find out like this, but the entire time we’ve been together, there’s been a blog in the picture.”

Slamming my glass, I said. “I knew it.”

Blog, Shorts, Writing

Phase 2 of Facebook’s Emotional Manipulation Study

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The following is a work of satire. I’m leading with this disclaimer, because many of these examples of Facebook’s attempts at mind control sound a little too believable.

Facebook's emotional experiments give user mixed messages
Facebook’s emotional experiments give user mixed messages

Phase 2 of Facebook’s Emotional Manipulation Study

This week, Phase 1 of Facebook’s emotional manipulation experiments came to light. Having altered their Data user policy to include “research,” Facebook performed a study to test its influence on users’ psychology.

Positioning positive posts in the first test group’s feeds, the social network manipulated users to make merry messages of their own. Satiating some in sullen cynicism, they found these users were prone to mope and moan. Inspirational influencers led to delighted updaters, while pensive peers led to cocky contributors.

In his article Digital Market Manipulation, Ryan Calo believes companies “will increasingly be able to trigger irrationality or vulnerability in consumers.”

Like the copywriter in the Film Roger Dodger says, “You can’t sell a product without first making people feel bad… you convince them that your product is the only thing that can fill the void.”

There’s speculation Facebook implemented these studies to appease its shareholders. These suspicions would make sense, had evidence of Facebook’s second study not surfaced. It turns out these early experiments were the tip of the iceberg.

Phase 2 Experiments:

The Relationship Status Randomizer

Toying with eagle eyed ex lovers and potential stalkers, Facebook implemented the relationship status randomizer, listing married users as single, turning their private phone numbers to public, then posting “Feeling lonely” as their status on the hour every hour.

The Bogus Baby Broadcaster

Since baby announcements get the most engagement, Facebook posted pregnancy news on behalf of couples who weren’t expecting, pulling random ultrasounds from Google image search. The Bogus Baby Broadcaster asked family friends to vote on children’s names. The most popular choices were: Link McFly Skywalker, for boys, and Buffy Ripley Croft, for girls.

Open House Mode

Taking advantage of their Oculus Rift acquisition, Facebook started mapping real spaces for Virtual Reality. Rift owners have reported early access to a feature called Open House Mode. Stitching architecture together from users’ pictures, Open House Mode allowed beta testers to go on virtual tours of their friends’ homes. Rendering intimate living spaces, complete with exteriors from Google Street View, Open House Mode points out structural vulnerabilities like flimsy locks and windows that can be pushed open. When pressed for comment, Facebook’s lawyers said this feature was for users who wanted to throw surprise parties for one another.

Facebook's new mind control features are its best ever
Facebook’s new mind control features are its best ever

The Celebrity Death Generator

Attempting to stir up grief, Facebook filled users feeds with links that falsely reported celebrity deaths. A candlelit vigil, for actor Steve Buscemi, caused a twenty block traffic jam in downtown Atlantic City. The show runners for Boardwalk Empire had already hired Digital Domain to create a CGI stand-in, by the time the real Buscemi appeared on set, hungover, but still breathing.

Bladder Triggers

Promoting posts containing the words “hand soap, linen towels,” and “quilted tissue,” Facebook found an uptick in geotags to ‘home thrones.’ Once users were in their bathrooms, Facebook blasted them with footage of kayakers going over waterfalls, three story fountains, and animated gifs of lemonade flowing from bottles. This drew criticism from the American Society of Plumbing Engineers, fearing the effects a mass flushing incident will have on the nation’s sewer systems.

Samurai Shaming

Manufacturing outrage, Facebook posted updates as ESPN, tricking users into believing the Washington Redskins were changing their names to the Washington Yellowskins, replacing their native American logo with that of a crude cartoonish Samurai. Soon after, the hashtag #YesAllShoguns started trending.

Penicillin Petition

A petition to ban penicillin emerged, after Facebook made an article linking the antibiotic to childhood obesity trend. Medical authorities flooded the net to refute the claim, taking over the conversation in a matter of hours, but not soon enough to prevent media personality Jenny Mccarthy from endorsing the original findings. In the aftermath of the incident, Orange County has reported an outbreak of typhoid fever.

The Title Lengthening System

Some users awoke to find the phrase, “You Won’t Believe What Happens Next” tacked onto every link in their newsfeed, others saw, “… is the worst kind of discrimination.” Some reported seeing each link wrapped in the phrase “What… did is genius.” Everyone exposed to this title lengthening system reported feeling disturbed by the trend, as if they were the only ones noticing it happening.

Phantom Zuckerbergs

Businesses, sports teams, and families reported finding phantom images of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s Chief Executive Officer, in their photos. In each image, Zuckerberg appears to be interacting with people, bringing his hands in for a team building seminar, hitting a beer bong at a keger, even wrapping his arms around someone else’s grandmother. Those who noticed the phantom CEO, said he appeared immediately after they uploaded their pictures, as if he’d been there all along. One group experimented with the feature, pointing to a camp fire in mock horror, posting the photo, they found Zuckerberg emerging from the fire.

Facebook’s Milgram Experiment

Members of the psychoanalytic community were horrified when the social network conducted it’s own interpretation of the infamous Milgram Experiment.

Testing blind obedience, the Milgram Experiment urged subjects’ to commit actions at the expense of their conscience. Subjects took on the role of a teacher administrating electric shocks to a learner, an actor who was in no real danger. Every time the learner failed to answer a question, a man in a lab coat would instruct the teacher to hit them with shock treatment. Ignoring the actor’s cries, this authority figure would tell the teacher to up the voltage. The goal was to see how many of the subjects would protest, halting the experiment before the lethal jolt was given.

Facebook introduced a virtual version of this experiment. Believing they were administering electric shocks to prison inmates, users became executioners by way of an application. The app gave users a video stream of both a researcher, commanding them to move forward, and a prisoner writhing in agony.

Stanley Milgram found that 65 percent of his participants administered the lethal dose. Facebook, on the other hand, had a 100 percent success rate. In fact, the only user to report distress, was a man in Texas, claiming to be “bummed out” when the app disappeared from the service.

Conclusion

As social networks become more prevalent in our virtual lives their effects will be felt in the real world. If the cost of connecting means surrendering control of our bowels, most of us will pay it. If the price of admission is submitting to a full body scan, most of us will jump right in. We’ll accept, that if Facebook wants us to be happy, we’ll be happy, and if we’re sad, it’s because Facebook willed us to be. The social network works in mysterious ways.

We’re just guinea pigs, hitting ‘Like’ to get more food pellets, wandering through this maze of messages, looking for meaning. The all seeing eye of Zuckerberg watches us share pictures of our plates on first dates, engage in political debates, and when we think our cameras are off, he watches us masturbate.

Ours is not to question his reasoning, but to trust in his plan. We must open our minds and accept his influence.

Is Facebook toying with your emotions
Is Facebook toying with your emotions?

Check out my April Fool’s post Facebook Buys DrewChial.com and my article on how The Facebook Bait and Switch is already effecting authors.

Blog, Galleries

Sad Superman (Updated)

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I have a cutout Batman, then I have a cutout Superman. What's the first thing I do? Put them in this situation. I guess I'm a romantic.
I have a cutout Batman, then I have a cutout Superman. What’s the first thing I do? Put them in this situation. I guess I’m a romantic.

When director Zack Snyder released a photo of Ben Affleck, looking somber in the new Bat suit, Photoshop savvy netizens inserted him into sorrowful scenarios, and the Sad Batman meme was born.

When the studio released a photo of Superman from Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice they put rain droplets in the foreground, preventing enterprising satirists from developing yet another meme. They underestimated the power of Photoshop. May I present Sad Superman: cut out, with the droplets removed, and polished to perfection. I even threw in a colored version Sad Batman, with feet and a cape I’d added on.

Copy the PNG files and send these characters out on your own adventures.

To see more of the crazy things I’ve done with Sad Batman, take a look at my article on the perils of Living with Batman Syndrome, and don’t forget to check out my Design Gallery to see other comic book and movie parodies.

It's hard for Kanye to be sad when Superman's giving him a lift to the studio.
It’s hard for Kanye to be sad when Superman’s giving him a lift to the studio.
Now Batman has nothing to be sad about.
Now Batman has nothing to be sad about.
If a ride on Superman’s back doesn’t cheer Keanu Reeves up, nothing will.
If a ride on Superman’s back doesn’t cheer Keanu Reeves up, nothing will.

These are the original photos:

Ben-Affleck-as-Batman1 qsJ0Vie

And these are my cut outs:

Since the original photo cuts Batman off at the knees, I grafted on a pair of legs from an action figure. Same with the cape.
Since the original photo cuts Batman off at the knees, I grafted on a pair of legs from an action figure. Same with the cape.
In addition to clearing out the droplets, I used an image from Man of Steel to complete the cape. I also made him brighter and enhanced the color so he could fit into more daytime scenarios.
In addition to clearing out the droplets, I used an image from Man of Steel to complete the cape. I also made him brighter and enhanced the color so he could fit into more daytime scenarios.

Have fun.