I've recently realized there's a large gap in my education: I don't know how to be a citizen.

I know how to be a worker. Long hours spent in school forced to sit still and be quiet at a desk while taking orders from an authority figure prepared me for life in the 21st century economy. Years spent working for minimum wage -- as a fast-food cook -- or less than minimum wage -- as a server -- taught me crucial survival skills like Smiling at the Asshole and Let the Boss Be Right. Not to mention first-hand experience with the inherent conflict between workers and owners that lies at the heart of capitalism.

I know how to be a husband. Not always a good one, to be sure, but a husband all the same. Popular culture, family examples, and years of church gave me a plethora of role-models to choose from. There's the drunken layabout coupled with teary-eyed professions of love (my dad's preferred mode). There's the stalwart family patriarch, holding everything -- and everyone -- in no matter what. There's the queer model of radical equality, or the jealous hawk, or the laissez-faire bro. Lots of choices, an entire industry of self-help books, all geared around making sure I know how to play that role.

But what about being a citizen?

There was no class for that in my schooling. There's no section of the bookstore on citizenship to read up on. No MasterClass. I can get courses on being a better cook or learning to play the cello or the exact right way to pose so my Instagram posts go viral. But nothing on how to be a better citizen. There, I'm on my own.

Is it enough to vote? I mean, I do vote, every chance I get. I scour election materials and try to sniff out which candidate is actually going to do some good. But I hear now that "just showing up on Election Day" is not enough, that we need to involved citizens.

Is it voting and protesting, then? I protested the Second Gulf War, Bush's candidacy in 2004, and Trump's Inauguration. I've marched for Women's Day, and I'll march for Black Lives Matter. But that too feels hollow, in a way. Not just because the Second Gulf War went ahead as (not really) planned, or that Bush got re-elected, or that Trump never got removed from office. Participating in those marches felt...good, cathartic, even. But also ephemeral. Nothing was really at risk, for me, in those marches. And nothing permanent came out of it. I came, I marched, I went back to work the next day. So when I hear terms like "performative ally-ship," they hit very close to home, for me.

Is it being an activist? But -- assuming no one can be an activist for every cause, so we should all pick one to pursue -- if we all become activists, what distinguishes us from just another series of lobbies or interest groups?

So seriously, now: What does being a citizen (not just a consumer, not just worker) mean?

I suppose it used to mean, and may still mean, participating in civil society. But what's that? There's no Chamber of Commerce for me to join, because I work for an international company, not my own business. There's no union, either, for the same reason. There's no PTA, because I don't have kids. The City Council meets behind semi-closed doors in the middle of the afternoon on a week-day, when absolutely no one that works for a living can attend.

I guess that leaves volunteer organizations. Habitat for Humanity. A food bank. The local chapter of a political party, even. Some kind of group with a concrete mission, some change they make in people's lives, on a daily basis.

Is that it? And, maybe more importantly: Is that enough?

Got another short story rejection today. This one was personal, at least; not a form letter, but a description of an historical error that threw the editor out of the story.

It hurts a little less, I guess? To know I got close enough to being accepted that the magazine's editor read the story, and rejected it themselves. But it's also frustrating, to have such high hopes for a story, only to see it constantly fail to get published.

And now, of course, I'm diving into more historical research, and thinking of ways to fix the error they called out, while keeping the heart of the story intact. Yet another revision to make before sending it back out.

Or perhaps it's time to let this one go. Sometimes I think I need to take these rejections less personally. To treat them as less of a challenge, and more like little slips of paper slipped under my door while I'm working. So long as I'm producing more stories to send out, does it matter that much if one of them doesn't work as well as I'd like? Or to flip it around: If I'm happy with a story, does it matter so much that any particular editor isn't?

Of course I'm never completely happy with a story. There's always something to change, some phrase to tweak or scene to re-think.

That's the thing: I'm always ready to revise. I crave feedback, and once I get it I honor it by making changes. But is that the best way to improve as a writer? Am I making things better, or just delaying working on something new, something to which I can apply all of my lessons learned afresh?

What about you? When you get a rejection, does it spur you to keeping editing? Or do you march on to the next project?

I finished the eternal section!

Finally laid down all the connective text it needed. Final word count: 34,089 words, for just that one part of the book (!).

It's a huge milestone. Means not only that I can move on to the next part of the book, a shorter interlude before the next large chunk, but I'm about 1/3 of the way through the book as a whole: 49,594 words. I said this was going to be a door-stopper, right?

I feel like I need to take a moment and look back at where I started. Not to brag, but just to survey the view from this part of the summit, so to speak. Because otherwise the moment's going to be lost, mixed in with all the others spent putting one word in front of the others, trudging up the slope.

When I started out on this book, last November, I had a plan in a very loose sense of the word. I knew the beats I wanted to hit, and the general shape of the story, but that was it. I didn't really know who these characters were, or what could motivate them through these events. I also didn't know if I could even write this kind of historical novel, where I leap from the shores of the Baltic Sea to the Central Asian steppe and back again.

But I have. I can. It might be junk, but the first draft of the steppe sequence is done. I conjured up a whole family from scratch! I worked out how to track a dragon across the plains. And discovered how a pre-teen could summon her inner strength to strike back at that dragon for her father's death.

That's not nothing! Again, it's just the first draft, and I can already see that it'll need a lot of edits. But after months of grinding away at it, wondering if I'd ever see real progress, wondering if I should just stop and spend my time doing something else, I can take heart in knowing that this piece, at least, is done. And if I can finish one section, I can finish the others. One word at a time.

So take heart, if you've been feeling like me! Like the work is never-ending. Afraid that none of it will be worthwhile.

Because eventually you'll summit that mountain. And you'll look back at where you started, and wonder how the hell you've come so far.

Took a break from my Stephen King read-a-thon to dive into some non-fiction this month.

As always, these are listed in reverse chronological order. So, the book I just finished is listed first, followed by the one I read before that, and so on.

Let's dig in!

Creative Selection, by Ken Kocienda

Polished, refined prose. Kocienda pulls just shy of a dozen stories from his time at Apple in the early 2000s to illustrate what he sees as the principles behind their back-to-back successes in that period, from the iPod to the iPhone to the iPad.

Each chapter begins with the story, and then ends with him picking it apart, revealing the particular aspect of the Apple process (really, more like goals or guidelines) that he wants to focus on.

It's all well-told, and they're entertaining stories, but I can't escape the feeling that it could all have been summarized in one word: Demos.

The Nordic Theory of Everything, by Ana Partanen

Absolutely fascinating. Partanen is a journalist and a naturalized American citizen, originally from Finland, and she wrote this book in 2015-2016 after living here for several years.

Her goal is definitely not to knock the United States -- she bends over backwards, in fact, to insist over and over again how much she loves Americans and was excited to live here -- but to point out the widening gap between what we say we value -- families, children, individual choice -- and what our policies actually value. She uses a "Nordic Theory of Love" as a through-line, connecting how Nordic policies on healthcare, vacation, school, parental leave, etc all enable a greater freedom of choice for the people that live there.

Full confession: My wife and I have been contemplating a move to Northern Europe, and I picked this up as part of some research into what it might be like to live there. While I think many of the policy changes Partanen outlines would be wonderful if adopted in the United States, given our current political climate, I don't think they'll be adopted any time soon.

Partanen, apparently, agrees with me; she returned to Finland after getting pregnant with her first child (shortly after this book was published, in fact), and she hasn't returned.

Needful Things, by Stephen King

More King! A later novel, this one's a bit of door-stopper. But it's still King at the top of his game: small-town Maine rendered in exquisite detail, slow-building tension that explodes in gory violence, and a victory so Pyrrhic as to be more like a truce.

I thought I knew the plot of this one, going in, based on parodies and knock-offs. But the real thing is much, much better, both more unsettling and harder to predict. The villain's motivation was a bit of a letdown, to be honest, but his methods were chef's kiss perfect.

I also felt a bit of shear between the setting as written and the setting as placed in time. Having read King's novels from the 70s and 80s, this felt more like that time period than anything else, let alone the early 90s, when the story is supposed to take place. There were some markers laid down -- I think one kid's t-shirt has a 90s band on it -- but they felt more like window-dressing. As if King had such deep knowledge of the Maine of 1960-1980 that he had trouble writing about the present. Which is perhaps why he's returned so often in later books to writing about that exact period?

So I didn't quit. Not this week, at least :)

Only 686 words written so far, though, so I'll need to play catch-up today and tomorrow, once again. I seem to end up skipping my writing for the day at least once a week, so a Friday writing marathon might end up being a regular habit. Which is fine with me, actually...wrapping up my writing in a final burst feels like a good way to roll into the weekend.

And I've finally got enough distance from the horror story I drafted -- about two weeks -- that I can go back and start revising it now. Which'll be a nice break from the novel (again), because ye gods I'm tired of the section I've been working on. Writing in skip-around mode works for getting me past blockages, but makes sewing up all those missing parts kind of a drag. And it makes that connecting process a skip-around of its own, but an involuntary one, so just as I get in the flow for one area, I hit the words I've already written, and need to skip ahead to the next missing piece.

It's tedious, and tedium makes it hard to push myself to get the writing done. Because it needs to be done, those missing pieces need to be filled in, lest I end up with something of a half-told story.

But it's not very fun. The fun parts I've already written! That was the good thing about skipping around. Now I'm in the bad part, which is...well, something I've got to grit my teeth and get through.

On the other side of the tunnel of tedium is the next chapter though, where I've got to write about bodily trauma and some inner psychological horror as changes take hold in the point-of-view character. That'll be fun...so long as I can convince myself I know what I'm doing when writing about this kind of physical trauma 😬 I might want to set aside a day or two for some research...

It's been a rough week for my writing.

The company I work for has had a series of cross-company events this week, and since we've got folks working all over the globe, they were held at a time that was convenient for basically no one. For my part, that meant getting up at 4am so I could be awake, showered, and coherent for what some days was five hours of continuous Zoom meetings.

Not conducive to writing, to say the least. I managed to throw down some words on Tuesday after work, but otherwise my brain has just been much at the end of the day. So I've only written 269 words on the novel this week.

The meetings are over, so I'm hoping to be able to play catch-up today and tomorrow. Reach my goal of at least 1,250 words before the sun sets on Sunday. But the shift in my schedule meant other errands have also been put off all week, and now I've got to juggle all of it together.

And process the short-story rejection I got on Wednesday.

This one hit me harder than I thought it would. Possibly because they'd had it for a couple months, which -- once again -- gave me hope that it might make it through the gauntlet this time. The form rejection I received -- word-for-word the same letter I've gotten from the magazine before, despite a change in editors -- was a bit of gut-punch, then. I guess it didn't make it through any part of the gauntlet, after all; folks were just too busy to have even read my story (and then immediately reject it) until now.

So I'm a bit low, and questioning once again why I bother. isn't it enough to have one job? Why am I trying to have another? Why don't I just give it a rest, and go do something else with my time? And I don't have any good answers this go-round.

What do you do, when you think of quitting? How do you keep putting words on the page? Or push yourself to send that story out to one more market?

I finished the rough draft of the short story!

It topped out at 5,157 words, which is a little longer than I'd like. Most of the markets I want to try to sell into have a cap of around 5k. But I should be able to trim it down enough during editing that it'll squeeze under the limit.

So I'm setting that aside for a couple of weeks, to get some distance on the story before I try to revise it. I'm picking the novel back up, meanwhile, trying to finish the same interminable section i was working on when I pivoted to the short story.

I say interminable because it seems I keep finding gaps in the story that I have to fill in now. I'll be scrolling along, watching a continuous flow of words, when there's a break in the narrative. And I have to stop, scroll back up, get back into the "mood" of the particular scene, and then spin a bridge across to the next one.

It's a little tedious, but only in the sense that I can't believe I left so many holes in the story. I'm filling them just fine, the words are flowing, thank goodness. But I'm already judging past me: Why didn't you just keep writing the story? Did you really need to skip over writing these three paragraphs that I just put down?

The answer, of course, is that yes, I did need to skip them. At the time, I needed to leap over them in order to discover my destination. But that still means poor present-day me has to trundle along behind, paving over the potholes in the semi-paved story road.

What about you? Ever make a judgement call during drafting that you later regret, either in the same draft or later?

In the spirit of being more flexible, I decided to take a break from the novel this week. Instead, I've been putting my word count towards the short story, pushing to get a first draft done before the week is out.

And so far, so good! I've written 1,076 words of my 1,250 word goal (so I've got to do a session today to finish out strong), and I'm currently writing the last scene in the story.

It's a horror story, so I'm trying to use all the techniques I've been learning about from Writing in the Dark and all the horror novels I've been bingeing. Focusing on the character's reactions to events, rather than relying on the events themselves. Sticking close to one character's point of view, to pull the reader into the situation. Using more senses than just sight and hearing to convey the world.

And I'm leaning on the drafting techniques I've picked up while writing the novel. Like jotting down dialog first, or skipping around in a scene to work around a temporary block. Or working on a scene in layers, doing multiple passes to put in all the elements I want to have in a scene (dialog, thoughts, physical blocking, environment).

I feel like it's producing a stronger first draft. One I'll have an easier time revising later on. Not that I'm trying to be super-careful about word choice -- it's a trash draft after all -- but I think the bones of the story will hold up more, when it comes time to edit. So hopefully I'll be able to focus more on language and less on "do I need to completely rewrite this to make it more interesting?"

What about you? Do you feel like your first drafts have gotten better over time? Or have you found better ways to revise? Maybe both?

Fewer books read this month. Between turning 42 and getting both doses of the vaccine, I've been reading less (but writing more?). I'd hoped to have a fourth book done before the end of the month, but that's going to have to wait :(

Anyway, here are brief, non-spoilers reviews of the three books I did get through, again in reverse chronological order (so the most recently read book is first).

Carrie, by Stephen King

At this point I should just confess that I've decided to read all of the classic King books. Everything I missed growing up (parents!): Carrie, Cujo, Christine, Needful Things, etc.

This was King's first book, and it's amazing how much his writing improved between it and his second (Salem's Lot). Carrie is a lot faster paced than the other book, but as a result I didn't feel like I really got to know (or care about) a lot of the characters.

Even so, it's a gut-punch of a book. Would recommend.

Trade in Classical Antiquity, by Neville Morley

A non-fiction palate-cleanser between horror novels. Recommended by the author of acoup.blog, whose insightful and detailed critiques of the "medieval" world represented in the Games of Thrones TV series drew me in.

It's a short book, more of an extended scholarly essay than anything else. Morley's goal here seems to be to poke holes in two of the leading schools of thought about trade in the classical Mediterranean: one that holds trade couldn't possibly have been worth noting because of subsistence farming, and another that basically says globalization arrived thousands of years earlier than we thought.

I'm not familiar enough with those other schools to tell if that's a straw-person argument or not. But Morley lays out his own case well, arguing for a sort of middle approach, relying on archeological evidence that shows trade in certain goods was in fact massive, while admitting the large gaps in our understanding of the period. Certainly food for thought when designing a classical-like society, or writing a story set in the classical period.

The Dead Zone, by Stephen King

Published the year I was born! King's fifth book published under his own name.

Again I could see both the commonalities in the way he tells stories (newspaper clippings and interviews sprinkled throughout, a sharp focus on the minutiae of small-town life) and the leveling-up of his skills in the use of those techniques (and exploration of those themes).

Very much a horror-as-dread book, rather than blood-and-guts. Reminded me of his later book 11/22/63, not in the time travel aspect, but in the dilemma the protagonist faces towards the end (no spoilers, it's worth the read). King's rendition of the political mood of 1976 jibes with everything I've read about that election by recent historians, and his construction of a populist politician with evil in his heart and elections to win felt...let's say a little prescient, after 2016?

A Note on the Casual Racism in King's Earlier Books

While I'm reading through King's oeuvre, and enjoying it, for the most part, there's a few...problematic things that pop up again and again, like sour notes among an otherwise well-written symphony. And I feel the need to call them out, rather than skip over them.

Most striking, for me, in reading these now, is the way King drops at least one racist bit of imagery in each of the books I've read up to this point. Adjectives like "n*ardly", or describing a character's grossly misshapen and swollen lips as "African".

It jerks me out of the book each time, and makes me wonder why he (or the publisher) doesn't go back and remove it. This isn't in character dialog, it's narrative description, and it would be easy -- very easy -- to remove the short phrase that contains it without really altering the book at all. Why not change it?

More insidious is the way these books have basically no black people. In Needful Things, which I'm reading now, there's one (one!) black character, and he's only allowed to be a janitor, and his dialog is written...well, let's just say King tries to render what he feels is a Black manner of speech, and it comes across as a caricature. I know some of these books were written before I was born, but I swear there were Black people in America back then, even in Maine. Leaving them out altogether feels...strange. Less like oversight, and more like an authorial blindspot.

These elements might change in his later works (and I hope they do!). And I'm certainly not trying to say anything about King the person, especially given how much time has elapsed between when he wrote these books and today. I must hope that whoever he is now, it's a better version of himself than when he wrote these.

But these racist elements are in the books, and I feel must be called out as such.

Novel's at 44,600 words! I'm still wrapping up the section I've been working on for weeks now, filling in the gaps in the narrative I left behind when I jumped around to write the bigger moments in it.

Wife and I brainstormed different reward methods over the weekend, and she liked the idea of a vacation savings account. So that's what I've done: Setup a new, separate account, where I'll deposit a little bit of money each week, but only if I hit my word count goal. Then -- as the pandemic lifts -- we'll use that money for travel.

I've also shifted my morning routine a little to give myself more time to write (an hour instead of just thirty minutes). I don't necessarily spend all that time writing, but having that time lets me relax and get into that state of flow that both helps me get the words down and takes me out of my languishing head for a while.

So far, it's working; I missed my daily writing on Wednesday because of some food poisoning, but I was able to make it up on Thursday by using more of my hour than normal. Combined with the mini-sprint I ended up doing on Tuesday, I've already hit my writing goal for the week! Looking forward to making that first deposit on Saturday morning :)

Speaking of the weekend, I'm hoping to get back to the short story draft. I'd like to finish it, even; it's close to being done, if I can just nail down the visuals for the last bit. Ok, I say done, but...it'd be just the first draft. Still, gotta have the first draft before I can edit it into the second.

How about you? Made any recent changes to your writing habits, good or bad? Hit a milestone you're proud of?

Found this article in the New York Times (I know) that rather perfectly captures where I've been, these past few weeks, and where I still am: Not depressed, exactly, but languishing.

I link to the article not because it's got a pop-culture ready mental diagnosis, but because it also talks about practical ways to cope with it. Small goals, like finishing another level in Duolingo. And any task that takes you out of yourself and into a mental state of flow, whether it's bingeing Netflix or playing a game with friends.

Sounds a bit like writing, eh? At least, writing in small chunks, giving myself enough time to enter a flow mental state.

I think it's that last part that I've been missing, in terms of my daily writing. I've been trying to squeeze it in, sometimes just in 15 minutes at the end of the day. Which is one day to make sure I always hit my 250 words, but is no way to let myself fall into the story, to lose myself in the writing.

So I'm going to try altering my routine a bit. Give myself at least an hour to write. No distractions, no time limits. And no pressure to increase my word count, either. If I give myself time to really focus on the story, that'll be enough.

I'm also going to start rewarding myself, again, for hitting that daily work goal. Not sure what to use as a reward (I'm already eating plenty of chocolate). Maybe money put into a savings account, like Jonathan Maberry does? Or maybe a new game at the end of the week, if I've written my total words?

What do you use, if you reward yourself for getting your writing done?

I got my second shot!

Wasn't quite as easy as getting my first. Yesterday was the first day of general vaccine eligibility in California, so even though I got there around 30 minutes early, I spent most of that time waiting in a socially-distanced line. But the folks there were all still friendly and efficient, and I made it through and out without incident.

I could feel a difference in this shot; felt like more material getting pushed into my shoulder. And about ten minutes after I started feeling light-headed. Had to put my head between my knees and breathe till it passed.

It did pass, though, and I went back to work that day. My left arm (where I got the shot) was -- and continues to be -- basically useless, too sore to raise up higher than mid-line. Other than that, I had the same wave of fatigue hit me as last time, shortly after I wrapped up work yesterday. Which is why I missed my daily word count for the first time in two months 😬

I might be able to make it up today; we'll see. I feel mostly fine, though I've got some of the symptoms of my asthma being triggered: stuffy nose, lungs can't quite get a full deep breath (it doesn't hurt exactly, but it definitely feels like something I shouldn't do too often). I don't think I have a fever, which is good.

Will probably still spend most of the day in bed, just in case. Better to take it easy, I think. That doesn't stop my from having my laptop in bed with me, though (as you can see). Hopefully I can get some writing done in-between doses of tea and naps.

I hope that wherever you are, the vaccine rollout continues, and if you haven't yet been able to get it, that you soon will be. We need to kick this virus, so we can spend more of our time and energy building a better world than the one we lost in the pandemic.

Been on a bit of a nostalgia trip recently -- no connection to turning 42, I'm sure -- and I noticed all these album covers from 90s alternative bands that are in black and white, and usually with something on fire.

Don't believe me? Ok, here's exhibit A:

Better Than Extra's Friction, Baby. Released 1996. No fire here, but it's a grayscale image, and the fire is implied, no? That torn piece of paper, plus the album's title, captures the moment just before the match is lit.

Here's another one, where the fire moves from implicit to explicit:

Hole, Celebrity Skin, released 1998. Sharper tones in this one, more contrast. Shot of the band in the foreground, looking nonchalant as a tree burns in the background. Did they set it aflame with the power of their rock? Was their cool just too much for the tree to take? We'll never know.

The trend wasn't just for American bands, oh no. Here's German band Fury in the Slaughterhouse's cover for their 1992 album, Mono:

Super-extreme stubble close-up. The face is weary, resigned. Shot is overall very dark. Meant to evoke the ennui in the album's hit single, "Every Generation Got Its Own Disease"?

Content Warning for the next two: Self-Harm, Nudity.

I'd be remiss not to mention the cover of one of the greatest albums of the 90s, released by one of my favorite bands:

Rage Against the Machine, self-titled album, 1992. If you don't know the history behind that photo, well...here's the wikipedia link. Suffice to say that it perfectly fits the album's themes of resistance to (racist, capitalist) authority.

But how far back does the trend go? One of the earliest examples I can find is from 1988, with Jane's Addiction's Nothing's Shocking:

Notice all the elements are already there: the fire, the black and white retro chic, the nonchalance on the human faces. Ahead of their time in more ways than musically?

Writing this past week has been...well, difficult is too small a word for it. When my motivation for even getting out of bed has been snuffed out, it's impossible to convince myself that the words I'm setting down are worth anything.

And yet they must be written. Because who knows how long this funk will last, and in the meantime the novel needs to be completed. Need to get this draft done, this junk draft, so that I'll have something to edit later. Not that I'm looking forward to later, exactly, but I know it's coming.

Thank goodness I stopped being an inspiration writer -- that is, someone who writes only when inspired to -- a good while ago. Because at the moment, inspiration isn't just hard to summon for me, it's completely gone. I'm writing like someone re-learning how to walk: laying down one word at a time, till a sentence is formed, and then moving on to the next. Word by word, line by line. Till my daily word count is reached, and I close the laptop.

I'm not blocked. I'm not afraid of the scene I'm working on. I'm just depressed.

I'm trying different things to lighten my mood, of course. I started walking in the mornings again, and I can now vouch for the runner's high as a way to trick my body's chemistry into lifting the sadness for a bit. It's doesn't last, but for a little while I feel...not normal, but I stop feeling like crying all the time.

Crying is a constant danger at the moment. Anytime I'm left with my thoughts for too long, I start to tear up. Which makes writing dangerous, in a way; I've got to think to put these words together, but every time I start to imagine the scene before me, my thoughts will veer into taking an inventory of all the reasons I'm worthless and unneeded, and I break down again. I know it's my brain inventing reasons for my sadness, but still. It's surprisingly good at it!

And trying to do the opposite -- take inventory of all the things I have to be happy about -- doesn't help, either, because it just gives me a list of reasons I'm an ungrateful wretch for daring to be sad.

There's no winning here. There's just endurance, and a hope that it will pass. I've had dark moods before -- never this bad, but still -- and they've all come and gone like clouds in a thunderstorm. This one will, too, given time. I hope.

"What's wrong with you?"

"I don't know!"

There are lots of ways to find out you're depressed. For me, it was breaking down crying in the kitchen Monday morning, after berating my wife for my (upcoming) birthday present.

Not my finest moment.

I turned 42 yesterday, my second birthday during the pandemic. And I want to say I'm going to throw a big party once we're all vaccinated, that I'm fine, everything's fine here, how are you?

But I'm not fine. I'm tired of being scared, of having to leap out of the way of folks walking by me on the sidewalk. Of asking delivery people to back up from the door and pull up their mask before I step out to show them my ID. Of wondering if this is the week I get the call that my mom's in the hospital with Covid, that there's going to be another family funeral I can't attend.

My wife says I don't like surprises, and she's right. This year has been one long series of surprises, one after the other, combined with constant waiting for the other shoe to drop and the disease to claim me, or someone else close to me, or all of the above.

So I'm not fine. I'm lethargic and blasé and if I pause for too long between activities, I start to cry. I can't get excited about...anything. Not something silly like the new Godzilla vs Kong movie (which, pre-pandemic, I would've flipped for). Not something abstract like my wife and her mother deciding once and for all that she will not be moving in with us, giving us a sense of stability we haven't had since 2015. I want to be excited. I want to be joyful.

But I can't, and before my wife made me turn and look at my depression, I thought the problem was in the things themselves, not me. I had all kinds of rationalizations for why her news wasn't exciting ("because she could change her mind"). Why I couldn't make it through a re-watch of the first two Godzilla movies ("they're boring"). But those were just excuses, mental defenses to keep me from admitting that I was not, in fact, doing well.

And I think I haven't been doing well, for at least a few weeks now. I've just been covering it up. Hiding it.

I hope that wherever you are, mentally and physically, that you're able to be honest with yourself. That you've got someone who will keep you honest. And that if you're feeling down, that you let yourself feel it, and don't try to fight it off or deny it, which just makes it worse.

This time will pass, as all things do. But while it's here, let's not pretend. Sometimes, we're just not okay. And that's all right.

Ok, I didn't get this posted in time for the end of March, but better late then never, eh?

Continuing the theme of posting short reviews of the things I read each month, here's what I've consumed since last time, again in reverse order (so, the most recent book first):

Seven-Gun Snow White, by Catherynne M Valente

The first book is also one I couldn't finish. I love the premise of this book: a Western retelling of the Snow White fairy tale. And Valente is one of my favorite authors! Should have been right up my alley.

But the whole thing is written in dialect, which is annoying for me at the best of times. And when it's an author from the Northeast trying (emphasis on the trying) to write an entire novella in a Southwestern accent, this Texan just can't take it.

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire

This one I enjoyed! Very well-crafted fantasy. Hard to say anything without spoiling the plot, but basically it weaves in themes from Frankenstein, the Wizard of Oz, multiverses, and time travel (of a sort...you'll see) to construct something wholly original. I'll be studying this one for pointers on style and craft.

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

I didn't think it was possible to make a compelling single-monster horror. But Jones has done it, and done it with characters and traditions (Blackfeet and Crow) you don't normally find in American literature. This one was so good I read it all in one gulp, in a single day.

Four Lost Cities, by Annalee Newitz

Another one I wanted to like, but couldn't get through. It's supposed to be a survey of four historical cities that, for various reasons, were abandoned, even after long periods of growth and popularity. It promised some insights into the debates we're starting to have about the sustainability of modern cities, and whether climate change will mean their inevitable decline.

Instead, I kept running into mischaracterizations and outright mistakes. One glaring error is in the location of Pompeii, which the author has right in the text but wrong on the maps. One mischaracterization is the author projecting the myth of the noble savage onto the population of an ancient city, even after they relay an exchange with an expert that lays bare the flaws of their assumption!

I can't read nonfiction that I can't trust, so I put this one down.

Writing in the Dark by Tim Waggoner

Wrote about this one last week. Recommended for anyone that's even thinking of writing horror.

Salem's Lot by Stephen King

King mentions in the intro to this one that he wrote this book partially because he wanted to see if it was possible to wed a literary story about a small Maine town with a Dracula-inspired vampire tale. That duality runs throughout the book, with passages that wouldn't be out of place in the New Yorker followed by harrowing chapters filled with dread. So in reading it, I felt like I was watching the evolution of King the writer in real time, with his literary aspirations slowly giving way to his mastery of horror techniques.

Oh, and the story absolutely still works, even after all this time!

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle

Holy shit, this one. Another book that hooked me from the first page, and held me until I'd swallowed it all in a single day. An absolutely brilliant -- and ambiguous -- take on Lovecraftian horror. I immediately went and ordered more LaValle after finishing it.

Genghis Kahn by Paul Ratchnevsky

Another book I picked up after it was referenced on acoup.blog. Not as readable as The Mongol Art of War, but covers similar ground. Interesting for insights into how Genghis built up his empire, via political manuevering as shrewd policy as much as through battle.

I feel like I've been to a horror workshop this past week.

It started with reading Tim Waggoner's Writing in the Dark, effectively a textbook (complete with exercises!) for writing better horror stories. He breaks down the different sub-genres, he explores what distinguishes horror from other types of fiction, and he pulls back the curtain on different techniques to use in horror to produce different effects.

I've read other writing books before -- and will read more, I'll take advice wherever I can find it -- and always come away with at least one or two changes to make to the way I write. Writing in the Dark was no different in that respect, but it went one step further: It changed the way I read.

Shortly after finishing it, I picked up a copy of Salem's Lot. I realized I haven't been reading much horror lately, so I thought going back to one of the classics would be a good way to dive in.

And I was right, but not in the way I'd intended. Because instead of just noticing things like the parallels in the story to the original Dracula, or getting sucked into the story -- both of which happened, it's still a damn fine book -- I started noticing things about the way King wrote it. Places where he was writing in a more literary voice, versus genre. Places where he slowed time down by writing everything out in minute detail, to ramp up tension. Places where he shifted point of view. How in the more "horror" chapters, he wrote in a perspective that clung tightly to one character's train of thought, to show their reactions to what was happening, which is where dread lives. Often those chapters had very little happen in them at all, but the characters reacted to them as if they were scared out of their wits, and thus carried the reader with them.

It was like Waggoner was standing over my shoulder as I read, pointing to passages and remarking on the techniques being used in each. I could still appreciate the story King was telling, still feel the chill of being hunted by an ancient vampire in a New England fall. But I could also see how he was telling the story, and think about how I could use those techniques in my own fiction.

Next I read Stephen Graham Jones' The Only Good Indians, a horror novel which came out just last year. I had the same experience with it, though -- at least for me -- the seams were less visible in this one. That is, it was harder for me to pull myself out of it, and see how it was built. But it was still possible, and I noticed both some of the same techniques King used and others being brought to bear, techniques more commonly used for monster books, which Jones' is (and King's wasn't).

I'm now reading Seanan McGuire's Middlegame, and having much the same experience. Loving the story, falling into the book, but on the way, paying attention to the way she's telling the tale, from sentence length to parenthetical remarks to event ordering (no spoilers, you'll need to pick up a copy and read it). It's another finely constructed book, and I feel I'm appreciating it on a whole different level (and learning from it).

All of which is to say: I've started drafting a new horror story (finally).

It's the one I've been outlining forever, afraid to commit it to (electronic) paper. This week I took the plunge, working on it after my words for the novel were done for the day. I'm drafting it in much the same way as the novel, working scatter-shot, drawing up bits of dialog before anything else, and then stitching it all together.

But this time, I'm consciously thinking about the different horror techniques I've seen, and looking for ways to apply them. So after finishing the dialog and blocking for one section, I went back and added in the main character's thoughts, feelings, and reactions, to pull the perspective tighter in on them. I'm also not shying away from characters in conflict, or physically fighting; taking the time to block the sequences in my head and then setting them down. Because in this story, at least, there will be pain, and there will be blood. And if my protagonist is not going to flinch, neither can I.

It's still the first draft, so it's going to need a lot of editing, but I'm already feeling better about it. More confident. Like I'm writing in a more deliberate mode, more aware of what I'm doing, and why. Here's hoping my confidence is justified, once it's done.

Novel's at 38,160 words. The snippets I'm working on are starting to spill over into the next chapter; I'm already scoping out the reactions of the characters to the events of the section I'm working on.

Meanwhile, this section is winding down. And I'm getting the feeling that much of it -- most of it, even -- might be cut in the next draft. I mean, do I really need to describe how a character makes their camp dinner in such detail? And yet, if I don't do it, I won't know that they keep flour in this jar over there, and that they constantly gather firewood as they travel, so they have a stock of it ready to go when needed. Details like that would be completely lost, if I didn't make a hash out of describing every little action right now. So I keep doing it, knowing that what I'm writing now will likely be cut, but that doesn't mean it won't be used.

I'm also...well, I'm debating whether to let one of my characters give A Speech at the end of this chapter. They have the words for it -- I've already written the points they want to hammer home -- they have the audience, they have the space and the time. But does the book have the tone for it?

I usually shy away from having characters make big speeches, or monologues. Blame part of it on a Gen-X thing: I treat displays of sincere emotion with suspicion. Blame another part on my preacher of a father, whose pompous, hypocritical sermons turned me off to religion altogether.

So I'm always pushing my characters to speak more naturally, to take any Great Wisdom they want to lay down and either show it through their actions or weave it into their dialog some other way.

But this time...this time I might let them just say what they want to say. Certainly the situation calls for it: a young girl is about to be pushed into an apprenticeship that will change her life, take her away from the family and the place she's always known and send her criss-crossing the world with her mentor. And all because of a decision she made to pursue vengeance for her father's death, that led to a near-deadly encounter with a dragon, and now this. Such sweeping changes, they call for a little more weight to the dialog, yes?

Oof, I'm uncertain. I'll write the speech, I think, and see how it plays. I can always change it later, right?

Ye gods, the Daylight Savings Time switch walloped me this week. It's like I was finally adapting to 2021 -- working on the novel, editing short stories, plotting out a new story -- and then DST yanks an hour out from under me, robbing me of just enough energy that I've been struggling just to hit my daily word count.

I've basically been slow-motion jet-lagged all week. I really wish we would stop doing this to ourselves.

The good news is that (thanks to beta readers) I now have not one, but two stories under submission. Just waiting for their little pink slips of rejection to come back 😅

I kid, but really, it feels good to have them out there. Statistically, they will get rejected from each magazine I send them to, which is how I steel myself for it. But I like these stories. I believe in these stories. There's a market for them, somewhere, and the only way I can find it is by sending them out.

Meanwhile, the novel's climbed to 36,789 words. I'm starting to connect up the snippets of dialog I've written for the ending scenes of this section, which means I'm having to actually worry about things like "How would they have treated this wound in this time period?" and "How badly injured is the protagonist, anyway?"

I am definitely getting some of these details wrong. I do not know enough about wounds, or medical care on the Central Asian steppe in the 18th century, or early modern firearms, or...really, so much. But I know enough to write something down, something I can come back and fix later, so that's what I'm doing.

It helps for me to think of this not as the first draft, but as the trash draft. The draft I know I'm going to mess up on, and revise extensively later. No one's going to see this draft but me. I'm going to finish it, and then do the research needed to get each section right. Hell, some of these scenes I'm flubbing might not even be needed, and so they'll get cut. Which would make taking the time to get them exactly right now a waste.

So it's onward! Screwing up as I go, laying down the raw material I'll shape into something better via editing.

I don't think I'm good at coming up with story titles. Mine tend to end up either very much on the nose -- my first published story, "Wishr," is named for the company at which it takes place -- or become horrible puns, like "There Will Be Bugs" (I know).

So in trying to come up with a new title for the story I've been editing, I wanted to branch out from my usual process. Started brainstorming, just listing out things as they came into my head.

At first, most of them were more of the same (I really am fond of puns). But then I thought back to short stories I've read and liked recently, and their titles, and realized: The ones I liked the best (titles, not stories) were ones that fit the story, but where I didn't understand how they fit until after I finished reading the piece.

So I shifted my brainstorm, away from trying to convince a reader to read the story (by telling them what's inside it) and towards giving readers a new insight into the story after it's been read. And voilà! I found my new title.

I've got some beta reader feedback to process (on the story as a whole) this weekend, and then the story will be ready for submission, shiny title and all.

Meanwhile, I keep moving ahead with the novel, which is sitting at 35,380 words. I'm past the big climactic scene, and into the aftermath, where the consequences of the protagonist's actions come due, and her life changes forever.

This part introduces a new character who becomes a major part of the protag's life. So after filling in the rest of the climactic scene, I'm back to sketching what comes next, setting down fragments of conversation and description as they come to me.

I'm trying to consciously develop a different voice for this character, a distinct way of looking at the world, so it's obvious she comes from a different part of it than the protagonist. Which means I'm focusing on dialog first, nailing down the back-and-forth between her and the protag before handling any action.

I'm also getting close to the end of this section of the book. 21,000 words and counting to cover just a few days in the protagonist's life. Important days, to be sure: You only get one first encounter with a dragon! Even once I read the end of this section, though, I've still got some gaps left in the earlier parts of it that I'll need to close, stitching everything together.

And once that's done? On to the next big section, which will leap years ahead in time, and thousands of miles across the Earth's surface. Let's hope I don't get lost along the way!

Novel's still chugging along, currently at 33,884 words. I've pushed through the first big scene, and am well into the second.

There's...well, there's individual pieces of the sequence that are still missing, some connective tissue that I have yet to write. The technique I've been using, of skipping around to write those scenes (or sometimes fragments of scenes) that I feel like adding, has a that cost. Eventually I have to go back and write in everything I skipped.

But for now, it's all big scene all the time, and no connective tissue...yet.

However, the big news this week is that I've finally cracked open a story I've been working on for nearly four years now. That one started out as just a character and a situation, a piece of backstory for the novel I wanted to write. But it never worked quite as well as I wanted it to, so I've kept tinkering with it (and submitting it while tinkering with it, which is a habit I need to break).

Tim Waggoner, during his 15-minute (!) workshop back in January, pointed me to the central problem that was holding up everything else: the motivation for my main character wasn't strong enough. So on weekends I've been brainstorming different ways to go, different versions of the character that would have a stronger push for their actions.

I finally hit on one this weekend that I liked, and in the process of editing the story to match, everything fell into place. I ended up cutting away about half of the story's word-count, focusing in on just three scenes. But in those scenes I not only lay out the main character's motivation, I fill in the secondary characters, giving them more life and depth. And I shifted the ending, so it's now both more complete (in the sense that the current narrative arc ends) and more open-ended (in that the world's evolution past the story is implied).

I'm going to do one more editing pass this weekend, to clean up language and make sure it all fits together properly. I'd like to have it ready to submit in time for Nightmare Magazine re-opening to submissions later this month.

I need a new title, though; the old one doesn't fit anymore. Anyone have any tips or tricks for choosing a title you can share in the comments?

So this weekend I attended another online writing class, this one from author Stephen Blackmoore (of the Eric Carter series) on how to give and receive feedback in critiques. I've been exchanging feedback with other writers for a while now, but never really had any instruction on how best to do it; my techniques have been cobbled together from blog posts and Litreactor guidelines. I wanted to see if, frankly, I've been doing it right, or if I've been failing my fellow authors by giving them the wrong type of feedback.

It was Blackmoore's first time giving the class, so it went a little longer than anticipated: 2.5 hours instead of just 2. But those two-hours-and-change were packed with excellent advice.

Some of it I'd learned the hard way, like focusing on the positive when pointing out problems. Or remembering that at the end of the day, the story belongs to the author, which goes both ways: you don't have to act on all the feedback you get, and you can't expect other writers to act on yours, either.

But the vast majority of Blackmoore's advice were things that I had some sense of, but didn't have a good way of thinking about. Like how you should treat each work not as good or bad, but as either complete or incomplete. A story that doesn't seem to be working isn't garbage, it's just a piece that needs polishing. The difference between bad and good isn't necessarily one of value (in the work or the artist), it's a matter of time and effort.

All in all, I took almost twenty pages (!) of notes. Blackmoore did more than cover general ways to handle feedback, he also did a detailed break down of six different aspects of a story to examine when offering a critique, and ways to identify -- and talk about -- problems in each one.

In short, it was a fantastic class, and one I wish I'd had years ago, before I tried to offer any other writer feedback on their work. I highly recommend taking it if you can, when he offers it again. And I'm going to start incorporating his advice into how I give critiques to others going forward.

Novel's up to 32,300 words!

It's been easier to write this week. My wife's recovered from her vaccine ordeal, and is well on her way to hitting her two-week full-strength-protection mark. Neither of us have picked up anything in the meantime, so -- touches wood -- we should be ok to ride out the rest of the pandemic.

I also got back in the habit of writing in the mornings, which seems to help. Something about trying to switch gears one more time, at the end of the day, makes it that much harder to focus on the story. Harder to think about where it's going, and what I want to describe along the way.

Finally, I think it helps that I'm facing down the two scenes in this sequence that scare me the most to write. They're both action scenes, which I consider a weakness of mine. And they're both emotionally fraught for the main character. In one of them, she winds up losing an animal companion she's had since she was a little girl. In the second, she's seeking -- but not necessarily finding -- vengeance for her father's death.

These are big, tentpole scenes. I need them to move quickly, to feel realistic, and also to hit readers right in the feels. Which means on top of my normal first-draft anxiety, I'm worried about building up to scenes that fall completely flat. Or scenes that are laughably implausible. Or scenes that make it all seem too easy on the protagonist.

Even success, in a sense, is rough. Writing scenes like these -- where the emotional stakes are high for the characters, and it can end in a broken heart -- are hard on me, too. Because I live through everything they experience; I have to, in order to put it down on the page. So I feel the knot in my chest when their father dies. My own tears well up when they have to put down one of their closest friends.

So I've been putting them off. Writing around the scenes, so to speak. And there's been plenty of other things to cover! But now I've got to write them, so I can move ahead with the story.

And somehow, once I'm in the scene, writing it, it becomes easier. Easier to picture what's happening, and easier to describe it. Easier to say what the impact of it all is. So I end up writing more, and more quickly, than before.

It's almost like my fear of the thing is worse than the thing itself?

Of course, this is still just the first draft. It might feel easier to write it once I'm in it, but it could still all be terrible writing. I won't know till it's done.

How about you? Are there particular types of scenes that you put off writing, for whatever reason? How do you overcome your hesitation?

With the new year, Biden settling into the White House, and the vaccines rolling out, my reading pace has picked up from its previous pandemic low.

So rather than work up longer individual reviews of the books I've gone through, I thought I'd do a quick breakdown of them, all at once, in reverse order (so, the most recent book I finished this month is listed first).

Here we go!

Not All Dead White Men, by Donna Zuckerberg

A frustrating read. Zuckerberg (yes, the Facebook founder is her brother) provides a detailed, anthropological study of how the denizens of the manosphere wield Classical authors to promote their racist, misogynist views. What she doesn't cover is any way to counter these arguments. If anything, she comes down on their side, agreeing that yes, the Classical tradition contains lots of misogyny (Though no racism, since race as a concept wasn't invented till the modern period. Which makes it weird that she would fall into the right-wing trap of assigning Whiteness to the Mediterranean authors of the Classical tradition? But I digress).

The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy, by Michael Lewis

A set of separately-published essays stitched together in book form. It works, because each essays illuminates a different side of the central question: What happened when an administration scornful of expertise took control of the nation's experts?

This was published in 2018, and already Lewis could see -- via his interviews and investigation -- that disaster was coming. We've got a lot to rebuild.

The Mongol Art of War, by Timothy May

Discovered this via military historian Bret Devereux's excellent series of blog posts about the historical accuracy of the Dothraki in A Song of Ice and Fire (narrator: there is none).

It's a fairly quick read, giving a detailed look -- well, as detailed as we can get, given the reliability of our historical sources -- at how the Mongol army was able to conquer so much of Asia and Europe in such a short period of time. Goes through command structure, tactics, even some detailed logistics. For example, did you know Mongols preferred riding mares on campaign, because they could drink the milk provided (and thus not need to bring as much food along)? Or that the Mongols built a navy from scratch (with Korean assistance) just so they could conquer southern China? Fascinating stuff.

Lost Art of Finding Our Way, by John Edward Huth

This is one I'm going to be reading and re-reading. It's basically a manual of all the different navigation techniques used by humans before the invention of GPS. How did the Pacific Islanders sail thousands of miles across open ocean to settle so many islands? Why did the Atlantic triangle trade develop the way it did (hint: it was the prevailing winds)? What sequence of clouds denotes an oncoming storm?

Simply wondrous. Made me look at the world around me in an entirely new way.

Reaganland, by Rick Perlstein

The final volume in Perlstein's excellent series on the rise of the Right in the United States. This one covers 1976-1980, and it's absolutely riveting. All of the techniques we've seen from the GOP under Trump -- misinformation, distortion, and deliberate hyperbole -- got their start in this time period, and coalesced around Reagan as their standard-bearer. His election cemented the shift to the Right that we've been suffering from for the last forty years.

I consider this book essential reading, if you want to understand how we got to this point in American politics.

My wife and I are only six years apart in age, and yet our childhood pop culture was completely different.

For example, I know if she starts singing along to a song I don't recognize, it's a 1970s radio hit. She knows all about The Partridge Family and Three's Company, shows I've heard of but never seen. Minstrel hobo chic is her fashion jam.

But move into the 1980s, and the roles reverse. She's never seen Fraggle Rock or Duck Tales. Doesn't know Bon Jovi or Journey (or Def Leppard or R.E.M. or Bauhaus or New Order or....).

So we've made an effort to introduce each other to our respective pop landscapes. It's interesting to find places where we overlap (MacGyver) as well as the gaps (I'd never even heard of The Rockford Files before her, and she had no clue why I was so excited to hear that She-Ra was getting rebooted on Netflix).

All of which is to say, we watched Iron Eagle this week, as part of introducing her to 80s movies I loved as a kid. And it did not hold up well.

What I remember as a scrappy-kids-rescue-the-grownups movie, a sort of Goonies adventure with higher stakes and fighter jets, is actually a harrowing tale of how a group of teenagers infiltrate a military base, steal a bunch of weapons, then invade a sovereign country, kill dozens of members of its military, and destroy a major oil refinery, all for one downed American pilot (who was violating the country’s airspace).

Questionable morals aside, that might be forgiven, if it were at a good movie. But...it’s not. The Eagles are thinly sketched, the lead has no charisma, the timeline is way too short (only three days between “go away kid” and “you’re the finest young man I know”??), and the climatic battle with the “villain” is just ridiculous.

Only Louis Gossett Jr comes out well. His character isn’t written any better than the others, but he’s just so damn good as an actor that he breathes life into Chappy through sheer force of will.

But! We talked it over, and we think the movie's salvageable. At this point it'd be a reboot, but that's ok; it gives us license to do the extensive rewrite the movie needs.

What to Keep

Chappy. Chappy Chappy Chappy. He's the real heart of the movie, the mentor tying everything together, and that needs to stay. We need someone with the right mix of charisma, maturity, and gravitas that can play him, like Denzel Washington.

We also keep the central conflict of the story: Military pilot is shot down in a hostile country and held captive. Their eldest kid and that kid's friends -- with Chappy -- plan and execute a bold rescue mission.

I also like the story of how Chappy first met Doug's dad. It's sad, but true, that a Black man getting mistaken for janitorial staff is just as plausible in 2021 as it was in 1986.

We also keep the idea of The Eagles Flight Club as a place where certain military brats hang out, and as a group of friends to help with the rescue.

And we'll keep the general sequence of how the final third of the movie plays out, with Doug ending up on his own for the rescue mission (accompanied only by Chappy's voice) after things go wrong, the attempted blackmail of the country's leaders to free his dad, and the need to evade a pursuing force once he's got his dad in the plane with him (but more on that later).

What to Change

So, we've kept the bones of the story: A military-brat teenager is going to get help from his group of friends and an older pilot to go on a daring rescue mission in a foreign country using aircraft. But we need to shift things so that it's both more realistic and less jingoistic.

We start by altering the nature of the Eagles Flying Club. Instead of being a bunch of military brats who have "the whole base rigged," it's a group of kids who work on and fly old planes. That airplane graveyard that Doug takes his date to? That's their source material, where they go to get good deals (because their parents don't make a lot) on parts and planes that they then fix up and fly. So right away, we position Doug and his friends as clever, hardworking underdogs, not bratty teens.

We also need to up the diversity in the casting. Half of the Eagles should be women. There should be more than one PoC. The US military (and thus, military families) is diverse, and we should show that on screen. Ideally, the Doug character himself is not White.

Okay, so now we've got the casting, and the reason the friends hang out put together. Now we give them an early challenge, to show who they are and how they work together: the Snake Race scene. But we make a few alterations: the bullies are not just bullies, they're fellow military brats. But their parents are wealthier (higher-up officers), so the planes they fly are expensive and new, not the buckets of junk the Eagles cobble together. The main bully got in to the Air Force Academy, while Doug was shut out.

So when the main bully taunts Doug about his rejection letter, it's the culmination of a lifetime rivalry for these kids. And when Doug accepts his challenge to race, the stakes are high in terms of pride: it's the Eagle's junkyard plane against the bully's new Cessna. No motorcycles involved.

Doug still has to take the (shorter) risky route, because the bully's new plane flies straight and fast down the (longer) easy way. And that's how he wins the race, because he and his friends have modified the old plane to perform better under such stressful conditions.

Just a few small tweaks, and we've taken this scene from "why is this in here? is that a motorcycle in a movie about planes?" to "oh shit there's no way they can beat that fast new plane in that hunk of junk."

Then, just as they're celebrating their victory, they get the news: Doug's dad has been shot down.

Here we keep a lot of the beats from the movie, but we spread them out over time, and we don't have anyone just waltz into a Situation Room and get access to Top Secret reports and a high-ranking Air Force officer. The Air Force stonewalls Doug and his family; they get most of their information from news broadcasts (yay, journalism!). All they know is where he got shot down, and why, and that the government is negotiating for his release (or worse: the government is not negotiating for his release, because "they don't negotiate with terrorists, and that includes rogue states").

A month passes. Not three days, not a few hours, a full month. Doug spirals, spending more and more time in the simulator, ignoring his friends, going through the motions with his family.

It's Chappy that pulls him out of it. Chappy that chews him out after that he takes up the Colonel's simulator time (and Doug is mouthy about it). Chappy that takes gives him a job, working with him at the local commercial airstrip.

And it's a story from Chappy, about a rescue op that almost went bad, that inspires Doug to mount a rescue for his dad. Not one that uses military equipment, though. What he imagines is a stealth mission, where they get in and get out without being caught or recognized.

Because the head of the military in the country that's holding his dad is a fan of...old aircraft. He has a collection of old planes that he's bought from various places over the years, painted and fixed up. He likes to take them out himself, without any guards, just for the thrill of it.

So that's how the Eagles plan to get into the country's airspace: They build copies of some of the planes in the enemy general's collection, so they can pretend to be just him on a joy ride.

No theft of military hardware needed, this time. No hijinks on the base that would end up with the kids spending their lives inside a military prison if they got caught. Just good old fashioned elbow grease and research.

They do still need some military intelligence, though, to track where Doug's dad is being held and the disposition of the country's air defenses (so they know how to fool them). This they have to steal -- or maybe Chappy provides it? -- but that's it.

Chappy's role is still advice and planning. He knows the hardware they'll be up against, knows how to teach them to avoid triggering any reaction that will get them killed. But he doesn't have to aid and abet them ripping off the US military, this time.

He also doesn't go. His role during the mission is going to be monitoring everything from the ground, pulling up fresh intel as they need it, and coordinating everyone. He doesn't fly any of the old planes they fix up. That's what the Eagles are for.

This lets us continue to fill out the Eagles as characters (because they're in the film more) and gives us more possibilities for the rescue (because they're part of the mission now).

So, they spend weeks (not days) planning the rescue, and working on the planes (to make them match the enemy leader's collection). They contact other Eagles Flying Clubs around the world -- thanks to the internet, there's franchises all around -- to have a place to stop, refuel, and repair on the way from the US to the country where Doug's dad is being held.

Just as they're putting the finishing touches on the plan, that's when they hear that Doug's dad is going to be executed in three days. So we get the scene where Doug can't sleep and Chappy shares war stories with him, but this is after their relationship has been built up over time, so it's both more believable and more poignant.

They set off! Things are bumpy from the beginning, of course. One of the old planes starts having engine trouble over the Atlantic, and only just touches down on the borrowed runway in rural Spain (cue shots of sheep running from the incoming planes). So they have to leave it behind, along with its Eagle pilot (to repair it and fly it home).

They lose another plane as they're crossing the Mediterranean, getting close to the country where Doug's dad is being held. A sudden fog blows in, and one of the plane's instruments starts malfunctioning. Unable to see, its pilot is forced to climb up and out of the fog, which uses up too much fuel. It's forced to turn back.

Only Doug's plane is left. He thinks about turning back himself; there's no way the plan will work with just one plane. Chappy gives him the "I'm right there in the cockpit with you" speech, bolstering his confidence.

He makes it over the border successfully, and when contacted by ground control manages to fool them into thinking he's part of the leader's entourage. He heads for the prison.

This is when they switch deceptions (and where the other planes would have been handy). As he closes into the prison, Doug switches on an electronics package his Eagles worked up. At the same time, another Eagle on a fishing boat off the coast unfurls a huge makeshift radar dish on deck, and activates another one. We see the air control at the base near the prison react to seeing an American warship appear off their coast, followed by a radar ping off an F-18 (!) deep in their airspace.

Then Doug contacts the prison, issuing his threat: He's part of a strike force sent to get his dad out. If the captured pilot isn't put in his flight suit and set on the tarmac within an hour, the warship will start launching cruise missiles at strategic targets in the country.

The prison scrambles to comply, while contacting the leader for instructions. The leader is skeptical; he orders them to go ahead and release the American, but to set snipers over the runway and prepare their own fighter craft.

Hearing that they're moving his dad, Doug relays the next part of the plan: His fighter is going back to the warship, and the pilot will be picked up by a civilian aircraft. He switches off his electronics package, and the "F-18" vanishes from their radar.

This makes the leader deeply suspicious. He orders visual confirmation of the warship's presence. A scout plane is duly launched, headed to the coast to confirm.

Meanwhile, Doug prepares to land. Watches them take his father out of the prison, shove him into a jeep, and wheel him down the runway. He makes his final turn, landing gear down.

And then the scout plane spots the "warship" in the bay: Just a fishing boat, with a smiling, waving, Eagle in it.

The leader orders the snipers to fire, just as Doug touches down.

His dad falls, shot through the shoulder. Panicked and enraged, Doug lifts off again, followed by machine gun fire. He looks back at the runway, sees his dad moving, pulling himself along till he's behind the jeep, using it for shelter.

Doug can't leave him there. Thinking quickly, he flies back over the runway, a little down from where his dad is. Drops his spare fuel tank, which explodes on contact, creating a wall of fire on the tarmac that obscures the vision of the snipers. Under its cover, he's able to land, grab his dad, and take off again.

But they're not safe. Three enemy fighters from the base set off in pursuit. Doug doesn't have any weapons, so it's just his flying against theirs, as they race for the coast.

And it seems like he's bested them! They're almost to the Mediterranean, when six more fighters show up ahead of them on radar. They're caught.

That's when we hear the American accent crackle over the radio, letting the enemy fighters (and Doug) know the six planes ahead are real F-18s, and suggesting they do not engage with Doug's plane.

The enemy fighters break off, not wanting to take on such odds. The Americans offer to escort Doug back to base. Doug follows, though he wonders what base they're referring to.

...Which is revealed as they pass back through the fog near the coast, and come out the other side, where an aircraft carrier is waiting!

Along with Chappy, who "convinced a Navy friend of his" who "was going to be in the neighborhood" to let him come along (and bring his carrier).

And that's how they work up the cover story for the rescue: The aircraft carrier strike group carried it out, not the Eagles. This gives the military the win, and lets the Eagles off the hook for the whole thing.

There you have it! An updated Iron Eagle, ready for remake in the 21st Century. We keep the emotional heart of the story, and many of the beats, but we deepen the characterization, broaden the representation, and up the realism.

sits by phone, waiting for Hollywood to call