Just a quick little update to let you all know that I met my own personal deadline for completing the final draft of Zemblanity. It took five years and five drafts, but it’s finally done! By the time you read this, I will be balls deep in sending query letters to agents.
This is treading new water. My game plan is to try to get the story to stick somewhere in a year. If after a year it’s still bouncing back, I will look into a smaller publishing house to work with directly. If after six months it’s still finding it’s way back home, I’ll cave and look into self-publishing.
I seriously cannot wait for you to read this. It’s like nothing else I’ve written previously, unless you count Improbable, but the site that was featured on I believe went under. Now that I think about it, I might take a look at that contract and see when I can publish it on my own. How do you handle contracts when the group doesn’t exist anymore? Huh.
While you’re waiting for this baby, I’ll still be working on other projects. I have another short story in the works that will likely end up in novella territory if things pan out the way I think they will. I’ll also be working on a novel that will go in a different direction than my first. Think Phantom of the Opera (for manipulation) meets Night Circus (for magic) meets You (for modernity). It’ll be fun. And maybe a little messed up, let’s be real.
Stick around, void! No matter how this pans out, it’ll be great!
After months, almost half a year, I finished The Stand by Stephen King.
I wanna start out by saying that I enjoyed it for the most part. I know a lot of people consider it to be his best work. I still have a hard on for the final installment of The Dark Tower series that shares the same name, but I do think this one is in my top five for sure.
My favorite character in the entire book was Nick. Favorite is a bit of an understatement, I think. I was in love with Nick. Like, I am ready to dive headfirst into some fanfiction and read some sweet, sweet Nick scenes over and over again. If Nick was real, my fiancé would have some real hard competition. Do you get what I’m saying here? I have feels for Nick in the worst of ways, and it is probably not healthy. NICK was the BACKBONE of the whole shebang, and what does King decide to do after he birthed this magnificent human being into existence?
Stephen King took my heart and crushed it like a stale cigarette.
If I ever have the chance to meet him again and actually talk to him, I’m going to have some strong words.
I recently wrote a post in a Stephen King group about this very same topic, to which I got a multitude of responses. Most people agreed with me, so in that aspect, I’m glad I’m not the only one who felt real attraction to a fictional character. I’m also worried about what that says about us as a whole. I don’t think this is a normal thing. Like, I embrace it, but cautiously.
Some people told me basically to get over it, since it is a Stephen King book, and the man has a knack for killing off the most beloved characters. To that, I lovingly say ‘fuck off,’ because it’s not the same. Stephen King has a knack for killing off beloved characters in a satisfying way that gives the reader some closure. I would provide examples, but I don’t want to spoil any more stories than this one. Just take my word for it. I have loved other characters of his, and at the time of their death, while yes, I was devastated, I was also accepting of the fact. My favorite character is dead, but their friends are grieving with me, so it’s going to be okay.
A large handful of people agreed with me, that yes, Nick’s death comes out of nowhere, and yes, the characters did not grieve in the way I wanted. However, the part I was missing was the fact that these people had already experienced so much loss before Nick’s passing. How could I blame them for being numb to it all? And to that, I say…you’re right. Everyone lost their families, their friends, the people who were closest to them. Who had I lost? Who had the readers as a whole lost? Their best friend, Nick.
That speaks to me.
While I felt for (and maybe you did, too!) everyone who lost someone during the pandemic, I couldn’t take part in their pain. I only had a few pages of knowledge about the relationship between them and their loved ones, while they had a whole lifetime with them. I could only share in their pain when I lost someone, too. That someone just so happened to be Nick.
In the end of it all, I suppose I need to be grateful that King created a character so real I could almost touch him. He was made from nothing, and when he returned to nothing, I felt a hole where he once stood. That’s some powerful stuff. That’s why he’s one of my all-time favorite authors.
And, when it comes right down to it, I guess I hope that one day I can do the same thing. I hope that in my own writing, I can create someone that feels real, not just to me, but to another living person. I hope that I can illicit this outpouring of emotion, whether it be good or bad, like he has done for me and countless other people.
I think a lot of authors getting a feel for the ropes want to be famous. As for me, that’s not what I strive for. Don’t get me wrong, selling books to get by sounds amazing. However, in the end, I want to give what authors like King have given to me: an escape.
All that stuff aside, the book was solid. It had several likeable antagonists (Flagg, Lloyd, Trashcan Man), a couple of likeable protagonists (Nick, Tom, Gene, Larry), and some damn fine storytelling throughout. He did a fantastic job of showing the “bad guys” not as monsters who were all out for blood, but real-life people who were just as good as you or me.
As for a rating, I’ll give it an 8/10. You probably think I docked it because of what happened to Nick. You’d be wrong. This baby doesn’t get a solid 10 from me because I didn’t like Stu or Fran, and they got the most screen time out of anyone. They were the main mains, and I wasn’t here for it.
And Nick exploding didn’t help.
Before I end this off, I shared a couple songs when I finished The Dark Tower, and that was kind of fun. So here’s a couple songs that feel like The Stand to me.
This first one reminds me of Nick. It feels sad and a little hopeless, which is something I imagine Nick felt a lot of throughout his journey:::
And this one reminds me of the overall fight between good and evil in the story. It’s less sad, more angry. It’s something I associate especially with those in the Free Zone. Listen to the lyrics:::
Have you read The Stand? God, I hope so, otherwise you just got something big ruined for you. Who was your favorite character, and why was it Nick? I’m just kidding. But really, tell me who your favorite was. If it was Stu or Fran, please tell me what it is about either of them that tickled your fancy. My cousin loves both of them, and I just don’t get it. Tell me your thoughts down below!!
I want to start out by saying that I enjoy Tim Burton’s projects. His art touches me in a way no other entertainer does. He’s all sharp angles and dark whimsy. You know who he is; you know what I mean. He’s someone that speaks to all those who, like me, have a weird little heart.
However, like the Wizard chilling behind a curtain in his castle in Oz, not everything is quite as it seems. Or so it would seem. The mirrors crack, the smoke fades, and we’re left with just a man.
Let’s reminisce a little first, though.
The Appeal
I can still remember the first time I watched Nightmare before Christmas. I was young, staying with my siblings at my cousin’s house. Our parents went out for the night (probably gambling, let’s be real), and they had left us to our own devices. There were eight of us in the house, four kids on each side, each pair almost the exact same age as the other. It’s like our mom’s were on a mission and their biological whatnots were in sync. Kinda crazy if you think about it.
Anyway, I was with my cousin in the den, and our parents had either rented or bought the movie for us to watch so we would stay out of everyone else’s hair. I remember it was scary in some spots, but not so bad I got nightmares. After we watched it all the way through, we rewound it to the part where Jack first goes to Christmas Town, after he sings his iconic What’s This song, and he runs into the pole. We laughed a lot. I also remember wanting to eat the snow. I remember falling in love with Jack Skellington, and all the spooky things involved with him. I don’t know if that movie completely molded who I am today as a person, but it definitely set some things in motion.
I watched that movie for years to come, sometimes multiple viewings in a row because I didn’t feel like I appreciated it enough the first run through. I still bust it out to this day, devouring it piece by piece, falling in love with a walking, talking, singing skeleton over and over again. I grew with it up to the age when I realized it’s not just about Halloween and Christmas, but about a guy stuck in a rut and depressed and searching for something to make life exciting again. It’s about trying to run from your problems and having to come back and face them head on. The grass isn’t always greener on the other side, but where you water it.
Nightmare before Christmas had some very grown-up themes for a kid’s movie. I think that’s a big reason why I still consider it a part of my life as a 31-year-old. It’s a masterpiece, in my humble opinion.
Fast forward several years later. I was in college when Burton’s take on Alice in Wonderland came out. This was not the film of the century. It’s not as influential as Nightmare was by any means, but it’s a favorite of mine. Any version of Alice has a special place in my heart. I love the story of it. The whimsy. The implied drug use (even though that’s just a theory everyone clung onto and is in no way the real deal).
I remember seeing this film as well. It must have been a break of some sort because I was at home. A simple Google search could answer this for me in a second, but the exact time frame isn’t important. I was at work, and my sister text me to see if I wanted to go with her. I, of course, did, but the movie started about a half hour before the end of my shift. We decided I could still make it, that I’d only miss the previews. I clocked out at ten til, because that was legal for Walmart standards at the time, and made a mad dash over there. She’d bought my ticket despite me telling her not to, we ran into a half empty (or half full??) theater, and I was blown away enough to buy the DVD when it came out. We repeated the process almost word for word when the sequel came out. The theater was our happy place.
Again, this wasn’t a masterpiece. The plot won’t stick with me the same way as Nightmare. I will grow older, and it will stay very much the same. And the important thing to get out of this is that’s okay. Not everything you consume has the obligation to be a mindfuck. Entertainment does not always need to have layers upon layers of deeper meaning. Alice in Wonderland was a feel-good movie with enough bizarre imagery to make it undeniably Burton. That was enough for me.
Fast forward again. It’s November of 2019, and I’m in Vegas with my soon to be fiancé. I had just been to Vegas a few months prior for my coworker’s birthday trip, but I chose to go back. On one hand, I was doing the good girlfriend thing: My fiancé got the go ahead to hit up SEMA, a personal goal of his. I’ll be real with you. Cars interest me not in the slightest but seeing him happy makes me happy. Yanno, that lovey-dovey bullshit. I had my own reasons for joining him to Vegas for the second time in a year.
The Tim Burton exhibit.
Lost Vegas.
Words don’t do it justice, so I’ll just share some of my favorite pictures with you.
This was truly a once in a lifetime experience. It’s one I will never forget, and I’m so grateful to have gone.
The Bad
What celebrity hasn’t had a controversy or two during the life of their career? If you name one, I’ll tell you to just wait. At the end of the day, no one is perfect. We are all human. We all have skeletons in our closet and demons under our skin. It’s a fact of life. It’s what makes us real.
In the past, I had heard of Burton being in hot water with social justice warriors everywhere because of the type of characters he chose to portray. Yup, I’m going there. The white-washing whatnots. This article gives a pretty good summary of it.
TL;DR: He was confronted about his lack of diversity in his films, and he responded with “Thing’s either call for things, or they don’t.”
Here’s the thing. When this was making headlines, I was standing off in the corner. Quiet. Mostly because I don’t like to go along with movements, but also because I don’t like to start shit.
(And now here I am. It’s whatever. It’s cool. Please don’t hate me.)
Diversity is a fine thing. It’s a wonderful thing. It’s what makes life worth living. I like seeing differences come together. It’s beautiful.
But I get what he’s saying. Having a black character or an Asian or Hispanic or whatever it may be, simply to say that you have one, is insulting. Throwing someone in just to meet a quota is wrong. You make a token character. There is a reason that the black kid in South Park’s name is Token. It takes away part of the creativity.
This is not a popular opinion, and I guarantee that my stance will be twisted into something that it’s absolutely not. Do I think that there should be more representation for people of different races and beliefs and sexual orientations or lack thereof? Yes. Absolutely. Do I think that every movie from here on out needs to have a cookie cutter cast list to appease every person to make sure they are accurately portrayed? Absolutely not. I feel like doing so is a form of censorship, and as I have stated in posts past, I hate censorship. Even when I disagree with the subject material. Hell, even when the subject material is so far out there and wrong and what I consider to be immoral. I don’t think art should be censored.
I think that if Burton wants to have characters with skin tones ranging from alabaster to porcelain, that is his deal. Will I look down on him for it? Not necessarily. Will I continue to support his and other’s movies that have a cast of all one race? Not necessarily, because I don’t watch movies to fill an agenda. I watch to escape, and if it’s a good movie, I don’t care who’s acting in it. If Burton continues to create films starring his best friend and ex-wife, good on him. At the end of the day, he’s creating, and I’m not going to shit on anyone for creating.
His creative choices (though poorly worded, I’ll admit) are not a comment on his character. Primarily white characters are not enough to make me stop consuming.
However…
The Ugly
Over the holidays, I was stuck in quarantine. This led to a lot of show binging and random documentaries. One of them that struck my fancy on Netflix was a series called “Holiday Movies that Made Us.” There was only two episodes available, and low and behold, one of them was all about Nightmare Before Christmas.
Now, first I want to say that I did not enjoy the episode. The editing and cuts that were in it reminded me of a special on Bravo. The awkward repeats and upbeat, snarky narrator didn’t tickle my fancy. It felt like it was trying too hard to be funny and edgy and it fell flat. At least for me. My mom would probably like it. You might like it. I did not. That’s not the important part, though.
Here’s the thing: I could have at any time stopped watching. I could have added some arbitrary statistic that someone either at Netflix or otherwise deems as too scary to finish, when in fact, it is lame. That’s a conversation for a different day. I could have stopped. But I did not. And the reason for that was something I wasn’t expecting.
I, who had grown up watching Tim Burton and stood in his corner when others attacked him, was horribly, utterly, terribly disappointed.
Let me explain.
Spoiler alert if you want to watch the episode.
Tim Burton was hardly involved in the making of one of my favorite childhood movies.
No freaking way!! – Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com
Okay, so I’ve asked around since I learned this, and apparently this was common knowledge for a good amount of people. I was not in on it. I had no idea. I was 31 years old when this little tidbit of information was thrown my way, hitting me in the face like one of those rubber dodgeballs, and splaying me out on the floor.
So then, why is it considered Tim Burton’s Nightmare before Christmas? The simple answer is big business trying to distance itself from the little guy. Disney gave Burton the go ahead to make the film, but after a tense preview, they decided they didn’t want to be associated with it. It was dark, it was scary in some parts, and it didn’t fit their brand.
For the life of me, I don’t understand why. 😉
Ultimately, they let the filming continue, but when it came time for it to be released to the world, they gave it to their sister company and slapped Burton’s name on the title, gracefully bowing out to watch from the shadows.
Of course, they changed their minds years later when Nightmare made a comeback, and rereleased it, letting everyone know that the cult classic was, indeed, a Disney masterpiece.
Corporations are dumb sometimes.
Truth be told, the shock shouldn’t have hit me so hard. It wasn’t a secret. The truth was in the credits the whole time. I just never cared enough to look, and there’s probably others out there who are the same way.
The other big truth bomb that went off while watching the reality-tv-style documentary was something I never would have dreamed was real. If it didn’t come from the mouths of the people who worked with him (or, rather, under him), I wouldn’t believe it.
Tim Burton is kind of a dick.
Dick might be a strong word. He is eccentric, which is not inherently a bad thing, but he takes that quirk to diva territory. I’m talking all-out temper tantrums. The man would scream when others would come to him with different ideas for the story. He kicked a hole in the wall once during one of his rare visits because he got upset over creative differences.
Okay, so dick is just the right word.
For someone relying on a crew to essentially ghostwrite and create his vision from the ground up, including modeling, set builds, script, music, lyrics, and voice acting, he sure liked to throw what little weight he had around. It’s not a good look.
Tim Burton: The Legend
So what does all this mean for people who, like me, loved everything about the man up to this point? It’s like a crossroads. One side is all the good memories associated with his works, or at least the ones with his name plastered on them. The other side is ideas built upon with lies, whether intentional or otherwise.
Here’s where I stand.
Have my feelings about him changed? Definitely. It’s embarrassing to admit this aloud, but I held him on a pedestal. It’s the same pedestal I put all celebrities or influencers I admire. Hell, it’s the same damn pedestal I put close friend and family on. When they are up there, they can do no wrong. Everything they do has a good reason, and any bad they do is forgivable, and with a flick of the wrist, their wrongdoing is gone, forgotten.
If I may continue on that idea, I am a paradox. I believe so hard in good that I refuse to see the bad. At the same time, when there is bad, I force myself to recognize that anyone can do it, that no one is evil, that we are only as bad as our choices, and that everyone has some good.
That came out confusing. Simplified: Good=can be generalized. Bad=can never be generalized.
If you’re still confused, shoot me a message and I’ll give you my Hitler talk to illustrate it better.
The point is Tim Burton is no longer on a pedestal. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the dickishness. I am a pacifist at heart. I care possibly too much about how I make people feel in all situations. I don’t like it when people raise their voice at me, and I definitely will not raise my voice at them. Anything can be solved with kindness. I’ll stand by that fact until the day I die. No matter what was going on, nothing excuses screaming at your crew or damaging the wall. It’s a gross quality to have. Explosive anger does nothing for anyone.
After I watched that film, I thought that my opinion would be forever changed about him. I wasn’t going to denounce my childhood, but I wasn’t going to immerse myself into anything he does in the future. This was all purely out of spite. I thought I lost my love for him.
Then Christmas came. My fiancé and I were still locked in quarantine. I was finally experiencing the joys of Covid, and my fiancé was starting to get better. His family brought over our gifts and some food so we would feel a little bit of normalcy during an otherwise shitty holiday season.
Lo and behold, his family got me a signed print. The print: Nightmare before Christmas. The signature? You guessed it.
When I opened it, I just stared at it for a long time. It came with a certificate saying the signature was legit. It was in an absolutely beautiful—and fitting—frame. We opened up other gifts, and I kept coming back to this one. When gifts were done and we were getting the living room back in order, I kept coming back to it. Even now, as I write this, I keep glancing over at it, just staring, willing this office to be done so I can hang it on the wall above my desk so I can look straight ahead instead of off to the right.
I treasure this. I treasure this as much as the signed Stephen King and Joe Hill books I own. Maybe, dare I say, even a little more than those.
Void, I can’t stay mad.
Here’s what it all boils down to. I love Tim Burton’s work. Whether or not he was directly involved with all of it, he breathed life into it. He made his mark on it. I love his aesthetic. He takes death and makes it beautiful.
That being said, I don’t know if I would ever want to meet him in person.
Let me backtrack that statement in case future Manda has an opportunity that today Manda doesn’t see. If I had the opportunity to meet Tim Burton, I would take it. But if I died without ever having breathed the same air as him, I would be okay with it. At the end of the day, I am content with consuming what he delivers; my compliments to the chef without the chef having to come out from the kitchen and make the whole exchange awkward.
I recall in the film The Fault in Our Stars (total chick flick by the way, not the type of movie I would ever choose to watch, but I’m generally overruled when it comes to picking those kinds of things out), the girl has an author that she absolutely adores. Closer to the end of the movie, the love interest of said girl finds out where this author lives, and they go to meet him. They get there, and he is nothing at all like she imagined. He’s just plain mean. A dick, if you will. I remember watching that and thinking, oh god, I never want that to happen to me.
Luckily for me thus far in life, all the people I admire whom I have had the pleasure of meeting have been coolly pleasant to outright friendly. But I dread the day where the one I meet is a dumpster fire of a person, forcing me to have a whole new outlook on the world.
Now what?
I want to end this off first by saying that the negative information about Burton all came from a Netflix special that was poorly edited (in my shitty opinion) and featured old coworkers with a chip on their shoulder. It never once interviewed the man himself to get his side of the story. Was he asked to be a part of it and he declined? Did they have their own narrative they wanted to push and decide not to involve him themselves? I don’t know, but either way, the end result was one-sided. I understand the point of the episode was not about Burton at all; they wanted to show a fun behind the scenes of Nightmare. But at the same time, they sure did leave some road rash when they passed by. (Is that even a phrase? Whatever. It is now.)
Secondly, there are testimonies from others who have worked with him who claim he’s a great guy. I don’t doubt that, mostly because I don’t want to doubt that. At the end of the day, you can’t make everyone happy, no matter how hard you try.
Thirdly, despite all this, I still like him. His movies are still some of my favorites. His gothic whimsy makes so much serotonin in my brain. If he made a billion more movies with a pale cast list and the same three people in lead roles, I wouldn’t be mad one bit.
This is all I know, and the only thing I want you to take away from this. It’s not that you should hate him, nor should you adore him. You need to make up your own mind on that.
No, what you need to take away from all this rambling is this: Kicking holes in walls is a dick move. Just don’t do it.
Whew. Hey Void, did you make it through all that? Okay, sweet. Now’s the time I turn things over to you. I want to know your thoughts on Tim Burton. Good, bad, don’t matter. Is obscure involvement in things and dealing damage to literally anything the end of the world? Or does none of that really matter? Do famous people get a pass for being a dickbag? Am I reading too much into the whole thing?? Let me know!
Yes, January is almost over, but I wanted to make a post about it anyway. Here are the highlights of an otherwise shitty year. It was a productive one, despite everything.
Good God I’d kill for some cake right about now — Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com
January:
Wrote lots of letters to my nephew in basic, including sending him some of my first draft work for Itsy Bitsy.
Started making time to workout. It was irregular because my work schedule was irregular.
February:
Had a marathon drafting session for Itsy Bitsy and finished it in a week. Found out I can get a lot done under pressure.
Tried to make plans for an engagement party. It was going to be either laid back barbeque or like a ritzy masquerade with close friends and family. Then Covid happen the following month. It didn’t happen.
Paid off my car. Paying things off is like winning the lottery.
Did Breaking Benjamin’s VIP. Held Ben’s hand during a song. Almost cried.
March:
Packed up the rest of our life and closed on a house.
Cleaned boogers and possible shit from the walls of said house. It was really nasty.
Covid officially started in Nebraska. Lots of things cancelled.
My job cut back hours dramatically, so I was shipped off into the store. I worked mostly in online grocery pickup. I had awesome managers. It was fun.
April:
Every moment not at work was spent unpacking and cleaning.
Work was boring half the time. My coworkers and I had to take temperatures and stand around. Eight hours doing nothing goes by slow.
May:
Finally started writing again. Spent a lot of time editing Itsy Bitsy.
Made a tough decision between more pay and consistent morning hours. In the end, I decided I didn’t want to work for Walmart forever, and the only way to reach my goals was if I had a job with less stress and more consistency. I stepped down to write.
Worked out significantly less than before, but my job had me walking around 6 miles a day, so I was cool with it.
We built a privacy fence. By ‘we’ I mean my fiancé and my dad.
June
Finished editing Itsy Bitsy. Started the second draft.
Started listening to a writing podcast in my free time. I did this for a sense of community. I kept it up for several months but ultimately stopped. I just wasn’t getting what I wanted out of it.
I have something in my planner that says SPOOKY TACOS. I’m not sure what the context of that is. All I know is I want them again, but this time, more spooky.
July
Finished the second draft of Itsy Bitsy. Sent it to my beta (my mama) for a read through.
My fiancé got a new job with much better pay. My worries of if I made the right financial decision by leaving my old job subsided just a little.
Did family pictures with everyone on my side. It was hectic. But it was nice to see everyone.
August
Finished Itsy Bitsy and uploaded it to the world. Also ordered paperback copies. My first physical book!
Started tracking my writing differently. Set out short term goals as a sort of business plan, and journaled any thoughts relating to them.
Got together with my mama to talk about wedding stuff. Finally got a vision in mind.
Wrote a little story for my best friend’s birthday Zoom party.
Gave my website some TLC. It still needs more.
Put down deposit for wedding venue. It’s non-refundable. I guess it’s for real.
September
Spent time in Tennessee. Wasn’t ready to come back.
Mailed copies of Itsy Bitsy to people I knew and a few I didn’t.
Submitted a silly little entry to a horror cookbook contest.
Sold six copies of Itsy Bitsy to a local bookstore. I need to go in sometime and see how it did.
Made a plan to contact another bookstore to do a signing once Covid subsides. It looks like it’ll be a while before that happens.
Became a member of HWA and NWG.
Submitted several pieces to another contest, including a few chapters of Zemblanity.
October
Started a newsletter.
Submitted a flash fiction piece to a contest. It didn’t place, but I wasn’t in love with it. Might expand on it later.
Left town to do engagement pictures. My best friend and maid of honor dressed up as Pennywise for them. It was fun.
Started to work on a piece for a contest, then stopped. Decided it’s best not to stress over something I don’t have a solid plan for. No more half ass stories.
Applied for a job outside of Walmart. Interviewed. Decided against it. Too many red flags, and I don’t want to be married to a job. I wasn’t willing to give what they were asking.
November
Serious work on Zemblanity. It’s still a work in progress, but it’s been coming along nicely.
Submitted a short essay to a magazine to feel it out. Working on a longer essay while I wait for a decision on it.
Got the news that the Zemblanity excerpt I submitted was accepted for Voices of the Plains. It’s due to come out soon.
Made a solid business plan for the entirety of next year.
Bought a new laptop. It was much needed.
Experienced the season finale of Unus Annus. Might have felt feelings and bought merch because of said feelings.
Found a sense of purpose/direction/will to live after months in a slump.
Missed family on Thanksgiving due to Covid.
December
Covid. So much Covid.
Missed Christmas with the family and a lot of work.
Made awesome progress with Zemblanity.
As for this year, I don’t have anything concrete planned out to make me a better human. I do know that I want to get back into yoga and pilates again, and I got a new mat for Christmas so I may as well put it to good use. And, of course, as I told you before, I have a solid business plan for writing this year. Let’s hope things work out. Not to mention a few other little ideas I want to take the time to try out. It might work out. It might not work out. I’ll keep you updated if anything cool happens, and I’ll expect you to forgive me if I don’t tell you. Namely because if I don’t tell you, it means I made an absolute fool of myself, and while I am totally onboard with the whole idea of ditching the false narrative of constant happiness and optimism that social media drives into us, I don’t like to feel stupid, yo. You get it. 😉
Question time: Is there anything in particular you’d like to hear more about or see more of? Book reviews? Wedding shiz? My own personal writing things? Blog style whatnots? Lemme know! I’d love for this website to be more interactive. More people with conversation. Less bots that click like without even reading what was written.
Well, Void, here’s to a great 2021! Happy fucking New Year!!
Voices from the Plains is now available on Amazon! If you’ve been wanting some more of Allyson, or if you want to check out some other amazing authors from Nebraska and beyond, you can purchase a copy of the anthology either in print or as an ebook.
I’m a part of a thing 🙂 – Photo by Any Lane on Pexels.com
They sent me an electronic copy of the anthology, and I haven’t had a chance yet to read it. I have a little bit of a pile going of books that were lent to me/books I need to review on Amazon for people, but you can bet your ass I’ll sit down with it and hopefully find a new favorite author. I do know just by scanning through it that there is at least one other author from my hometown who submitted. I might do some Facebook stalking. Make a new friend. 😉
That’s not creepy, right? To stalk in hopes of friendship?
I dunno, man. I just wanna have more writing friends.
It’s that time again. The fourth chapter, for better or worse, in all its glory. If you would like a refresher, here’s a link to chapter three. Otherwise, without further bullshit, here’s what you came for:::
***
Chapter Four
Sleep did not come to Allyson that night.
Under normal circumstances, it did not bother her in the least. There was plenty to do at night. She’d balance checkbooks, wash floors, spend time touching the holes in the wood from events that seemed to happen ages ago or just yesterday, depending on her mood.
But not this time. No, all she could manage was tossing and turning in her twin size bed. She stared out in the blackness imagining different colors and shapes dancing before her eyes. Nonsense and random.
Sometimes, she’d squint until she swore she saw her again. It was a her. She was sure of it. Breasts, though shriveled, were still present. Skin like powdered latex. Some of her bones protruded in sections around her shoulders, her hips, the skin stretching almost beyond its means—it looked as though it could split at any given moment. It resembled spiked armor. Beautiful. Deadly.
At night when the tossing and turning wouldn’t give way to rest, she would let her mind wander. No matter where her thoughts started, they would most often lead to that night. The moment everything changed. She thought it was for the better. Most days it seemed for the better. But sometimes the act got tiresome.
She tried not to think about it too much. She didn’t want to obsess.
“Not that you haven’t already.”
The act consisted of two main scenes. First was the matter of the liquid courage her dead deadbeat relied on so heavily. There was a wall of beer cases in the living room, still full. She’d empty it in the next couple months at the end of the year. It was easier to keep track of when it was present and ready to count. By the end of December, there should be fifty-two. It was easier to buy beer than make up stories about sobering up. She’d bought for her old man often enough for the clerk to be okay with her purchasing alone. Everyone knew who the Alexander girl was buying for.
The second scene was a little tougher than buying underage. Keeping her father under wraps only came by keeping up appearances. Periodically she stood in front of the mirror. With an open palm, she’d strike herself on the cheek, the mouth, near her eye, her ear. It was by far the least enjoyable part of the ruse, but a necessary evil. It was easier to create self-inflicted cuts and bruises than make up stories of happy family dinners and game nights.
It was hard pretending to live in a broken home when in reality things couldn’t be better.
Maybe better.
A little better.
The night was long, and she was tired.
Allyson reached under her pillow, fingers searching for either cloth or drawstring. From practice, she was able to find the opening and grasp the tooth without removing the bag from its home. It was bumpy along both sides from years of plaque eating away at the bone. Had he been alive, this tooth wouldn’t be in one piece.
“It’s funny how life works out sometimes.”
Her words bounced off the empty walls of the room. Deafening.
If it hadn’t been for her, there wouldn’t be any teeth left in his mouth. In a way, she saved its life. The tooth rolled around in her palm over and over again while her mind jumped from one thought to the next in rapid succession until it landed on something worth pondering.
Zaquerie Aimes.
Zaquerie Aimes tomorrow.
It wasn’t as if he were inviting her to another party. He’d tried that a couple times before. She never kidded herself before; thus, she hadn’t accepted. The invite wasn’t special then. She’d been sitting in a classroom full of people then, and everyone got an invite. Even Allyson. He hadn’t cared then; he’d just wanted to be polite.
She could see though the bad-boy persona he held onto like his life depended on it. The clothes, the hair, the booze, the cigarette smile, all of it screamed villainy and violence. It was his eyes that gave him away, though. His eyes weren’t dead. Far from it. They reflected the gold in his soul. That boy didn’t have one mean bone in his body.
“We’re the same, you and me.”
The words didn’t feel like her own, but the buzzing in her throat said otherwise. Uncomfortably aware of her own pulse, she shoved the tooth back in its place and rolled to her side. Blood rushed to her cheeks, making her face burn. Yes, she liked him well enough. He was kind to her, and while no one was outwardly mean, no one was particularly pleasant.
Yes, she liked him well enough. He had a nice personality and he was nice to look at. It was nothing serious. Nothing life-changing.
“So then why the butterflies?” she asked the darkness.
And that’s it, folks. If you want to read more, you can catch chapters five and six in Voices from the Plains, which should be coming out very soon. You’ll know when exactly as soon as I do.
If you want to stay updated Zemblanity and the progress I’m making on it, be sure to subscribe to my monthly newsletter. I’ll post the sign up below if you are interested.
What did you think? I’m really curious to know, good, bad, and ugly. Shoot me a comment, or if you’re camera shy, you can pass an email along my way.
Have a good one, void. Scream at ya later. xx
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Unus annus. One year. The low down, if you aren’t in the know, is a couple of YouTube personalities got together to make a video every day for one year, then at the end of the year, deleted the channel. Think of it as nothing lasts forever/live in the moment type of thing.
I was super into it.
I didn’t come here to gush about the series itself (even though I watched it faithfully and pulled an all nighter after working a full shift to be there for when they pressed delete). Instead, I want to talk about what happened after the screen went black, and something that had been there for me every day was suddenly dead and gone forever.
You wouldn’t think that a show ending would evoke such emotion in me. I definitely didn’t think it would. But when you do something every day for a whole year, it becomes a part of you, whether you like it or not.
Dude. I bawled.
Alone in my living room. Bottle of wine in hand. Face in other hand. Bawling at a blank screen.
To be fair, it was a long day, and I had been awake for almost 24 hours, and I’m old and don’t handle no sleep as well as I used to. But that feeling of loss, of empty, remained with me through the night, up until the next day, then ebbing and flowing back and forth from there randomly over the next several days. It was like I lost a friend.
It sucked. But in a good way. Like the friend had some terrible disease that made them live through pain every single day, and their passing means no more pain. Make sense?
What I took away from Unus Annus was that you can do anything you want to. It just takes commitment and a whole lot of work.
So, in true Manda fashion, I went to work on my planner. I made an actual business plan for the entirety of next year, and I’m going to do my very best to keep to my deadlines. So no more winging it. I want to have the final draft of Zemblanity completed and sent off to agents by February/March, and I want to have another short story written up and sent to magazines by the end of the year. I want to give essay writing an honest try, and plan to have two articles written over the course of the year. Textbroker will hopefully be a weekly thing (even though the pay isn’t the greatest), at least until I can get a handle on another route. And those occasional freelancing gigs I’ve done in the past? I plan on searching job sites once a month to see if there’s anything that would be a good fit for me.
Most of all, more than anything, is I want to stir the same feeling in others as Unus Annus stirred in me. I want to mean something to someone: if not me myself, then the words I write. I’ll admit that a lot of what I do here is word vomit with no real feeling behind it. It’s half assed is what it is. It’s book reviews and fiction—which, to be fair, is the majority of my life. The importance of all that, though, is lost in translation, and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I haven’t been trying hard enough. Even this post could have some more to it, honestly. It feels generic. It feels like anyone could have written it. There is very little of myself in it, and those little glimpses come out in occasional curse words. That’s not enough.
What does this mean for you? Not a whole lot, probably. You will either notice a change over here or on one of my socials or the stories I write, or you won’t.
What does this mean for me? A whole lot of work. But if a couple of guys can throw their all into something that is just going to disappear, then I think I can manage to put in more effort to do something that’s been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember.
I want to write. I want people to care about what I write. I want to create characters from nothing and make them feel just as real as your family, your friend, your lover. I want you to feel that same stir of emotion and inspiration that I feel so often.
Alright, Void. One more update after this one before I hit the no post zone. Let’s make the most of it, shall we?
Allyson is a little creepy. Let’s see what’s up with her now. A little time has passed for both us and for her, so who knows, maybe she’s chilled out?
***
Chapter Three
Allyson was almost certain she would never need to know the difference between one triangle and the next. Triangles were triangles. Three-sided and incredibly boring.
“My life is a triangle.”
Only two people took notice of her mumbling; they turned around to shoot her a glare. She looked back down at her notebook, scribbling equations she didn’t understand.
Four years. Four years since she started this façade, and not a single incident. And it wasn’t from lack of trying.
Yes, no one ever guessed the truth about her living situation, and that was well and all, but she was bored with it. She wanted more.
She attempted summoning up the creature from that night more times than she cared to admit, but nothing ever came of it. It took two years of staying up late and recreating the situation best she could by herself for her to finally give up and accept it for what it was: a fluke. Devil traps were drawings and Ouija boards were toys.
She might have thought it all a dream if not for the faded scars under her eyes and the speckled holes in the hall of her home. And, of course, the body. Thankfully, it was easy to keep the deadbeat under wraps.
Allyson never knew her mother. She imagined her occasionally, making up stories to go with whatever face she chose to give her. She didn’t have the luxury of family photos to use for reference. Most often, she imagined her dead. Sometimes in a car crash. Other times during childbirth. She didn’t want to imagine her alive. If she was alive, that meant that she left her daughter with a drunk. Abandoned. And she didn’t want to believe that. Otherwise, she’d be worse than him. No, her mother loved her dearly, but the grim reaper had different plans.
“Hey, Allyson.”
She was so deep in thought, so didn’t notice anyone leaning against the front of her desk. Her heart leapt into her throat, thin shoulders rising in surprise that she tried to cover up with a stretch. She furrowed her brow, feigning annoyance.
Everyone in the classroom, teacher included, was gone. Not the first time she’d zoned out during a lecture, and definitely wouldn’t be the last.
“Um…yeah?”
Icy blue eyes traveled up the ripped jeans, up the grey hoodie hiding the lean muscle beneath. She could feel her heart pounding in her throat, her wrists, her eyes, and her lips trembled if she didn’t force a smile. Whenever Zaque talked to her, she’d stare at his eyes. One moment they’d look green, and if she blinked, she’d swore they were brown. Like magic.
“What are you doing later?”
Sometimes she would envision the spelling of his name. She’d see it in neon lights hovering over his head. Utterly ridiculous. His parents, hip and trendy as they were, couldn’t settle on a spelling that made sense. Zaquerie Aimes. She didn’t know his middle name, but it was likely just as obnoxious.
“Probably nothing? Why? What do you want?”
She kept her half smile and annoyed expression. Sending mixed signals was somewhat of a specialty of hers. Keep them guessing, keep you safe. Besides, no one, not him, not anyone, ever asked her something like…like…
“Hey, hey, no reason to get upset or anything. I just wanted to see if you wanted to go to a movie or something. And, uh, if you don’t, that’s totally cool. Just offering and whatnots.”
He held up his hands as if he could push his request on her. She’d watched him do it hundreds of times throughout the year. It didn’t matter if the other person was male or female. It didn’t change the outcome. Zaque was a superhero, and persuasion was his super power.
She looked him over for what seemed to her like an eternity, searching for ulterior motives of the butt of the joke. If there was something there, he hid it well.
“No.”
Short and simple, more to see his reaction than anything, ready to brace herself against the bucket of pig blood that surely rested on an imaginary beam over her head. But nothing. Not even a smirk to prove how gullible she was. His eyebrows raised, mouth down turned even as he nodded in acceptance.
“Not tonight, at least. My father wants me to run errands for him. Um, I mean, I’m free this weekend, though.”
The heat traveled up her neck, into her cheeks, and her mind felt fuzzy. Allyson always had a half smile plastered to her face, but it felt like ages since the right side turned up in agreement. A little less forced than before. A little more natural.
“Cool. Theater tomorrow at four then.”
It didn’t sound like a question to her ears. He walked out of the room without waiting for a response. As if he already knew the answer. As if she didn’t have a choice in the matter. How dare he. How dare he how dare he how dare…
There’s some good news, and there’s some not-so-good news. If you were here with me, I would give you the option of which one you wanted to hear first. Void that you are, you are always with me in some way, but in spirit. Not physically. Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this blog post. You’d just be staring at me while I sit in the corner, silently trying to make words happen with my mouth but failing again and again and again.
All that silence is uncomfortable.
And the way you stare at me makes me uncomfortable
So maybe it’s better this way.
Since I am the one choosing the option on behalf of you, I’ll choose the not-so-good first. It’s nothing personal; I just don’t like to leave things off on a bad note.
Here it goes:
I will no longer be posting chapter five here and chapter six through my newsletter. I suppose I still could, but that would be dishonest of me, and I’m not about that life. If you wanted to see what Allyson was doing with some gifts she never asked for, you’ll have to wait. This isn’t my own decision. There’s outside forces at work here (not you this time).
Which brings me to the good news, which is I will no longer be posting chapter five here and chapter six in my newsletter.
“What?!” you collectively scream. “I’ve been duped!”
Nah, fam. Hear me out.
I won’t be posting them here or there because someone else is going to publish those two chapters exclusively for me. The reason being is that my submission for the Nebraska anthology, Voices from the Plains, was accepted. It’s due to come out in December of this year. More details on where you can pick up a copy (if you would like) to come at a later date.
I’m absolutely thrilled for this opportunity. I hope it whets the appetite and stirs a little bit of excitement for the finished product. As far as the state of the novel, I’m hoping to have the final edits completed by the end of the year. I’ll have a special beta read opportunity for those who are subscribed to my newsletter, so if you like what you’ve seen so far, I’ll provide the sign up at the end of this post so you can be added to the list.
That’s about it for me. Come back next time for chapter three.
See you on the flip side.
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Hey void. What’s up? I won’t keep you waiting for long.
It’s been a hot minute, but I have the second chapter of Zemblanity here and ready to go. In case you missed chapter one, you can find it here.
Fun fact: Allyson Alexander’s initials cause minor bullying at school since her dad is…er…was…a drunk. The AA jokes didn’t survive the first round of edits, and unfortunately exist only in my fleeting memory, because my dog decided a long while ago to pee on a bunch of my books and the first draft was one of them he chose to claim. He’s an asshole. He also has never peed on my books again. Seriously Jax. What were you thinking?
Without further word vomit, let’s see how Allyson is doing since shit hit the fan:
***
Chapter Two
Tick
Tock
Tick
Tock
Tick
Time and place sewn together in a blurred mass of grey. Allyson lost track of how long she sat over the corpse. Stray dogs barked and moaned from outside her house, her barrier. Streaks of daylight slashed through the shadows, carelessly highlighting the parts of her father she did not wish to see.
Dead.
Roger Alexander was dead. Nothing left of him but scraps of clothing and literal skin and bones. His body was stiff and dry, almost as if he was gone for years instead of hours (Days? She didn’t know, she couldn’t know). There on the floor, he didn’t look so big; his body collapsed on itself like a long dead spider.
The first of many pangs of anxiety hit her, forcing her back to her feet to pace the floor in a set pattern she’d traveled many times. If he was still alive, she’d receive a hearty smack to the back of her matted head for the nervous habit. That was one thing she wouldn’t have to worry about anymore. She could pace when she wanted, watch what she wanted, eat what she wanted, do anything she wanted, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
On one of her back and forth trips, Allyson glanced at the mirror at the end of the hall. She took in air so fast it hurt her throat. She almost didn’t recognize her own reflection. Something was different from before, but it was hard to tell what exactly from this far away. She wanted to walk, but her knees shook so violently that she settled on crawling to the framed glass.
It was her face, but not the face she saw last night while playing dress up with her dead mother’s clothes. From bottom eyelid to cheek were ugly red scabs trailing like a river bed before tapering off to smooth skin. It was as if someone took a knife to her, but she had no memory of weapons.
Trembling fingers reached for the first mark, and her body went cold all over. She touched the skin around it. It was sore, but otherwise felt normal. Slow, slow, her fingers came together, running along the divot. It burned to the touch. She didn’t pull away until she could feel her thoughts fuzz white.
“Like static.”
The words came from her mouth, but it wasn’t her voice. Not quite. Not as she remembered.
“Bad reception. Something happened.”
Different bits and pieces came back to her. Her tears were acid. They were acid and they ate through her cheeks and through his hand and through the wood. And then…and then…
“And then what, Allyson? What did you do?”
But it hadn’t been her. There was something else in the room with them.
“It came from the shadows.”
From the shadows in the hall, from the shadows in the floor, she wasn’t sure where for certain, but she knew it wasn’t from the light. It was hard to see at first, but it was there.
“And it killed him.”
There was no weight to the words. She told herself it was just the shock; that really she did care that her father was no more. But the more she thought about it, the less certain she was. With that uncertainty came and eerie sort of calm that she clung to like a lifeline.
“You deserved it, you know.”
Allyson sat on the floor for another good look of what remained of the thing she called Daddy. There was a hard lump in her throat that was hard to breathe past, and forced something that felt like a sob but sounded like a laugh. No one would believe it, not even if they saw it. Spiders shriveled when dead; not people. Not that fast.
“You were bad and you deserved all the bad things in the world,” she told the corpse. “You can’t just hurt people when you’re mad at them. You can’t just scream at them. There are consequences, Roger. And when you do bad, you have to suck it up and deal with the consequences.”
For the first time since she could remember, she felt bigger than him. She held onto that sudden empowerment as tight as she possibly could, but it didn’t come as naturally as portrayed in the movies. Her grip was slippery.
“Fuck,” she whispered against her open palm. “No one deserves to die.”
The shock was wearing off, and fast. She didn’t hate him. Sometimes, she even loved him. It was a sort of sick game, she supposed, trying to win his affection, but they got by. He was all she knew, and now he was gone.
Allyson stood and paced around his body. This couldn’t be real. Demons did not crawl from the depths of hell to claim the souls God had no need for. Human beings did not dissolve away to skin and bones.
And yet, there he lay. Empty eye sockets. Mocking her.
Why did it feel so natural, so at home, when the beast from under the house smiled at her with those razor sharp teeth?
“He probably died of a heart attack or a stroke or alcohol poisoning or a brain aneurysm and I made up the rest to make it interesting.”
In fact, she should pick up the phone right now and dial the police or an ambulance or somebody to come make sense of the situation for her. Maybe an adult would have better luck wrapping their mind around it.
She grabbed the corded receiver, her fingers hovered over the buttons, and she froze. If she involved adults, her fate was sealed. Not because she would be blamed, for no one in their right mind would believe a girl so young capable of such atrocities, but because she’d become a kid of the state. Allyson had no relatives that she knew of, and she’d seen enough classmates playing the foster home game to know what she’d be getting herself into.
Besides, there was still the matter of the body. The recently deceased were supposed to have meat on them. Her father simply did not. She didn’t want to deal with the questions when she herself was still trying to figure out the details.
Then again…
“Bingo.”
It was common knowledge around town that Roger was a recluse. A homebody. A deadbeat drunk on disability. It was a rare occasion to see him anywhere but the liquor store, and most times he’d send Allyson with his list anyway.
It was possible, fully possible, to pull it off without anyone knowing he was missing at all.
“He was already a ghost to them.”
What did it matter if his body was above ground or below?
“Speaking of which…”
The house was on the outskirts; the last house before acres of farmland. Even if someone drove by, they wouldn’t be able to see the backyard through the weeds and trash littered about. Even so, she’d wait until the safety of nightfall. Until then, she’d move him closer to the back door.
It just didn’t seem right to watch tv in the same room as a corpse.
Allyson couldn’t bring herself to touch him. She imagined his skin would feel like a plastic bag holding wet sand, with some bits crunchy as dried leaves. She was afraid of him splitting open or crumbling away.
With an old towel to protect her hand from direct contact, she grasped his ankles and pulled. It was like moving furniture. Heavy at first, but with a little momentum, everything went fairly smooth.
The closer she got to the door, the more aware she was of the sounds from outside. It sounded like a dog fight. A cat fight? She couldn’t be certain, but whatever it was sounded mean. Had they just started in, or did she just start paying attention?
All her worries of a piece of her father snagging on a splintered piece of floorboard were unfounded. The only part of him that managed to work its way loose was a single tooth. She’d not have noticed had she not stepped on it in the middle of the kitchen.
Arms still shaky from exertion, she knelt down and cradled it in her hand. She meant to walk to the trash and toss it away, but her outstretched palm couldn’t bring itself to rotate. It didn’t seem right to put it there. Later she’d bring herself to believe that it was for her own safety. What if someone at the dump rifled through the bag and found the tooth? No, too risky. Instead, she placed it in the pocket of her dirty sundress.
“I’ll figure out what to do with it later.”
Burying it with the body crossed her mind, but she shoved it aside, convinced it was likewise risky business. Her fingerprints were all over it now. Then they’d know.
“Know what?”
A problem for a different day. For now, she was proud of a job well done. She walked to the living room and went to the chair—his chair. She flicked through the channels until she landed on something as dark and foreign as her current state of mind.
Manda Kay Writes 