golden age

I recently listened to a podcast where the guest (Amazing Spider-Man writer Dan Slott, on the Word Balloon podcast) pointed out that when it comes to sci-fi and fantasy fans, what you like when you were twelve years old, is pretty much what you'll be into as an adult. It's your own personal Golden Age, and where you think, somewhere inside of your head, that things should always be.

So where were you in your Golden Age? I think it's probably the age I read/saw/heard all the things I love today, or can at least trace back to. I know I was that age when I saw Back to the Future and Planet of the Apes, and those are still my favorite movies. I read Batman and X-Men comics, and when I'm lucky enough and have the money to find myself in a comic book store, I still venture over the the Batman and X-Men sections. I love the crappy characters the introduced in the 90's and tend to tune out when they change them up to much.

I heard punk rock and hip hop for the first time in my Golden Age. I can remember listening to Bad Religion's The Gray Race and it changing my life. Setting me on a path. The same is true with And Out Come the Wolves and Ill Communication.





And while I love movies, and I love comics, and I love being the white guy who knows all the words to Wu-Tang songs, none of them compare to the Tower.





The Tower stands at the center of the universe, the center of all universes, both as a reference point to all the things I ever loved, but also in the fantastic fictional universe created by Stephen King. And don't let the name turn you off. There will come a point where these books will he revered with the same respect as your other literary classics. I'm just trying to get ahead of the game.

It's a western and a fantasy. The premises of the world inside is one similar to ours, with armies and weapons and men who can't wait to point them at one another. And then the men use their science to replace magic, and the world around them collapses. Cut to 2,000 years later when civilization is trying to puck itself back up, only to be torn down again. That's where we meet our hero, the gunslinger Roland. I won't go on much further. Go read them. I recently re-read the first book and picked up on these things the twelve year old me wouldn't understand, and the 27 year old me finds so profound I can't put them into my own words. This book taught me about not only story and narrative and how to choose your words, but about genre and love and sex.

And that's it. I just wanted to get out my love of those books. It's why I like westerns, and it let's me drop some geek credit. They make twelve year old me very happy. I may know Gambit is a shitty character, but that doesn't mean I don't want him in my X-Men book.





Later this week: why I can't write, why you should also love cop shows, and how I fell in love.

a word a day

Writers should write. Everyday. I write for a living, something I dreamed of doing when I was growing up, albeit in a different kind of situation. Instead of making up stories to share with the world, I condense the stories of somebody's life into thirty second clips for someone else to read on television. And not only does it have to sound good, it has to flow with other stories that go around it, and be relevant to someone somewhere. I'd still like to make up stories someday. Something independent from things around it and that may be relevant to someone for other reasons.




I'm on day two of a ten day vacation. This comes after working nineteen days straight covering wildfires in Texas and running a telethon for a rehab center. So that's ten days of not writing, and I thought I'd start this back up again so I don't get rusty. You have to do it everyday, and all that.

I'm spending the weekend with my lovely fiancé's family. They're good people, a fine replacement for the extended family that I never get to see and feel guilty about it. The conversation goes into hunting sometimes and I'm sure my eyes gloss over. No, I don't want to go with you. Because I don't like guns and I've never killed anything and I'm 27 and don't feel like starting.

I'm hoping writing some entries will spark some ideas for the making up stories part of the whole thing. Jana says it will be therapeutic. It will probably be both, I'd imagine. We'll be home tomorrow and I have a week long vacation with my couch and a DVR full of new episodes of Doctor Who, The Killing, Camelot, and everything else I'm behind on. I'm hoping I can use this process to talk about my love of storytelling. Writers should read, too. And absorb. And think about what they're absorbing. If I never see a grassfire again in my life, I think I'll be good. Let's see what happens.