Secret wisdom
And so it seems there’s an entire cannon of hidden and secret writings connected to Jesus – the Gospel of St. Thomas, the mystical sayings of Jesus, the secret teachings of Christ, the Lost Books of the Bible. A taste copy-and-pasted from the not secret, not hidden Amazon catalog:
“The Nag Hammadi Library was discovered in 1945 buried in a large stone jar in the desert outside the modern Egyptian city of Nag Hammadi. It is a collection of religious and philosophic texts gathered and translated into Coptic by fourth-century Gnostic Christians and translated into English by dozens of highly reputable experts. First published in 1978, this is the revised 1988 edition supported by illuminating introductions to each document. The library itself is a diverse collection of texts that the Gnostics considered to be related to their heretical philosophy in some way. There are 45 separate titles, including a Coptic translation from the Greek of two well-known works: the Gospel of Thomas, attributed to Jesus' brother Judas, and Plato's Republic. The word gnosis is defined as "the immediate knowledge of spiritual truth." This doomed radical sect believed in being here now--withdrawing from the contamination of society and materiality--and that heaven is an internal state, not some place above the clouds. That this collection has resurfaced at this historical juncture is more than likely no coincidence…”
The Gnostics sound almost like Buddhists.
The question is: How do vampires fit into all of this?
*
But it’s Saturday and my brain needs a breather. And it works better when I give it one. Think I’ll take a long bike ride and then go sailing.
Selah.
Posted by Michael on 07.24.04 @ 11:04 AM CST
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Thursday, July 22nd
No Daves here
I was looking at some other blogs today, and I found one where a girl spends most of her time writing about Dave. She loves Dave. Sometimes that's all she writes: I LOVE DAVE. I LOVE DAVE. I LOVE DAVE.
Strangely enough, it's kind of addicting. Getting ready to miss Dave. Traveling and missing Dave tons. Reunited with Dave and delirious with joy.
There's no Dave here. I love my wife, but I don't feel like talking about it alot with you. It's kind of a given.
*
Went to Borders, my Thursday indulgence, and found two great books for reasearch for my new novel. On is about Freemasonry -- "Freemasonary And Its Etiquette" -- and the other -- "Secret Gospels" -- will help with one of the story's mysterious plot lines.
It's so much fun to start pulling stuff together out of thin air to make a book. I'm happy to say the outline is starting to come together. Previous to this, I was still at the stage where I had a lot of good ideas but they didn't necessarily relate or fit together in a coherent story.
Selah.
Posted by Michael on 07.22.04 @ 04:15 PM CST
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Wednesday, July 21st
Bloody weather
I was thinking of going for a sail this afternoon, but the sky is overcast and it's rained off and on. Thunderstorms are forecast to pop up throughout the day and evening. Not sure I'm excited to be out in our floating lightning rod in this kind of weather...
Having written some warm-up chapters on the new manuscript, I spent some time stepping back to work on the outline. It's appealing to my personality to just have at it, but I've found through experience that it's better to know what I'm doing instead of wandering all over the fictional landscape in pursuit of vampires.
There's no single proper way to write a book, but there are lots of bad ways to go about it. It's a matter of trial and error, and luck, and grace, and inspiration -- many factors beyond the humble author's control. I tend to think that optimism and stubborness are my two best friends.
Selah.
Posted by Michael on 07.21.04 @ 05:16 PM CST
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Tuesday, July 20th
On writing...
From an email where I answered some of the questions readers frequently ask.
* * *
Hi, Dennis.
Sorry it took me a while to get back to this. You had some questions about writing...
[The reasons for writing to you at this time is to ask you how you got your first novel published. I know that your mom has written many articles and your stepfather was also editor of The National Enquirer. This may or may not had a part in your decision to become a writer. Are there any books that you read that helped you become a writer or did it come naturally as you sat in front of a typewriter/word?]
Basically, I was really lucky. Or blessed. Or both. I met an agent in about 1981. A couple of years later, I contacted her when I finished my first manuscript. She'd retired but referred me to an agent in New York. I sent him a chapter, an outline, and a stamped postcard he could send back to me if he wanted to see the whole manuscript. (I was trying to make it as easy on him as possible.) He bit and we were off to the races.
I can't say it's been all smooth sledding since then. The publishing business means swimming with sharks, but it's provided a nice second income for me and been a good creative outlet.
As for deciding to become a writer, I didn't really decide. I just kind of did it. I intended to go to law school, but I got a job at a newspaper until I could get the mojo up to go stomach going back to school -- but I never did. To be perfectly honest, I didn't plan to get a job in journalism period. I was an English major, but I understood how the biz worked from my mom. I'm afraid I was just following the course of least resistance and grabbed for something I knew about instead of being more adventurous. I briefly had a gig editing romance novels (gag), which let to one of those, "Hey, I can do this" moments. I ended up writing horror because I thought it would be fun and might sell.
As for books and inspiration and all that stuff, I suggest you read some books on screenwriting. A script is fairly formatted and even ritualistic in the where the acts and plot points fall. Maybe it's just me, but I've found it very helpful to plan books as if they were movies -- 35 or 40 steps, the setting the major conflict up somewhere between the 3rd and 7th step, having things looking most bleak for the hero at the close of the second of three acts, etc. Here's a web site with some great free articles about screenplays that apply to writing fiction; click the ARTICLES tab:
http://www.writersstore.com/index.php
Here's the Amazon link to Lew Hunter's book, which I got a lot out of:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/039951838X/qid=1090267453/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/102-7863311-4057769?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
At both the Writers Store and Amazon you'll see a bunch of links to software that will help you outline books, develop characters and whatnot. I've tried a few of these but I can't say I found them especially useful.
[Fiction seems to flow freely when I start to write a story. My kids love me to make up stories at bedtime. Now I feel perhaps it is time to put the stories into book form and see if anyone is interested. My stories often involve settings in the northwest, or on the islands near my home. There is plenty to write about and putting into a novel seems like a natural idea.]
You might as well give it a try! I think most bright people can write a decent manuscript, if they're stubborn enough to stick with it and finish. I'm not really sure whether short stories sell these days. If that's the format you prefer, you could certainly try to publish some of them in regional magazines. It won't pay a ton, but money isn't probably why you're interested in writing (though it's always nice when you get some).
If you're thinking about a novel, I recommend you do some thinking about doing a "genre" book that an agent will have a chance of selling, but in the end you really just have to follow your heart. However, you'll have better luck getting published if the editor you pitch knows that it's "like" some other book that sold zillions of copies.
Got to run. Hope this helps. If you want to write back and give me more details about what you're thinking about writing and I can maybe give you slightly better advice.
Posted by Michael on 07.20.04 @ 01:39 PM CST
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Monday, July 19th
Coffee & fine arts
Time to warm up the fingers for another chapter in the new David Parker manuscript. Maybe I can put this blog to good use and kill multiple birds with one stone...
I had coffee this morning with a couple of artist friends, Ralph Iaccarnio, who is my unofficial guru for creative enterprises, and Sam McFarland. Sam as in Sarah. Or maybe that’s Sara. I don’t know. This isn’t a newspaper so I don’t have to fret over niggling details like how to spell her name.
Both of these characters live off their art, which means that they have more guts than I do. I need the security of a paycheck and paid health insurance. But maybe someday I’ll let it all go and devote myself fulltime to writing and music.
Other than that, I should report that I finished The Book of Revelation the other day and was glad to find it has a happy ending. Happy, that is, for the people who go to Heaven instead of being condemned to eternity in Hell.
Heaven and Hell are difficult concepts for me. I’ve always been the sort who subscribes to the theory that if there’s a Hell, this has got to be it. But lately I’ve started to think that’s a facile and convenient attitude. Fact is, we humans don’t have the least idea how cosmos is put together.
What does this have to do with vampires?
Writers and ideas are like Indians and the buffalo: We try not to waste anything, to find ways to use it all up in one way or the other. I’m thinking that this story will eventually lead David off in pursuit of the (perhaps mythical, perhaps not) Second Revelation of John, which reportedly details how vampires figure in the End Times.
Now to work…
Posted by Michael on 07.19.04 @ 01:56 PM CST
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Friday, July 16th
Bonus chapter ... a rough draft from the David Parker book
4
It was after midnight when I pointed the Mercedes down the bluff toward the downtown.
The city was in the midst of a massive riverfront redevelopment project, leaving the downtown looking like Beirut midway through Lebanon’s civil war. Here and there old buildings were being torn down or were already demolished, leaving rubble-filled open spaces to await new construction. New buildings in various stages of completion were being built across from the levee, where a vulgar floating casino that supposedly looked like a 19th century Mississippi River steamboat was moored.
Just beyond a new, multi-story faux art deco parking garage, an enormous glass structure was rising up out of the ground, as if a long-buried alien spacecraft were emerging from beneath the ground to take flight for a galaxy beyond the reach of Earth’s telescopes. The façade was a series of cantilevered planes rising a dozen stories over River Drive, interrupted in the middle with a dramatic set of stairs that would be about as exhausting to climb as the steps to the summit of the Mayan pyramid at Chicen Itza.
Traffic was light on the streets and sidewalks. The downtown had its share of street people, but late at night they congregated near a few notorious flophouses and taverns at the downtown’s far edge, an area several dangerous blocks beyond the reach of the present gentrification. Though casino never closed, not even on Christmas Eve, though the gamblers still hoping to beat the odds were busy at the slot machines and blackjack tables.
I wheeled into an alley and parked behind a semi-size dumpster that hid the car.
The rear of what the city’s new art gallery didn’t look like a space ship so much as an urban construction zone. The project was surrounded by temporary chain-link fence and protected by a rent-a-cop slumped against the door of a white Cherokee belonging to one of the local security companies.
I skirted the sleeping guard and jumped the twelve-foot fence, landed silently on my fingertips and the toes of my Nikes atop the construction company’s mobile office. I next leaped to an air compressor suspended from a crane to prevent it from being stolen, hanging there a few moments before dropping to the third-story balcony that serve as the terrace for the museum’s café.
The glass was in the windows and doors, but the doors were not locked, not that locks could stop me.
The interior was cavernous and empty. I tried to imagine Renaissance paintings of ruthless Italian princes and shrewd Dutch merchants hanging on the walls. The floating casino’s carnival lights glittered through the specially manufactured UV-proof glass front wall. The night was starless, the Mississippi mostly unseen, a river of darkness between the downtowns one either shore that nevertheless conveyed the sense of power and motion.
The main staircase had not yet been carpeted or tiled. I walked down the naked concrete steps, finding my way into the part of the building that was divided into offices and rooms for meetings, classes, storage and caring for the collection. The walls were up and doors hung, but tendrils of wire and HVAC tubing drooped down from above, yet to be hidden by the ceiling tiles.
Through a pair of glass doors was the sculpture garden at the center of the gallery’s education wing. Pallets of pre-poured concrete slabs – the walking surface textured with river gravel – were stacked against one wall. The installation had already started along one wall. I found a spade and began to dig in the dirt near a cement mixer, where the foundation had yet to be poured.
The air was still and thick. Thunder rumbled in the distance. I needed to finish before the rain came.
The hole I dug was three feet across and a little more than six feet long. I dug it six feet deep, the prescribed depth for a grave. When I was finished I dropped the shovel and stood there, looking down into the dark hole in the ground. A vampire had never before died like this – not from violence or the terminal ennui of a life eternal, but from poison that slowly leached through the blood until it could silence the slow beating of an ancient heart. I wouldn’t have believed it possible if I hadn’t watched the life run out of him with my own eyes.
The steel gate behind the mixer leading to the alley was chained shut. I turned the tumblers with my mind until there was a click and the Masterlock fell open.
There was no sign of the security guard or his Jeep in the alley. I walked the hundred feet to the Mercedes and opened the trunk. I gently lifted the crumpled form inside, still wrapped in the tapestry. The body was not as pliable as it had been only a little earlier. Rigor mortis was setting in. Apparently once a vampire died, his no-longer-immortal shell at last became subject to the same corruption and decay as a mortal’s corpse.
Feeling overwhelmed with a sadness bordering on despair, I returned to the sculpture garden gently lowered the body into the hole. It thundered again as I put him there, the volley loud now, the storm close.
I took up the shovel and put the dirt back, feeling as if I were planting a great seed that was doomed to never push its way back to the sun. I spread the extra dirt around the unfinished part of the sculpture garden, assuring myself that no one would know the difference, and that in day or two the work would be complete. Before long they would bring in the sculptures, and they would be the only thing to mark the true final resting place of Leonardo da Vinci.
I stood over the grave with folded hands, thinking I should say something, but what? A prayer? I tried but the words wouldn’t come. I had forgotten how to pray. And so I stood there, saying nothing, thinking nothing, stunned to numb nothingness by grim significance of Leonardo’s death and what it might portend for the Vampiri and the world.
A flash of lightning ripped across the night, illuminating for a moment the swirling blue-black belly of an angry sky. Thunder exploded a second later, a cannon that roared and echoed against the manmade canyons of the surrounding banks and office buildings.
Leonardo’s dying words had been to warn me watch for a sign.
The lightning flashed again, the almost simultaneous thunder making me flinch.
Perhaps this was the sign, I thought, staring up into the night.
It started to rain.
Posted by Michael on 07.16.04 @ 03:19 PM CST
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Wednesday, July 14th
Hey, Thomas
Please check the question I posted to your comment. And in general, if anybody can suggest a decent interpretive text to The Book of Revelation, please let me know. Best, MR
Posted by Michael on 07.14.04 @ 05:11 PM CST
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