From what I gather, Stephen King does not like Stanley Kubrick's film for his work, The Shining. Kubrick made some changes and had a vision perhaps different from what King had. Those of you who have seen the film probably agree it is a masterpiece of cinema on every level: one of the best horror movies of all time. But it's not the novel.

I bring this up because the lovely folks at EDGE Publishing have been hard at work with the proposed cover for Beltrunner II: Aftermath and have sent me some proofs and drafts to discuss. It's a fascinating process--I'll tell you my experience with it: I'm not claiming this is how it works with everything, but...well, let me just get on with it.

Without going into too much detail about the cover, let me say that the scene depicted there is indeed one which happens in the story, more or less. I say "more or less" because some of the details are not quite as I pictured them, and some artistic choices were made that are factually wrong from a scientific standpoint. But I couldn't be happier with the choices made.

The artist did much more than simply draw or paint the scene as written. The artist seemed to use the scene to capture a tone, a feeling, that very much matches the tone I was trying to strike in the novel. In my mind, that's a lot harder. And it's also more rewarding. To see that the artist had the feel of the work was much more fulfilling than if the artist had simply translated words to images.

I think that's probably true in any adaptation. The writer's words exist in a certain medium that uses none of the five senses (yes, I know the reader has to use their eyes to see the words, but they can't see the story with their eyes). In a novel, the story has no existence in the physical world. It is wholly a concept. Once it becomes a picture, or a radio show, or a movie, it has color, and shape, and even sound. Whatever those sights and sounds are, they "fix" the story in place. 

Have you ever read a novel, especially a fantasy one, and then seen a movie of that same novel? And you hear a character's name pronounced very differently than you were pronouncing it in your own mind? My friend Steve and I had that happen many times with Frank Herbert's Dune and the subsequent David Lynch movie of the same name. The same thing happened with regard to the way characters looked. (I love me some Patrick Stewart, but I did not see him as a Gurney Halleck!) 

What I'm getting at is that when an artist has to try and move a concept into a reality, they have to make choices. I know there is some ambiguity in the visual arts, but nowhere near the same level as there is in the written ones. The artist who designed the cover for Beltrunner II: Aftermath had the difficult task of capturing not only a scene but a feeling, without ever having met me or even communicating with me. That they were able to do so is a credit to their skill.

As soon as the cover is finalized and official, I'll be able to show it to you elsewhere on this site, and you can take a look for yourself!

Be seeing you!

...you're driving to work carrying on a conversation with them as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

I'm talking about characters.

So there I was, driving to work as I always do. Y'know how you drive to work for the umpteenth time to the point that you're not even using your conscious mind to do it? The drive is so automatic, so routine, that you could probably do it with just your autonomic brain functions? It was one of those kinds of drives.

And I found, almost at my destination, that I had been carrying on a conversation with the two women who comprise the main and primary/secondary characters in the novel I'm working on at present.

I've said this before, but for me, I know I've got 'em when I can hear 'em. Not see them--for some reason, I don't go in for the visuals as much as the sounds of my characters. But once I can hear them talking, using their own timbre and diction, I know I've got 'em.

Just a quick one today.

​Be seeing you!

And another NaNoWriMo in the bag, folks. This was a little unusual, since the football team I help coach went two games into the postseason (it was the best season our school has ever had: an undefeated regular season of 10-0, a league championship, and a Division III quarterfinal appearance--congratulations Chris Varner!) so I got off to a slow start. Each day matters in NaNoWriMo, so I found myself suddenly in a deficit that meant I needed over 2,000 words a day.

I have to admit, it could be argued I cheated this time. How do you cheat at a self-imposed deadline? Well, the purest iteration of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words of a new novel in the month of November. I wrote the third draft of a book I've been stuck on for over three years. 

This damn thing has been sitting on my brain for a helluva long time--so long, in fact, that I wrote Beltrunner: Aftermath just to get AWAY from the thing. at this point, I feel a little like a literary Ahab chasing down my white whale even if it ruins me. And I do a lot of my writing at Starbucks, just to complete the allusion.

So I've thrown away about 120,000 words of the story so far, which baffles the few students I talk to privately about writing. I like what Elie Wiesel said about writing and editing: "Writing is like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate, in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain." 

Anyhow, the 50,000 are done, and the story is in better shape than it's been in the first two tries. I feel as if I've avoided the cul-de-sacs that hurt me the first two times through, and now have a much better way forward. I guess we'll see. 

​Be seeing you!