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Pick A Domain For My New Novel “Wayland” Contest

jelewis8 — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:17:39 +0000

You may or may not know that for the last year I’ve been working on a novel entitled Wayland. It is the story of a man who travels across the ruined landscape of America with a young boy. Unlike Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, this is not the story of a hopeless post-apocalyptic future, but is rather the story of the redemption of a monstrous man who nevertheless strives to be good in the face of his sins. While the story does contain what amounts to a zombie outbreak, the bulk of the story focuses more on the main character’s childhood (told in flashbacks) and his relationship with the young boy he is traveling with.

Themes of the novel revolve around information theory, recursion and computer programming, psychic landscapes and geographic neuro-networking, and epigenetics (the study of the development and maintenance of an organism orchestrated by a set of chemical reactions that switch parts of the genome off and on at strategic times and locations).

To help me begin the prep work of pitching and selling the novel to publishers, I want to set up a website for the book. And that’s where you come in.

CONTEST: Submit a domain name that is evocative and to the point.

RULES: To submit, you must @fringeblog on Twitter OR leave a comment in this blog entry by no later than October 13, 2009. There is no purchase necessary to enter the contest. You must be a citizen of the United States and at least 13 years old to enter the contest. Contest is valid from September 23-October 13. Contestants are allowed no more than five entries each.

Valid entries must contain an available .com domain name. Due to the nature of domaining, I will only be able to verify whether domains are actually available at the end of the contest. I will choose from the pool of submissions one domain that I feel works for the novel.

The winning entry will become the new domain for Wayland.

THE PRIZES: A signed copy of Wayland, a copy of 28 Days Later DVD ($16.99 retail value), and a $20 gift certificate to Amazon.com. DVD and gift certificate will be sent to winner no later than October 30, 2009. Copy of Wayland will be sent to winner when book becomes available for printing, either through a registered publisher or through an independent publishing entity.

WAIVERS/LIMITATIONS: Winning entrant agrees to waive all present and future rights to the domain. By entering contest you agree to allow Fringeblog.com and the author to use your name in advertising, marketing, publicity, and informational materials related to the book Wayland.

Fringeblog.com will not be held liable for any damages or injury to persons or things as a result of the acceptance of offered prizes.

Email or Twitter me for more information or questions.

The Worst Opening Sentence

jelewis8 — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 17:02:20 +0000

“There was a pause in time as Frank’s erratic turn of the wheel propelled him into the path of the bag-lady carting what could only be described as a black garbage bag of bent, crushed, or otherwise impacted aluminum cans, during which a vision flashed before Frank’s eyes of his mother, whom he had struck some years before in a similar drug-fueled vehicular rampage through the farmer’s market.”
That’s my entry into the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest., which encourages writers to submit their worst opening sentence to an imaginary worst novel ever. Give it a shot.

FWF Returns

jelewis8 — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 00:04:36 +0000

Fifty Word Fiction is back! Thanks to a comment recently left on one of the last stories I posted, I wanted to try my hand at writing these little stories again.
In case you’re unfamiliar, the premise is simple: I post a story, new every Monday, composed of fifty words. Nothing more, nothing less. If you count the title as part of the narrative, it might be more, but I use it as an adjunct to the story, which is always exactly fifty words.
Starting on Monday, I’ll be posting some that I’ve composed. It’s been a while since I last did one…almost exactly one year ago, actually. And the interesting thing is, they’re almost as difficult to write as a novel, and I say this without any trace of sarcasm, irony, or anything resembling a sense of humour.
They’re tough to write well, I should say. And as usual, mine tend to be dark. I hope you enjoy the resurrection of this old feature.

Writing Erotic Literature

jelewis8 — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 23:09:55 +0000

The film, as it stands, is winging its way to the suits who have become the arbiters of good and bad independent and semi-independent cinema, for better or worse. Now our commitment to finishing the film before the middle of December has been made a bit more firm and round. The good news is I have upped my involvement from just plain Editor to full on Producer, which means added responsibility and commitment, but also increased glory in the afterlife, along with a bevvy of high quality snacks and drinks on every Jet Blue flight from here on in. I just have to flash my Producer card and they’ll click their heels, say, “Yes sir” and bring out the ranch dressing hose. We are trying to raise funds for the post processing, which includes ~~buying off~~ paying a sound designer and composer.
I’ve finally acknowledged to myself that the great overarching plot that I had conceived about halfway through writing Book 1 of my novel The Cold Goodbye somehow got lost in the thematic elements I was trying to convey. Technology as a dark aspect of humanity’s psyche…cool idea, but not that novel or interesting on its own. So I tried to wrap it around a supporting column, which winds up being a disaster scenario. Again, not that novel, but with good fodder for human emotion and reactions. So I watched as slowly, but inevitably, the disaster fell away into the background, and the compulsory techno-babble I had tried to avoid slowly crept into the narrative. Looking back, after a week of back and forth edits on the manuscript, I can see where I tried to correct, only to fall back into it immediately. So fair warning, the second part of the novel delves deeper into actual mechanics of the futuristic circumstances. It’s not straight up techno-porn, but it might be considered erautoma, if I may coin the term.
I just hope that the mere hint of sex might convince people to buy the book. Trust me, it’s there. (Just not that interesting.) Reading about sex, I suspect, rarely lives up to expectations. I’ve always been curious about writers who “do” erotic literature. Do they get turned on by it, or is it like everyday carpentry? Screw in this, hammer that, put the rivet into that hole, connect the trim like so…
Then again, if you love what you do…
That said, I’m not an author of erotic lit, though if I was, I imagine I would pepper it with snarky commentary and wry, subtle satire. I just can’t help it. Plus it would disguise the fact that I don’t actually know what I’m talking about. I understand the mechanics of sex, but that isn’t enough. Tell me the last time you read a really good technical manual.
I’m usually pretty good with endings, but I imagine erotic story endings would be difficult to do well without feeling like you’ve already written the exact same thing in the previous story. You could shake things up a bit occasionally with a chase scene or a shootout, but it would feel fake, just like most porn. So there’s that.
By the way, that’s not a subtle hint that I secretly do write erotic literature–it’s not like it’s a “I have this friend…” situation. But if you’re a writer, and you’ve got sex in your book, and you’ve got your parents reading it, then these thoughts are a natural progression, the final being, of course, is figuring out how to explain to anyone who asks how you know about all this stuff in the first place, being a virgin and all. I always use the homicide response. I’ve never killed a man just to watch him die, but I did it with impunity in The Cold Goodbye.
So within the next couple of days I’ll be posting a link to purchase the second volume, along with a revamped edition of the first volume. Then a few days later, once I get some cover art together, I will post for purchase a single volume edition containing both books in one convenient and easy-to-read package. Consider this advance marketing. Buy it! Read it! Tell your friends!
See you tomorrow.

The Lines of Yesterday

jelewis8 — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 15:52:51 +0000

Days are getting easier to remember. I think it’s because I’m using my novel as the rubrick. Every day is measured in words written. Every day is defined by the section I’ve completed. Actually, when I finish this thing I’m probably going to lose all sense of time. The good news is I’m one or two days away from being done with the first draft. I edit as I go along, which means that by the time my “first draft” is finished, it’s actually on the third or fourth version. That’s not to say all the kinks have been worked out. I’m still making edits on the first book. But I feel somehow this second book is more solidly written. The plot was finally all worked out in my head by the end of the first book, and the writing has simply been more interesting. There’s more cohesion throughout, characters take more shape, become less stock and more nuanced. The themes have also shifted somewhat. The book does maintain focus on technology as a facet of humanity’s dark nature, but now I’ve tried to also move it toward love and the motivations of power. With my limited grasp of such things as politics and theology, I’ve tried to steer aside from those, though I do touch on them a bit.
I will admit, the book took a cynical turn about three quarters of the way through. It’s always been my intention to end it with the good guys winning and the bad guys getting theirs, but it seems plain to me that with my ideas firmly set in motion and the plot taking its twists and turns, the fact is, there are good guys, but they are merely players in the larger game of world domination, which is sadly occupied by all bad guys. So there’s some positive resolution, but it’s overshadowed by the larger and more insidious cynical, yet realistic situation at hand.
I enjoy writing the book. I also occasionally enjoy writing about writing the book. But I can’t maintain that for quite as long. It’s the difference between experiencing a roller coaster and telling your friends waiting for you at the platform how exciting it was. It probably means more to me to read about the ongoing work than it is for you. I’d just as soon make the blog brief and spend the extra minutes on the novel.
Yesterday I missed my chance to write about 9/11, and it seems a little cheap to go back now and sermonize about how it changed my life. I spent yesterday evening at a Freedom Walk, a remembrance event with some military and NYPD speakers, my brother James being one of them, and then a small catered dinner in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, sitting under Air Force One. The entire affair was a pitch perfect exercise in remembrance. Parts of the evening were solemn and subdued, others were more joyous and thankful, and the tenor of the time was one of a simple message: Never Forget. It adds meaning to a day that would otherwise be like any other, and at a time when memory is short and history recedes further into the past, we look to a day like 9/11 to remind us, not just why we fight terror and injustice, but why we exist as a people and a nation. We have never been perfect, and never will. We’ve made mistakes along the way. Lives have been lost, and the world stands on an apex of decision: will we give in?
Never, because we haven’t yet forgotten. As long as we memorize the lines of that day, the police banners and the silence of the skies after the second terrible plane, remember the smoke and the fire and the floods of tears, we will never give in.
So I look to tomorrow, and I look to the day after that. It’s about as far as I can see these days. But the work continues, and we all have our busy lives to attend to. I hope we’ll see each other at the top of the hill.

My Life As An Almost Am

jelewis8 — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 20:39:10 +0000

I know I risk alienating a large portion of my readers by continuing to post updates on my life. Who wants to hear that kind of stuff, right? You want intrigue, sex, scandal, and violence, right? You want the sordid details of my adventures on Skid Row, or the story of my run-ins with celebrity and pseudo-celebrity, not the minute and crinkling musings regarding the completion of my first major novel without going completely mad, whilst editing a feature Ethiopian film in the hope of getting it into Sundance this year and forging a bi-coastal relationship with the best girlfriend I could have ever hoped for–all without starving myself or losing too much sleep and risking turning into a smelly, decrepit, shell of my former self, which incidentally, may have been a shell of its former self. So really, when I put it in those terms, I’ve got quite an exciting life.
It plays like an episode of Giada De Laurentiis’ Everyday Italian, unfortunately. If my life was a television show, it wouldn’t make it past the pitch.
Speaking of pitches, I came back from my pitch meeting on Friday wondering if I had stepped into some Bizarro World where high concept commercial plots are dismissed out-of-hand, and B-Grade material is substituted like Splenda for sugar. Then I realized it was just Hollywood, and so my faith in the system was restored. Can’t talk too much about what happened, but I will say there is a difference in philosophy when it comes to entertainment in the movies. I tend to derive pleasure out of well-plotted stories with good subplots, exciting supernatural drama, tantalizing mystery, and thrilling climaxes. Other people prefer stories involving this band of killer circus freaks that travel around the country leaving bodies in their wake. The characters, there’s this seven-hundred-pound fat lady who has a way of seducing guys, gets them in her trailer– (Get the reference? Leave a comment.)
But seriously, that’s what it was like. I didn’t quite know how to respond, so I came back and played Mario Kart 64, which always has a way of recentering me. Thanks, Nintendo!
Because I was sick last week, I did not meet my goal of finishing my book by the end of August. I think it was the fear of finishing that put me under. Really, what do I have left after it’s done? Editing, but what’s that? A few weeks? Then what?
Oh yes, query letters. To New York agents. People who hold the power of the sun in the palm of their hand. People who have the ability to ignore my pleas with little more than a tight lipped response to their assistant that they’re done with the recycling for the day, send the rest of it to the incinerator. Yet I am hopeful. The biggest push for me is to finish, which I shall do within this week, and then a few weeks of editing and careful perusal for typographicals, then a print run of a dozen, which I will then begin to use for marketing myself as the next genius futurist writer.
That’s the plan, but I will of course offer it for sale–the full book, for sale at a low, low price, complete with custom cover art and a brand new forward. I’m even considering illustrations. Just a few maps, maybe a few inserts. Not sure quite how I want to proceed. But it’s really going to be huge. Not huge like Janet Jackson nipple huge, but pretty big. Like Boise, Idaho big.
Seriously, I think you’ll love it. And I’ll love you for buying it.
Oh, speaking of celebrity sightings, I went to a new church this weekend. There I met Danny Bonaduce, the grizzled former Partridge Family member who has apparently a dozen black belts in various martial arts disciplines and recently spent time as a victim/corpse in the season opener of CSI. Not sure which variety of CSI. Maybe Des Moines. I was amused when he stepped outside to take a smoke. I think he may be a Christian.
You gotta love Hollywood.

2005 Winner NaNoWriMo

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:45:42 +0000

I’ve been waiting all month to post on this. This year I decided at the last minute to participate in NaNoWriMo, the worldwide challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. I declined to participate last year, oddly enough, because I wasn’t busy enough. This year, I had so much on my plate at the beginning of November that I felt I would have the proper motivation to write consistently.
However, I didn’t want to say much about it, since I wasn’t sure I could actually finish. After all, I had done no planning at all. I would be starting from absolute ground zero. The last time I participated, in 2003, I had done about two months of outlining chapters, writing character bios, and generally getting plot ideas down on paper so that when I actually started writing, I would have a distinct path to follow. Not so this year. So it was with some trepidation that I decided to enter.
Some might say the fear of failure is the motivation for success. In my case, that was partially true. Still, I wasn’t confident enough in myself or my ability to complete the challenge to let many people know what I was doing. A few friends knew, but that’s it.
After a week in, I only had about 8,000 words and I was ready to quit. I had no story, no sense of purpose, and I was already running out of meaningful things to say. The next week I wrote nothing at all, so that by the time the third week rolled around, I was about 15,000 in the hole. But for some reason, I kept dogging it, coming back and filling out the characters and adding what little I could think of to the plot. Elements grew and evolved, shaping into connections that I could begin to see if I squinted, like gossamer threads of spider silk.
Week Three took a turn for the better. Suddenly, I could see more of the story unfolding. I wrote roughly 20,000 words that week, and even though I struggled with some parts, for the most part it flowed effortlessly. I took some time off for Thanksgiving, and then this week made the final push.
Tomorrow is the last day of the NaNoWriMo challenge. But today I surpassed the mark, writing almost 4,000 words to reach 50,600 total. The story is still going. But it’s nearly done. I’ve reset my personal goal to 60,000 by Friday. The story should be wrapped up by then. I know a few people who want to read the manuscript when it’s done. If you would care to be in that group of first readers, email me at jeremiah.lewis @ gmail.com and I’ll send you a copy.
In the meantime, I’m going to revel the rest of this week in my small victory. Man, it feels good to be a winner.

Be Cool

jelewis8 — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 19:42:51 +0000

Get Shorty was hip. It had an edgy, off-the-cuff, yet leisurely feel about it, like it had nothing to prove but was proving it anyway, just to show you who was boss.
Be Cool on the other hand, is anything but. With derivative and sub-par jokes, a cast that feels as strained as the story, and muddled direction, it’s as if this movie was made to push the line for sequel tolerance. Elmore Leonard, who wrote the original novel Get Shorty, ought to be ashamed of himself for writing such an obvious, yet serially unimaginative novel sequel, in which the shylock hero Chili Palmer (John Travolta) quits the movie biz for the less bureaucratic music industry. Is Chili daft, or just ignorant?
When Chili’s music producer friend Tommy Athens (James Woods) is gunned down by the Russian mob, Chili promises to help his widow Edie (Uma Thurman) run the failing music company. Chili meets Linda Moon (Christina Milian), a hopeful butt-twitching, vocal-fluttering cookie-cutter diva wanna-be, and offers to put her on contract. This isn’t viewed too kindly by Raji (Vince Vaughn), a white rent-a-gangsta, whose real name is Roger Lowenthal, with a gay bodyguard named Eliot (The Rock), who has aspirations to get into film acting, and Raji’s sleazy music partner Nick Carr (Harvey Keitel), who technically “own” Linda under contract. Chili says “nuts” to that and takes her anyway, which inspires Nick and Raji to call a slovenly hitman (Robert Pastorelli) to take Chili out of the music business for good.
It gets worse. Because of Athens’ dirty dealings, the music company is threatened by the mob and a suburban rap-mogul producer (Cedric the Entertainer) and his band of notorious S.T.U.P.I.D.S (led by Andre Benjamin). Lucky for Chili, who seems to have begun working in the wrong entertainment sector, Edie once did laundry for Aerosmith. That’s right, laundry. Based upon this laughable connection, Chili and Edie get Steve Tyler (playing himself) to listen to their diva sing. He likes, they make a hit, and Chili gets out of another scrape by smooth talking, salsa dancing (one of the film’s only “Cool” sequences), and sidestepping a few axes, guns, and more than a couple angry Russian mobsters.
If the plot seems preposterous, the writing makes it all the more so. There are in-jokes about the preposterousness of sequels, in-jokes about Los Angeles, in-jokes about the industry. In fact, the entire film exists because Chili got roped into doing a sequel with Martin Weir (Danny Devito). Writer Peter Steinfeld doesn’t realize this spells doom for Chili and company.
Steinfeld seems to think that recycling a couple jokes from Get Shorty is enough, since they’re used repeatedly throughout the film to cover for a distinct lack of sensibility. Chili’s move to the music world is not justified at all, especially considering Chili’s history from Get Shorty. The setup is predictable and unimaginative, despite the immense complexity of the plot, and the payoffs are far too scarce.
Vince Vaughn’s Raji is one of the few characters whose shallowness is justified by his actions. He brings light to a few scenes, but isn’t strong enough to cover for the entire film, and starts to grow stale as the plot unravels.
There should be a rule against casting more than one person in a movie with the word “The” in his name. Cedric the Entertainer (who has had quite a few movie appearances lately) seems comfortable in his role as a ruthless, yet fatherly mogul whose mercenary sensibilities are contrasted by his artistic tastes. The Rock is little more than a mantlepiece, and after the first taste of the amusement of his character, has little to offer.
I haven’t seen an actor look as shiny and plastic as John Travolta since Robin Williams was the Bicentennial Man, and Uma Thurman, fetching in a kitschy, 80′s fashion sort of way, ought to be ashamed of herself for following up Kill Bill with this monumental piece of unhipness. Director F. Gary Gray has been playing catch-up ever since Friday, and despite his abilities, this one just got away from him. There’s no cohesion whatsoever in the production; it’s simply one implausible scene after another, without much relief.
The worst thing, though, is just the arrogance with which Be Cool tries to “be cool” without having the chops to pull it off. And it knows it. Like Raji, the white boy faking a gangsta lifestyle, the schtick is a lame and shallow disguise. Cool it ain’t.
Fringe Rating: out of 5

RotK

jelewis8 — Wed, 03 Dec 2003 22:17:46 +0000

Someone saw a pre-release version of the Return of the King and now I am filled with envy of a cinematic nature. He’s got small picks and a few larger criticisms, but on the whole seems to think it the best effort of the trilogy of movies.

The audience was made up of jaded film critics and theater owners, and had only about 50 people in attendance. But spontaneous applause and cheering broke out three times and I myself got misty in more than one place. That might be the film just reminding me of the great scene in the novel, but I still give Jackson some props for getting the emotions right.

Score!

Life As a Beachhouse

jelewis8 — Thu, 23 Oct 2003 21:19:53 +0000

Junk For Code is reminded of the purity of a 1930′s architectural example as he looks at beachhouses along an unnamed seaside.
The commentary on transitional living reminded me of the vacation home on the coast of Northern France that is one of the settings for my first novel (still in progress). There, four disillusioned and disassociated Chicagoans migrate to France, each to escape their own private lives. There they live together in a white-boarded cottage vacation house, owned by the father of one of the characters. Their lives there are as empty and meaningless as before, perhaps even more so.
My intention with the setting and the story was to present a picture of the growing hopelessness of modernity, the growth of the individual as the death of society and the beginning of the last stagnation of humankind. Not a very pleasant picture, yet true, I think. When I saw the following passage, I connected immediately.

The new beachside holiday homes strike me as empty shells where life behind the glassy facade is much hollowed out. Then, maybe, this architectural beach form is appropriate to the poverty of experience in late modernity, which results from a hurried, machine-like processing of information, the destruction of tradition, and the lack of collective form of life. Transience and instability are the new conditions of life.

I absolutely agree.