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Joined: 11/17/2011
Posts: 1016
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will never find a publisher: I'm weird, my story is weird, and it's gonna stay weird. That's what turns me on.
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Today was the annual library sale in Newtown, CT. I've got a box of treasures. As I always do, I picked one up, scanned a paragraph here and there, and threw it in my box. There was no author listed on the title page. The spine was crumbled, barely readable. I've read one chapter, and I'm loving the superb prose style, the delightful rambling, the extraordinary phrasing of oddball thoughts. This is what I adore. This is the way I write myself. Some of these speeches I could stuff in my character's mouth easily. One rampage, concerning the retrieval of memories, has got to be reinvented for Sly's use, it is a dilly. Also notable, and in only the first twenty pages (I've got four hundred to go!) is the bit about how a character dares to call himself a poet. For me, this is as good as it gets.
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I'm reading The Poet At The Breakfast Table, written around 1890, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Wikipedia says of him: "his peers acclaimed him one of the best writers of his day." I'd never heard of him. His son was, of course, the famous judge. I was vastly confused until I looked him up on Wiki. I thought, a judge wrote this? How unusual.
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He apparently wrote a series of At The Breakfast Table books. I'll be looking for more of them. This is priceless.
--edited by Mimi Speike on 7/14/2014, 11:25 AM--
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Joined: 11/17/2011
Posts: 1016
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If Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. had written The Vampire At The Breakfast Table, that would be a vampire story that I would dig into, eagerly. I see it starting something like this:
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Not unwelcome should be the baptism of dust which banishes remembrance of deeds that ought to be despised. Pity me, friends. I will never know that felicity.
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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. meets Amanda McKittrick Ros is the feel I'd aim for. I love both directions. Both are custom-made for parody. If that's possible. If these idiosyncratic styles can be coaxed to register any higher on the wacko-meter than they do already.
--edited by Mimi Speike on 7/21/2014, 2:31 PM--
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Joined: 4/27/2011
Posts: 608
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Mimi, you're the perfect person to write that book!
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Joined: 11/17/2011
Posts: 1016
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Guess what, Carl? I think so too. I'm going to start exploring the idea.
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Joined: 1/23/2014
Posts: 44
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Ahh, but will your vampire sparkle, or is it just sugar dust getting blown into the air?
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Joined: 11/17/2011
Posts: 1016
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Hello Mellow Yellow!
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All I can promise is, my vampire will be unlike any other. I think he'll be racked by guilt, but being an addict (of blood) he can't stop himself. Has this been done? Hell, I don't know. I've never read a vampire book in my life, except for WIPs here and elsewhere, and not much of them. And what I've read has been pretty damn cornball.
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My guy will be an intellectual, quoting the greats. He knew many of them. Or likes to claim that he did. One of the perks of being undead, centuries old, you can say anything, who can call you on it?
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Hmmmm. My characters all turn out to be bullshit artists. I do love stuffing wacky words in their mouths. But you know that already.
--edited by Mimi Speike on 7/24/2014, 11:50 PM--
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Joined: 8/29/2014
Posts: 7
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Mimi, since you asked, something like that being done, at least on TV. I recall a show called "Forever Night", about an old vamp that works as a night beat cop. His sire, keeps trying to encourage him back on to "proper path". But he still needs blood so he has to get it somewhere. I recall it being a good show (he choose his car based on trunk size, hence his old 70s car). But, then again most everything has been done before in one form or another, right? Its doing it with style and twists in the story that can make any book/tv-show/movie memorable, but isn't that what we all try to do with our writing? But that idea has lots of play in it, perhaps the vamp is seeking redemption or doing penance as a doctor and having to struggle with his hunger while saving lives.... in the ER... yeah, that might have been done already, too...
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Joined: 11/17/2011
Posts: 1016
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Ah! Nobody! We meet again. You're not a troll after all. (I thought that was a strange idea.)
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I love the vampire thing, but I'm back dealing with (or trying to) my long-labored over story, trying to get it finalized, in some kind of shape to publish. It's fun to kick around new ideas but, frankly, it's a procrastination tactic.
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Ya know, sometimes I just drive myself crazy.
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