Some thoughts and some very good news

The month is almost over, and me with two posts. What can I say? A lot has been on my mind.

Tonight I went to see Andrea Gibson perform at Mills. I missed her when she came through College Park on the Salt Lines tour, so this was my first time seeing her. She spit her poetry on the stage on the campus green, with students camped out on the lawn. Andrea is worth the hype. Powerful. Chilling. Warm and positive. Reminded me why I got interested in spoken word in the first place. Her delivery is very reserved, so the listener can focus on her wordcraft. She not only performed her poems, but explained a bit of the thought process behind them, and how she's rewritten some as time goes by to reflect her changing politics. What I found cool is that, well, Mills gave her the rock star treatment. Advertisements everywhere, what I can only assume was a nice honorarium culled from my $50000, a large and receptive crowd. This is good and bad, as Andrea herself pointed out: she feels that people who disagree with her views should be listening to her poetry, and she inevitably finds herself reading to the echo chamber most of the time. But anyway, to see Mills pull out all the stops for a poet was super.

There was also something cool and unifying about seeing so many of my fellow students in one place together. As a 27-year-old black man, I sometimes feel alienated in a space designed for and populated almost entirely by middle to upper-class white women, most of whom I never interact with. The stratospheric tuition also adds to the feeling that this is just a place I go to get a piece of paper. I feel far more distanced here than in my previous college endeavors, College Park (where I connected with other people through our art) and Pitt (where we all loved alcohol). It was nice to just groove with my fellow students to this artist who we all enjoy. However fleeting those moments are, they're good for the spirit.

So is Andrea's work. Positivity is something I've had in low supply lately, and there's a stream in her work about the beauty of life. Can't sweat the small stuff.

My work on The Motley and Plume Players has stalled. Mostly because outside word drama has been on my mind so much. Instead of sitting down and typing, I find myself picking up bits and pieces every day. A phrase here, a word there. All of which I hope to explode onto the page, whenever I sit down and start typing. Checking out of the writing process usually means that now's a good time to shake up the narrative, blow something up or kill off a character. Anyways, I'm working on the crucial middle portion of the story, in which the characters go on a romantic vacation.

I've decided that Motley & Plume will be my thesis. It was originally going to be another project, but in order to get this novel in shape I absolutely NEED my thesis director Micheline Marcom to go at it with the red pen. Micheline is an incredible writer and teacher and everybody wants her for their director. I know how lucky I am.

Still time to donate to the Motley & Plume Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1329246557/guerilla-fairy-tale-marketing-for-elwin-and-christ Oh my god we're so close!

Now is as good a time to mention...I GOT NOMINATED FOR THE 2010 CARL BRANDON AWARD! Both of them! To paraphrase the message they sent:

"The Jack Daniels Sessions EP by Elwin Cotman, published by Six Gallery Press, has been nominated for the 2010 CBS Parallax Award (for an outstanding speculative fiction work by a self-identified writer of color) and the 2010 CBS Kindred Award (for an outstanding speculative fiction work dealing with race, ethnicity, and culture). Carl Brandon Society awards include a $1000 cash prize. The awards will be announced by the end of 2011."

Yay! Carl Brandon is a prestigious organization dedicated to supporting and promoting speculative writers of color. These awards have been bestowed upon some of the greats. If I win, I'd be standing with Walter Mosley and Nnedi Okorafor, among others.This nomination makes me feel content, and proud. Not just for me, but Dan, Nathan and Rachel, who also worked so hard on this spectacular book. Here's the CBS page: http://www.carlbrandon.org/

I was contacted recently by Diesel Books to come and pick up my consignment copies. I sold two of four. So I spend an hour waiting for the predictably late Oakland public transit, ride over there, grab some money and the two books. This is the first time I've had to reclaim unsold merchandise. As I handle most consignments myself, I'm sure it won't be the last. Simply knowing I sold two books is pretty amazing. It's interesting to me, knowing I got nominated for this major award and still having to personally pick up unsold merch. A very weird, cool place to be in. Anyways, hey two people who bought my book! I appreciate you!

More updates soon. I promise. But don't hold me to it.

Kickstarter

Christine and I are halfway through our Kickstarter. We've added some cool new incentives, so check it out. Every bit helps:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1329246557/guerilla-fairy-tale-marketing-for-elwin-and-christ

Chapter 59: In Which I Get Autobiographical

Reason #250 why I love Prince: he has respect for his catalog. I don't mean this in the sense that he spends half his time pulling his songs off Youtube. I'm talking live performance. The last time I saw him in concert was damn near ten years ago on the Musicology tour. All the songs were awesome, but there were three he absolutely killed, stretching them way beyond their album lengths with improv and additional bits. They were "The Question of You," "Sometimes it Snows in April" and "Take Me With U." In order, a three-minute track off his most reviled album, a non-single off the soundtrack to one of his movies,  and the lowest-placing single off Purple Rain. He KILLED these songs. Did 'em to death. It's very cool that, after so much time, he sees the worth in his more obscure work.

Another artist that thinks this way is Korn, who I also love. While they don't have the energy as a live act that they once did, being in their 40s and all, they make up for it by not going up there and playing a bunch of singles, but revisiting and re-imagining their obscure work. They retire songs from their setlists and bring others back. Green Day is one of the greatest live acts I've ever seen, but I wish their shows weren't so single-tastic.

I've been publishing writing since 2005. My goal is to still be reading early work like "Prodigal Child" or "Sacred Duty" at events when I'm 40. Hell, I may dust them off sooner than that.

Leaving Washington DC

The lowest point in my life in recent memory was the autumn and winter of 2008. I had just returned to Washington DC from a productive summer in Pittsburgh working for the Carnegie Library. It was also a socially great time for me, as I got to hang with my family in Pittsburgh. I've never been close with my blood relatives, extended or nuclear, but there are people I consider my family by more than blood. Ties of love and trust. Many of them live in my hometown. So I returned to three realities.

1) I had no money to finish grad school at the University of Maryland.

2) I could not find gainful employment.

3) I was a politically active person in the most oppressive city in the country.

Dropping out of College Park was one of the first things. I was enrolled in Maud Casey's workshop and was really excited to take it. The girl who was my counselor was pretty much useless. We had several conversations about financial aid in which she acted annoyed I was even there and told me every time there was nothing out there for me. At all. But I had a talk with Maud that really put things in perspective for me. Grad school was not the end-all, be-all. I could always return to College Park if I had the funds later on. So I left Maryland, a school I had grown to love with a community where I felt welcome.

My B.A. in English got me no work, even after I'd already taught middle school for a year and a half. I took a job as an ESL teacher. I sucked at it. My one student told me straight up that her English was getting worse. There was some other part-timey thing I did, none of which earned me a dime.

I am a person whose politics are left of center. Prior to moving back to DC I peacefully protested the Republican National Convention in the Twin Cities. I returned to a city where being an activist feels like banging your head on a wall, for obvious reasons. I also returned to a city where I had few allies. The local "radical" scene had a lot I objected to. It was predominantly white and suburban, and a lot of people seemed more dedicated to making spaces where they could feel comfortable and unchallenged than in working toward any kind of social change, or even in getting to know their neighbors. There was a ton of white privilege being exercised and the whole scene was alienating, the kind of experience that makes people join APOC (a group which, by the way, I hate). Just an overall clique-y, high school atmosphere. It wasn't everybody. There are lots of DC folks involved in organized resistance who I have love for. The ones who weren't about shit know who they are. After coming from a city of blue-collar anarchists working to reclaim space and build their alternative, hanging out with a bunch of Capture the Flag-playing scene punks, well, sucked. I was lonely, miserable, broke and drunk, and the few cool things that happened during this time (such as really developing my reading style, and meetng WENDY PINI) meant little to me at the time.

Which brings me too...the Coldsnap Legal benefit.

I'm writing about it because I was just thinking about it today. As someone who wasn't arrested at the RNC, I thought it paramount to do something for those who were. That same year I had visited Barcelona and was wowed by the meals served at the local squats. Once a week or so, squats would cook up a giant meal. You could just show up, drop a few Euros and enjoy the company of intelligent people from around the world. This way, certain squats were able to stay afloat and self-sufficient for DECADES. It occurred to me that if you do an event where there is food, real food, people will show up and they will pay money.

So I decided to plan a multi-course fancy dress dinner as a benefit for the legal collective in the Twin Cities. My favorite part of planning was the company. I got to work with friends old and new. One was an high school friend of mine who had just moved back to the city and his girlfriend. Another was a fellow I had met in DC, an absolutely lovely guy named Mike who is one of my favorite people. Another was this young student at Corcoran who I met through doing the benefit, who has since become a great friend. Then there was an older punk who helped us the night of and a younger punk who made some ice cream. It was a melding of people from different stages in my life helping out on this one project.

The benefit, which took place at St. Steven's church, went awesomely. The food was delicious, we made a nice chunk of change for Coldsnap Legal. The cello player even came through! What felt most touching was seeing all the people who showed up. So many friends who I met during my time in DC attended. Never did I feel more connected with them than when I saw them all in the same room, simply enjoying each other's company.

I moved from DC to San Francisco a month later. The city simply had nothing for me anymore. I don't think I could have asked for a better goodbye to DC than that night. I also got to do a final feature at TerPoets, the College Park open mic that was so important for me as a writer, and that was my goodbye to the University of Maryland. That stage of my life got some pretty solid fucking bookends.

And that's what I remember, now that some time has passed. The alienation and depression are afterthoughts. The lost friendships are dead and buried. The pain passes but the happiness lingers.

Life is defined by its struggles. Moments of happiness are by nature fleeting reprieves from the troubles of the day, and the best a human being can hope for are extended periods of contentment. Still, ultimately, we are our memories. Hurt fades. Love survives. I love my friends from DC. I love the moments we shared. Those moments survive. They live.

That's the truth. And I just wanted to say that.

Channeling David Byrne

And you may ask yourself...why hasn't Elwin updated in weeks? And you may ask yourself...where is the talk about old fantasy books? And you may ask yourself...how could he neglect his blog? And then you may ask yourself...how did I get here?

The truth of the matter is that I've been writing. A lot. I took a break from writing to do some reading (A Dance With Dragons) and then I started writing again. As I've stated previously, I am working on a short novel entitled The Motley & Plume Players. It is an obsessive love story in the vein of Neil LaBute or Mary Gaitskill, but done my way. Right now I'm at 324 pages of material, adding and deleting things as I go. I'm very proud of what I've written, and I'm pretty sure it's going to be my thesis at Mills.

Writing a novel-length work has been a delight and a burden. Everybody knows how George R.R. Martin spent 11 years trying to figure out the "Meereenese Knot." As in, his chosen one character Daenerys Targaryen decided to park herself in the city of Meereen, and George spent a decade and two books trying to maneuver certain characters in her direction, jettisoning a whole book's worth of material, so everyone would be in place for the series' endgame. Anybody who keeps up with A Song of Ice and Fire knows what a struggle this was for Martin. A lot of fans complain about the wait, but he's the guy who had to wrap his brainpower around this conundrum.

Where Martin spent most of 11 years working on the Meereenese Knot, I spent most of the summer on the "AU Knot." My protagonist is a professor at American University. Judging by how I portray the college, I don't expect on getting an adjunct position there anytime soon. I have spent a lot of time navigating my hero through the portion of the narrative that takes place at his job, trying to get in the story beats I want while making sure the section stays economical in its pacing. It's not easy. Whole chapters have been written and thrown away. Small ideas have been expanded. New characters have found their way into this old story of mine. And I feel I have conquered my own knot, more or less.

I began writing The Motley & Plume Players in 2006. Back then it was a 90-page novella that I shopped regularly in the "Mike Madden Writing Group" in Washington DC. Being 22 years old at the time, I had no idea that I had a real novel on my hands. Seeing how much I could expand on my concept, I came to the conclusion that it was really 150 pages. Since then, I studied in two graduate programs, published a short story collection and, most important, read authors far outside of my comfort zone. I also got older and moved to a point in my life where i can, if not relate, then understand more of the 50-year-old protagonist's perspective. This is all to the better, as the writer I was at 22 could not have done this story justice.

The climax for the story was written long ago. As far as a 22-year-old writer's work goes, I don't think it's too shabby. Much that I wrote in that climax set the stage for my revisions. Now here I am, one-third of the way through the book, starting a second part that is almost all new material, on a crash course with the climax. A crash course with the writer I was in 2006, his work largely untouched. How much will stay and how much will fall to new plot developments? I don't know. Neil Gaiman once described the idea of revising old work as a collaboration with whoever you were at the time, and that's the vibe I'm getting.

Which brings me to...

Kickstarter

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1329246557/guerilla-fairy-tale-marketing-for-elwin-and-christ?ref=email

This book is going to be a dos-a-dos style project like Ace Books used to publish in the day. Those old ace paperbacks are the coolest thing in the world and I'm happy to homage them. Six Gallery Press has expressed interest in publishing the book. The key here is promotional money. Six Gallery has very limited resources as far as promoting their books. So Kickstarter provides an avenue for us to get cash for PR. We are looking to raise a modest $1000 to do so.

I've long been interested in Kickstarter. Some friends of mine have funded really amazing projects through it, and it is a great way for people interested in the arts to give their support directly. Our Kickstarter page has some nice incentives. The one I'm most excited about is reading stories to donors via Skype. If you don't feel like paying so much, there are the personalized thank-you cards and stories. Yes, I will write the donor a story. Christine and I got pretty creative with the incentives, so I can't wait to follow up on them.

The Motley & Plume Players is the story of Chuck McGuirk, an actor who begins a relationship with Kate Fitzpatrick, a longtime friend of his. This is the start of the novel. From there it goes deeper, darker, more lyrical and more magical than anything I have written. It is a story about regret and loss. It is about theater. It is a story about desire and the lengths people will go to achieve their desires. It is about the domestic and the fantastic and the truths we can't bear to reveal, even to ourselves. It has pushed me as a writer and I cannot wait to share these characters with the world.

Cabinet des Fees Review

Got this nice review the other day in Cabinet des Fees, an online magazine I adore.

http://www.cabinetdesfees.com/2011/the-jack-daniels-sessions-ep-review/

I have recently been alerted that my blog does not allow anonymous comments. So I changed that. Comment away!

IWL reading...TONIGHT!

Tonight I'm reading at Intersection For the Arts, at the launch for the Interdisciplinary Writers Lab anthology Chicken Skin and Impossible Trees. The 9 other writers I attended the workshop with are amazing and I'm excited to see them read. Four out of our five instructors will be reading as well. Intersection has given us a lot of freedom to craft our 5-minute readings. I, as usual, will go off the cuff. Anywho, here's more info. I'm hyped for this like I haven't been hyped for a reading in a long time.

http://www.theintersection.org/calendar/index.php?op=view&id=4047

Chapter 58: In Which I Give My Fantasy Rec

This.

Do yourself a favor and watch Record of Lodoss War, the original 13-episode OVA from the early '90s. For a while it was the most notable fantasy anime, though the years have seen its acclaim diminish. I first watched it when I was a boy and it left a large impression on me. It is a perfectly executed epic fantasy, with all the beautiful settings and heroism and atmosphere. But it also taught me the importance, in fantasy, of setting up the audience's expectations...then tearing them down.

The plot is, as they say, so Dungeons&Dragons you can hear the dice roll: a knight, wizard, cleric, thief, high elf and dwarf set out to save their world from the dark lord trying to conquer it. They join up with the good king (who, in true epic fashion, used to be friends with said dark lord) and go to war against the trolls, goblins and dark elves. There's daring-do and nature-loving elves and the gruff old dwarves who talk trash about them. The bad guys all wear black leather vests, which makes me wonder about the Dark Tailor employed to make these uniforms. Anyways, high fantast, elves and wizards, tra la la. Open and shut, right?

No. Record of Lodoss War, on closer glance, is a series that delights in not doing what you expect it to do. Let's look at the villains. Beld, emperor of the dark island of Marmo, wants to conquer Lodoss. But he is held up as the mirror opposite on his old buddy Fahn, who wants to unify Lodoss. Nazis or the EU? Hmm. Then there's Ashram, the badass black knight who leads Beld's armies. Thoroughly evil, yet capable of love. Wargnard the wizard, the series' resident mustache-twirler, is really just a pawn for forces more powerful than himself. Then there's Karla, the Grey Witch, who at first appears to be just another asshole helping in the Team Evil war effort, but her character turns out to be much more compelling, both in her goals and the lengths she goes to achieve them. A lot of thought has gone into making these characters human, and it shows.

Every time you think you know what's going to happen, the series throws you a curve ball. There's an epic fight at the end of episode 7. You think you know how it's going to go down. Oh, hey, here's a bad guy who just redeemed himself! He's going to join forces with the hero Parn in the end, right? And the evil black knight is set up as his nemesis, so of course they have a fight to the death in the last episode, right? Even little stuff throws a wrench in the cogs. There's a character named Orson who is a berserker: he is possessed by a demon spirit that makes him go crazypsychobadass when he sees his loved ones threatened. He's going to go berserk in the final battle, right? RIGHT? No, there's none of that predictable fanservice. The writers of Lodoss War are two busy telling an honest to god story.

A lot of high fantasy has comedy sidekicks. How often do these sidekicks get possessed by a grey (not evil, *grey*) witch halfway through the series, becoming her new vessel? You may say, "His friends rescue him right? Like they rescued Han Solo." Wrong. That's part of the beauty of Lodoss. The party changes over the course of the tale. Old friends depart, new friends arrive. Some heroes die. Some get abducted. The table changes over the course of this brief yet spectacular anime. No one is safe.
Parn's victory is not realizing his place as the chosen one (by the end of the series, he's not even that good a swordfighter). It is in accepting the balance and following his own personal code. The series always comes back to the idea of individuality. The terms "light" and "darkness" get thrown around a lot in this anime, but this is because Lodoss is a serious look at the very concept of good and evil. How the characters embrace or defy this dichotomy of absolutes in turn defines them. What is most important is that, in the end, the idea of a "crusade" or a "jihad" against their enemies is not what motivates the characters to be heroes. When Parn and Co. storm Marmo in the last episode, it is as much to rescue their beloved friend Deedlit as it is to save the world. That's some real shit.

The story of Lodoss' creation closely mirrors that of the Dragonlance Chronicles. Started out as some nerds' role-playing campaign, turned into a series of novels, then expanded to other media from there. Its hard to believe there was no influence of one on the other, but they developed around the same time in two separate areas of the world. I think this is indicative of an overall wave in the high fantasy genre, maybe inspired by the emergence of role playing games. Players wanted to go on quests, sure, but these games got a lot of new voices involved in fantasy writing, many of whom wanted to tell epic stories in new ways.

Dragonlance gets unfairly slagged for being a Tolkien knockoff, primarily by people who never read the books. Other authors were jealous because these books became NY Times bestsellers when "anybody could write them." No, anybody could not write them. Not just anybody could conceive a character like Raistlin. Not just anybody could write the Battle of the High Clerist's Tower. Not just anybody could come up with characters that are so flawed yet so sympathetic. Dragonlance did not become popular because it was a story about saving the world from evil. It was a story about conquering personal demons. That's where the story started, then veered into much darker territory with the Legends series. When the indisputable hero of your piece will literally kill innocents, lovers and family to get what he wants, you are playing way outside the Tokien sandbox. One only need read the final book in the Legends series to know that, in this series, peace doesn't come without cost. Man, that was a depressing novel.

One thing that marks Dragonlance is sympathy. Every character, from Tanis to Raistlin to Kitiara to Goldmoon, is doing what personally feels right to them. Everything is justifiable in their heads. Each one could be their sympathetic protagonist of their own novel. The same goes for Lodoss.

From what I am told, the Lodoss TV show Chronicles of the Heroic Knight follows the novels more closely. If so, this is a shame. The show is much more typical fantasy, with extended quests and chosen ones and predictable plot points. It's also way longer than the OVA. That makes me guess that a lot of the OVA's subversion came from trying to truncate the narrative. If so, +10 hit points for economy of stoytelling! Lodoss War may count as one of the few times in history that a bastardization is better than the original.

The economy also means that no scene feels wasted. In this age of 10+ volume book series, I think a lot can be said for trimming the fat. Parn's maturation feels natural because you can track it scene by scene through the show. Lodoss also has character designs by the great Nobuteru Yuki, who did the legendary Vision of Escaflowne and the legendarily awful Angel Cop. There's such a great detail and weight to his characters. Did I mention the dragons all have individual designs? Seriously, if you want some good fantasy, put it on your Netflix.
I've been thinking about Lodoss because the new George Martin book is coming out. He gets a ton of credit for taking high fantasy in a gritty direction, and deservedly so. One has only to look at authors like Scott Lynch or Daniel Abraham to see the ripple effect that A Game of Thrones had. But the groundwork for the de-Tolkienization of epic fantasy was already taking place in the 80s, through properties like Dragonlance and Lodoss. They may not have completely flipped the script, and for every subversive piece another Shannara book came out that same year. But the tide was turning toward a more nuanced approach.