Last week, I wrote that there were both nature and nurture aspects to who I am, as a human being and a writer. I wrote about nature (my dance with autism); I have put some time between that and writing about my upbringing so that readers wouldn’t get the feeling that my childhood was a Dickensian nightmare. Still, I did say I would write about my nurturing, so…

My parents were unhappy people whom I remember fighting constantly when I was young. Of course, children believe that everything in the universe revolves around them, so I assumed that they were fighting about me (well into my 30s, if I was around my parents when they were fighting, I would be afraid to listen lest it had something to do with me – those childhood feelings are hella powerful). Because I carried the weight of the bad things that were happening around me, I resolved to go through life making as few waves as possible, being as anonymous as I could be, so I could cause the least damage to people around me.

Combined with my other emotional dispositions, this made me the exact opposite of who I needed to be to succeed as an artist. :-( Things like this contest – win or lose – are important in helping me break out of that emotional straightjacket and, hopefully, reach for the audience my writing deserves.

A couple of years ago (because I can sometimes be slow that way), I realized that my decision when I was eight years old to write comedy was a way of making myself feel better, to help me survive a rough childhood. Over time, this intention grew: first, if I could make my family laugh, maybe it would make them feel better, then I extended this to anybody who would read my writing. Perhaps my writing could make the world a better place by helping alleviate the suffering of my readers, if only for a short while.

Unhappy childhoods happen to a lot of comedians, but I wouldn’t put too much into that. For every one of us in that position, there are hundreds of people with unhappy childhoods who became alcoholics, abusers or right wing politicians (or some combination of the three). The choice to turn childhood pain into humour is more complex than that.

The more I think about it, though, the clearer that connection is in my life.

PS: Everybody in my family went through therapy and came out better people, with a much greater capacity for happiness. I get along with my parents – who are my biggest supporters – much better now. Our life experience is always with us, of course, but we do not have to let our past rule how we live in the present.

It happened to me again last night.

I sat down on the subway and a man sat next to me and immediately started talking. He had three or four ideas, ideas which were not really connected to each other, that he kept coming back to. Over and over again. He periodically asked me if I understood what he was saying, but when I tried to give more than a two word answer, he talked over me until I stopped.

In this case, the man was black (not that that means anything: most often in my experience he has been white). His obsessive talk started being about colonialism in the Philippines (which was odd because he was from Ethiopia – at no time did I get the sense that he had ever been to the Philippines); somewhere in his monologue were observations about the fistfight that broke out in Canadian Parliament because of the repatriation of the Constitution from colonial England and trade negotiations being a form of control of smaller nations. In describing it this way, I’m making what the man said sound a lot more coherent than it actually was. This was just one more example to me of a mind trying to make sense of a jumble of disjointed information and, to my ears, failing, although it obviously made sense to the man who was speaking.

I used to wonder why these people found me. A few years ago, I realized that that was the wrong way to look at what was happening. They will take to anybody. The difference is that I will politely sit and listen to them instead of telling them to stop talking or moving away. Why do I do that? Because I’m basically an introvert who doesn’t want to be involved in a public scene? Because people like this make great fictional characters? Because I have, in the past, been forced to question my own thought processes and way of looking at the world, so I can empathize with these people? All of the above?

When I used to teach, I would try and impress upon my students that they should pay attention to everything and everyone in their environment because the world was an artist’s raw material. The human mind malfunctioning doesn’t get much rawer than this.

SATURDAY SHORTS

Is it Saturday already? Okay, to keep it short: here are the first couple of pages of “The Writer Did It!”, the short story I finished a couple of days ago:

“Wuhl holy jumpin’ cats, then!” Missy Mulholland, The Shootin’ Sweetheart of Sandler’s Gulch, exclaimed, “No offense meant.” Missy looked at the six foot tall orange and grey tabby in the gold brocade bathrobe sitting at the desk to her left; it waved a paw and purred genially, as if to say, “None taken.” Relieved, Missy continued: “If ah was of a mind ta kill someone, I’d do it the proper way: shootin’ ’em in the back with mah sixguns! Kin you see me killin’ anybody by stuffin’ a big ol’ carp down their throat? ’Tain’t mah style!”

I had to admit, Missy made a good point. And to be honest, I was hoping that she wasn’t the murderer. She was small, with rough features and tangled blond hair – my Bubbe would have asked me what I was thinking, falling for a shiksa from out west, but these were different times. Better times. Times when strong women were –

“I would imagine that changing one’s modus operandi would be a way of diverting suspicion away from oneself,” intoned Rich Uncle Moneybags, who sat on her other side. He was so short he was the only person in the room who was completely at ease sitting in the small desk/chair combinations that were available to everybody; in fact, there were times when I could have sworn the thick stogie he was constantly puffing away on was bigger then he was! The man seemed made up entirely of circles, but he looked smart in a tuxedo, top hat and monocle. Smart if you discount the fact that Rich Uncle Moneybags’ white moustache looked like he had mugged a mop, I mean.

Missy was offended. “You take that back about my modest oper…brandy, mister, or we’ll be exchangin’ more’n words!” Her frilled arms slowly inched towards her gunbelt.

The Samurai standing behind her (Samurai don’t sit. It’s a thing with them – don’t ask) grunted and spoke sixteenth century Japanese. Fortunately, I had done some work in the part of Anytown where…those people lived, and I had picked up enough Subtitlese to be able to follow what he was saying. The gist was that a true warrior does not disguise his actions in order to evade detection. A true warrior is proud of the work he does. Every second sentence out of Feng Chi’s mouth had something to do with true warriors. My shrink, Melinda Gottlieb, would have said that he was compensating for something. I don’t generally argue with people in shiny black body armour who carry swords that are almost as big as I am, though, so I saved the thought for my next session.

I raised a hand to stop the discussion. “Oy, why do you people want to give me such tsuris? Nobody is going to be killed, here,” I commanded. “I asked you to come tonight because you’re all suspects in the murder of Desmond Concannen, gentlemen inventor.” I could physically describe the dead man, but I hadn’t heard of him before his estate had asked me to investigate his murder, and when you’ve seen one urn full of ashes… To be honest, I had been on the case for several days and, although I had many suspects, I had run out of leads; a good friend of mine, Hercule Marple, had suggested I gather the suspects together in one room and shake them up to see what came loose. Did I have a better idea? Naah. So, I went with that. “Nobody murders anybody when you’ve gathered all the suspects in one room! It just don’t work that way!”

“Well, thank goodness for that,” said Jules Flippe-Flappy, the beanpole of a man with a long face and oversized ears who sat on the far left of the group of suspects facing me. Ain’t no easy way to say this, so I’ll just come out with it, already: Flippe-Flappy was black. And white. He had no colour at all. “Because…Death. Death. Death./Nobody wants to smell your stinking breath/On the backs of their necks./Especially when they’re having –”

Oh, yeah. And he frequently broke into song for no apparent reason. He was good, I’ll give him that: you could practically hear the orchestra playing behind him. Still. I held up a hand – I must have been a children’s crossing guard in another life – and he immediately stopped.

Mister Giggles, the alien cat thing, purred and looked languidly at Missy. We all understood this to mean, “Well, you do have a strong motive for killing Mister Concannen. After all, he knocked up your sister and then abandonned her.” Everybody in the room got the sense that Mister Giggles couldn’t see why such an action would be a bad thing and thought Missy was overreacting.

“I ain’t the only one,” Missy sneered. “That dang gentleman inventor done invented hisself a gizmo that made it possible to travel to distant planets. Seems ta me your planet was one of the ones we done made it to, Mister Giggles. Only, we killed alla you cat people – yer the only one what done survived. I imagine that’s a right powerful motive to kill a man.”

Mister Giggles waved a paw in her direction and made a low growling noise in the back of his throat, making the table gently vibrate. “Did that happen over four hours ago? Honestly, I can’t be bothered to purrsue anything that happened more than four hours ago!”

Feng Chi grunted. Twice. Then, he pounded his open hand with his fist for emphasis. Then, he grunted again. He either said, “The true warrior does not allow the destruction of his civilization to go unavenged!” or “The duck charger screams out to be sacrificed at Stonehenge!” Gimme a break, here: my Subtitlese is a bit rusty, and he spoke fast. Real fast. If I had to guess, though, I would say it was the first one.

The cat creature licked one of its paws and slicked back the fur on the top of its head. Then, it languidly purred: “I wouldn’t be so quick with accusations, if I were you. Or, have you forgotten the Electric Samurai?” I don’t mean Mister Giggles spoke in English with a purring voice. I mean: he purred and we understood what he meant. I don’t know, it must have something to do with pheromones or something.

The Samurai brought his fist down on a nearby chair/table so hard that it splintered into a thousand pieces. It was the third since he had entered the room. I was going to have to pay for that, but what are you gonna do? Argue with a Samurai? I like my kishkes on the inside of my body, thank you very much!

But, uhh, perhaps I should explain. Ordinarily, these things are held in the apartment of the detective, all very civilized-like. But my apartment? Oy! Don’t ask! A shoebox has more room and a sewer has a better view! If I had tried to get everybody into my apartment, only the Samurai would have fit – the rest of us would have had to meet in the hall! So, I asked my Rebbe, and he said we could use a room in Beth Tchochkes Synagogue. It was a standard Hebrew classroom, with rows of chair/tables facing a desk at the front. The brick walls were painted white and adorned with old notices of High Holidays, children’s art and posters that attempted to make you feel guilty for not sending all of your material wealth to Israel. I haven’t exactly been a pillar of faith since the Big Man and I had a falling out over the Gutman debacle of seventy-three. Whatever that was – I’m a little fuzzy on the details. One too many blows to head with a blunt instrument, probably. Still, whenever I got an eyeful of one of those posters, even I couldn’t help but involuntarily reach for my wallet.

Anyway, I was sitting behind the teacher’s desk because I’m the schlemiel who called this zoo together – no offense to decent, hard-working caged animals anywhere. I got a lotta respect for what they do. Who am I? The name’s Schwartz. Shlomo Schwartz. I’m the Kosher Detective. When something don’t smell…you know…right, you call me. Except on Shabbas. Don’t get me wrong: I got nothing against working on Saturday; as I mentioned, I wasn’t exactly Abraham or…or…or somebody else who was prominent in the faith – you see what I mean about not being a believer? However – okay, Moses. There you go. I wasn’t exactly Abraham or Moses. I got his name from a movie, but it still counts. Anyway. As Maimonides – that would be Myrtle Maimonides, my landlady – used to say, “You ask somebody to work on the Sabbath and it’s like doing it yourself. You gonna finish that potato kugel, or what? You don’t, I’m only gonna throw it out!”

I’m not really sure what that has to do with anything, but it was damn good potato kugel. It would have been a shame to have to throw it out.

OMG! The past couple of days, I actually did some writing! Remember writing? This is a Web site about writing.

Mostly, I worked on a short story for an anthology Peter Buck at Elsewhen Press is considering publishing. The story is called “The Writer Did It!”; it’s a delirious mashup of half a dozen different genres. And the best part (other than the writing, I mean)? It sets up elements of the plot of my next novel (not the one I’m currently working on – number four in the series – but the one that comes after that). If the story makes it into the anthology, great. If it doesn’t, I can rework it so that it can be incorporated into the novel.

It’s all good.

I also started doing research and thinking about a short story for an anthology that focuses on Canadian mythological creatures. I even wrote a few paragraphs. I had the basic idea for the story about a month ago, when I first saw the call for submissions, but I couldn’t do much with it at the time (for reasons which everybody here should understand). I have high hopes that this story will be a lot of fun. Either way, the last couple of days have reminded me of an important truth.

Promotion is necessary. Writing is awesome.

The other night I read a review of the new Lizbeth Salander novel, written by somebody other than the Millennium trilogy’s original author, who died before The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was published. And I wondered, not for the first time, why any self-respecting writer would want to write anything involving characters created by somebody else.

Actually, I have done this twice.

In my second novel, You Can’t Kill the Multiverse (But You Can Mess With its Head), I needed a character who was an assassin by trade and who would plausibly see destroying the multiverse as his greatest coup. Who better, I thought, than Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius? In this case, I asked Moorcock for permission to use the character, which he graciously granted.

I have also written a short story called “Portrait of a Spy in the Twilight of Empire” that features James Bond. (I could do this because Ian Fleming’s novels are actually in the public domain in Canada; unfortunately, it is illegal for me to try to sell it anywhere else in the world, which kind of limits my options.) The story is a 4,000 word deconstruction of the Bond myth which includes copious nods to the original novels, including a lot of Fleming’s stylistic tics. I’m actually very proud of it.

Notice, though, that in both cases, I used existing characters to further my own artistic agenda. The point of writing those stories was not to mimic a dead author’s style in order to fill a publishing company’s coffers (a practice you may get the sense I’m not overly fond of). There are characters I would love to work with (cough Dr. cough cough Who cough), but only if I could do it on my own creative terms. If not, I don’t see the point.

These are a few things I know about myself:

1. I have low affect, which means I don’t feel highs of emotions. It also means that my emotional reactions to things are not always what “ordinary” people are expected feel.

2. I have difficulty making and maintaining eye contact.

3. I often feel uncomfortable being touched. That is something a friend and a relative, who are huggy people, are trying to cure me of. Still, the longer an embrace lasts, the more likely I am to break it off.

4. I often have obsessive thoughts. As I get older, though, I am becoming better at recognizing when they start and short-circuiting them before they become too debilitating.

5. I have difficulty reading other people’s emotions.

When I was younger, I went through a period when I tried to understand why I was the way I was; I suspected I had some form of autism. When I did some research into the subject, however, I found that I was missing a couple of key symptoms of autism. I have mellowed over the years and no longer feel the need to name how I act; it’s enough for me to know that my interior life is, as best I can make out, much different from that of most other people.

This fed into my feelings of otherness growing up. On the one hand, a lot of people get a weird vibe from me, which leads them to keep their distance. On the other hand, because I can’t read other people, I don’t know when people are offering to be friends (in fact, I have been used by more than one person because I was unable to see that their offers of friendship had ulterior motives); my ability to form relationships has been stunted, at best.

It’s not all bad (although, even if it was, I would have to make the best of it since this is the only life I’m getting). Years ago, I read an article that claimed that a lot of autistic people become great actors. Why? Because people who are different often watch others very closely to try to learn how “normal” people behave, and become very good at mimicking those behaviours. Perhaps this is also true of writers. If nothing else, my single-mindedness, if not outright obsession, has allowed me to spend decades pursuing a career with little reward.

I may have done myself a disservice yesterday in quickly dismissing my interest in diverse points of view; as with many things that make artists who they are, this is a complex question.

When I was young, I had few friends. I was the weird kid in school whom even the other weird kids didn’t want to have anything to do with. I can clearly remember sitting on the stoop to the door in the back of my junior high school during recess, reading a book while the other students were playing on the field (or standing around exchanging gossip). Even when I did start making friends, I always had the feeling that they really didn’t care about me, didn’t understand who I was (a point of view born of bitter experience); I still felt as though I didn’t belong, a feeling that hampers my relationships to this day.

In short, despite being a straight white male, surely the most privileged group in modern western society, I have always felt like an outsider. It is, perhaps, this feeling of not belonging that attracts me to characters usually considered “other” as my main characters.

How does somebody become so alienated from who he is? In my case, I believe it was a combination of nature (my genetic inheritance) and nurture (the family life of my youth). I will explore these issues over the next couple of days.

Because I write a lot of satire, I am no stranger to taking positions on political issues. They don’t usually come as close to home as the one I engaged with last week, though.

There was an article in the Toronto Star (Canada’s largest circulation daily newspaper) about a move at last weekend’s Fan Expo to promote safe cosplay. The article was a pretty good, if brief, overview of why it happened. I thought the briefness could use a little historical context, so I wrote a letter to the newspaper explaining that science fiction, which was once viewed as a bastion of nerdy white maleness, had been attempting to diversify its fan base over the last decade or two, and this was just one manifestation of that. I ended the letter applauding the diversity of fandom.

The letter was published, more or less in toto, yesterday.

For anybody familiar with my writing, this should come as no surprise. The main character of my first three novels is a black woman (based, loosely, on my Web Goddess). The main character in the novel I am currently working on is a lesbian (as, indeed, are most of the other people who work in her organization). And, of course, the whole premise of Both Sides. NOW! is that all of humanity becomes transgendered, not a group overrepresented in speculative fiction, or, for that matter, fiction generally.

I don’t consider myself a champion of diversity in my fiction, so don’t be casting that medal just yet: to be honest, I’m just sick to death of straight white male protagonists and want to read about a wider range of human experience. Characters of different ethnicities and sexual orientations are also just another manifestation of my desire (for good or ill for my career) to tell stories that other people aren’t telling.

Still, the impulse to celebrate diversity is there in my fiction for those who want to find it. And, it was nice to be able to carry it through, in this small way, into my life.

Icky icky ick

I’m feeling rather sick

Through the aches and pain

I have become a bear of little brain

I hope this won’t cause my followers sorrow

But a more thoughtful update will have to wait til tomorrow!

SATURDAY SHORTS

Here’s a sneak preview of something that will be appearing in one of the Daily Me features on my Web site on Wednesday:

My Wall Trumps Your Rights

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Speaking Spanish the Donald Trump Way, a series of instructional videos to help border guards, immigration officers and anybody interested in the future of the United States learn how to speak to Mexican immigrants.

TRUMP: Job stealing criminal drug dealers and rapists.

ANNOUNCER: We haven’t started yet.

TRUMP: I started the moment I was conceived, and I never stopped! Get on with it.

PAUSE.

ANNOUNCER: Where is the nearest financial institution?

TRUMP: I need to rob a bank to feed my drug habit. Is there one near here?

PAUSE.

ANNOUNCER: You have a beautiful wife.

TRUMP: You so much as look at my wife the wrong way – oh, screw it, even the right way – and I’ll sick immigration officers on you so fast it’ll make your empty head spin! Pervert! Next phrase.

PAUSE.

TRUMP: I said: next phrase!

ANNOUNCER: Do you speak English?

TRUMP: Of course I speak English! Who do you take me for? Jeb Bush? Loser! Or, maybe some other loser who can’t make it in his own country so he comes over here to mess up our country? Listen, pal, the United States is the greatest country the world has ever known, and you don’t get anywhere here speaking frigging Mexican! You wanna live in America? Learn to speak frigging American. You probably won’t be able to speak it so good as me, but as long as you know the basics, you should be able to make yourself understood to a real human being. I mean, come on: how hard is it to say, “Where’s the nearest Welfare office?”

ANNOUNCER: (over him) This has been Speaking Spanish the Donald Trump Way, the first in a series of instructional videos to help border guards, immigration officers and anybody interested in the future of the United States learn how to speak to Mexican immigrants. Order yours today!

SOURCE: Weekends!

[http://www.nobc.com/Weekends/video/play.shtml?mea=227528]more