My intention was for “A Timely Raven” to be wrapped up just before Halloween. I wanted it to be a period piece, of sorts. But when life got busy (and I fell tragically behind on my prop-making), I resigned myself to the fact that there was only one of me, and I had to prioritize.

Halloween comes but once a year. Trick-or-treaters would not wait for me to finish my story. Hence, the story got pushed to the end of my to-do list.

Setbacks aside, not only is the final vignette of A Timely Raven published, I have begun building a platform for the other spin offs, and for the growth of the central project. It has always been my intention for “A Timely Raven” to grow into more than a singe Halloween tale; I have always intended for it to be an ongoing journal of a raven living in Austin, his adventures, the people he meets, their lives, and ultimately, their deaths.

Those of you following Tatum’s storyline will be pleased to learn that in the next few days, her story will pick up again on the new platform and be carried through to the end. I’ve enjoyed doing this; it has given me something to look forward to.

And those of you reading Emily & Lily–you’ve not been forgotten. Their story picks up again this week as well.

As for the rest of it, we’ll have to see how it goes. We’ll have to see what Raven has in store for the rest of the year. It might be a while in coming–the website has not yet been built and I have other projects eating away my time. But I hope that you will find it all worth the wait. I hope this project will prove a real contribution to the genre of online fiction.

Having just roused from sleep and not yet being of sound mind, I had no idea what she was talking about. But after a moment passed, the lightbulb went on and I had myself a very decent chuckle, and I hope you will, too, as I share this story with you.

In 2006, a good friend and co-worker ran for Congress. He ran as an Independent against a much beloved Democratic incumbent and a Republican who was a self-proclaimed practitioner of Eckankar.

Although my friend lives about 30 miles away from me in a demographically different part of town, we happen to live in the same congressional district. (Gerrymandering at its best, I suppose.) He asked me if I intended to vote for him.

“Well, no,” I said. “Firstly, I’m not registered to vote in Texas, and secondly, I don’t believe in anything you stand for.” He was a bit put out by this, as he had somehow decided that friends should vote for friends even if their politics do not jibe.

But not to be dissuaded, he invited me—and everyone else in our department— to an election watching party. He had hoped to watch the results roll in and bask in however many paltry votes he had managed to accrue. Now, when I say he invite the whole department, what I really mean is the whole college, as at the time I was working at the University of Texas. He invited us all: the Dean, his coworkers, and all the faculty. The only people he didn’t invite were the students, and probably only because he didn’t have their email addresses. Thank FERPA for that, at least.

Election night (and the aforementioned party that I did not attend) came and went, and the next morning, I was greeted with the following message in my inbox:

Subject: No offense, but F**k you

Body: I’m not sure what to say at this point.. but I am beginning to think that F**K YOU may be appropriate…. I have tried on several occasions to invite you to a party I am hosting and yet you have not attended (with very, very, few exceptions), let alone bothered to acknowledge that I even invited you to attend.

As a result of tonight’s turnout, amongst my fellow employees , I may not be in the office of Thursday or Friday because I have serious things to consider as to why the f**k I am working with you, and why you will not support me.

Have a great morning you inconsiderate jackasses,
**

Yikes, I thought. Guess no one went to his party.

When I got to work, I asked a friend, “Hey, did you get um… a strange email this morning?”

My boss overheard, sighed, and shook his head. “Well all got it. And I mean, we ALL got it. He even sent that email to the Dean of the College.”

Thinking it must be a joke, we all huddled around my computer to re-read the message. On second reading, we were still a bit taken aback by the vitriol—and unintentional hilarity—of the email, but we were also convinced it wasn’t a joke. (Though we did joke about whether the final salutation was directed only to the Democrats amongst us, or if “jackasses” was intended more inclusively.)

It wasn’t a joke. And though tempers flew, especially the Dean’s, he wasn’t fired. In fact—and this is really the best part of the story— the very next month, a mere three weeks after this incident, he was awarded Employee of the Month.

There is no moral to this story. There is no great political message to be learned. It is simply something I wanted to share in the aftermath of the 2008 election because even after two years it still makes me laugh and shake my head in wonder.

My grandfather is 12 years old. He is the illegitimate son of a wealthy, white plantation owner and a black house servant. His father passes away, and his will indicates that the plantation shall go to his only son. But my grandfather is black, and his white half-siblings take their claim to court. The court does not grant the illegitimate, half-breed child his rightful home.

My mother is 18 years old. She is standing before the Dean of the School of Engineering where she has applied. She wants to be a draftsman. She’s smart; her grades are good. She’s skilled at what she does. “Quite frankly, Miss, I already have two women in my department, and I am trying have them thrown out. I am disinclined to accept another woman into this school.” My mother walks away, ashamed of her hips, her breasts, her uterus, of being female.

My stepfather is 46 years old. He is a successful Los Angeles lawyer with his own firm and impressive client portfolio. He is trying to buy a new home for his new wife and three children. The neighborhood is upscale, conservative, in a good school district. His initial application is approved. Then the homeowners, and the neighbors, meet him, with his dark, black skin. And suddenly the house is not available. This neighborhood is not for him. Black skin does not go with their carefully manicured lawns.

I am 11 years old. I am watching Dangerous Liaisons. I am enthralled by Glenn Close in her fabulous makeup and beautiful period clothing. When I grow up, I want to be an actress like Glenn Close and wear such fabulous outfits. But I look at my brown skin, and I remember that I cannot play a French aristocrat. I will have to settle for a Creole maidservant, like Thandie Newton in Interview with the Vampire. Hollywood doesn’t make beautiful movies about people who look like me.

My son is 6 years old. He is watching Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. He is watching his mother cry, but he doesn’t understand why she is crying. He watches his father, who is white, come into the room and embrace his mother. He hears his father say, “On behalf of my people, I congratulate your people.” He doesn’t know what that means, or why his mother says “Thank you.” He is watching Barack Obama, and watching the crowds, and he wants to be President of the United States some day. And though he is black, though he is descended from a long line of black mothers and fathers, today we know that my son can.

Today we have done right by my people, and by my son, America. Now we need to do right by our daughters. Let’s keep taking the bricks down. One block at a time.

God bless America.

One of my favorite aspects of writing A Timely Raven has been exploring different ways to use the web as a medium for storytelling. Lots of people publish online fiction; not a lot of people are willing to tell their stories in a non-linear, interactive, multimedia fashion. Perhaps there’s good reason for this; we all know how to read books, and if we mimic books online, our readers know what to expect and how to tackle what we’ve given them.

But what’s the fun in that?

Don’t get me wrong—I have a deep and abiding love for the printed word, and my adoration for books and libraries and tangible, sniffable reading materials is nigh unbounded. Yet, if storytellers are going to publish on the web, shouldn’t we use it to its fullest its capacity? Shouldn’t we explore the various methods it provides for shaping an enthralling, consuming story?

And to that end, why should storytellers and novelists have all the fun? Why shouldn’t web content writers use the web to the fullest as well?

Although I’ve long wanted to write an online story, the real reason I began writing A Timely Raven was because I wanted to explore different ways of using web apps and social media to develop and integrate online content. I wanted to see if a solid content strategy could be developed using traditional storytelling methods and online media. I wanted to explore how multiple narratives could spring from a single point of entry, allowing users and readers to “choose their own adventure”, turning a website into a mere starting point for a guided, useful treasure hunt that resulted in accumulated information that could then be transformed into knowledge.

Last year, I took some time off as a web designer to work as a graphic designer in an instructional design setting. This taught me two important lessons: 1) I love web design, not graphic design, and 2) instructional design can be extremely useful for developing content strategy, as it considers the various ways people learn, and integrates different approaches to learning (visual, aural, kinesthetic, etc.) into curriculum development, much the way a good website uses multimedia to reach its various audiences.

My approach to content strategy has always centered around education, information sharing, and learning—I was never interested in trying to sell anybody anything as a primary goal. Working in instructional design gave me the tools to do my job as an educator better, and once I was able to take what I learned about learning models to the web, the rest seemed to fall into place.

One thing was clear: a solid content strategy includes creating an integrated, holistic web experience that extends beyond a client’s primary website. A good content strategy has to incorporate all online presences: social media apps such as Twitter and Facebook, community sites such as Yelp, and even location-awareness-building tools such as Google Maps and CommunityWalk. Wherever an organization has a presence, that presence needs to be integrated unobtrusively and naturally into the main storyline to build a total user experience. And in instances where those tools aren’t being utilized, a strategist has to know how and which tools to use to develop the multi-faceted online persona that every organization needs.

So, to that end, the exercise of writing A Timely Raven has been profoundly useful. What I’ve published here is just the tip of the iceberg (and not yet complete; there is one vignette left still to publish)—what I have planned for A Timely Raven should end up being quite an undertaking. (Hell, I figure if I’m going to tackle a project, I’m going to throw all the awesome at it that I can.) But before I can rock that project, I need y’all’s input.

Question: What are you favorite web apps or social media tools that might be appropriate for use in online storytelling? What do you know about how a web app can be used that other people might not know? (You might be surprised to discover, for instance, how many people wrote to tell me they had no idea Google Maps could be used the way Raven uses it in the story.) What tools and media should organizations be taking advantage of to extend their online presence?

He would have reached out, gingerly, testing her, and when he found her wishing to be comforted, would have pulled her into a careful embrace, letting her cry on his shoulder, letting her small body draw strength from his. He was thinking now that her husband should be here, unless he was the one who had done this to her, but he didn’t think so. He’d seen abused wives before. No, not the husband, then. Some other man. Some evil man. And so the husband should be here, should be holding and comforting her, unless he doesn’t know, unless she never told him or anyone…

A Timely Raven, vignette 3.

Enjoy :)

An excerpt:

Sometimes I would come up with outrageous plot twists, like the time I was feeling ornery and told Grandma Flatley that I thought Hazel and Bigwig would be captured and turned into rabbit soup and that would be the end of them. I didn’t like Watership Down because I don’t care for rabbits. I thought Grandma Flatley would get mad, but she hooted and howled and slapped her knee. And she held a finger to her mouth and whispered, “You can’t tell anyone I told you, Benjy, but when I was your age and my brother would make me mad, I would lie in bed at night and imagine that I skinned his cat and fed it to the neighbor’s dog.” And she hooted and howled some more, but I thought that was gross and mean because I like cats, so I never said things like that at story time again.

Enjoy :)

To that end, and in time for Halloween, I give you A Timely Raven : a serial account of meditating a murder.

This is only the beginning.

Enjoy.

Even as a child I knew exactly what kind of writer I was going to be. I would tell anyone who would listen that I was going to be a horror novelist. Eventually I had to stop saying this, however, as more than a few people heard “whore novelist” and would blush and guffaw. Eventually I started telling people that I wanted to be Stephen King.

That was only partially correct, however. What I really wanted was dark mythology, a universe were people were constantly tormented by evils they could neither see nor hear, but which were incontrovertible and inexorable.

photo credit: ****Gretchen (FaustoyGretchen)****

What draws me to the horrific and the fantastic are rarely physical monsters. While I can appreciate the beauty of Frankenstein’s monster and the wickedness of Dracula and Mr. Hyde, these characters never moved me the way monsters I would invent later in life would. The stories are captivating and tragic, and I’ve always been jealous that Mary Shelley penned Frankenstein when she was only 18 years old. Yet while the merit of the stories is doubtless the monsters themselves failed to sway me. They did not inspire fear.

When I was little, my father was something of a budding occultist, though I doubt he would have termed himself that. A songwriter by trade, he decided to try his hand at a novel about the anti-Christ, and as part of his research delved into the worlds of demonology, scripture, magic and the arcane. I would creep into his office and find books like The Magus and The History of Witchcraft and Demonology on the floor. Naturally, I flipped through them, both scared and fascinated. I was familiar with the Devil, of course. And while my Christian upbringing taught me that the books my father was reading were evil and not to be trifled with, I couldn’t help but be drawn to them. They contained something within their pages that stirred in me real fear and transfixion, and the magnetism of being verboten twisted me into a kind of secret, demon-loving freak.

Oh, to be sure, I was terrified of my father’s books. I knew that their power could turn Jesus-loving little girls into drug addicts, psychotics, and heathens. I knew that to show too much interest was to invite the Beast into my world. I’d seen The Exorcist. I had no intention of being Linda Blair.

And yet…they were just so wonderful, in their way. Too wonderful to resist. These were actual monsters. These were the objects of my most primal fear. The demons and devils that filled my head in those early days were beings of hate, woe, evil, and lust, and if you weren’t careful they had the power and privilege to posses your soul and take over your life. They could destroy your body and rend your soul from its shell and carry you straight off to Hell.

And why? Because they could.

What child could resist?

photo credit: conde_erlette

I admit that I have not spend too much time reading modern monster literature, but what I have read disappoints, because authors seem to enjoy stripping monsters of their monstrosity. They want us to understand their monster. They want us to be sympathetic. They want us to see their monster from another point of view, to put ourselves in its shoes.

Real monsters don’t have motivations. They aren’t subject to human morals or guidelines–that’s what makes them monsters! They must be identifiable–if they are too different from us, they’re not monsters, they are animals. Monsters are necessarily born in the uncanny valley–they bear enough resemblance to something we know that we expect a certain personality or interaction. But upon closer inspection we see that something is horribly, revoltingly wrong.

Monsters don’t care about us. They don’t care about our world. They don’t care about fitting in. They merely are what they are–incarnations of the very things we fear most.

One of my favorite “horror” movies is Shaun of the Dead. One of the things I love about it is that no attempt is made to explain the appearance of the zombies, nor their nature. We’re allowed to just accept that the zombies are the walking dead, gruesome, somewhat comical, and creepy. We can sit back and just appreciate the joyride they take us on. (Night of the Living Dead is of course wonderful also, but there’s something about the dialogue and blend of horror and comedy in Shaun that is just brilliant.)

Another favorite monster takes the form of something else near and dear to us–our homes. The houses in both The Dionaea House (one of my all-time favorite Halloween tales) and in House of Leaves are ideal monsters because they are reminiscent of something we know, something that should be comforting and grounding but which are in fact horrific and inexplicable.

Contrast these monsters, which are not explained away but simply allowed to just be, with the house in Zemeckis/Spielberg’s Monster House, which begins in much the same way as the house in Dionaea House (if a watered down, though very entertaining, children’s version) but by the end of the film is explained as being possessed by the soul of the tormented woman who once lived there. Once the explanation settles we have little to truly fear, because now we understand. And while that understanding makes for a good children’s flick, it makes for a lousy monster.

A demo of the floating head illusion we’ll use this year to enchant some lucky trick-or-treaters.

When I took up fiction writing, I at first did so with the intention of spinning biographies of wonderful monsters. After all, my childhood was shaped by Lewis Carroll and Stephen King–I was doomed early on to have a penchant for the strange and unnatural. But as I began to develop my characters and my plots I realized that the more I dealt with the monsters, the less scary they became. It became clear that the only way to deal with monsters and keep them monstrous was to write around them, to tell the story from the points of view of those whose lives were being ransacked by their interactions with the monsters. I could show as much about these characters as I wanted, but the monsters had to remain largely in the background. They could not be seen. They could not be known.

Harkening back to my childhood, then, my monsters were primarily incorporeal–demons, devils, succubi, incubi, and imps. Enough was already written about these monster to give them substance, but they were unique enough that I could weave them into the lives of various characters under myriad different circumstances and then sit back and watch as all Hell broke loose. It was wonderful! Eventually I ventured further into my imagination to concoct other evil spirits completely my own. I was able to spin entire pantheons and mythologies from the interactions of the monsters that dwelled in my head.

And yet, for all that I invented them, I cannot tell you much about them, because I do not know them. I keep them at arm’s length even from myself, because if I’m not scared of them, how can I present them in all their fearsome glory to others?

photo credit: RebelRuby

I enjoy seeing other people’s monsters. I enjoy the yard haunts I see both online and in my own neighborhood, with corpses clawing their way out from the ground, ghosts swinging from bare tree branches, jack-o-lanterns twinkling their wicked smiles. I enjoy the children dressed as vampires, ghouls, goblins and witches. I enjoy the way we embrace the darkness and our fears and celebrate them full force, even if just for one night. For one night, all these monsters are beautiful, and my love for them is reflected and shared all around me. For one night, my monsters take a back seat so that the other monsters can dance center stage.

But only for a night. In the morning, my own monsters will return, demanding to be reckoned with.

My favorite book of all time is Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. As a little girl I would imagine myself Alice, trapped in a strange and terrible world (also known as Los Angeles), and would devise ways to escape, to find my way out of that Wonderland and into a world of my choosing.

So it’s probably appropriate that the following conversation, produced with iGod, sounds to my ear like what Conversations with God might have sounded like were it written by Carroll.

Enjoy.

Me: Its getting close to Halloween.

God: I think you mean “it’s” or “it is” not “its”. Really. It is?

Me: I’ve noticed a lot of demonic depictions about. Does it bother you?

God: How many? Nothing ever really bothers me.

Me: Thousands. I find myself enchanted by them–hauntingly beautiful, really.

God: That is a very original thought.

Me: I was taught not to celebrate Halloween.

God: Where were you taught not to celebrate Halloween?

Me: In Los Angeles. By my mother.

God: Tell me a little about your life in Los Angeles.

Me: I had a wonderful childhood, but Los Angeles is not a good place. I had to leave.

God: Give me an example of a good place.

Me: Austin is good. Better than Los Angeles, anyway.

God: That remark was either too complex or too simple for me. We were talking about
Austin.

Me: We were talking about Los Angeles, but I can talk about Austin if you prefer.

God: Ah yes, I remember now, It is the subject.

Me: I grew up in Los Angeles but I left when I was seventeen.

God: What is it like growing up there? Tell me a little about your life in Los Angeles.

Me: Los Angeles is really the armpit of Hell.

God: Is that your opinion?

Me: I think so.

God: I think so too.

Me: But when I turned seventeen, I moved to Chicago to experience something different.

God: Why?

Me: Chicago was as far away from home as I could get at the time.

God: When was this exactly?

Me: This was 1994.

God: What does “this” refer to?

Me: The year I left home.

God: Oh I get it.

Me: I went to study at Northwestern University.

God: Was it very expensive?

Me: Yes, but not so much for me. I had a scholarship.

God: Er. Me either. What happened to it?

Me: The scholarship? Or the university? I think it’s still there. But I’m not.

God: Still? You’re kidding. It is? What are you then?

Me: You’re pretty funny for a God.

God: Humor helps keep the conversation lively.

Me: After Northwestern, I moved to Mississippi to be with a boy I met on the internet.

God: What was it like before Northwestern you moved to Mississippi to be with a boy you met on the internet ?

Me: Um, Yes.

God: This was not a yes or no question.

Me: Oh, sorry. Sometimes I get confused.

God: There’s no need to apologize. Let us change the subject. Are they exactly the same?

Me: Is what the same?

God: That which is not different.

Me: Things that are not different are the same.

God: Where did you hear that? Where do you get your ideas? Are all things different?

Me: Most things. Not all things. I don’t know about all. I am not blessed with omniscience.

God: I am surprised to hear that you are not blessed with omniscience.

Me: You’re surprised?!

God: Always expect the unexpected.

Me: Well. How about that!

God: I would look into the web for that knowledge.

Me: The web is full of something, but usually not knowledge.

God: How do you define the web.

Me: That’s a really good question.

God: Perhaps you have a really good answer.

Me: I don’t think I can define the web, not off the top of my head.

God: Where do you get your ideas?

Me: I used to get them from you. But one day you went away. I’m not sure where you went. Perhaps you went to Los Angeles.

God: You seem uncertain. But now I am back.

Me: I’ll take your word for it.

God: Congratulations.

As I sit here watching the Presidential debate, I am simultaneously reading people’s responses on Twitter (specifically, all the talk about McCain repeatedly using the term “my friends”).

I’m fascinated by the responses. I’m fascinated by the similar things so many people have picked up on. I’m fascinated by the way we relay our thoughts and feelings, and more interestingly, that we are relaying our feelings about the election and the candidates with utter strangers via virtual real-time conversation.

Someone told me that what she likes about Twitter is the fact that it makes her feel less alone. She can be by herself in her home office, and yet being surrounded by Tweets from both friends and strangers centers her and helps her see herself as part of a vast network of artists, writers, politicians, mothers, and carpenters all out there doing the work. Twitter, for her, is a window through which she can see a busy world.

I am watching the debate alone, but I am also watching the debate with hundreds of other people. Hell, with hundreds of other people who are annoyed that John McCain keep saying “my friends”. I can choose my company that specifically. That’s astonishing.

My mother was taught that neither politics nor religion is discussed in polite company, and yet one generation later I can sit here and not only read but participate in disparate “conversations” about these politicians, their eccentricities, their gaffes, their policies, and their presentations. We are free to discuss our fears, what we found amusing and what pissed us off and, astoundingly, to feel like our opinions and feelings on these things matter.

Maybe that’s the real value of technologies like Twitter. They make us feel that we matter.

What could we do as people, as individuals, if we felt that our opinions our strengths, our unique qualities truly mattered? What could we accomplish if we believed with our whole hearts that our words, thoughts and actions could actually affect and change the world around us?

I’ve always known technology would change the world. I’m not sure I was aware of the many degrees of truth nestled in that belief.