Okay, okay...Am I at the right blog? Yes! Okay! Safe to continue!
Now that last entry's...unpleasantries are past us, let's move forward, shall we? There may be guests. Fellow Paperback Reader contributor A.C. Hall moonlights at another comics site, Stumbebum Studios (I don't get that, either), where he writes a column called Ring Psychology (still lost, Ace, which is something I've been callin' ya, bud, in my head; at least now it's out there). Several months ago, he came 'round with a few writing prompts for a few of his friends, to use for the column, and among them was one that asked those friends to reimagine the concluding arc of The Matrix. This week, Ace included my version, which was one of the few responses I still remain proud of. If you liked it, too, that's why I'm writing this post, because I probably owe ya, in case you followed that link and found your way here and wondered if there was anything actually worth reading.
Sometimes there is.
Sometimes! And I'm not even speaking of the regularity, or lack thereof, of the actual blogging on this blog. If you review the archives (and brave ye those waters, if you must), you'll discover that when I began, I pretty much stuck some slappy things every days at this old Monk.
I think now would be a good time to apologize for some of the things I'm saying, because I'm saying them funny. I don't do that. Much. You can find poetry at the Scouring Monk. I won't apologize for that, not on your life, my new and good friend. Anyway, speaking of poetry, while I was home, fretting over Midtown shipping matters you might discover in my own column, I sculpted a new poetry collection out of the material available on my parents' computer, where I wrote most of my formative work upon leaving the college workshop. This one ended up being called Card Games. But you aren't really interested in that at this time, are you? Ah, well, I'll get you another time.
I wrote up that Matrix plot basically around the existing material for Reloaded and Revolutions, and maybe that's sometimes clear and maybe sometimes it's not. I hope Ace uses my write-up for the RoboCop prompt, because I like that one even more. But I'm not always basing all of my ideas on other people's ideas. My spanking new ComicSpace page, which you can find here, boasts about three original comics projects I've been working at for a couple of years now, Bandit, The Astrals, and The Conformists. If you'd asked me three years ago which one I'd prefer and were most eager to pursue, it'd have been Bandit, no question, and it wouldn't have been just because, at that time, it was the only one of the three extant. That one's got the longest story. The Astrals mythology has been expanding since its original proposal to the aborted Cabal from my Digital Webbing days, but it's a story that's more easily contained and thus might be easier to introduce first. The Conformists is a concept of characters more than anything, and I love those characters, but the more I think about them, the more I wonder if they have a specific story to tell as well. I have other concepts, one that the boys behind the Death Lurker Saga have in their court, others sprung from other prompts. Many of my favorite ideas come from prompts, actually. Don't let anyone tell you that you can't come up with something good just because someone asked you before you thought of it yourself. That's the story behind Lost, after all. In my earlier years, I wasn't quite as good at it as I would become, but I've really come to value the method.
But I'm still just a hack who isn't actually being published. I'm editing my first novel at the moment, woven from three acts written during successive NaNoWrMos. It's called The Cloak of Shrouded Men and I'm going the indy route, self-publishing. It's called taking fate into my own hands. And I was sure I was done the story, too, but I'm come up with a coda, which I may include in the volume, a most appropriate conclusion to the affair, much as I discovered a new beginning a few years ago.
And did I mention writing for Paperback Reader? Y'know, that's something I'm constantly struggling with. You may have come here after having read something I wrote, but you've got to understand, my experience with my writing is that very few people actually end up reading it. A decade ago, it would have been because I didn't show it to anyone. Now, though, now I just don't know. I do know that I've been writing a weekly column for nine months now, and I've not once gotten a response, beyond my colleages, from it. I'm constantly thinking of pitching the whole thing in. Why bother, right? Well, maybe because if I'd never written for Paperback, not a single review, not a single column, Ace'd never have asked me about those prompts, and you would've never come here. Strange kind of way, how things happen.
Well, things'll keep on happening, one way or another, and I will continue blogging away at the Monk, and I will add more friends at ComicSpace, and someone will read what I write, and I will be published, one way or another. I will tell my stories, and everything will sort of work out.
But yeah, you came here for The Matrix?
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