A-to-Z Challenge Day 17: The Letter Q

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Seven Thunders

This particular character wouldn't have existed without the A-to-Z Challenge.  True story.  I was hedging whether or not to do it again earlier this year, and in fact at one point simply wasn't because I thought I would be doing something very much different this month.  That didn't happen, and so I signed up.  I started planning.  Now, maybe I have another character whose name begins with this letter.  I don't have all of it indexed yet.  But at the time I was also writing Seven Thunders, which as I've discussed I finished writing last month after a gestation of fifteen years.  I conjured Qatar out of thin air to fill this void.  Like some of my names, Qatar has a fairly obvious origin.  It happens to be an Arab state, an unusually peaceful one, familiar to American soldiers shipping in and out of Iraq during the last decade.  Qatar in Seven Thunders isn't Arab.  He's an alien space cab driver, and in his case having a name that evokes a familiar human touchstone is no accident, because all of his kind have been doing that since our kind entered the galactic community.  It's actually his character that allowed me to give them more depth than I had previously, and that's pretty awesome, because Seven Thunders is all about depth.  So, thank you, A-to-Z Challenge.

Ronan Quinn

Yoshimi and the Assassins Guild

Yoshimi Trilogy Volume 2

Here's the Big Bad in Yoshimi's life, the driving force of the revenge narrative, whose story evokes my favorite J.K. Rowling book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.  The reason I keep referencing rather than outright explaining it is that maybe you're familiar with it and maybe you're not, and maybe I have a different impression than you.  Either way you might know the particular significance of the events depicted in it, and if you do, then you know more about Ronan Quinn than other people reading about him today.  And yes, I'm not really talking about him.  I'm not really talking about any of the characters I'm introducing, am I?  I find it annoying when a writer presents an outright biography of a character.  Either that stuff is relevant or it's not, and if it's not and what you've actually done is explain exactly what that character will be doing in the story, then half the story has been ruined.  I don't usually mind spoilers.  It's one thing to know what will happen in a story a large percentage of the population will be experiencing along with you, quite another for something that far fewer will.  It's more special to discover these smaller miracles for yourself.

Bonus!

Quincy

Modern Ark

I'm going to be writing about Modern Ark over at my writer's blog.  It's a manuscript I've got and have tried submitting around with absolutely no luck.  The most recent failure was for Amazon's Breakthrough contest earlier this year.  Quincy is a modern pirate (which would have made him just as appropriate to talk about yesterday, when lots of people were talking about pirates).  He blatantly got his name from Jason's pet iguana in FoxTrot (seriously, if you've never read FoxTrot you should feel ashamed, and if you haven't read Pearls Before Swine, prepare for a visit from Guard Duck).  Also, it's the other John Adams.  I love me John Adams in either form.  Good stuff.  Quincy is also referred to as Dane in Modern Ark, but this is not to say that his full name is Dane Quincy or Quincy Dane.  Just for the record.

***

Did the Red Sox get their sixth straight win yesterday?  You betcha.

The Angels didn't play yesterday.  This article looks at their slow start.

The A's didn't play yesterday.  They're off to a great start, though!

The Cardinals eked out a win yesterday.  I'm still pleased that three out of four of my teams sit atop their divisions to this point in the season!

***

Just because I didn't do it last year when I was doing Star Trek as one of my themes, I will mention Quark.  Quark is a big reason why Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is my favorite series in the franchise.  A lot of fans didn't like the Ferengi episodes.  I loved them!  (Zek was the Q of this series, making visits most seasons and being awesome every time.)  Quark was jealous of his cousin Gaila, "the one with the moon."  But he had a bar, and even if he wasn't so great a brother all the time to Rom, he was rightly an institution on the Promenade, which Sisko recognized immediately.  He was also a bitter frenemy of Odo's.  He was a schemer (so basically Quark is exactly who the Joker was talking about in The Dark Knight).  He was the only character who didn't have a big dramatic arc in the Dominion War arc, but it only figures.  He didn't need one.  His whole gig was avoiding big dramatic arcs.  Every time he got involved in one it was literally a chance to lose everything.  Do that in a war?  He would have been cannon fodder.  (Although he and a bunch of his Ferengi friends still faced down the Dominion and came out alive.  So there!)

#291. Finnegan, Ecce Homo

#291.

A couple weeks back, I sent Finnegan off to another publisher. Today, I sent Ecce Homo to its first potential home. I say, wouldn't it be nice if potential writers had a tad more secure network on which to support themselves...?

#232. Finnegan, Genesis, Survivor Series

#232

Just a couple of quick notes:

~Finnegan is awaiting agents and/or publishers, so that goose is still in the air.

~Hoping like mad that John Morrison is getting the push he so richly deserves. (You morons who honestly believe The Miz is at a better career position at this point can suck it.)

~Genesis (2010) is being released on DVD on March 23. Owned. I also got another TNA Cross the Line three-pack featuring some PPVs from 2008. Good time to be a wrestling fan. For me, anyway.

~WWE: Please continue releasing the Survivor Series anthologies. Still don't know why they weren't released all at once, or if the final two actually have been scheduled. But, dudes?

~Contemplating a fourth poetry blog.

#229. 2009 QBs, Finnegan

#229

I've posted the 2009 QBs at Lower Decks.com (link at right), my fourth annual look at the year in comics. The actual QB50 is in this week's HYGOTS column, but on Tuesday I posted a supplemental edition with a look at fifty additional comics. I thought it was a wickedly good year for the funny books.

The completion of that task required a balancing act that worked out nicely with the end run of Finnegan, which I finished early this morning. I spent two months, and wrote the equivalent of two and a third NaNos, which is why I'm still thankful to Chris Baty and that movement for getting me started and helping me write my first book, Cloak of Shrouded Men, which I hope to republish at some point in a slightly (more) corrected edition. I'm extremely pleased with Finnegan, which, combined with the Fall In Their Place blog poems collection and the outline for the twelve-issue Conformists comic, made 2009 an exceedingly fruitful year. I couldn't be happier about it, where it positions me in the future.

#227. Against the Day, Finnegan, Decade Favorites in Films, Books, TV, & Music

#227

Funny, but when I made the Reading List entry last month, Amazon wasn't loading properly, so I wasn't able to give Pynchon the same deal I've been doing for about half the year here at Scouring Monk. Also, not so funny, but I haven't actually gotten to read much of Against the Day, though I am quite enjoying it. Haven't gotten past a hundred pages yet. Chumps of Chance!

(A few days later, I was able to do my Christmas shopping pretty easily at Amazon, so my buggy computer stopped bugging out for a while.)

Part of the reason is that I've been battling Finnegan. I was forced to abandon the strict NaNo pace after twenty days, but have been rallying and gotten to 43 chapters of roughly 1667 words. The current goal is to complete the remaining ones by Christmas, so I can spend the rest of the year completing the QBs for Lower Decks and my weekly HYGOTS column. By 2010, I'll have a week vacation I hope to in part spend fishing out an agent to get the book into some publishing waters. Should be fun...

Here's the "literay mathematics" (originally posted at Facebook) of Finnegan: Twilight + Mary Shelley's Frankenstein + Calvin & Hobbes + the Bible + Grant Morrison + Robert Pirsig / Tony Laplume

Lots of people are marking the end of the decade with lists. I've been compiling some ideas myself:

Ten Favorite Films of the 00s
Alexander
Munich
The Dark Knight
Memento
Gladiator
The Departed
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Inglourious Basterds
Watchmen
The Da Vinci Code

Ten Favorite TV Shows of the 00s
Futurama
Boomtown
Star Trek: Enterprise
Lost
Alias
How I Met Your Mother
Prison Break
Survivor
Heroes
Grey's Anatomy

Ten Favorite CDs of the 00s
Coldplay - X & Y
Coldplay - Viva La Vida
Oasis - Don't Believe the Truth
Oasis - Dig Out Your Soul
Jet - Shine On
U2 - All That You Can't Leave Behind
Great Big Sea - *Something Beautiful
Hootie and the Blowfish - Looking for Lucky
Guster - Ganging Up On the Sun
Thrice - The Alchemy Index (Vols. i-iv, especially iv)

Ten Favorite Books of the 00s
J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Roberto Bolano - 2666
Neil Gaiman - American Gods
Peter Ackroyd - The Plato Papers
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon
The Patron Saints - T.M. Wells
The Execution - Hugo Wilcken
Bone (One Volume Edition) - Jeff Smith
52 - Various

(revised lists as of 12/19/09)

#225. Pandora, Finnegan, Survivor Series Anthology

#225

Sent off a sample script to Avatar Press today, featuring their flagship character, Pandora. I hope they like it. This doesn't mean I'm giving up on the Conformists pitch at Dark Horse, but hey. I should be sending a lot of stuff out anyway.

Finnegan is progressing nicely, and I'm happy how it seems to be evolving in the best possible uses of my talent. It's off NaNo pace by five days, but I've been playing fast and loose with that all month, so I'm not really all that concerned.

I got the Survivor Series anthologies finally, and have spent perhaps too much time watching them (when I could be writing, yeah, or reading.) Wrestling seems on a good tear these days. TNA (Turning Point is another step in the right direction) is doing well, WWE is still working on the next generation (Survivor Series 2009 looked like it was excellent), and even the Hulkamania tour is finally a reality, headlined by Hogan/Flair and featuring Orlando Jones/Mr. Anderson (Kennedy), two of the stars WWE completely failed in recent years.

I can't think right now, but wanted to check in anyway...

#224. Finnegan, 2666

#224

The big news is that I've started writing Finnegan, which coincidentally started at the start of NaNoWriMo, and I'm actually treating it much as I have in the past, a pace of 1667 words a day. The bad news is that, technically I'm already behind, but the good news is that I'm finding myself with a more flexible schedule that I had during the three Novembers it took to write Cloak of Shrouded Men (my calculations for Finnegan actually average to just about two and a half months, with 72 chapters at the stated length), which I think is pretty much working at this point.

I was thwarted in my attempts to purchase the released Survivor Series anthology volumes last week, but then I visited WWE.com and saw that I could get an outrageous deal from them (basically the two for the price of one), so I did that.

I'm still reading 2666, which is a long book, so it's taking more time than the pace I had been cutting since I started posting my reading list here. And the next few books, yeah, they're going to take probably about the same amount of time. I hope to be done 2666 well before the end of the month. Also, I am loving it.

#210. Conformists, Fall In Their Place, Finnegan, Lance Nolan, Smackdown, Main Event Mafia, Ken Anderson

#210

It's funny, the more I prepare the outline for The Conformists, the more detail I find myself wanting to fill in. Normally, I'm pretty happy with far less than what I've done already, but this is the first time I think I might actually have a chance at getting a comic book published.

It's had the effect of blocking up a lot of writing projects. I've been doing a lot of reviews and my regular weekly column, HYGOTS, at Lower Decks, but have been unable to motivate myself to get back on the Fall in their Place edit/entry due in a few weeks, or work on the script for the first Conformists, or for that matter, Finnegan (which I've decided I might just skip out on "Line of the Dead" as part of the title).

But I did make a pretty big decision recently, and that was that my long-gestating Lance Nolan project, which I really don't talk about very often, might be a single book, in the form of Cloak of Shrouded Men (or The Stand, to use a slightly more famous example), rather than a trilogy, which it only really ever was conceived as because that's what sci-fi epics typically come as, at least in film. I'm liking that idea more and more...

To get back to wrestling talk (yay!), I'm pretty glad that I ended up with My Network TV after the converter conversion, because it's helped me familiarize myself with the latest Smackdown roster, which is the most cohesive it's been since around 2003. CM Punk, John Morrison, Dolph Ziggler, Chris Jericho, Rey Mysterio...They've been working so well together in recent weeks that it's like they're reinventing the wheel. Exciting to follow!

TNA, meanwhile, finally advanced Sting past the Main Event Mafia, which is just perfect. The promotion finally seems to be running on all cylinders. Tomorrow's PPV, Victory Road, ought to be a good one.

All that and Ken Anderson counting the days to once again making history? Couldn't be a better time to be a wrestling fan.

#205. Fall in Their Place, Finnegan, Cloak of Shrouded Men

#205

Well, I did it. I finished up Fall in Their Place last Friday (yeah, I'd been hoping to trick the last one out in the wee hours of Saturday, but because I'm lazy with my time zones here at Scouring Monk, I was thwarted, dear reader), and compiled the initial edit of the collection later that same night. It ended up being the longest of the three blog collections to date, which was kind of frightening, because the thing I hope to submit it to wanted up to 100 pages, not past it. Maybe they'll compromise in the face of greatness...

Anyway, yesterday I accomplished another writing milestone by completing the first draft of the Conformists outline. That company wants five pages, so I'll need to trick out some more words.

It's funny, because I've got my older sister all excited about Finnegan, and The Cloak of Shrouded Men seems to be picking up an inch of steam, pimped as it is by said sister at work and by another friend recently as well.

I picked up some great deals on WWE and TNA collections recently, and that'll be the subject of the next post...

#202. Conformists, Cloak of Shrouded Men, Finnegan

#202

Just a quick note on another project, the ongoing Conformists comic book effort. Recently I came up with the big idea behind the team, and have decided it'd be worth to try and put a package together that could be submitted to publishers who're willing to take such things from writers (thank you, Caleb Monroe). I've got twelve characters now, and a tie-in with my book, Cloak of Shrouded Men, just as Finnegan: Line of the Dead incorporates Oliver Row, who was featured in a number of projects from the time the Conformists were first dreamed up at Digital Webbing...

#200. Finnegan, Cloak of Shrouded Men, Poetry

#200

In the very special 200th post here at Scouring Monk (funny, because I'm approaching 300 entries in my poetry blogs in far less time), I've got an update for the Theoretical Reader on my book-in-progress Finnegan - The Line of the Dead. I've had the framework ready for months, chapter titles stolen from the lyrics of U2 songs and a general idea of the story, but today, I sketched out all 72 chapters, which is a huge step forward, one that flowed out relatively quickly. From this point, I may expand the sketches further, or simply wait for inspiration to strike on actually writing it. I have the inspiration of Shadow from Lower Decks and his 100 days 100 100-word stories project he's been working on as a kick in the pants.

Also, because I still like to think of Cloak of Shrouded Men as my baby (and having recently recovered the Paperback Reader revision -which never saw publication, Bart *ahem* - that hopefully cleaned up all the ridiculous typographical mistakes from the iUniverse print), it was amusing to here today that Sarah Gruen's Water for Elephants also began life as a NaNoWriMo project.

Anyway, other news includes the end destination of the current poetry blog, Fall In Ther Place will hopefully be publication, if I can just track down that contest...Seriously, this stuff couldn't lose if it was Vogon poetry. Then again...

WrestleMania 25 the DVD is on its way from WWEShop, or it isn't. I got conflicting reports. That'll be the subject of #201...

#191. Finnegan, Wrestling

I was just wondering what someone would think if they happened to stumble upon this blog. Oh, I don't be to belittle my beloved Theoretical Readers, either here or at my latest poetry blog, just that I was reading through my old colleague (at Paperback Reader and Dead Letter Quarterly) Derek Koch's Live Journal, and he seems to actually write about his life there. Weird! But I've been blogging longer, Koch!

One of my main projects at the moment has been compiling a reasonably complete record of the films I've watched in my lifetime, at least the one I've really cared to remember (favorably), which will eventually extend to a year-by-year best-of survey. Believe it or not, but I've got movies to cover every year to the '40s. I've seen my share of films, certainly not everything, and I've still got crazy ambitions, but I dedicated the last year to catching up with some of the most glaring omissions, which helped when completing the latest version of my favorite films at Lower Decks, where I made them suffer through a list of 300 (and yes, '300' was on it).

Anyway, enough of that. Another project has sort of supplanted the writing of The God-Slanter at the moment, a book that might actually get me some interest, one in a series of three, really, called Finnegan, stemming from my recovery of a dragon-ball at work last week. If it works out like I hope, soon all will know.

Or, I will revert to my previous plans for the dragon and simply throw it at coworkers. It's spring-loaded, opens on impact.

"Finnegan, attack!"

Oh, and WrestleView has been atwitter about the career and fortunes of Paul London, and for what it's worth, I'm in the lot with ECW recapper David Stephens (I think the ECW/Smackdown show I attended last year coincided with the first ECW he recapped), who will support London to the bitter end. Christian apparently made his big return on ECW rather than Smackdown, which to my mind is sort of appropriate. But he may prove himself out, or maybe just elevate ECW once and for all. Or maybe Jack Swagger will do that. Or Paul Birchall (ha! he's another Rodney Dangerfield. or Paul London). Personally, good luck to London in his future endeavors. I'm concerned once again for his former tagmate, The Brian Kendrick. Unless he can still parlay his exceptional matches last year with Jeff Hardy into something bigger (now that, y'know, Hardy has been heavyweight champion), I don't see his future matching his potential. Once again. Still, I'm excited for WrestleMania 25 in just a few short weeks now...