I have a bad habit of writing painfully long posts that take me well past the time when decent folks get to bed, and on work nights, no less, then saving them for later, then abandoning them because they're so painfully long. I should probably just give up and write the whole autobiography, which I think for non-celebrities is supposed to be called a memoir. Books can be long and have chapters so that people can stop there for a while. (spoiler alert!) These blog entries, they can just go on and ON, you know?
In ancient times I was a published author four times over. Don't get excited. The books were written in The Days Before the Internet! and have been out-of-print for almost longer than I am old. Er... Anyway, at least one website referred to them as "pulp fiction." That's a term meant for books, magazines, and the like that were printed on cheap paper and were about allegedly sensational subjects. I suppose the cheap paper was true, but the "subject," at least for the first two books, was, in the stinging words of Otto the Bus Driver, "books written from the vampire's point of view." That Simpsons episode must have aired over 10 years ago, and it was a cliche even then. In my meager defense, I wrote the first one while still in college and still young and foolish and naive to the ways of the world! Whatever that means. The other three, I have no excuse for because I was out in The World by that time. But they did get published, so that counts for something, right? In order, the topics of the books are: vampires, vampires, werewolves, werewolves. The pairings did not exist in the same "universe," either. Also, I learned that I don't like werewolves as much as I like vampires. A, uh... very profound learning experience, I'm sure.
There are a couple of reasons why my writing career dried up after four books. One is that *I* dried up. Not literally. The book-length stories in my head did. They're just... I got nothing no more no how. At least, not anything that would actually sell to a publisher. More on that later. Two is that writing is not my only hobby and never was. I sculpt, paint, sew, draw, and have even dabbled in counted cross-stitch, spinning alpaca wool into yarn, and wasting years of my life on tvtropes.org. The first three hobbies have actually brought in some funds. In fact, if I calculated a grand total of all the money I've made from my other hobbies, I'm confident that sculpting would win in a landslide. Wait, let me recalculate for a second. Okay, I have to combine the first three, because what's paid the most are my custom dolls, and I have to use all three skills pretty equally. Alas, wasting years of my life on tvtropes.org has, to date, brought in no funds. Writing books just ended up shuffled to the bottom of my interest list. These things happen. Maybe my interests will be reshuffled someday, and I'll give it another go.
A third reason is that my hopes that some Hollywood decision-maker would find my books - ANY of my books - and read them and decide to adapt them - ANY of them - into a movie (film or TV, didn't care) were long ago sucked down a drain. See, I went to UCLA to get a degree in film and/or TV production, and after getting it, and quickly learning that Film and/or TV wanted nothing to do with me... EVER... I thought that, maybe getting a novel adapted would be like a back door into The Biz. Don't look at me like that. I wrote the books and then hoped for the adaptation, not the other way around. I actually did have a compulsion to write books, you know. It was also around this time that a Writer's Strike (no, not the 2000's one, an earlier one in the 90's) was in full swing, just as I was primed and ready and had screenplays and everything raring to go. And I might have had a shot, because Hollywood was looking for scabs. Except that I would never cross a picket line, and did not. Time marched on, and I had to get a job somewhere, so I... did that. You know, got a job somewhere, but that wasn't related in any way to being a writer, author, or screenwriter. It was one of those bill-paying jobs.
Now, before you think that I've only written this time-waster just to sprinkle a bunch of links around to pimp my art business and to subtly beg Hollywood to follow the link above to Amazon and give my books another peek (Maybe. Shut up! No, You shut up!), the real reason for the time-waster is to offer another possible reason for the torpedoing of my writing career.
A confession: I lied a little bit earlier. I actually do have a gazillion stories in my head, but almost none would sustain a book, and those that could, are only capable of entertaining a single audience member: myself. The main reason is that almost to a one, they have become solidly derivative and, in a word, pure fanfiction. That may seem a bit weird: a published author indulging in amateur storytelling. It's supposed to be our enemy. We're supposed to hunt down fanfic sites with our research staff and lawyers and shut them all down. Okay, not everyone's like that, but oh, yeah. There are authors out there like that. Me? If somebody had started running a fanfic site for my books, I'd have contributed to the damned thing myself, I'm cool with the imitation/flattery concept. I admit that I do shudder at "slash" fiction that too often involves unsavory pairings, including incestuous ones, of characters. So I would politely request to the contributors not to write such tales. And the contributors would politely sneak off and post them somewhere else. As for the rest, I'd be rolling around in the stories like a dog at a garbage dump.
To save you the trouble of buying and reading my first book, I'll sum it up as succinctly as I can. It's about Mara (always pronounced Mare-ah and never Marr-ah. NEVER, I SAY!!), who was born in the late 4th-Century not-quite-yet-England to a mother who died in childbirth and to a father who was a complete monster. You know what I mean: physically and emotionally abusive, alcoholic, antisocial, delusional, blamed Mara for her mother's death, etc. He wanted a son like nothin' else, and a daughter popping out.. er, popped what little sanity he had left. He raised her to continue the family business - being a mercenary, mostly - and to hate and fear all men. He being her main male role model, that wasn't too difficult. Then when she was 16, her village was ransacked by marauders and burned to the ground. She was knocked out during the attack and fell far enough away from the carnage to escape it unnoticed. Now orphaned and homeless, she barely fended off starvation and death by sword for the next 5 years or so, trying to make Dad posthumously proud of her for being a mercenary like him. Miraculously enough, she never ended up getting raped or killed by the men she's forced to work with in that vocation - or fight, for that matter. Mostly, this is because I could only heap so much crap on her life. I couldn't do it, no matter how "realistic" such an occurence might have been.
Enter an impossibly kind, patient, compassionate, understanding, (insert favorite Dream Man attributes here) named Gaarius, also a mercenary, but who longs for a life of no more violence, a real home for once, and a nice Mrs. Mara, being severely damaged goods, takes a looooooong time to thaw enough to even talk to him without trying to kill him, let alone marry him (she does), have sex with him (she does), have children with him (she does!), get a best friend (she does!), dump her violent ways and embrace wife-and-mother...ness (she does!), get painfully and violently made into a vampire (she does!), adopt a fellow orphan during the Black Death (she--!) Whoa, what was with the vampire thing? Yeah, sorry. It started out as a sword-and-sorcery themed romance, and ended up a vampire story. But I think it flowed better than that sounds. Your mileage may vary. And yes, the first book was written "from the vampire's point of view." Shut up. That's all Anne Rice was ever doing at the time, and she's had movie adaptations all up in your face. I wasn't imitating her, though. I don't even like her books. First-person narrative was just the best way I could tell Mara's story.
Anyway, I suppose a departure from most vamp stories - at the time - before all of them now seem to be like this - is that Mara never had the slightest interest in being "converted," fought back with all her might, was drained anyway, and has spent most of her ageless existence hoping to be human again. This is a woman who was taken while in a state of near-bliss: she had a fantabulous life with an adoring husband, kids, a best friend, a nice home, etc etc. But Vampire Dude wanted her and took her, and fed her husband to his minions. Her children managed to be rescued by her best friend, but they likely grew up never knowing what the hell had happened to their parents. Vampire Dude was, he claimed, the very first vampire, meaning he made himself and wasn't "converted," so she started out the gate already pretty powerful. But she didn't give a crap about power or "endless beauty;" she just wanted her old life back. That didn't happen, so she just kind of existed in poorly-researched eras of British history before eventually ending up in modern southern California (because I lived there, too. Write what you know, right?). She met a nice guy and angsted a lot about the vampirism. Also, Vampire Dude's death was greatly exaggerated; he came back for the action-packed climax, which included a magic spell that I pulled out of my ass that would make him super-powerful and required her "help" to make it work. Stuff happened, and Mara ended up the recipient of the power he wanted. She became over-the-top powerful with magicalishness. Well... that last part I decided had happened, after the book was published. Like the whole, "Oh by the way, Dumbledore was gay. Sorry, had run out of room by then!" But not nearly as newsworthy. {{cough}}
What you have there is the template for almost all of my internal fanfiction. My other books had other main characters, but Mara is my Author Avatar for almost every story I've thought of since. My stories are about her, not me. Because her name sounds similar to "Mary," some might think that she's a "Mary Sue" character, but she's not quite that. Mara comes in many flavors when not in her own, published story. As mentioned mere moments before, the amount of magical power that she possesses came after the book. Trouble is, she hates it. If you're obsessed with being human, you should be willing to forgo any extra-human abilities, and she's really, really OK with that. It's a bit of a theme in my Mara stories: she's almost always over-powered to Boring Invincible Hero levels, but I handicap her in some way. For Mara Prime (aka Book Mara), it's her pacifism, trauma over how she was converted, and hatred of where her power comes from (hint: it's not divine providence). Speaking of which, she's a devout Christian. Seriously. But the "wants to walk in the healing ways of Jesus" kind, not the "You're all sinners!!!!!" kind. As if a creature of darkness can point fingers at anyone.
Most of Mara Prime's post-book "adventures" are really mundane. Like, helping her kids with homework and discussing money with her husband. Doing laundry. Having coffee with friends. I don't think of a lot of those stories, unless I really need to fall asleep in a hurry. When I'm eager to stay awake, here are the alternates:
TV Mara. Essentially Mara Prime, but with a sidekick. Her best friend from the books is Jackie Chiu, a permanently 17 year old vampire who is the closest that a character has come to MeAsMyself, except that I'm not Chinese, nor 17. Still, Jackie knows everything about pop culture that I know and likes the same movies and TV shows. Mara... does not. Her favorite shows ever were Touched By an Angel and Highway to Heaven. Mine... were not. Anyway, these stories are the most fanfictiony. In those Jackie has developed the ability to be a catalyst for Mara's by now reality-warping power to literally enter the world of Jackie's favorite TV shows. For a long time it was Buffy the Vampire Slayer (oh, irony!). Mara hated it because it was a violent show that presented vampires (yawn, again) as soulless and evil. Jackie loved it for that exact reason. And every week I'd pop them both into the latest episodes and screw with the storylines. In my head, anyway.
TV Mara is Boringly Invincible, but because she loathes violence, she avoids fighting whenever possible - and this being Buffy's world, it isn't always - and only tolerates being in Buffy's world so Jackie can get her (literal?) kicks before they can leave. Jackie gradually ends up at Buffy's fighting level and is thrilled to be part of the Scooby Gang; Mara could wipe the floor with both of them plus Faith while reading a book, but would rather just read the book. I also imagined that in "the real world," the show's writers were desperately trying to kill off these characters that nobody had authorized to be there and were screwing with the story arcs. And they just kept popping in, then out, every week. Mwa ha ha.
TV Mara also popped in a couple of times to Angel, Farscape, and Smallville. She's also appeared in Supernatural, but as a rare, in-universe character. Mara Prime but in the world of the Winchesters (God help her). She ends up healing Bobby Singer, not Crowley. Sometimes I can't resist a "Mara Sue" story. The latest in-universe TV Mara works for Warehouse 13. Just go with it.
Jedi Master Mara. I'd actually started writing her story, but gave up because it was so dialogue-heavy, and decided to just keep it in my head. Plus, it would've probably caused the most obsessive of Star Wars fans to fly into a nerdrage, due to my lack of giving a shit about the "canon" of the non-movie stories (aka the Expanded Universe) and just making up my own history. Because Star Wars history is nonfiction.
Ditching the vampire angle, I still managed to make JM Mara boringly invincible and ageless. Not quite a magic spell, but I did pull a "forbidden Jedi technique" out of my ass. It has to do with being able to drain a Jedi or Sith of The Force, permanently. Long story short, she ended up using the technique to save herself from her own, now power-mad master, the guardian of the secret, who was hopped up on Sith juice. She then went through a brief time of being equally hopped up on Sith juice, until the Power of Love (again, just go with it) brought her to her senses, but not before draining the equivalent of 30 Force users of... well, The Force. The result: Boring Invincibility, agelessness, and the curse of knowing every detail of everybody's life that she comes into contact with, starting from when contact is made, to their death.
So much for "The Dark Side clouds everything!" And she doesn't just know a person's life; she experiences it as if being that person, but very, very quickly. An entire life at 78,000rpm. Yes, she did meet Yoda, and when he was quite young, too. The experience knocked her out for an hour, and she spoke like BackwardSpeak Yoda for most of the day afterwards. The other drawback of all this is that she learned the hard way that The Force doesn't want her messing with its plans. She tried several times to change the futures that she didn't agree with, but made things much, much worse each time. Imagine experiencing every foul thought and deed that the Emperor will do, or experiencing Anakin's descent into Darth Vader, and not being allowed to do a thing to stop them. Sometimes she's even supposed to help these sordid events to occur. And The Force doesn't want her dead - yet - so her attempts to die are always thwarted. She may know a lot of main SW characters - and know everything about them - but it doesn't mean they're all buddies. The Council kept expelling her for refusing to tell them what she knew. Obi-Wan really did not like her at all, for being so very un-Jedi-like. Or something. Maybe he confused permanent PTSD with irreverence and insubordination. Dunno. Only Yoda had any luck at interpreting her hints about the future ("The Temple used to have a garden. Now it's like a tomb."). She survived the Jedi Purge by making it far too costly for The Emperor to keep trying to have her killed; even the Empire could afford only so many squadrons, star destroyers, and the limbs of his apprentice to be sacrificed before moving on. The irony is that she wasn't allowed to do anything to stop his rise to power, anyway, other than when acting in self-preservation.
But JM Mara isn't entirely useless. Sometimes The Force has her working behind the scenes to make sure the mainstream story goes as planned. Sort of like a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead... IN SPACE!
DC Universe Mara. A rather recent flavor. I think Animated DC Universe Mara would be more accurate. I really, really like the animated Justice League, later Justice League Unlimited cartoons. The comic book DCU has gut-wrenching storylines like Blackest Night. The ADCU doesn't (yet??), so there we are.
ADCU Mara still has the same family as Mara Prime (human husband, two adopted kids), but is much more accepting of her abilities. Since everyone in the DCU with fantastic powers is a superhero or villain, she goes the superhero route and patrols the streets of Los Angeles as the Night Avenger (creativity isn't her strong suit). Mostly she tries to steer people away from crime, but uses force when necessary, which turns out to be most of the time. A couple of years into this, she gets a visit from none other than Wonder Woman, who takes her into SPAAAAACE to the League's Watchtower. Mara has never been transported a la Star Trek before, and is yelling in surprise the entire time, to the amusement of folks like Green Arrow. Then she meets the founding members of the Justice League, who invite her to join (Batman abstains from voting). In spite of the sheer awesomeness of the invitation, she treats it like any other job offer and goes home to discuss it with her husband. The potential to get called away at any moment to defend, say, another planet, is something that should be discussed with one's spouse. But he's all for it, so she joins. Too bad he can't tell any of his buddies about it (she has a secret identity). I don't have a lot of ADCU Mara stories - mostly just snippets here and there. Such as when Supergirl arrives in her backyard to fly her to the latest emergency (giant fire ants in Texas!!). Mara is more concerned about the neighbors possibly having seen her arrive, than that Supergirl is at her back door. Mara's kids and husband almost wet themselves with delight, but a crisis is a crisis, so they must fly. Mara assures Supergirl that she's tough enough to handle the g-forces of, say, Mach 6 (they're in a hurry). Let's just say she survives, but won't be so quick with the assurances next time.
I also have a surreal story set in Disneyland, where the latest ADCU crisis (that I made up) has created pockets of magically-spawned events in the world. Grunts like ADCU Mara put out fires while the main characters find and fight the source. A distress call from Anaheim sends her to, of all places, the Disney parks. They've been "hit" and turned into dark and dangerous versions of themselves, sort of like in the Epic Mickey game. Any costumed character that has Meets and Greets with the public has become "real" (Fridge Horror: what of the real humans inside the costumes??). It's October, so all the Villains have taken over the park, and have actually killed some characters (again: Fridge Horror!). The survivors have holed up in Toontown, where Sorceror Mickey has managed, so far, to create a forcefield that keeps out anyone with evil intentions. Except that they're all pacifists and won't fight back, so it's up to Night Avenger! to save the day. It involves getting the California Adventure costumed characters (like the Incredibles and the Monsters Inc guys), who will fight but are trapped in CA, into Disneyland. Hilarity ensues.
Medieval Mara. To date, the only non-powered version of Mara. Mara Prime if she'd been born during the "Disney Fairytale" time of castles and dreams coming true. Medieval Mara's origin is similar to Mara Prime's, but in this world the mercenary jobs are extremely rare, so she's begrudgingly taken other jobs such as kitchen wench and inn worker, while somehow being allowed not to wear a dress. Her job as an inn worker involves keeping the rooms clean and ready for other guests, waiting on tables, cleaning all the dishes, pots and pans, laundry, washing out the pisspots, etc. She gets only pennies a day plus table scraps and a hard cot in the dry goods room. Enter Kenneth, would-be wandering minstrel, who tries for a week to earn money (he doesn't) by singing and passing the hat in the street. Mara, perpetually exhausted and also sick of that guy singing all day, convinces the inn's owner to hire him. Maybe it'll shut him up. Kenneth, by now practically starving, takes the job but holds out hope about the music career. He does the same work as Mara, gets the same pay, eats the same scraps, and sleeps on his own hard cot.
Medieval Mara is still very much damaged goods, but is less violent and hostile than Mara Prime. Her willingness to work at an inn instead of obsessed with killing men in battle is a clue. So is her willingness to talk to Kenneth without trying to beat him up. Kenneth is... well, insert favorite Dream Man attributes here. In my case: kind, good sense of humor, compassionate, gentle, persevering and very, very patient. "Hard to get" is an understatement for Mara in most of her Love Stories. As for myself, I would be even harder. As in impossible. Trust me.
Kenneth is oddly polite and formal in his mannerisms, making her wonder about him. There are other interesting clues, like that he doesn't eat as though someone will steal his food at any time, and performs chivalrous gestures towards her like they're a habit. She doubts that he was always poor and wonders if he's some weird rich boy who is out "playing" in the world. Nevertheless her heart softens enough that she is, eventually, willing to do him the honor of allowing him to kiss her (his words when he asked her). He's very gentle about it, of course, but before long they end up in a makeout session behind the inn's shed. Just kissin', no sex. The next night they're back there after closing time for another session, when he springs The Question on her (albeit no ring). After much thought, awkward conversation, hemming and hawing, she says Yes, after which he convinces her to quit their inn jobs the next morning, because he has a job waiting for him in the king's castle away yonder. He knows somebody on the inside. Seriously, he does. She doesn't like the idea of quitting a job without any backup, but agrees. Upon arrival at the castle, near noon, Kenneth is greeted with great surprise and joy from its denizens, because he is, as you likely deduced before even reading this paragraph, a Prince in Disguise.
By the way, when I play these stories in my head (over and over), I often mix and match how events occur. The paragraph I described has been mentally revised multiple times, so it's no longer completely accurate, but the gist of "girl meets boy, girl warms up to boy" remains. Moving on...
Arranged marriages for the wealthy and the powerful, while not by law in my story's world, were really, really strongly encouraged and not to be abandoned lightly. Kenneth - actually Prince Kelvin - knows and respects this but can't stand the four eligible bachelorettes that his father has selected for him. Their vanity, shallowness, cruelty and greed make him almost ill. A mistress is out of the question for him; he either loves his wife wholesale, or doesn't have a wife at all. Psshh! Young people. Meanwhile Mara was likely the only female in this world who didn't dream of marrying anyone, let alone a prince. The concept that anyone would want to marry her was so alien to her, she didn't bother daydreaming about it. That sounds more pathetic than it actually is. Medieval Mara is just really, really pragmatic in her thinking. Royalty only has arranged marriages + Royalty marries only other Royalty = Don't bother fantasizing about marrying princes.
As for the Prince in Disguise bit, well, after years of arguing, the King reluctantly allowed Kelvin to get his fantasy out of his system, so Kelvin went out in disguise, thinking he could support himself as a wandering minstrel, in order to find a wife amongst the commoners. He had 40 days and 40 nights, "because if [he] found a wife in that time, it would be a miracle," and the one unbreakable rule was that nobody could know he was the Prince, for obvious reasons. To everyone's surprise, including Kelvin's, not only did he bring back a fiancee, but he genuinely loved her wholesale. This... {{shudder}}... commoner.
Needless to say, Kenneth's "job at the castle" was a bit of a shock to Mara. Also the fact that the King and Queen had to be convinced that she - a commoner, and a poor one at that - was worthy of marrying their son and becoming the Princess. This goes on for some time in the story. Mara also struggles to come to terms with Kelvin's deception, even though it was a necessary one. She also doesn't like all the fuss about the whole thing and debates sneaking away and going back to her old life, but she ultimately stays. For about a month she stayed as a guest while the King and Queen made their decision, during which time Kelvin and Mara weren't supposed to see each other for more than an hour each day - they were monitored, too. Then - the royals gave their blessing. To soften the blow to the rest of the noble and royal world, she was given a title (countess) and her own plot of land. Later, in a super-romantic moment, Kelvin insisted on proposing to her "properly," meaning as himself and not Kenneth, and dropped to one knee to re-pop The Question. Mara accepted - again - and was then given a fantabulous engagement ring. Which is weird, because I don't like jewelry. But I thought she'd like something pretty. Note: she does end up wearing dresses. A royal family will only tolerate so many breaks from tradition.
Anyway, lots of romance and mushiness follow. I should find a way to turn her into a vampire. That'd be so cool!!
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