Richard S Crawford

I just put my story “Jenny Goes Home” online. Enjoy!

Mirrored from Richard S. Crawford's World.

My comedic contemporary fantasy short story “A Pine Romance”, which features the Jersey Devil (pictured to the left), REALLY needs some love. I’ve revised it numerous times in the past 18 months, and I’ve had many people read it. I want to make this story marketable, because I think it’s a good one and has some great elements to it, even if it currently lacks what we writers like to call “cohesion”.

If you’re at all interested, please drop me your email address in the form below or using my “Contact Richard” page (or post a comment on FB or Twitter). Even if you’ve read it before, your additional input would be greatly appreciated. The story in its current incarnation is about 6,000 words long.

Thanks to all!

EDIT: This form was attracting a lot of spam (surprise!). So please indicate your favorite color in the line provided so as to make it clear that you’re a person.

Mirrored from Richard S. Crawford's World.

Last Saturday, Sherman got sick. After a normal morning of running around, picking fights with Ingrid, and generally getting into trouble, he started crying, then threw up. Then we noticed that he was straining and crying when he was in the litterbox. Jennifer told me, "Something's wrong with Sherman," and we decided that she would take him to the emergency vet while I went down to my parents' house to celebrate my mom's birthday.

The vet couldn't find anything wrong with Sherman, even though it was obvious he was in a lot of pain. Cats are not good at telling us humans exactly what's wrong with them or where, exactly, the pain is, so Sherman was not forthcoming. Finally, the vet sent Jennifer home with some pain meds and instructions to feed Sherman a bland diet and keep him isolated for a few days.

Sherman's a pretty rambunctious little cat, so being holed up in the library for a few days sounded risky. Would he go stir-crazy and start ripping apart all the books? Cry nonstop, keeping us awake at night and triggering our guilt feelings?

Fortunately he did not do any of those things. He was quiet the whole time. We went in to visit and play with him several times a day, and we fed him baby food for the first couple of days. Tuesday we reintroduced him to canned cat food, which he wolfed down, having gotten bored of the baby food, and yesterday we let him have some kibble, which was OH MY GOD THE BEST THING!

Today we let him out of the library. I was worried that the first thing he'd do was go charging at Ingrid but nope. He took a few tentative steps through the library door, then wandered around upstairs for a bit.

But the real proof that he's better came this morning. Usually when we open the front door we have to make sure Sherman's nowhere near since he has a documented history of trying to run outside. This morning, I didn't see him when I opened the front door, so I figured it was safe to open the door. But the moment I did, Sherman charged out of nowhere and shot through the door.

I shouted after him, of course, but that never does any good with a cat. Usually when he goes outside he gets distracted by something -- a neighborhood cat, a stranger jogging by, or (once) the gravel in the neighbor's yard, which, for some reason, really confused him.

But nope. Today Sherman was intent on having an Adventure. I chased him for half an hour, around the block and around several houses. I thought I had him for sure when he ran into a shed in someone's back yard, but he crouched low and ran on his belly when I tried to grab him.

Fortunately, he ran under someone's truck, and that's when he stopped. For some reason, cars frighten him, even if he does invariably run underneath them when he gets outside. He sat, hunkered down and crying, like he always does, and I managed to grab him by the tail and pull him out. I know you're not supposed to grab cats by the tail, but I figured in this case any handle would do.

I carried the squirming and fussing cat home (did I mention that we call him "Squirmin' Sherman"?) and tossed him atop the cat tree in the living room, where he immediately settled in and started bathing himself. Stupid cat.

So I was a bit late to work, and I only now just realized that I was going to take the trash can to the curb, but completely forgot because of the stupid cat.

At least he's feeling better now.

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'Tis the season for Holidailies. Check it out.

Earlier I was firmly committed to my kaiju novel for NaNoWriMo this year. But now I’m wavering. I have three ideas, all of them equally attractive. So I’m throwing the question out to you, faithful readers:

Of course, I won’t be posting my novel online this year for Reasons, but you’ll be able to request that chapters be mailed to you as I write them. I’ll work on a mechanism for that.

Mirrored from Richard S. Crawford.

I’ve been watching the original Twilight Zone series on Netflix, and loving it. I’m currently halfway through season 2, and last night I saw the episode entitled “Night of the Meek”. In this episode, Henry Corwin, a department store Santa, gets drunk and is fired from his job. He informs the store manager that the reason he gets drunk all the time, and especially at Christmas, is that he can’t bear to see all the suffering and sadness in the world, especially in the faces of children, and especially at Christmastime,and know that there’s nothing he can do about it. Look at this picture of him. Doesn’t he look sad?

But the night he’s fired, Henry stumbles across a magical burlap sack that seems, at first, to be full of nothing but garbage. But he soon finds that it’s full of gifts, and not just any gifts: the heart’s desire of anyone he encounters. He gives gifts to the downtrodden at a Salvation Army soup kitchen, to the manager of the department store he was just fired from, and to the neighborhood kids.

Finally the bag is empty, and he lets it drop to the ground and goes on his way… only to encounter a sleigh, some reindeer, and an elf who says to him, “We’ve been waiting for you!” Henry’s own wish — that he could be the real life Santa Claus to give gifts for everyone — has come true.

I personally think that “Night of the Meek” is one of the better episodes that Serling himself (who was born on Christmas Day) wrote, and it actually made me a little bit sniffly. When I read a book in 2003 called The American Fantasy Tradition, I was more than a little surprised to see that Rod Serling was not mentioned at all.

Reams and reams have been written about The Twilight Zone and its impact on American pop culture (especially in speculative fiction), and I won’t bother going into that here. For now, I’ll just say that the show definitely impacted my own creative sensibilities. Over the past couple of weeks, as I’ve been watching this show, I find myself feeling more inspired to work on my own fiction, and giving it more subtle twists and bits than I normally would be include toward. No one has ever accused me of being a very subtle writer, so perhaps binge-watching The Twilight Zone will help change that.

If you want to buy me something for Christmas or my birthday or just for the heck of it, might I suggest Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Twilight Zone: A Fifth-Dimension Guide to Life by Mark Dawidziak? I heard the author interviewed on a podcast I regularly listen to and this sounds like a fun book.

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A couple of administrative notes:

1. As you know, I no longer cross-post to Livejournal. Now, I cross-post to Dreamwidth, where my username is underpope2.
2. I’ve applied a new theme to my blog. What do you think? Is it pretty? Ugly? Pretty ugly? I think it needs some tweaks.
3. Finally, I’ve moved some of the free stories off my writing page and onto their own page at My Monstrous Universe. Enjoy!

 

Mirrored from Richard S. Crawford.

I’m currently working on several different projects.  Some are brand new, some are just revisions of older projects.  And here they are, in no particular order:

1. Fred, Again.  This is the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo this past year.  I’m still revising it.  I’ve been talking to a woman I know who’s a retired police officer and picking her brain for information such as how crim scene investigations are conducted.  I’m trying not to get myself stuck in Revision Hell, but progress is still slow.
2. “Indications”.  A story I wrote a few years ago which I thought was finished, though  recent comments from editors I’ve submitted it to suggest otherwise.  So, I’m putting some more polish on this one.
3. “Burying Uncle Albert”.  I wrote this story about three years ago, and I’m still finalizing it.  I like it so far, but there’s a serious tone shift in the middle of the story that I need to fix.  My question is how I want to handle it; do I want to make the first half more serious, or the second half more funny?
4. “Tumbleweeds”.  A short story I wrote a couple of weeks ago.  This one just needs a few final touches before I feel comfortable sending it out.

My biggest time sink right now, though, is the rewrte of a short story I wrote a year or so ago called “Hollow”.  This one is particularly challenging because the main character is a young Hispanic woman, and I don’t resemble a Chicana by any stretch of the imagination, not even when I shave.  So I’ve been reading blogs written by such women, checking out some forums, and reading books.  What I really need to do is find a Chicana who can act as a sort of collaborator on this story; who can say, “Uh, no, you racist nitwit, she’d never say something like that.”  I’ve been stressing a lot about that.

What I haven’t been stressing about, though, is the fact that her husband is Irish American; and at last night’s writers’ group meeting, my ignorance of other cultures showed up most prominently there.  I’d been operating under the assumption that Irish American culture is pretty much like most European-American culture, which is pretty much like the culture I came from.  Imagine my shock when my fellow writer M. pointed out that the slang word I had used — “plonker” — is not a word that this guy would have used at all (she has authority on this, being married to an Irish man and having spent some time in Ireland herself).  Now, I admit I was lazy; I just looked up a website of Irish slang, and didn’t bother checking on how current any of that slang was.

I guess that should be a lesson to me and any other writer who chooses to create characters of different cultures and societies.  You can grab words and broad elements of the culture from popular impressions or through cursory research, but it’s the subtleties that will come back to bite you.  A European writer writing about a modern American culture might mention that their character likes to grill with charcoal, for example, and completely miss out on the entire conflict within that BBQ’ing subculture over the value of charcoal vs. gas for cooking (I’m a charcoal man, myself).  Such subtleties may not figure into the story at all, but if the character gets involved in some sort of grilling contest, then our European writer had been know these kinds of subtleties.

Characters have a life of their own.  At first I thought I could avoid these issues by simply making Francesca a white woman and her husband a regular American guy, but neither of them would budge on this issue.  I figure I’m stuck.

Stories frequently take on lives of their own as well.   I wrote “Hollow” almost a year ago, figuring on it being part of one “universe” of stories.  I knew I had to rewrite it, though, but it wasn’t until I realized it was more properly a “Mollyverse” story that I began to know what to do with it.  And last week, I discovered that the story was starting to take on a new title; I’d recently started reading Veinte Poemas de Amor, Pablo Neruda’s collection of love poems.  The first poem in that volume is “Cuerpo de Mujer”, which means “Body of a Woman”.  And because of the nature of the story and the identity of the main character, this title feels a lot more natural to me.

The story will get written.  I’m excited about it.

In other news, I recevied a rejection notice today from the magazine I’d sent “Joe’s Salvation” to.  They were happy with the work, I think, and almost apologetic that they couldn’t take the story, but they did ask for more contributions.  That, at least, makes me feel less pained about the rejection.

Mirrored from Richard S. Crawford's World.

Because I’m a narcissist, I decided to Google my own name this afternoon, and I came across a review of Issue #1 of Shimmer, which included my short story, “An Interrupted Nap”. The review, published on the Tangent Online website, is here.

The section on “An Interrupted Nap” reads, in part:

Crawford writes with a certain ease, showing a world where the strange is considered normal, and things like the Rapture are events to ready for.

which kind of echoes comments I’ve heard made on my stories before.

That sort of gives me a happy.

Mirrored from Richard S. Crawford's World.

Over the weekend, Checkers spent most of her time lurking in one spot or another in the library; for a couple of full days, her favorite spot was behind the books on the bottom shelf of one of the bookcases. I took to calling her the Lurker in the Library, which appealed to the Lovecraft fan in me. However, she started doing much better yesterday, to the point where she was relaxed enough to come out for Jennifer when she came into the room, and to sit and actually play with us for a bit when we dangled string in front of her and gave her skritches on her head. She also purrs loudly and is interacting with us more. She prefers Jennifer’s company to mine, but I think she’ll loosen up more over the next few days.

Most of the other cats still don’t care. Tangerine’s more interested in Checkers’s food. Azzie likes to hang out in the kitty carrier that we brought Checkers home in. Rosemary coudn’t care less about the presence of another tortoiseshell in the house. We don’t know how Zucchini feels, and probably never will. Sebastian, however, finally got around to expressing his outrage with hissing and yowling, and Checkers hissed back at him. We’re still keeping her isolated, so we won’t have to police that situation for awhile.

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This past weekend was DunDraCon. I meant to go on Saturday and Sunday, but Saturday I ended up sleeping until 2:00 in the afternoon, at which point I just kind of figured there wasn’t any point, so I spent the rest of the day at home. Sunday, after Sunday School (third session of the Da Vinci Code class), I drove down so I could spend a few hours there. I hung out with K. until he needed to get set up for his game, then went to the open game room and played a few games with C. and some other random person he had met. After that, went to K.’s Galactic Champions game. It was already full up with players, so I didn’t get to play, but I did get to assume the role of the over-the-top supervillain for a bit, and that was quite fun. K. is an outstanding GM; if gaming were a profession like law or medicine, he would be among the most respected practitioners. Alas, it is not.Oh, I also made a few purchases; the 6th Edition of Call of Cthulhu (and I’m still planning on running a game someday); the new color edition of Give Me the Brain (I’m kind of disappointed that it’s a full-color glossy card game now, instead of the cheesy card-stock black-and-white Cheap Ass format that it has been in the past); and Cheap Ass Games’s Kill Doctor Lucky. I also got a T-shirt which reads, “Innsmouth Emergency Medical Services”, which is funny to me at least (see the image below).

So, all in all, a pretty decent time at the con. I wish I’d gotten to spend some more time there, since I have a pile of games that I enjoy but that I never get to play (the other two games in the McFries trilogy, for example, as well as ChronoNauts, Burn Rate, Cthulhu 500, and others). Perhaps next year.

Mirrored from Richard S. Crawford's World.

Way back when, I used to work for the Labor Relations unit of a large public University, dealing with unions and management. It’s always fun to tell people that I kept a leash on the unions and got to see the dark underbelly of the University at work, but in truth I was just basically a secretary who kept the grievance process rolling along (well, I did get to see the University’s dark underbelly). I’m not the most detail-oriented person in the world, and this was a job that required a lot of attention to detail. I spent three years at that job, getting more and more frustrated. I liked my bosses and my co-workers, but I wasn’t a good fit for the job and I was stymied in my attempts to get my web development career moving.

At one point toward the end of my tenure there, the unit head noticed that I was — well, dissatisfied, shall we say. He suggested that for my sanity, and for the sanity of everyone else in the department, I might want to take a week’s vacation or face some disciplinary action. I’m pretty grateful that he offered the choice, because he didn’t have to, and it did give me some very badly needed cooling off time. And during that week, I interviewed for and got a job as a paid web developer with another department at the University. I got back to Labor Relations after the week was up, and promptly told the unit head that I was taking a job offer elsewhere. He congratulated me, but I also know that he was disappointed that I was leaving, even though we all knew it was the best thing. As I said, I liked the people I worked for and with, but not the job itself.

Anyway, long story short: since then I’ve worked doing paid web development for Communications Resources, went on to the private sector for awhile before being laid off, went back to the University as a temporary employee doing clerical work, went back to the private sector traveling the state teaching welfare workers and recipients how to use the new benefits distribution system, and then came back to the University doing full time web development in Linux, PHP, and a bunch of other open source tools.

Er. Okay, on to the main point.

The building where I work now, in downtown Sacramento, is a four-story building. Our office is on the second floor. The ground floor has a few small businesses, but the building is mostly empty classrooms that the University uses for various teaching programs or meetings. And this week, there are labor negotiations going on just a couple of classrooms away from our office.  And representing the University are my old bosses from Labor Relations.  It was kind of interesting to see them wandering around the building, and I went up to them and had a pretty good conversation.  We chatted a little about old times, and about where we’re all at now.  I told the unit head what I’m doing now, and he approved, saying he was glad I was doing what I enjoy.  We didn’t get to chat long because they had to get to the negotiations and I had to get to my desk, but those few minutes were enjoyable.

It’s been almost six years since I worked in Labor Relations doing grievance administration, and I honestly don’t miss it at all.  I know that I’m very lucky to be where I am now; I enjoy my job, I’m good at it, and I have fun at it (PHP and open source development are hobbies of mine; secondary to the writing, of course).  The guys in that department were good folk, and I’m glad I got to work with them.

There’s no way in hell, though, that I would ever even think about going back.

Mirrored from Richard S. Crawford's World.

Edited 19 July 2006: It seems that this particular page on my site gets four or five hits a day from people looking for information about costal chondritis (or variants thereof). I’m quite glad to be getting the attention, of course, but it’s kind of funny because I put so much effort into the rest of my site. Well, at least some good is coming out of this.

I understand the frustration of looking for information about this condition. I found nothing at WebMD, which is my personal favorite medical site, nor at WikiPedia, which is my favorite reference site (a search there for “costal chondritis” brings up “Tietze’s Syndrome”, which I’m not sure is the same thing). I guess that the best I can say is, talk to your doctor. Ice, heat, and non-steroidal anti-inflammatories seem to work for me (but please don’t think this is medical advice), though my doctor now recommends against stretching the affected area.

And six months after I wrote this original entry, I still suffer from costal chondritis. I think it’s primarily because I haven’t been free of asthmatic symptoms long enough during that period of time to really give the muscles and cartilege a chance to recover. On the plus side, since the pain’s been there, at a constant level, for so long, I can now be positive that it isn’t anything more serious.

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I saw the same doctor today, and he looked at the results of the X-ray, listened to my symptoms, and did a couple of quick prods on my rib cage — “Does it hurt when I press down on your rib cage with 8,000 psi of pressure?” — and so on. And said Yep, very likely costal chondritis. But just to be sure, I get to go in for a bone scan this week, just to make sure there’s nothing there.

Because I am what I am, I naturally brought up the notion of cancer.

The doctor scoffed and told me that the odds of this being cancer are practically nil.

Anyway. So he explained costal chondritis more thoroughly this time, and I paid more attention. The “costal” part of the term refers to the ribs; you know, the bones that protect your heart and lungs and such. The ribs have cartilage between them to make sure they don’t rub together and damage each other. Between the bone and the rib is a joint; and it’s this joint which is out of whack. So, the cartilage is actually slipping because of the inflammation. Because this is happening, the smooth muscles surrounding the ribs — the intercostal muscles, a term I remember from the physiology classes I took in college — end up working harder to keep everything in place. But because this is not the sort of work the intercostal muscles are supposed to be doing, they wear out quickly and start to spasm. Pain ensues.

So, costal chondritis not only involves the inflammation along the costal/chondral joints, it also involves spasms of the intercostal muscles. The affected area could be just the bottom of your rib cage, or could extend all the way down the intercostal muscles and their associated muscles; from the collarbone, in other words, to just about the small of your back. That’s the affected area for me, though mostly it hurts at the bottom of my rib cage on my left flank.

The doctor believes this may have all started when I pulled a muscle in my back last August, and been exacerbated by a series of upper respiratory infections. This last cold, with all the coughing and the sneezing I had, probably just brought about the huge flareup I’m having now. There isn’t much I can do about it, though; take big doses of Iburprofin for a couple of weeks and see how it goes (in addition to the icing and the stretching), and if that doesn’t work, take a more aggressive approach. The doctor doesn’t like people to take anti-inflammatories if they can help it, but agrees that it’s time for that approach for me.

What it all boils down to, he explained, is normal wear and tear on the body, and it’s all probably exacerbated by the lifetime of asthma that I’ve had. Fortunately, I still have my pain management techniques that the neurologist taught me almost two years ago when I was dealing with my headaches, so I’ll break out that CD and see if I can get going on that again.

In other words: ouch. Frikkin’ ouch.

But other stuff is looking up. I’ve read through about four chapters of Fred Again and taken a lot of notes (including the huge, glaring, painful chronology issue right in chapter 2). And because I got a telescope for my birthday I’ve been listening to a lot of astronomy related podcasts, which are giving me ideas for the novel. 70% of the matter in the universe is dark matter, and no one knows what dark matter is. Except, of course, you and I know that it’s really just the ill will of Nyarlathotep and Azathoth that keep the universe together, right?

Mirrored from Richard S. Crawford's World.