#34
June 23, 2003
From: Lindsey Main, beanmain@yahoo.com

This one is for everyone here... And for the occasion, I've brought a huge punchbowl of lime jello (it's spiked). However, there's a catch: There is only one spoon. Otherwise, it wouldn't be communal. I did bring a package of plastic spoons for the seriously cootie conscious. But I must say that it's not as fun that way.

I was just wondering what everyone thought about the rumored cover change for the 2004 paperback SOLITAIRE.

I like the cover the way it is, but something about it has always (well, since the day I picked it up) reminded me of Tori Amos. I think it's the little open square. There's nothing wrong with Tori Amos (two words: Kate Bush. I'm being cursed by a Tori fan right now, I'm sure). Has anyone else felt that way about it?

Perhaps it wouldn't look so "Tori" if half of her face was being pulled away...like the painting (the one that was in the style of Munch's, The Scream) in Solitaire. Or, if half of her face was white with a black smudge for an eye...like the other painting. I think it will be interesting to see what changes, if any, are made in the cover.

In the 3rd grade, my mom got rid of cable. I got in trouble at school for drawing inappropriate Halloween scenes. It was an art project—we had to cut out a haunted house. This was done with black construction paper. Then we had to paste it onto Manila paper. The houses had windows with shutters. In each window, we had to draw something scary... for Halloween. While everyone else had pumkins, bats and witches behind their shutters, I had a severed head on a platter, a blood stained crucifix on a blood spattered mattress, a hand clenching a bloody machete, etc., etc.... My brother, who is seven yrs. older than me, let me watch the movies he and his friends watched. We didn't even get the movie channels, but everyone knew that if you undid the cable box and stuck a pin in a strategic location, you'd get them. So, I saw "Friday the 13th", "Halloween", "The Exorcist", "Heavy Metal", "The Wall", "Trilogy of Terror"... you name it. Needless to say, I had a different idea of "scary". And maybe, for more personal reasons than I thought, I'd like to see a more dramatic cover (minus all the blood, of course)—something in the style of Estar.

Anyway, that is all.

Lindsey

I've just recently seen the new cover and it rocks. I think you will not be disappointed. It's fantastic, I love it, and it's very different from the current cover. It's by Archie Ferguson, an artist and designer who works for Knopf and has designed a truckload of wonderful covers including William Gibson's Pattern Recognition. Click on the thumbnail to see a larger image.

This new Solitaire cover could have come out of Estar's brain, for sure. I will be interested to hear what people think of it. As soon as my editor gives me the okay, I'll post it.

I'm feeling quite fortunate. I've had two great covers with very different images—two chances to reach different audiences.

The Scariest Movies In The World for me have been Alien, Jaws, and The Haunting Of Hill House (the original, not the silly remake). Anyone who enjoys great writing and has never read The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, yikes, do yourself a favor. She wrote beautifully. Other scary novel favorites: Ghost Story by Peter Straub, The Shining by Stephen King. It's always a treat when a writer is good enough to tell a frightening story without having to serve up a buffet of body parts. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or any other of the million billion Grade-B horror movies or novels running loose in the world just don't do it for me. Graphic violence is no substitute for good writing or good storytelling. I wrote about this in the introduction to "Somewhere Down the Diamondback Road," so in the interests of not repeating myself I will stop here.

#33
June 23, 2003
From: Lindsey Main, beanmain@yahoo.com

Thanks for the round! It's great that you had so much fun at your reunion. I didn't go to my 5th or my 10th. As much as I loved my school, I couldn't wait to leave. A girl I had a crush on found out about it and the last six months of senior year were a bit unpleasant. I don't know what I ever saw in that girl. She wasn't a nice person to begin with. And I ate pickled herring for her!

I'm so happy that you're curious about the project. I don't get to discuss it much with my friends because they're not really into it. They don't understand why I get so excited over something as simple as diffusion spray.

I get what you mean about process. I think that a year and a half ago, we had some "bad process". Each of us had a specific need that wasn't being met. But we didn't communicate our needs. And that led to a lot of frustration. Then Alx (how he spells it), wanted to hurry up and film. I didn't see the point in rushing, especially since the characters weren't fully developed. And Rich was a "Silent Bob" of sorts.

Now, things are different. We have a master plan. So, when stupid shit pops up (and it has), we work through it more efficiently.

Wayfarer 1 is a full length digital film. But, we have to film it in parts because we don't have a lot of money. We refer to each part as an episode (ie. Wayfarer 1: The Search for Devil's Tower). Even then, the "episode" is broken down...to a 15min. short. We hope to put one out every 3 months, but we'll be happy with one every six. And we'll be even happier if we can create a little underground buzz.

That being said, our first short is almost finished. We have to re-shoot the first two scenes and the last scene. Then Alx will compose the soundtrack (he was in a band once upon a time...big in Germany and Japan). We borrowed music from The Matrix, Aliens, Sneakers, etc. for our "in house" copy. It will be a few months before we pass it out to people at the sci-fi convention. Oh, and the Renaissance fair. Then we're going to set up a website where everyone can watch it if they want to.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote five new scenes and made up two new characters (Agent Savage and Agent Tallent. They're the elite members of the Recovery Team. And they just so happen to be remote viewers). Now, I do believe what you said about good process, but I have to tell you that there's nothing like a good sign to go along with it. I was on the phone with Alx, discussing my idea and explaining why I thought Nate (lead female) should refer to Savage and Tallent as "the Swanns" (after Ingo Swann)—I got a call waiting beep. Normally, I'd ignore it. But for some reason, I clicked over. It was my neighbor from across the street. "Lindsey, you have to come outside! There's a swan in my front yard!" I had just said, "swann" to Alx and now there's a swan. I'm not embarrassed to say that I took it as a sign.

Anyway, one of the ideas I came up with has something to do with a response you gave here in the pub. Our main characters work for Mr. Timm. He's the head of the spy ring, but no one actually sees him. His spy ring is called, "the gameboard". There are two kinds of spies and they are called, "players". Then we have our tactical remotes and recoverers. And then there's Mr. Timm's right hand woman. She runs the show from behind the scenes. One day, I was thinking, where the hell are these people operating from? Then I came up with the idea of EXALISSE... a company that manufactures boardgames and trading cards. It's a front, obviously. And it makes sense. That's not stealing anything, right? I hope not because it's so perfect.

Until July, that's pretty much it for Wayfarer 1. In the meantime, I have to grow some hair. Right now, I have what I like to call a "feminine fade"... it's what I have to tell the hairdresser to keep her from squaring off the back of my head. I'll be playing Tallent. She's going to have a "dragonballZ" kind of thing going on. Oh, Wayfarer 1 is our spaceship. I don't think I mentioned that. And yes, it's a really cool set. We built it ourselves.

Just one more thing... I liked your response to that question about what you hoped to accomplish in the next 25 years. I think all of it is possible. Even the U2 thing. Screenwriting, once you have a vision, is pretty easy (somebody probably wants to shoot me for that). And it's even easier if you have Final Draft software. It's the rules that are tricky sometimes. But we're not sending our script to anyone (though we are getting a copyright), so I've broken quite a few of them. Our actors are not professionally trained, so I use more description than what is allowed, in hopes that it will get them to that place. If that makes sense.

Well, take care.

Lindsey

Oh, yeah! What was that 4th grade teacher like???

Well, this all sounds pretty cool and I hope it's working out, although I'm trying to imagine where one builds a spaceship set without upsetting the neighbors. If you will let me know when your website is live, I'll be happy to link to it. And if your superspies want to use a games company as a front, more power to them: it's certainly a chaotic enough business to hide any amount of ulterior motive or general wackiness.

My 4th grade history teacher was a mean and angry woman. She also seemed, even to my nine-year-old self, sad and lonely and confused by a world that had backwashed her into a dead-end situation. In the 1960s it was hard for suddenly-divorced or widowed women in their forties and fifties to find lucrative, soul-satisfying ways of taking care of themselves. My grammar school was a place where some of them ended up. Some of my teachers were there because they loved their work, and they made a huge impact on me. But some of them were there because they lived in small windowless apartments and made daily choices between the electricity bill and the new timing belt for the car. And they'd never even heard of a timing belt before, because their men had always handled that, and maybe the car mechanic was bullshitting them about the whole thing. How to know? They didn't have college degrees or special skills or even much practice at mapping out a life, and they understood that there weren't many options for them. Those people had a huge impact on me too.

Anyway, long story short: my history teacher disliked me intensely. Maybe she didn't like any of us, I'm not sure, but I'm positive about me. One day I was in the girls' bathroom alone. I had tooth that was just loosening, but not nearly ready to come out—just at the point where it moved slightly and bled a little if I poked it with my tongue or finger, which of course I was doing all the time. This teacher came into the bathroom and found me in front of the mirror with my mouth open, poking. So she took some dental floss out of her purse, pinned me in a corner while she wrapped it around my tooth, tied the other end around the doorknob, and slammed the door. It hurt, it bled, it scared me, I cried, and she was happy. She may have been a nice person in some other areas of her life, but that day she was a pig.