Saturday, March 17, 2012

People are Books; Also: Meet Seven

We’re all story-shaped.  Parts of our lives may not have convenient endings or neat chapters to close out phases of our existence.  Interactions between friends or lovers, enemies or family may never have the proper conclusions scripted in television and movies and books.   

Reflect on the pages of your life.  Reread them.  Re-dream them.  But never forget: your life is all story.  We are books.  We open parts of ourselves to people we like; we allow the world to read us as we read back.  We can be closed books, too.  And while we’re all being books, we have to remember we’re also all writers.  Every interaction, every encounter writes and marks the pages of our lives… 
Which brings me to the subject of my first novel, Tetragrammar’s protagonist. 

Meet Seven.  Not the number, per se, but the man made of words and ink.  The man I, in theory, bled through pens and pencils into life.
Seven’s a writer, a story, a book.  As much as I plotted his life, he in turn plotted mine.  I may have compulsively typed at my laptop, but it was his voice, his life that drove me to do it.  Who is Seven? 

Seven is the guy you’ll find in book stores and coffee shops and libraries.  He’ll be alone with a table of notebooks and pens.  His hair is the black of spilt ink.  He looks somewhat unhinged, as if he never woke from a dream, and never learned how to iron his clothes.  He smells like office supplies and paper and newly released books.  As I said, he’s a writer like me.  And he practices yoga…like me. 
Seven, like me, is obsessed with fiction and to counter this craze, he embraces activities like meditation, martial arts and yoga.  They ground him; they keep him sane (almost).  

Unlike me, Seven has no memory.  Amnesia provides him the writer’s dream for he can craft any fiction on the blank template of his past. 
And although his creativity is limitless, he lacks the imagination to write himself out of his own plot-holes.  A doomed romance.  A botched marriage proposal.  Writer’s block.  An angry muse.  Rival Authors plotting against him within the Moon.  An addiction to write the perfect novel.    And let’s not forget, he’s got a special word (the Tetragram) tuned to the true name of God withering in his mind. 

Come get to know Seven as the Parliament of Pens continues this weekly (for now) blog.  Continue to check out blurbs and insights into the concepts and cast of Tetragrammar, which are perhaps as real as you and I.  Seven may tell you his secrets.  He’s already told me and I still feel there’s more lurking in his fictional body than I’ll ever know.  But I know this: Seven, like me, fears snakes, hates black olives, loves mythology and Thai food.  Unlike me, Seven is taller, with cooler hair, and for that, I will never forgive him.      

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Something like an Intro

Why did I write a book?  I obviously wanted to torture myself with many sleepless nights ramming my head against a wall as I tried to constantly shape and reshape people and concepts into a story people would read.  But I also loved diving into a story-shaped black-hole that I didn’t quite know how to fill but knew it needed filling. 
Why write a book?  Simple.  Too many characters were screaming to break out of my head.  And the only way to free a fictional person (at least the only way I’m used to) is to write them into existence; a birth which usually occurs on something white, like paper or word documents.   After a million revisions, my first novel Tetragrammar is complete.   
It was a painful journey, frustrating, enraging, but entirely worth it.  In the end, my characters Seven and Fable, Father Notion and The Authors, and all the Dynasties have danced the script I wrote for them.  (And many times, I don’t doubt I played puppet as they wrote themselves.) 
Why write a book?  I guess I did it for my protagonist, this guy named Seven, who’s also a writer/yoga guy like me. 
Now I sit back with a heavy sigh as a book-shaped burden lifts from my shoulders. 
I’ve written something.  Relax, right. 
As exciting it was to complete Tetragrammar, I’m equally happy to be done with it.  For now.  Now I’m left in shaky terrain of literary agent searches, query letters, and all those powers-that-be that will break my first novel into the Realms-of-Published. 
How to achieve this…Well, a blog.  I don’t know much about blogging, except it involves writing and social networking.  It’s been 2012 for two whole months, and so many people have taken to blogging for quite some time (except me).  It’s as good a time for me to join modern man and blog away.
I have several intentions for this blog.  One: namely promote my novel Tetragrammar.  Two: build interest in my future novels (there will be more; the insanity of story-building has already started).  And three: connect with those kindred spirits who are drawn to activities like yoga, meditation and martial arts; or for those inclined to open books and read stories that people like you and I make up; or for those who also write; or for all others who indulge in comic books and graphic novels.  And then if none of those things interest you and you so happen to follow the name Tetragrammar or Parliament of Pens during some random night of Google searching:  Welcome, too.