12-3-12

I am up to nearly 40k words on my first draft. Tough going right now. I'm working on a "date" scene between "Wendell" my romantic interest and "Sara" my protagonist. Wendell is a commissioner for the poor who is knocked over by Sara. Sara wants to influence Wendell on making the county farm where she has taken refuge more like a home, rather than an institution. The date is ending badly, something I hadn't consciously meant to do. So do I rework the scene or just go with it? Like Wendell, I'm a little perplexed on what to do.

Anyway, I'm closing in on my mid-point crisis. In two days, storywise, it will be 4-14-35. This is "Black Sunday." On that day the worst dust storm in history took place. And, yes, Sara will be outside looking for spring flowers when what looks like the end of the world is approaching.

I should back up and talk about what this story is (and is not).

After trying to make a horror story/movie after seeing this derelict old building we gave up. We were just going in too many directions with it. The magic of talking about it just disappeared the next day. I took the air out of the room (hard to do since wewere outside) by suggesting that the real horror story was what really happened behind those walls.

We never got back to envisioning our horror movie.  But I did come up with something for a "gag reel." if we ever did an amateur comcorder kind of thing.

First of all we envision a shot of the poorhouse as it stands today.  A group of teen age kids pull up in a hot car and two tough looking boys and two "hot" girls get out and talk about how creepy the place looked. They jeer the ghosts to come out. And they throw beer bottles at the old building. Then they jump into their car and leave. The camera stays steady on the old imposing building. A wind comes up and it gradually morphs into what it was like in its prime.

Our creepy story takes place where our characters gets picked off one by one in the grand tradition of cheep, sleazy, B grade horror. Of course. No survivors. The story ends. Or does it. As the credits roll. The gag reel starts to the side.

The old creepy poorhouse morphs back into its present day form. We cut to our beloved teen aged vandals. One of the tough boys left a bottle of whisky, or whatever, back there. They return to the old building and our tough guy driver retreives the bottle. Then he makes his, and theirs, fatal mistake.

He decides to challenge the house by relieving himself against the open front door frame.

Slowly the character in our movie, now in full dead make up, come trudging out of the old house. The tough boy is the first casualty. The rest of the kids are screaming and frantically looking for the car keys. One of the cute girls jumps out the car. She is caughn t and dispatched by our zombie characters in grand fashion. The other kids try to bolt, but all are caught by the surrounding zombies.

The scene ends by our story characters, now zombies, munching happily away on high protein snacks. Spam in a can was never this much fun.

I sent this to David and Lori a few days after we talked about "Poor Farm" the horror movie. She said she burned a pan of cookies reading the e mail.

The idea of a realistic story, an honest to God historical novel, kept pestering me. So I started making up characters and what if situations. I even came up with a "Poor Farm; the Musical" synopsis for a community theater.

The musical involved my zombie characters, only this time they are ghosts. There is one living character left. He, and the ghosts, are trying to save the old derelict poorhouse from being turned into a casino. More about that next time.