A new blog for thatjeffcarter

All right.

So thatjeffcarter, during the one of the craziest times in his annual calander decided to attempt the NaNoWriMo challenge (http://www.nanowrimo.org ) - to write a 50,000 word novel during the 30 days of November.

He's been writing things for most of his life - sermons for the sunday service, essays, rants, screeds, poems, screenplays, flash-fiction, short stories, stage-plays, etc... but he'd never attempted to write a novel.

So he gave it a shot.

He hammered out an average of 1,667 words every day (well, late into the night and early morning, really) and by November 30th he had a novel all ready to be wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid in a manger.

He knows that it's not a great novel. But it is a completed novel. And that's something he's pretty proud of right now.

The novel (Desolation -by Jeff Carter) has been put away for the time being. Thatjeffcarter will probably pull it out from the drawer where it is currently hiding, some time in January to see if he can edit into something better.

In other writing news,

In October thatjeffcarter submitted a few poems to a magazine for consideration. Just the other day he received thier reply. It was a "No." But it was a very kind "No" The editors liked the poems very much, but they just weren't right for the publication at this time.

And just to keep the writing going, he's started drafting a "creature story" which is sure to include all sorts of gruesome gore.

He's not been painting much - not since October - but several of his paintings have been put on display at the hospital. Yes. In this little town we look at fine art as we're wheeled into the Emergency Room.

And now thatjeffcarter is tired of writing about himself in the third person. So he'll stop here. But before he goes, he'll leave a small excerpt from his novel:

In the murky distance of his unconsciousness he could hear a wheezing calliope playing a frantic Slavic sounding waltz in a minor key. Then the darkness was illuminated. Light bulbs, wired between angled wooden posts, flickered on and off and on again around the red and yellow striped canvas panels of an enormous circus tent, large enough, it seemed, to contain the entire world. He could see the pale and vague faces of a vast audience seated in stacked rows around the perimeter of the tent. Their dark hollowed eyes were set deep into their white faces. They stared into the center of the tent without emotion.

Circus performers in flamboyant costumes, all glittery sequins and floating feathers and riotous Technicolor patterns, filed in from the edges of the tent. They arranged themselves in two rows in front of the audience before making a slow deliberate bow. The audience responded with a smatter of disinterested applause and whispers. When the performers had righted themselves, they were joined in the ring by a company of white and blue suited sailors. The mixed group paired off into couples and began dancing to the waltz; the bell-bottomed sailors with the acrobats and clowns and circus freaks. They whirled each other around beneath the lights of the center ring. Clouds of sawdust flew up from their footwork. Around and around they spun, lurching to the odd metered rhythms played by the wheezing pipe organ.

As Snodgrass watched them he became aware of a voice or voices, many voices chanting."Comme nous voyons, comme nous voyons que l'homme ou la femme, sans la graine à la fois, ne peut générer, ne peut générer, de la même manière que notre homme, Sol, Sol et sa femme, Sol et sa femme, Luna, ne peut concevoir."

The dancing trapeze artists, sword swallowers, lion tamers and their mustachioed sailor dance partners reached the end of the waltz and bowed to their partners and then, lifting their clasped hands into the air, they bowed once more to the audience. This time there was no applause from the crowd. The dancers then exited the ring into the dark shadowy regions at the edge of the tent. The waltz music faded away as they exited, but the chanting continued and grew louder even; it’s pulsing rhythms more insistent. “Sol, Sol et sa femme, Sol et sa femme, Luna, ne peut concevoir.”

Black and red robed persons began filling into the ring. Their faces were hidden beneath the deep cowls of their robes. After a slow counterclockwise parade three times around the circle they knelt down on their knees, their faces in the sawdust and dirt and their arms stretched out in front of them. They ceased their chanting. The tent was filled with a threatening and stifling silence, a cancerous silence. The pale faces of the audience withered and faded away like wisps of vapor or smoke. Snodgrass was left alone as an observer of the mysterious rite being performed beneath the big top.

Then from the top of the tent, from the sudden blackness and black pall of nothing at all, descended a grotesque statue; a foul idol carved from finely grained grey and black basalt volcanic rock. It figured a hairy priapismic satyr with one hand aloft in a blessing gesture, and the other fondling his beastly genitalia. The heathen idol, suspended by creaking and groaning cables, settled slowly to the sawdust covered ground in front of the robed supplicants, who bowed and prayed to this, their pagan god, now lit with garish neon lights, red, green, and purple.

The idol’s stone mouth opened with a harsh stone on stone grinding noise and from the inky black depths of its cavernous maw came a gurgling voice that echoed inside the tent and inside his reeling mind, “YOU BELONG TO ME!”