Why the Teacher(s)?

Happy 2019!

I tend to have a lot of educator characters (main and minor) in my slice-of-life comics and I wondered about that. 

And then it occurred to me: While reading "Archie", I was often curious about teacher, Miss Grundy, and the school principal, Mr. Weatherbee. 

What did they do after school? Did they like each other? What kind of families did they have or come from? What were their hobbies? 

As the child of a schoolteacher, I knew that teachers didn't live at the school but had homes like everybody else. Also, why were story teachers always old?

These sorts of questions drove me crazy as a kid. I also had to stop a lot of stupid rumors among my fellow elementary school classmates.

No, teachers didn't live at the school. They didn't sleep under their desks.
No, teachers had families and kids.
They do have spouses.
And teachers had nothing to do with the cafeteria food menu.
That's why they often bring their own lunches.
And no, teachers didn't give out homework to torment us.
Oftentimes, they had to answer to a higher authority, such as the school administrators and school boards.

Why did I only see a scratching of the surface on these musings when I watched those Hollywood films about a teacher going into a ghetto neighborhood to 'save the children'? What about the teachers who already lived there? Didn't they have a say?

Family, friends, family friends, I was always surrounded by teachers. Why not tell the stories I overheard? Why not come up with my own?

Teachers have a life, let's all acknowledge that, shall we?

Story can be a challenge

I had a short story in mind but realized another story within the same world, yet dealing with a different cast, finally started to make sense. I also didn't want to force the characters of another story in the same series for the sake of meeting a themed submission guideline. That routine has hardly worked for me except in this year, when I crafted an article just for a journal and it was accepted! 

Mind you, this is 2017 and I've been trying to write professionally since 1996 with my first publication in 1999-2000!

Since this break in the semester, not only has the novel continued rolling around in my head as it should, but a solution came to a short story within the cat epic fantasy series! I've been on-again-off-again with a particular title within the collection and I realized it proved difficult to write another title because I needed the events of the title I'm STRUGGLING WITH NOW to happen!

EUREKA! Can you believe this? And now, that difficult story is almost writing itself! I'm still jotting down notes, swathes of exposition and setups. The story deals with one of my magic using characters who I believed for years to be a villain, or at best, an antihero. I couldn't be further from the truth! He's not only a nice and generous person, he's lovably sardonic and sarcastic! His sardonic personality was already fixed when he was originally 'conceived' but that was with a villainous character. With this more pleasant personality, my shero/heroine won't seem like such a masochist when she falls for him.

There have also been changes to his back story as well. Actually, I kept his origins but in the nascent conception, I had him move far from those trainings and how he was raised. I also had him a stranger to most of that background. Now I understand he couldn't possibly be who he is while disavowing his origins. He just wouldn't be that person! 

His back story also solves my reasons for the antagonistic relationship he has with another fellow magic user too! It's all making sense now. After HOW long? Sheesh... Well, 'til next time!

Author's Note in my journals

In many journals, when I need to take a step back and look at my writing with an objective eye, I will title 'Author's Note'.

Initially penning these feels completely self-indulgence. But when I don't read these 'notes' for a while, it's when I realize the gem of understanding about why I wrote it in the first place.

Here is an example. Written on July 27, 2011:
There are too many personal stories to be told. Everyone has a story to tell: a private history(lesson). This book may take 3 books, I'll see.
Look at that: I always said 'Stacey's Story' would be only one book, + I was right. If I only focused on her. But once I began revealing Slash's story too, then the floodgates opened, + everyone needed to tell their story.
-End of journal entry

How Does Your Reader Feel?

On the telephone with a family friend, she brought up something interesting:
She not only asked about characters as if they were real. My friend believed that my rate of progress (drafts that I'd shown her) was greater than how I felt about my output. What I saw as the tip of the iceberg, she viewed as a great deal and fascinating. It not only opened my eyes to what I was attempting to accomplish, but lifted a veil of discontent I had been feeling for weeks.
There is no excuse for it, the feeling of inadequacy a creator feels for the project. Is it because we as creative types strive to outdo our last job? Does this feeling help us to create better and hopefully stronger each time?

Earlier fans of my storytelling was my oldest niece. Or rather, she being younger, became an unwilling audience once my stories became tiresome.

School friends were my next readers, except I was known as the Artist, illustrating my tales first.
One summer in 1989 (I think), stuck in summer school for math and all of us watching "Summer School" vhs tape from the library, I completed a full comic story. I used notebook paper and my favorite writing pens at the time. I used highlighters for color. I used a copier machine, and then, passed the copies around (I think they were two) during class. I'd like to feel this helped me and my classmates get through the monotony. By the time the booklets were passed around, everybody had their opinions: the story was good but the ending was rushed, or they didn't like how the hero's problem was solved so coincidentally. These comments came from friends and foes alike. And though I was annoyed by the reactions at the time (so sue me! I was 12-14 years old), I learned how much I had to delay resolutions. There had to be delayed satisfaction and a solution (if any) solved organically.

Fast forward to a secretarial position with the public education district office, and another short story was published. With many of my tales and ideas, I use my latest obsessions or readymade knowledge. Mine at the time was the history of the Middle east. Always fascinated by the cultures that gave us astronomy, algebra and the number zero, I decided it was time I wrote another story within my 'Tabber the Red' series. These are standalone yet linked stories set on a feline world. Yet, unlike what I was reading and seeing on shelves, my cats were upright, wore clothing, had different cultures, religions, were separated by ethnic groups and/or nations. So much like our world but so different.

My story took place during the ancient world of the lynx people. There was a messianic figure and the prophecy that drew him and his followers. Adventures ensued and this was one such tale. When my editor learned I could draw, he insisted I illustrate my story. I drew a caracal (a lynx cousin that inhabits the deserts) character wearing a head covering. The story was published both online and in a trade paperback edition. When I told one of my coworkers, who had showed interest in my writing, a budget analyst, about how to easily obtain the story, she told me that I must never give a story away. She told me that when it was available in print, she would purchase it.
I belatedly realized my coworker was Muslim and began to wonder if she would take offense to my story.
Later, she exclaimed excitement to me about the story and its characters. She thought that the Middle Eastern flavor of the book was thrilling. Its dark fantastic undertones she brushed off as she was used to reading horror. I was elated and told her I was glad she enjoyed it. That coworker told me she would keep up with my stories from now on.

Again and again, there is validation to this lonely life. It never fails to excite me that such seclusion from living in one's head can still lead to touching others.

"Back to the meat grinder!"

The above is a favorite paraphrase from the youngest of my older brothers.

[It's from a 1959 war movie called "Pork Chop Hill" and the actual quote is said by a Chinese propagandist telling the American soldiers, "Welcome to the meat grinder!"]  

Now that all my assignments are done, for a few days, I found myself adrift... Ideas were bombarding me left and right, and I couldn't make heads or tails what to do with them. I was so confused. So far off the high of creating so many things, doing so much research and compiling things together that I couldn't focus or stand the creative process still taking its time with me.

Now, I am not saying that the Muses left me high and dry. The opposite! They continued to stay and whisper to me. The ideas came in dreams, in bursts and in gallons of fuel-edged visions I couldn't keep up with. Stories that I had not thought about in weeks or months, couldn't remember, was coming up with answers and solutions to some of the more difficult subplots and weirds ideas I would never, in a million years, have considered.

So that I don't bore you with the plethora (I love this word) of examples, I will say that the novel draft had not been left behind because of this. Moreso, there have been subplots I really did not want to delve into because they were just so hard to solve. But now, I have the impetus (a word from my grandma, RIP) to tackle the task of writing those scenes.

For practice in the coming months of further working on the story, I'm working on the various female voices, especially the main secondary characters. I don't want them all to sound the same, of course, and each is crucial to my main male character.

I put the name of the character on top of the page, and then I do two paragraphs: one when she is talking about herself, the other when she talks about 'Slash' Castellano.
It's a start, but this may unearth gold for future chapters that will help the body of the story.

And the Beat Goes On...

*Singing*...just like my love, everlasting!

Sorry, I've dated myself, but, that's a cool song. YouTube it!

Anywhoo, have been sick with the flu since last week. I'm still not fully recovered. Have this persistent cough, however, I was able to return to work just this week.
I am doing that graduate work and trying to work on the dog gangster novel. My mentor wants me to start from the beginning, which is difficult since I rarely start a story from the beginning! I know, that sounds cracked, but, the longer a narrative, the more I jump around, trying to find the meat of it.
I already did an awkward Chapter One, and a more fluid Chapter Two. Now, I'm working on Chapter Three, and it's a daunting task. Aargh!
I will get it together.

The Art of Plugging Away - A side note

I was told, in early writing exercises, that my voice was authentic.
Or, when I write my male gangsters, and how other male protagonists behave, there have been, so far, little to no complaints from the men who read my fiction.
Rarely have I changed a character's race, though the ethnicity proved trickier to determine. As the story progressed, the ethnicity would become resolved.

Notes from the sketchbook

The post topic is originally from my notes in sketchbook, but first, a bit of news...

The FIRST DRAFT IS FINISHED! IT'S DONE! FINITOOO!!

Now that I got that off my chest, the long haul to edit the second draft begins...
**********

Stacey and Slash may appear as an ordinary couple, I mean, they're both dogs, right?
However, remember what I am trying to state: they are interracial (one is Black and the other is Italian).

Nowadays, many interracial, inter-religious, as well as intercultural couples, are considered very common and everyday to many folks.

However, such pairings were highly unusual in the 1930s, and even quite dangerous for the pair involved!
There was once what were called 'Miscegenation Laws'.

State officials, as well as other authority figures, had taken it upon themselves to keep, not only their own race, 'pure', but made it unlawful for other types of interracial couplings: this meant NO Asian/Black, NO Black/Native American, NO Native American/Asian.

NO ONE, under penalty of law, could marry OUTSIDE their race.
Even if couples were legally married elsewhere, in certain states, such marriages were considered illegal.
Furthermore, children born in such unions were considered (I HATE this term when applied to people) 'illegitimate'!

During both of the characters' development, not only has each had to fight against society's ideas about who can develop a relationship with whom, but oftentimes, the person has had to fight cultural standards, expectations, and identities.

With Slash, he struggles with his ethnic group's ideas of masculinity as well as how he must behave.
This is both within the gang subculture he has spent much of his adult life, but also the broader, wider culture he originates from.

With Stacey, she struggles with her working life, and with a society that has historically hampered, impeded, and hemmed in Blacks.
Throughout the story, she is underestimated, ridiculed, and misrepresented, by a society's need to separate the black individual from the post-modern world.

"I'm SO sorry!"

"I'm SO sorry!" 1st draft

"I'm SO sorry!" final draft

Here are two renderings of the same scene. The chapter this scene originates has already been drafted. 

Here, Stacey Hankin is looking for her friend, 'Slash', who, after being left for dead, the young woman found help for him. 

When he's mostly recovered, he disappears, leaving his forwarding address with their mutual new friend.

Stacey goes looking for him, and finds him recovering in his family house.

However, when she is led to him, he's sleeping and wakes up shirtless. Stacey is embarrassed enough to quickly turn away, much to Gina Castellano's amusement.

Did more research in order to render the clothing on both women. Also, by Stacey's dress, it changes the day the scene originally took place. Now, I may make changes not only to the next draft, but also within the story. *Sigh* The life of a writer/artist.

Writing in Ethnicity - Art of Plugging Away

Now, because I'm working on this new short story, have I abandoned the dog historical drama?
Perish the thought!

I've spent the better part of over two years working on this story, and much of my life from 6th grade summer school trying to figure out how to write it!

Now that I have 13 filled journals and a stockpile of empty ones, as well as time and money put into purchasing a reference LIBRARY alone for this novel, there is NO WAY.

Just this week, an employee of mine asked, while we lunched together, if with this story, what kind of dog breeds I use for the different ethnic groups, and I remember a young friend asked a similar question.

The young friend feared that I, even using non-human characters, would settle into stereotypes.
Because societal viewpoints are constantly on my mind as a creative type, I often want to go against the grain.

I don't appreciate when others take the easy way. I strive to make stories that I know I would read, that I would prefer watching.

I assured my young friend then, and my employee this week, that I use not only breeds indigenous to a region/country/nation, but I work on creating an individual first.

Also, because it's New York, have numerous mix-bred dogs (I just love mutts! Both cats and dogs!).

Consequentially, history reveals that organized crime had people of many ethnicities working together for the common bad! Though the Italian mob is more widely known, serialized, idolized, satirized and mythologized, it was NOT the established mob of the U.S.

This distinction actually went to the Irish, who, when the exodus of Southern Italians came to American shores, ran up against a brick wall: the Irish, in earlier years, harassed, oppressed, and racially held back, had established themselves in parts of American society where other Americans, who were called 'Nativists' then, couldn't touch: in politics, the police, and an in-grained infrastructure within the underworld.

By the '30s, the ethnic groups who were controlling most of organized crime weren't just the Irish and the Italians. There were the Jews, the Germans, the Polish, and the Blacks!
There is much of what I assumed, that has fallen apart since I began this story anew. I hope to see it through and let it open eyes as it has opened mine.

What's the BIG Idea? Part 2

In my previous post, I continue to work on this particular storyline: about prophecy, lynxes, and caracals.
I wish to learn more, and therefore, I write more.

This cat series is where I feel at home, because it has been with me from the teenage years to my life now.

I may begin another blog with a different media to showcase the cat series as it involves a different set than the dog novel.

The cat epic fantasy is a series of short stories, and as it is NOT historical but fantastic, I have no background to go to, nor a foundation to read on, but have to build this world from the ground up. However, I find this refreshing to not be hindered by historical facts.

Do I create EVERYTHING myself? No. I still must research extensively, just not in the same way with the dog novel, which I must work within the framework of reality because there is no magic, no superhuman feats, or whimsy.
Simply put, folks trying to make it in a world crushed by the Great Depression...

Just a thought...

The more I watch the black-and-white gangster cinema, the more these films' atmospheric nature and aura matches the temperament of my novel..  I have been influenced by these classic gang movies.
The words I choose, as well as the tone of my story, derives from them.

'Slash' with little girl

"Slash with little girl" (c)

This is a darling picture, but without giving away the plot, I can tell you I outlined the above scene.

Miss Francis as a young girl (circa 1923)

"Miss Francis as a young girl" (c)

This is my gangster's secretary, at age 13 or 14, I believe.

Man, I just love that little gem I discovered online: "Children's Fashions 1900-1950".

Miss Francis is about to enter her apartment building. In the scene where this image comes from, she will encounter her future employer.

I am studying Hester Street, an area famous for being predominately Jewish, with immigrants from many Eastern-European countries.

Isabella Spinoli

"Isabella Spinoli" (c) by Carmen K. Welsh

Someone noted that this character reminds them of those "Rosie the Riveter" WWII posters, and it makes sense.
She is no stranger to hard work: as a young child, she labored in the factories during the 'Teens (circa 1913, 1914, and 1915).

Isabella is my gangster's childhood friend. They grew up on the same block. Because of Slash's reputation and lifestyle, she does not keep in touch. However, when the gangster shows up again to do him the favor of checking out his young pal, Stacey Hankin, Isabella feels a new affection for him that he trusted and thought enough about her to such an important task.

Character as a spotlight on society

As an artist, I'm a product of my society.

In the December 2011 post, I uploaded the latest picture on my female protagonist, Stacey Hankin.  As far back as this story goes, I always thought of a hound as her breed. I had already determined which kind back in elementary school.

"Stacey Hankin" (c)

When I posted this image, the response I received was, to paraphrase a close friend, "A hound! Why, out of all the dogs to choose, did you have to pick such an unattractive dog?" Later, the same friend told me the character was actually cuter than she expected.
I had, in early years, received similar responses, and therein lies the crux...

I've often admired the hound, for its hardiness, its stamina, and through a breeder's eyes, its history. The hound is one of the oldest dog breeds in the world.
There is a hound on almost every continent. The hound, oftentimes, without, or, with little human interference, has occurred naturally in many parts of human culture.

Now I come to the next point: in my story, though it is furry fiction, I still try to retain the elements of human society and construct. This means that while my story's cast consists entirely of dogs, they still try to represent the different races and ethnicities.

Stacey Hankin is my Black American woman, and if she were human, she would be very dark. Because of her darkness, she is ridiculed, not just from whites, but more so by blacks.

This theme features predominately in my story: this obsession in society to determine a person's worth and attractiveness by how light and dark they are. This plays out moreso in our so-called 'enlightened' or 'educated' society.

"Beatrice and her sisters" (c)

Many of us know about segregation, but by reading much history, one learns that laws once used race by determining how much mixture in an individual.
Amount of blood determined who one could marry, who one COULDN'T marry, to gain inheritance, to lose inheritance, and that laws were made to even decide who could or could not vote...

To witness archaic rules in motion nowadays, that to be of mix-raced in order to determine attractiveness, sickens me.

In the 21st Century, to still hear people asked if they are mixed to later be told they are beautiful is a clarion call to a change in society's attitudes.

We are responsible for our actions, we each make up the decisions that will fulfill our society's framework.
I'm hoping with this story, the stories I've published, and the stories yet to come, I will, in small part, make an impact to change these destructive ideas that continue to plague our society.

As a writer, as an artist, I have a responsibility to envision the world I wish to see, futures I may hope for.

We are the motes, the cogs, the molecules that make up society's cellular body.

What is your call to action? What will you do? What is your part?

How I came to Fantasy [Addendum]

herocomplex.latimes.com (c)

Unlike most writers who were brought to fantasy by way of Tolkien, I was only lucky enough to have seen the animated version of "The Hobbit" and "The Return of the King".

I am a late bloomer to Tolkien, having read him in my early twenties. Instead, those who brought me to fantasy in the way of wanting to write it has to go to Hans Christian Anderson, Aesop, and the Brothers Grimm, as well as various mythologies.

Actually, I can pinpoint wanting to write fantasy in 10th grade by way of Weis' and Hickman's "Death Gate Cycle" (Please read. Your mind will be blown at the 2nd-3rd book in this groundbreaking series).

ebookstore.sony.com (c)

Later, I fell in love with David Eddings'*(Please read my April 2021 Post titled 'Our Heroes Are Actually Monster) "Belgariad", further solidifying my resolve.

handeebks.mybigcommerce.com (c)

Science Fiction discovery

"Andre Norton" (c) Rudysbooks.com

NOTE: Originally written in June 25, 2002. Changes are in brackets.

(c) Herbsandheirlooms.com

SF discovered me in sixth grade with [Ms.] Andre Norton's "Warlock of the Witch World".










I later read the entire series of Bruce Coville's "My Teacher is an Alien". Man, I loved those books! It really opened my mind to what I liked about aliens!

"My Teacher is an Alien" series (c) Gizmodo.com

"Bruce Coville" (c) Stephen D. Cannerelli

Earlier, from 4th grade, I wrote a series on my own version of [the] Superman [story], a tale that continued into my first years [in] Community College.

Later, [...] I am now in my mid-[thirties], I decided to discard much of what I thought were my best ideas and reinvented myself, changing ideas into concrete stories.

You find inspiration in half-remembered spaces

I don't know what I was thinking.
I'm in my bedroom, trying to organize what to read from next. I slide books to the side, move new journals over, move research books to skim to the fore, and notice an old journal (when I say 'old', I mean 2008). When I open it, there's a short story I hadn't finished.

So, guess what I'm editing now?

'Giovanni & Francesca Castellano' & Social Reform Photography

We, as writers, have to remember WHY we tell a story.

What held the 'gangster dog' WIP (Work-in-progess) back for an incalculable amount of time was by the fact I remained stuck in one character's head and POV (Point of View).

Since rewriting the story to show other characters' stories became my watershed moment. The floodgates literally and figuratively opened and I began to see the possibilities and connections being made and reinforced.

The above picture is supposed to be a family photo of my male protagonist with his eldest sister. They are only months apart and therefore, extremely close.

While researching this story, I came across many historical photographs with children and their families in Turn-of-the-century New York, as well as from photo albums.

Jacob Riis - please refer to my links at the bottom of this post! - was an important documentarian through the pictures he took in preserving history of Old New York.

I have tried, because this is a historical drama, to capture the feel of what it meant to grow up, live and die during those years.
What did Native New Yorkers want for their families, and what did New York immigrants want for their children? I hope as a writer, as well as storyteller, to capture such in the illustrations above. I hope as an artist to let readers be drawn into this story as I am.

NOTE: There was a documentary called "The Other Half", about the social reforms brought about because of Mr. Jacob Riis and Mr. Lewis Hine.

Here are two official links: Documenting "The Other Half": The Social Reform Photography of Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine

&

Jacob Riis: Shedding Light On NYC's 'Other Half' by Robert Siegel

(Personal endorsement) *Read NPR.org. Listen to NPR on the radio. Embrace it. Be informed. Be enlightened.*