Fiction Writers' conferences: Night School

WC: 1,314

Fiction Writers’ Conferences: Night School

Well, welcome to the first writers’ conference of the semester, Mr. er Impalovich.

Sir, that’s Impa LOW vich.

Quite an unusual name for around here.

Yes, Professor Redd. Accent on the penultimate syllable. The “low’ means illegitimate, like, say, oh apostrophe in Irish.

Just call me Eric. Sounds East European.

Yes, Professor Eric. Romanian to be exact, and I go way back.

No, it’s just Eric. We can dispense with titles here, Mr. ImpaLOWvich. My theory is when you sit around the writers’ conference table presenting our attempts at fiction, we are all colleagues. Some a little more experienced to be sure.

You can call me Vlad, Eric.

Nice, well, Vlad, and about the first story you turned in. Love your style, technique, how you get all the info one needs to grab the reader in the opening paragraph: a true example of in medias res: It was a dark and stormy night as the stagecoach with a driver and four sped along the moor. When Lady Jane Flatbottom pulled the red velvet curtain aside, she could see hints of a castle on the mountain top ahead as lightning flashes illuminated the night.

I mean, man, who, I should say, whom do you read?

Bulwer-Lytton, Stoker, Snoopy. You know, the usual.

B-L and Stoker, I know. Snoopy?

The cartoon beagle character who thinks in bubbles.

Oh, yes. That insipid little mutt unfortunately is part of the canon. I used to read him all the time, went through a phase, and did my doctoral at Harvard on his writings and their impact on Existential Phenomenology. Thank God… Oops, sorry, I outgrew him.

Harvard, you went to the Big H!

It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, believe me, Vlad. And don’t pay any attention to those dorks in our fiction writer’s workshop who commented about the doggerel in “Lady Flatbottoms Passion”.

“If poop was brains”, as we say in the faculty lounge.

I see also your technique of character development in the narrative arc of Lady Flatbottoms maturation. She becomes proud, fiery yet vulnerable That’s where the craft, dare I say Art, comes full circle. And looking at the text further, as Paul Foucault might say analyzing social structure from a semi-Marxist view point, your budding genius again shows itself in the climax of the story. And the deathless prose! “Hey, you, is that a poopoo cushion you put on my seat! I just love poopoo cushions, big guy. ”

I mean what do you want to do with all that talent?

Hollywood has us all wrong, sir. They take a few bad apples and the image sticks. Imagine, “the Undead”. Why not “the Everliving”? Gives a whole new slant to the image, my people, right! What I want to do is write the Great Transylvanian Novel. Show us as we really are. Shy, alone, needing company and companionship, well dressed. Say, they claim we exhibit narcissistic personality traits but, but what about our aversion to mirrors. Tell me we are NOT narcissist without telling me! Where do you think barbers got the idea back then about blood letting. From my people. We were the first to work the night shift, also. Bet you never thought about history that way. I mean it took women fifteen, sixteen hours to make a peasant shirt and when it got dark they had to get by with a candle, the fireplace or knock off for the night. Meanwhile, we are at the castle entertaining weary travelers, doing social engineering, working the room through hosting parties. Shucks, we worked carnivals as a mind-readers, fortune tellers till the gypsies flooded the market with their dancing bears, kids and chicken-stealing women.

What I really wanted to talk to you about, Eric, right now, though, is finding a woman, settling down.

Have you tried Match . Com, E-Harmony. I’m there trying to score all the time. And with your writing ability and that white skin and slicked back hair…

Well, sir, there was one woman who I thought would be my eternal bride. She was a phlebotomist.

Wouldn’t you know.

No, It’s not like that at all.

She saved me. Made me want to live forever. Pulled me out of the gutter. It was like this- I was in skid row trying to break the habit of biting necks and all that stuff Hollywood claims we do. I mortgaged my castle on the hill above the moor where it is often dark and stormy at night. I became a Capitalist to finance my recovery. The Red Cross blood clinic in SoHo was paying twenty dollars a pint and I’d offered the poor guys and gals twenty-five a pint for their juice. The bank was hounding me to pay up! But I was determined to break the habit. Course it had to be all night work.

Yeah, you just sort of hung around in a dark closet all day.

Right, Eric.

But one night I got some bad blood.

Maybe someone with the last name of Snopes?

That’s Faulkner, right.

Right-a-roni, my man!

Anyway, there I was lying in the alleyway between two garbage cans when she appeared. She came out from the clinic to smoke a joint, but when she saw me, her motherly instincts kicked in. Took me home, got the good stuff from the clinic. Chateau Hemoglobin. I called her My Little Blood Sucker. Our budding love was beautiful as I came back to health, but then I started to see a change. She wanted me to get an Afro, braces on my teeth, wear denim. Get a part-time job instead of staying home and watching reruns of “The View”. That’s when I felt the love was fading. But the straw, the last straw was when I saw brown ticked hair on her technician’s scrubs. Know what that means?

No, tell me, please..

Man, it was plain as the nose on an ugly pig’s face She was seeing a werewolf .

Oh, yeah. How could I miss that one!

Sure, women want a man who is dangerous, well dressed, a good sense of history…

Well a werewolf certainly fills the first need of a woman. But the well dressed, the history?

My psychotherapist said she probably wanted a bigger challenge, a socially sicker and, to boot, smelly dude. You ever think how bad they smell!

It’s a rumor, Vlad!

Well, I know what women want is a man, someone a little dangerous, well dressed. Her loss.

I have to admit you do have it all covered, well dressed, with that tux and cape. You kind of stand out, in a good way, a good way at the workshop table with those other writers in shorts, tights, baggy sweatshirts and purple hair. And hairy arm pits. .

That about wraps it up for our writer’s conference. I sort of got a little off track with all my personal questions, dominating the conference, but understand, you are definitely not the run-of-the-mill student here at Absorbine Junior College. And that is for sure. Any questions on your part?

Sir, I mean, Eric, I do have one question.

Fire away, Vlad.

That Viking, that helmet with the horns you are wearing, are the horns real?

Yessureebob—authentic as that sword and scabbard hanging on the wall behind me here! That sword is a real Grendle, best in the business back then along with Damascus. Part of their Wave Raider series. Check out what is carved on the hilt: Veni. Vede. Reradium. That’s Latin for, I came. I saw. I raided. Now days that sword stuff that cones in from China is J-U-N-K! Not worth the money.

Well there I go again—running off at the mouth.

Looking forward to your next story. And, please don’t forget that beautiful cape you wore when you came in for our little chit-chat.

wjp