Friday, January 20, 2012

My Little Ponies Massacred!!!!

So Shining in Darkness, my first non-urban fantasy is coming out Feb. 15. I've been thinking, maybe I need to find yet another way of whoring my thoughts to the world. Movie is generally my big bro's territory, but I figure I can handle a trailer. Have you ever seen book trailers? We've already discussed this. Pitiful. It is painful to watch them. So how could I be different, fun, and hip while examining sprites (as in fire sprites etc) doomed to a bloody Prophecy?

The answer was obvious: My Little Ponies and a lot of gore:


or click here

Now, you loyal few will be privy to what few have known before. The answer to why they are fat little ponies:

I got my start writing before I could actually write. Mom and Dad would staple together typing paper I would draw on. Then I would tell them the words I wanted and they would show me how to form them. I got a few awards for short stories, but my writing career swallowed my life whole when I was nine. My friend RoseAnna and I already had a so called friend teasing us for still playing with toys. Junior high loomed. We had to sit down and have a serious talk. Our childhoods were about to end, sitting there on my bedroom floor, my entire room made into a terrain for My Little Ponies. We knew every detail of our main character's lives. We knew every trial they faced, and could always elaborate on them or come up with another.

RoseAnna was glum and probably hating me for bringing this up. Neither of us wanted the fantastic out of our lives. Staring at the plaster and plastic Golden Knight, who was the Eldrins' (we didn't call them ponies) God. He had a whole tragic back story too, which explained his hated brother Exidor, also a God, who always tried to kill the Eldrins and the Golden Knight.

At this moment, I had a fantastic ah-ha. Now, let me explain my mother had already made me privy to the creation of novels. She spent my childhood writing them and trying to publish. I knew what to do with stories. And we had stories. "What if they were sort of novels--or two. One, like, about the Eldrins, and then a prequel about how everybody got to be gods and fated and everything?"

At 9, I began my ambitious project in a notebook covered in puffy endangered species stickers. RoseAnna ended up writing the prequel, while I wrote about the Eldrins. It was originally supposed to be the other way around.

Laugh. I know I do. But in less than three years, I had an, albeit long hand, 1500 page draft. RoseAnna topped me. By now the Eldrins were more like multicolored, slim elves. Horses were too hard to work with. Esp. since I'd ridden one twice. Also, privately, I thought the horse thing was dumb and babyish. I worked on editing that book until I was fifteen. I memorized characters, scenes. I knew when I had changed a word where and why.

Then it just became apparent to me. The duo books didn't work. It was impossible to keep all the connections between the two we wanted to draw on without crippling one or both of our writing. Plus, RoseAnna and my styles were pulling so far apart I couldn't guarantee someone who read one wouldn't have a rude shock reading the other. At that point, she was far more epic. I already tried to break the epic mood every chance I got. Hers were the characters getting married in the end, but mine were the ones having sex. She had an ethereal beauty in her words. True to my childhood, I liked to get down in the mud and sink my hands in. RoseAnna still struggled to make her book work. And it was unfair of me to make the decision without her, but my My Little Ponies and I finally parted. I simply told her I had finished the final draft, and I was more than ready to move on to the next book that had gotten into my blood.

RoseAnna eventually moved on to a different fantasy project, too. It must have been late college before we admitted to each other that our first novels were flawed, mainly in that they depended on each other.

But years later and a few fantasy books on, I found myself in a masters and certificate program in secondary education at U of Mich. Don't get me wrong, I love being a teacher. My student teaching placement kids will be etched in blood in my soul forever. But as it was a year long program, we pulled very long days. And three hour classes. I had been a great student, up till this point in my life, but I am tired, and they are talking jargon. The light is fluorescent and it is already dark outside.

Something deep, deep within my soul stirred. Covered in mud and made of bright plastic. One thing you learn in teaching school is what not to do. Telling all of your students they absolutely must bring and use a MacBook in your class--not so smart. I was on facebook more than the rest of my facebook using altogether. Everyone in class had friended each other, so a constant, second conversation took place. But I needed something even more. It was visceral, bloody and wild. It was childhood.

Almost all the ponies had belonged to RoseAnna. I had given away my handful to her when we broke off the games, rather than have them separated.

But eBay helped me get the old gang back together. Over the course of many classes, I searched out each of our most loved characters (so, like, 30). When I finally did get to go home, little boxes would wait for me, filled with magic.

As I sat, stroking plastic hair and drinking in the colors, I could touch each pony's personality. Each history. Each foible and triumph.

Of this moment, the ah-ha struck again. Divorced from the prequel except for some references, strip almost every aspect of the plot away--the characters weren't bad. I had to age them up a bit so that they felt like teenagers instead of what a kid thinks teenagers are like. At first it was just my doodling puzzle. But the temptation was too much, and the bait tasted great.

So my ponies rose to be sprites--beings of one particular streak of magic--fire sprite, dream sprite, rock sprite, fertility sprite--nothing left but the echoes of personalities that once had been.

Don't worry, the book doesn't sound like a nine-year-old wrote it now. But I sometimes wonder if we ever leave that which we truly love, that formed us.

So when it came time to publicize Shining in Darkness, I could only think of one thing. A stop motion, gore fest tribute to the book's humble beginnings. For those who didn't know me when I was twelve, who didn't read this blog--no earthly reason the two connect. Is the video still amusing and eye catching at least? How can you not like those cute little ponies kicking ass?

5 comments:

  1. Wasn't there a my normal sized pony, before the my little pony? If so, based on this it would be highly, highly dangerous.

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  2. I can't believe Firelight flambeéd a Care Bear! These are not your average sprites/ponies. I'm looking forward to the book. (Who the hell is this insightful Frums person?)

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  3. Yeah, Frums, those suckers are dangerous. You wouldn't want to know what those ponies that have to walk in a circle all day at the fair get up to at night. Then again, what would you do if your life consisted of walking in circles with screaming brats on your back?

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  4. Wow, this brings back memories.

    Yeah, the published version is so very different from even the version you wrote in high school.... and world's away from the stories of little plastic ponies we told as kids.

    Thanks for the walk down memorie lane....and the Macabre My Little Pony spin *grin*

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  5. Yeah. For those who were there way back when that I actually let read that, it is miles away. What stuck in my brain over the years was a skeleton of a plot that I wanted to turn on its head, and the characters. Of course the characters. I combine characters. I cut characters. I gave once minor characters major status. As a grown up and past being quite so much of a high school nerd, being a teenager became much more complicated. The world became much less perfect. I kept the distilled essence--or so I hope. I kept that of the characters which has haunted me for years. And like any writer worth a dime, I had to let go of all that didn't work. Including, unfortunately, the prequel being a book rather than a few scenes in mine. But that gave me wings to fly on like an unjoined joined twin. I am hoping to see that prequel someday, as far out and free as I ended up being with the original.

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