LeVar Burton Rocks!

Okay, so here’s my LeVar Burton story. I’ve definitely told it before and will probably tell it again. Back in the day, when Next Gen was airing on TV, I used to go to the comic conventions, which I believed were Sci-fi conventions at the time. The used to have these conventions conveniently on 34^th street. I loved it.

At the time I lived in the projects on 26^th street and that of course, made 34^th street walking distance.

So, going to a convention was like a family outing for my sisters and I. They would come down from the Bronx with children in toll and we’d usually take up a row plus. It was great and is still one of those things I remember fondly.

One of my favorite memories of going to the conventions features LeVar Burton. Some celebrities (definitely not New Yorker) come to these events with some idea in their head that includes assimilation.

Resistance is futile.

Whatever.

I remember one Next Gen actress going on stage and seemingly going out of her way to make on going rude comments. Perhaps she thought it would make her one with us of the bad reputation. Me, I just wanted to sing a Joan Jett refrain.

Unlike his costar, LeVar Burton was not of that ilk. During the question and answer potion someone in the audience, I kid you not, asked, “What does it feel like to get transported?”

Kindly and patiently, Mr. Burton explained, how the illusion is created by editing and film cuts. It really was sweet.

That was up unit no more than five minutes had elapsed, and another person asked, “What does it feel like to get transported?”

These are the moments. These are the times where my own knee jerk reaction wants me to live up to my bad reputation without a care.

Mr. Burton looked dumbfounded for a hot second. He even looked around to the second where the previous person had been. Then he smiled, without malice without guile, and said, “Great. It feels great.”

It was shortly after that, that my niece Jessica asked him a question. I really don’t remember what year it was, but Jessie who’s married and a mom, was, I believe, no more than five at the time.

It was cute. She asked her question and he answered. Not five minutes later she raised her hand to ask another question. My sister, Nelly, her mom, kept trying to get Jessie to put her hand down. Only Jessie kept raising her hand again and again.

Soon enough, a man in the audience was called, and he said something like, “could you call on this little girl. She kept trying to get your attention.”

For a second, Mr. Burton tried to explain that he’d already called on her. Shrugging it off he called on Jessie again.

Being all bashful after all the fuss, Jessie said, “I want a hug.”

LeVar Burton just called her up to the stage and gave her a hug.

Back in the day, we didn’t have cameras or anything, but I so wish I had a picture of that moment.

For this and many other reasons, LeVar Burton is welcome to read aloud anything and everything I’ve ever written.

Short Stories on the Go! ~ Link to Buying Paperbacks

A Dreamer … A Pragmatist … A Heretic … Me … Having A Bad Hair Day … Week … Month … Year … Years

Published August 4, 2018

I often put on my decrepit Guns N’ Roses T and following what is clearly some Pavlovian response as I walk to the subway station and also in the subway station, I start singing verses from “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” Which in turn almost tempts me to speculate about nefarious subliminal messages embedded in 80s music videos that went something like this: instead of “kill, kill, kill” it said, “sing, sing, sing.” And then I remember I’m me and I don’t need much prompting to randomly burst into song.

Or maybe I just remember I can’t whistle and so I sing.

Published August 21, 2018

After spending almost ten consecutive years writing I stopped. Well, mostly stopped, as I was still writing stuff — but no stories. The ideas, the narrative and even the fleshed out characters were still playing havoc in my head, but I stopped the follow through. I stopped the part where I tooled snippets of all those fragmented pieces I’d written and threaded them together to form a whole and made a story. It wasn’t the rejection letters from literary agents — though I have plenty of those. It wasn’t the inability to self-publish — back then even doing all the editing, formatting and proofing myself still carried a price tag I couldn’t afford. I just stopped.

I spent the next three years reading — mostly not the kind of narrative that would inspire me to pound the keyboard — which I often do. Pressing harder than I’ve ever had a need to. I blame the muscle memory of manual typewriters.

Published July 11, 2018

New Cover

And so for the last three years or so I’ve been writing reviews instead of writing stories. I can’t say I suffered a writer’s block, because I didn’t. I still have a million words clamoring for a voice. I’ve just chosen to, for the most part, ignore them. It’s mostly I let my days, like my life get cluttered with other stuff. This nebulous other stuff is of the important variety and it’s paramount that it receives my undivided attention. Or some crap like that.

Years ago when I still believed I’d get a literary agent and a real publisher I bought this book that was supposed to give me tips on those kinds of things. I remember this question, though I can’t remember exactly how it was posed. The gist of it was that I would be required to identify a target audience. I wasn’t even sure what that meant. I wanted to say “human” — because that’s often how I identify myself in questionnaires, before someone scratches it off and checks off other. Which begs a question or many questions.

Published August 5, 2018

After I’d finished writing Equilibria I decided my target audience has to be the proverbial single guys who live in their mom’s basement role-playing Rift — because that other game is for another set of nerds. My nerds play Rift, or Vampire the Masquerade. But I couldn’t reach my nerds or any nerds.

Then I co-authored, Bored of Education, a satirical collection of vignettes and short stories aimed for the Erma Bombeck aficionado. And discovered Erma Bombeck aficionado does not denote a target audience unless there’s a spaghetti monster in the mix.

Published August 5, 2018

So after a little fan fiction flexing (that I never posted anywhere) I went in an almost other direction. I didn’t write a serious novel denoting why David Copperfield couldn’t hold a candle to me. No, I wrote a novel in the scope of a soap opera motif and gave it a title mostly in Spanish. WLCDRS presenta… Telenovela: Traiciones (Betrayal) is totally in English. My target audience knows who Marlena is and watches telenovelas. I couldn’t find them either.

Like a demented battery powered rabbit I kept going. Three anthologies of short stories, one of which featured only erotica, fifteen assorted novels and novellas some rooted in the multiverse with some sprinkling of monsters and/or mayhem some just plain sexual and two for teens, more fan fiction giving me a grand total of six and eight prequels to Equilibria, each one featuring a different central character from the book. Target audience: still elusive.

Then I read Seth King’s Brave and tried the self-publishing route one more time. I’m still wearing my ratty T and bursting into song – target audience: human.

© Lillian Carrero

Quantum Fiction … Physics … Fiction … Physics ...

A few years ago (quite a few) while reading Allison Van Diepen’s The Vampire Stalker, I heard about Literary Physics or Quantum Fiction, if you will. And mostly I thought – huh? This concept that writers channel the multiverse and are not creating fiction, but relaying a glimpse from an alternate universe is somewhat insulting to every writer who spends an inordinate amount of time trying to get something alien right. Research is hard work. Perhaps not physically taxing, but on occasion time consuming and emotionally draining.

Though I sometimes let myself believe there is strength when writing about something you know and have experienced and some authors often underscore that belief. Writers who expose themselves, who strip themselves to the marrow of their souls, are very rare. Seth King is that guy. Every dedication, author’s note and even the warnings – tell us something about who he is. If those things weren’t enough then there are those glimpses of a person that are always revealed when they write.

As for me, my stories are more often than not set in New York. And when I say New York I actually mean Manhattan. If I can’t get there by subway, I can’t get there (unless my sister is driving). This big little island is the sum total realm of my actual experiences. When I reach beyond the scope of my world I sometimes make it to the Bronx. When I go further it takes a lot of hard work and still remains mostly in the confines of places where I’ve been.

But then Andy Weir has never been to Mars so I reevaluate my bias. Never once imagining Mr. Weir traipsing along the multiverse and stumbling upon Mark Watney. And though I’ve likened Frank W. Butterfield with a time-traveler, I never once imagined him fending off Morlocks. 

I firmly believe that Literary Physics takes away too much from the authors and fails to acknowledge the hard work and research that goes into creating a truth outside your realm of experience.  Though without the metaphysics, I’m still waiting for HBO to option “An Unexpected Heiress.”

That said, I kind of love the ideas of quantum physics, but wrapping my head around some of the concepts without the aide of direct instruction is kicking my posterior. There are times when I feel on the cusp of understanding some elusive concept and then given its abstract nature it slips away. Tormenting and/or frustrating I try to capture the thought that never coalesced only to discover my limitations and I let it go. I sleep on it because sometimes waking up with an epiphany is genuine evidence of the wonder of the human brain. It worked for me with coding and quadratic equations not so much with systems and functions and certainly not with quantum physics – but there you go and here I am.

Madeleine L'engle

Let’s be honest though, there’s never been a need for me to know or understand photon frequencies and wave vectors. Those things were never a requirement when I was writing “Equilibria.” I won’t insult the memory of Madeleine L'engle by equating what she did with what I did, but she was an inspiration.

Quantum Fiction (not physics) is an idea, an interesting idea that when used in fiction can sometimes make me smile – but imagination is limitless and fruits of labor are sometimes words on a page and nothing more … though so very much.

© Lillian Carrero