Very good story. Like other Japanese authors I’ve read, the prose is very direct and matter-of-fact. Which is even more interesting given it’s a story of four women cutting up a body of a man they murdered. It’s not a traditional crime mystery in the sense that we already know whodunit…we’re just interested to know if they get away with it, and if we want them to.

The main character Masako is very likeable, despite her darkness. Truly, all the characters are likeable, detestable, pitiable, and enviable, all in different ways.

It’s also well paced. My only complain is I tend to feel Japanese authors could drop 1 out of every 3 sentences and still get everything across beautifully. But perhaps that’s part of the charm of the way it builds in suspense. Everything is very clear, both details of setting and the individual motivations. Emotions are facts just as the color of bricks. Both are very realistic. As the cover states, it is indeed a "literary" crime thriller. 

For some reason, this overhead shot struck me as kind of frightening. That first ring around the center stage was empty, and then started filling up as those black-clothed people started pouring into the ring. They looked like an oily snake in motion and made me think of what a birds-eye view of a military coup might look like. Interesting.

Um, and I should mention that I’m not trying to make any comment about Barack. I loved the speech and will happily vote for the man. I’m just saying that view reminded me of something that could be pretty scary in a different context.

TRANSCRIPT:

Turn the page.
Time trading was done through falsified papers and changed names like freedom and citizenship is traded in police states. And time holders, the scientists, could be bribed, so in the end those with time to spare had more time to gain. (Swap Meet notes)
And in his deep deep cynicism he questioned everyone else, knew nothing, and spoke it. He is a vessel. A vesself for the baby blue. He sings, he plays, and wants nothing more. Watch him. Listen. To him get pissed at you, even while everything’s all right. Pissed at everyone else thinking its not all right and ignoring the dark things which are just fine too. (On Dylan)
What does anybody know? We know nothing. And to prove and accept that, you must have someone or something break down, one by one, all the things we think we know and take for granted. Kim knows nothing, including what family means, which we take for granted, for it means nothing too.
“Why do you love America, Milos, when its people have just come up with new ways of saying and doing the same things as any other people in any other time?” said Kim.
“Live simply and life will be simple. Fear is only of the unknown. It is a fog, that is all,” he said to Milos. “What do you fear finding here?” (Molasses notes)
The man who drew intricate isometric drawings of architectural structures with a shaky hand and a leaky black pen. Still, they took you in. (Character)
State the problem. State your “what if” surrounding your character.
If the problem is bullies: what if an asmatic girl was cornered by the school bully and she broke her inhaler? If the problem is government controlling free will: Clockwork Orange. Absolute pwer and class struggles: Animal Farm. Humans becoming lazy and destroying the playet through megacorporate consumerism: Wall-E.
Set up a Wordpress or Blogger account for the 826 Valencia workshop. Grab headlines, examples of characters, brainstorms. (826 Valencia notes)
What is the artist at the swapmeet?
“I don’t have time to learn.”
“I could never do that.”
Turn it on its head. (Swap Meet notes)

TRANSCRIPT:

Her face, it was hard. You could bounce a brick off it. You could try to hammer your treatise onto her forehead, but you’d just hurt your hand and hear the sharp ping of rejected mettle in return. Too bad for her. Wasn’t what she wanted. (Story starter, character)
When he woke up and fought through the haze of drugs, he saw his wife and asked “Are you a ghost? Amanda?” When my friend texted me I responded what an inappropriate “Shaddup faggot.” (Body Parts notes)
This was Kim’s first visit to Romania. His grandfather just told stories to his friends of his visits to America every few years, and the calls, letters, and cards. Kim remembers them weeping while watching the Berlin wall crumble on the couch at his home. Milos is his brother. No, Milos is Phantos’s son? No. What would I say to him if I saw him in the flood? (Molasses notes)
When your time ran out, a relay was sent to the main circuitboard (but only show with wife, allude to with Director), and you were hunted. Sometimes extreme measures were taken. Every second counts. What’s my double-barrel shotgun? Need the quickest hunting/killing method possible. No joy, just a quick shut-down of all systems. Brain versus heart death? Sacking – plastic bagged and epi-pen or electric shock. Magnetized? Implosion? Connection with generators going out? No government mandate on time well spent, just political discussion and trends like now with health, education, global warming, greed and leisure. Everyone arguing amongst themselves on best use of time. You get what you get at birth. Any reason for supplments or detractions? Taxes? Need to bother? Keep the focus on the charcaters. Morris and Sally argue about class struggles and use of time, like me and Matt talking about purpose and time and money. Can it be traded? (Swap Meet notes)
The girl who hung on, then fell off, of Dylan’s car. (Story starter)
We couldn’t leave it to nature any more. We had to take matters into our own hands. (Swap Meet notes)
Sweaters meets a Joan Baez-esque siren or banshee, who all but bursts his eardrums. (Sweaters notes)
Bob Dylan was a deep, deep cynic. (On Dylan)

TRANSCRIPT:

…happy at his efficiency, before collapsing on the ground with a bright purple thump and a set of imploaded lungs and disintegrated alveoli [synaesthesia]. (Sybil & Mape notes)
Body Parts. I was editing a new short story and trying to find the confluct inside when I got an email from her saying his old liver was successfully removed but they hadn’t yet started putting the new one in yet. Photo holding the old diseased one, while knowing you have a little thirteen year old girl’s one inside. His boy asking why he can’t park in the handi-capped section of the hospital. Angie & Victoria. Cheese and crackers.
Lead into chimaera and monster-making, magnetic monsters in a tin project for Cisco. It doesn’t matter to know things, or mean anything, it just matters if you know the relationships between. There is no truth, only relationship like harmony and melody.
There are more stories to tell than people on the earth, than seconds in the universe. What have I to say about a black cat, and being childless? On my chest as I sleep. Eating and being a pig. The look of my veins. The shadow falling across my shoiulder in the mirror and outlining my musculature even as I struggle to awak with no exercise in the morning. The Great & Powerful Should. (Body Parts notes)
Plums exploded on the sidewalk, and the feather of the exotic bird that shouldn’t be there. (Sweaters notes, story starter)
A group of kids (one of which who is a…) find an abandoned shipment of unbranded meshback ballcaps in an abandoned warehouse just raided by the cops for a drug bust or prostitution ring – and they decide to create images for the hats and sell them. But some don’t like the images. And someone else is still attached to the hats for some reason. (Story starter)

TRANSCRIPT:

…you asking me? Isn’t that what school’s for? Yeah, I know, you’d think. I’m pretty fucking pissed about it actually, but that’s the way it is. (Brain notes)
If you write about normal people doing/struggling with creative things, then you push the idea of everyman creativity. Inspiration from life, and patterns. Wonderment at the human body and the lines and curves that lie just beneath this malleable coating of skin. The blue veins and tendons of the wrist. (Swap Meet notes, Body Parts notes)
I’m all opening sentences, Sybil, but there’s never an end in sight. And don’t even ask me about the middle. The vultures grinded their throats overhead, and Sybil saw the world tinted red.
Mape, is the world red right now? Am I hearing it, or is that just the word we use? Are you even listening to me?
Mape slid backwards and his chair dropped eight inches.
Look at that, said Sybil, seeing a lightning strike blue in the sky.
What the fuck, er…I mean oops, said Mape, sliding off and regarding the slotted wooden floor.
Now how do you account for that, said Sybil.
And isn’t that everything, he said. I need another beer.
Have you noticed how long your beard has grown? It’s been only a few days and its full and white.
I call it my infinite regression.
That waiter came over and said “How’s everything?” for the fiftieth time and Sybil ran her fingers through her hair, listening to the swaths of yellow. He continued: “I bet you just wrote something about a waiter coming over, didn’t you?
Mind control! Shouted Mape, but he was kidding.
“Yeah, yeah, no, I’m the same way.” Neither had realized Mape was scribbling.
“Where’d this come from anyway,” said Mape.
“You stole it off a dead cop on horseback. You probably don’t remember because the horse kicked you in the head. But noooooooooo, no hospital for you, tough guy.”
“Are you out of your mind, woman?” said Mape, rising and pulling a smoke grenade from his pocket. “Come on. He’snever coming with that check anyway,” and he pulled the pin and he heard the hiss and they both watched the color pink spread and stretch at their ankles as they passed the waiter with the check, skipping… (Sybil & Mape notes)

TRANSCRIPT:

…the light of the world. Were they folding or unfolding through space or with space, he wondered. And as they flew past and as they cut his face and as they pelted the leather duffel on the ground beside his chair, Chingo pulled the single-shot pistol from his lap and show a one-eighth inch ball of lead deep into the old man’s head. (Chingo notes, morning sketch)
Write from the POV of a blind person.
Write with synaesthesia (story starters, obstructions)
Video input and sound visualization as an interactive story (multimedia)
“Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia”-type opening line.
The iconoclasts
Story about a vivarium shopkeeper who’s battling the creeping ice plants and who meets Alexis the Mexican beauty. (story starter)
Phantos is concerned with health, and is very knowledgable about nutrition, despite his misanthropy. It is his brand of humanism. (Molasses notes)
Big motherfucking belt buckles. (story starter)
A beautiful day. Hot, sunny, and warm. Not the type of day you expect to need a snow shovel. The smell is strong thorugh and by now the dying are dead and what’s left is bodies, not peole. They must find someone alive earlier, and show more relief effort. (Molasses notes)
Lazy bastard. Youth never thinks of anyone except itself. That statement says that it thinks about other youth too, but that’s not what you mean, right? Right.
Glasses and a goatee. You must be a writer, no? A nervous jitter too? You must be a real writer. (random notes)
“John, I need a brain.”
“Oh, don’t put yourself down all the time.”
“No, I mean it. I need an actual brain.” Pause. “In addition to my own.” Pause. “I’m serious.”
“What do you mean you’re serious? You’re a zombie now?”
“It’s for school, stupid.”
“Well, I figured, but why the hell are…. (Brain notes)

TRANSCRIPT:

“No, I don’t think I’ll eat dinner tonight,” said Marks, and then he left. (story starter)

One by one, shard by shard, the old man covered the table with jagged tiles. Chingo sipped his mint tea and let the steam cloud his eyes and dress his lashes and brow while waiting for the man to finish. He squinred and wondered how many tiny little muscles there were in the eye, pushing and pulling with each glance or focus. They strained with the heat of the tea’s steam. Surely they’ll be sore tomorrow, he though. The old man looked up with his hands resting on his brown pants. Two yellow leaves blew across the space between their thoughts and soft steel strongholds on a gust of wind.

“Then let’s begin,” said the old man. His hands reached to the dirt below the table and brought back his own saucer and teacup which he held out to Chingo. Chingo’s cheek twitched as he poured from his own oversized cup to fill the old man’s. Some liquid splashed on the tiles but didn’t move them. The liquid beaded on their curved surface and Chingo though of the way superstrings must look like foam on curved space. How many muscles in your eye would you need to see that, he wondered. Somewhere a clock struck eleven and left an absence in symetry. Somewhere a bird fed a bad nut to a chich which choked and died but didn’t leave the nest. Somewhere there was a real Chingo, out there with the twelth chime, buying a ring for his future wife. He could engrave his vowson the inside of the nut pulled from the dead chick’s throat, he thought, but why? The old man slurped and spilled on his white linen shirt. His eyes narrowed as he watched the liquid suck into the fibers, then brought his cup with full forcce onto the saucer and table, sending shards and hot liquid into the air and into Chingo’s personal atmosphere. Chingo watched them revolve, glinting… (Chingo notes, morning sketch)

Great article in the East Bay Express about the Immersion Composition Society which "helps musicians overcome creative hurdles". Indeed. Definitely worth a read if you’re doing anything at all creative. If this doesn’t get you inspired, you probably don’t respond to pokes from a stick either.