As much as I love irony (and I do), it was never my intention to write a blog post titled "Visible and Vocal" only to disappear for over two months. All our lives are busy and mine recently became more so...determinedly pushing my screenwriting to the next level, accepting larger assignments for freelance writing, and so on and so on.
And while I'm kicking my writing up a notch, I've noticed someone else is doing the same thing. Anthony Schiavino. Also known online as Pulp Tone.
As anyone with a large number of writers, filmmakers, photographers, and other creative types in their social networks knows, it can be wonderful, yet overwhelming to be connected to many talented people. It's just not possible to click on 100's of links to check out everyone's projects. So what happens is you peek in on the work your known friends are doing and randomly click on the links of a few others. I believe, since Anthony and I seem to be on the same page on a number of issues, that we may have discussed politics or religion or families or the current state of print newspapers before I actually read any of his writing. I know the first thing I'd read of his was a piece he'd submitted to NPR's "This I Believe":
"My beliefs lay in the free-flowing smoke, sultry and alive, of a dance hall as Shaw or Goodman or Dorsey swing rhythms around two people talking – talking about everything and nothing at once, spanning eternity, meaning every word like it was their last. In their own world — a world going dark around them...
I’m an old soul at home in a decade thirty years before I was born. Too young to truly know what life is, yet too old to ever fit in. I sit and dream of what I could have been. (Not even sure I could have made it through those war-torn times – an era when men were men and not enlisting genuinely meant something.)
So I keep my faith in the power of words on paper, that thing I’m told is so unfashionable and out of date in these digital times. I write what I know. I write what I am. I write what I could have been."
Amazing writing, right? That was my reaction. Even though I don't normally read comic books, I was now intrigued to find out more about Anthony's major project, an ongoing series called Sergeant Zero. In it, his love of the 1940's and 1950's underscores a genre-blending story of brave GI's fighting Nazis, with unexpected supernatural elements. If you have a moment, he's written a brilliant background about the series and how he goes about creating it:
http://sgtzero.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/on-creating-character-comic-books/This month alone, he's also written a two-part flash fiction piece for the pulp fiction site, Shotgun Honey, called "The Treacherous Road (Parts 1 and 2)", along with a shorter piece called "Jack Rose", all linked to on his site. If you have a moment, I highly recommend you check them out.
When people complain about social networking being banal and trivial and full of nothing but posts about what people have had for lunch that day, I just shake my head. It's like a cocktail party and it's as good as the people you invite to it. It's as good as what you contribute to the conversations yourself. And sometimes, you find people who can introduce you to new worlds, half-remembered, like an old jazz song from faded decades. A place where hard-boiled stories jump off the page with a strong, fresh voice.
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