Writing Updates, Reading Updates and Playing Games

I've spoken with my writing friend and she assures me that I no longer have a short story, this Cain story is a novella. I'm cursed with Stephen King's disease where everything I write turns into a novel. I suppose that's not too bad, novels make the money. But I wanted to hone my skills with Cain as a short story. Cain has taken a lot out of me and for now, I'm focusing on a story about stairs that kill people (based on the death of H.R.Giger). I also want to finish my Annihilation book. I'm not writing it but reading. It's...ok, I suppose. Not what I expected out of a Cosmic "horror" book. Jeff VanderMeer's work on the Southern Reach happening is facinating and boring at the same time. He writes about plants and natural enviroments, things I couldn't give a crap about. And he doesn't go out of his way to make you care about these things as if it's a metaphor for the protagonist. Throughout the book, the biologist, our protagonist, gives her view on the nature around her. It's almost boring in a facinating way. She talks about her interests in a stand off short of way that pushes away others. In fact, that's kind of her nature, to be outside of the group looking in. She doesn't quite fit in with other people and prefers her little swamps over the company of people. I think I understand her, or at least I sympathize with her. Despite my thinking that nature is quite boring, her facination with nature almost makes it seem interesting, even to someone like me. 

Moving on to my current story. I want to get this done within a few days. The quicker I fail, the faster I'll learn. I read about how HR Giger died and told my dad about it. He told me to make a story based off of the man's death. Immediately, thoughts popped into my head about how stairs would kill a person or why. Right now I'm listening to a story by Stephen King called The Mangler which is about a vampiric roller machine. I don't know how many people have seen the film based on the short story but it's awful. It stars Robert Englund of Nightmar on Elmstreet fame as the main antagonist. The movie was so bad, or underfinanced, that the team had to animate the machine attacking the heroes. You think greenscreen is bad? You haven't been cursed by the crap that The Mangler bestowed upon me. It's so obviously animated, think of people being afraid of a cartoon coming after them and you've got the gist of the story. Only Englund seems to be having fun, the rest of the cast seem bored. But the short story it's based on is good inspritation. As is the other story I'm relistening to, Brian Lumley's The House of the Temple. It's a good short story about Lovecraftian monsters and this slow build up that I need for my own story. I think these two stories combined can give me the inspiration I need. 

Finally, I should talk about what I'm playing. I've never held any interest in Rockstar Games. In fact, I hold most of them in contempt. Like most Adult Swim shows, I'm not clear on what the joke is. Rockstar games have this bitting since of sarcasm and irony that doesn't digest well inside of me. It's like eating foreign food that everyone likes, kind of like when the kale craze took off a few years ago. Everyone was eating it, except me. Despite my lack of interest in Rockstar Games' work, I thought it might be neat to try out Red Dead Redemption. So far, I'm enjoying some of my time with it. I miss that liminal space feeling that games had in the 2010s. The story trickles in at snail's pace and makes it hard for me to grab onto the themes. It's a slow burn but I suppose that if I'm patient, the game will pay off. I remember people talking about the end of the game as something they always tried to reverse. But I'll save that spoiler for when after I finish it. One thing I do enjoy is hunting. In real life, hunting would be very...gruesome to me, but in a game it's quite relaxing. It's annoying to stop at each carcass and skin each one. I get the realism but I just want to collect my loot and go on my way.

That's it so far. I'll write more later.