17 and Counting

Remember that post I made about suicides in Wales?

They're up to 17 victims now.

That's fucked up.

Short Story: The Suicide of Courtney Rayner

This is the rough draft of the short story I wrote in San Francisco. Feedback is welcome. This work is subject to a Creative Commons license (see below.)

The Suicide of Courtney Rayner
by Jason Mical
San Francisco, CA 2008

When Courtney Rayner finally committed suicide in front of the Chinese Theater the Nation claimed to be many things: depressed, pessimistic, faded, even a little sad. No one claimed to be surprised. The previous months were some of the most turbulent and troubled in the life of Rayner and by extension the Nation: the public fights with an eventual divorce from her husband, the late-night glamorous parties at the most exclusive of clubs, the entering and leaving of rehab and the now-famous breakdown on national television. The last occurred in what would become known as Courtney’s “hell week,” the seven days before ending her life in front of her last audience.

Great care was taken in creating the character of Courtney Rayner from the beginning: a marketable, fresh-cut, girl-next door actress and singer who could be equally comfortable selling movies to tweens as she was selling concert tickets to tweens. It is no mistake that the only people who use the term “tween” are the cynical types who see nothing but opportunities for financial gain from art, and it is these men and women who helped craft that perfect heroine. Great playwrights were humbled by the process, as even their most spectacular onstage personas only had two or three hours of life at the absolute maximum; Courney Rayner was a method-process that spanned ten years and millions of dollars in investments.

As the backgrounds on her compact discs switched from pink to more adult shades of blue and then to black on white, so too did Courtney’s character grow with her audience. Her dancing went from innocent to suggestive to erotic. And carefully-crafted rumors began to circulate about her wild and carefree lifestyle. If she wore a new pair of sunglasses, it was guaranteed that 100,000 girls would purchase the same pair in the next week. The Nation was almost Pavolvian in its predictability when it came to Courtney Rayner.

After the fact, many of the Nation’s experts agree that the toll of playing Rayner was simply too much for a young actress to handle. Others indicate that only once in the span of her ten-year career did Rayner ever step out of character, the breakdown on the Tara Sanders Show. That video is still the most played video on YouTube, and numbers do not lie. But the role was executed with such accuracy that it seems almost unfair to criticize an artist for a blunder that amounts to a fraction of a percentage of the overall time spent in character. That mistake is reprinted in whole at the end of this story for interested parties.[1]

As hell week began, the bookies who thusfar profited greatly from the Courtney Rayner death pool stopped taking bets. Evidence of cocaine use mounted, and the police were said to be waiting for Rayner on the lot outside of the Tara Sanders Show; she narrowly avoided them by running to a friend’s waiting Civic. Family members came forward, pleading with her to stop her partying. Somewhere, investors started drawing lines across old charts and planning what to do next with their fortunes.

In the end, Courtney Rayner died with as much dignity as she was allowed. According to the best corroboration of eyewitness accounts, at 10:52 PM on the 7th she drove her custom white Ferrari to the Chinese Theater, running it onto the curb and disturbing a homeless man camped nearby. She calmly removed a 9mm automatic pistol from her glovebox, stepped out of the car, looked down Hollywood Boulevard and without saying another word shot herself in the head. She did not miss. By the time the bullet entered her skull and ended life processes in Courtney Rayner’s brain, a crowd of about 20 people were assembled around her, many of them taking pictures, recording video or texting friends.

Within 30 seconds the first image hit Flickr and Twitter streams everywhere hummed with the news. Perez Hilton caught it from Twitter and posted an image, scooping Them magazine by a half-hour. YouTube routinely policed videos but they hit BitTorrent within minutes and had more than 500,000 seeds after an hour.

It instantly became the topic of conversation on message boards and blogs, and moved to talk shows the next day. The popular psychiatrist with his own show devoted an entire week to the problem of suicide, arguing that Rayner’s family should have done more. A month and a day later, Rayner’s previously-unknown brother crashed his BMW into a brick wall at 120 miles per hour, killing him instantly. Her husband was found in his bathroom, a pile of pills still clutched in his hand.

The Nation’s health statistics for that year list Courtney Rayner Copycat Suicides as the 45th leading cause of death, followed by accidental death from thresher insertion.

[1]Tara Sanders: Do you have anything to say to those would think you should be a better role model?

Courtney Rayner: Actually, I do. First I want to apologize. I never wanted to be a role model. It kind of goes with the territory, you know? The territory of being famous. Which I didn’t really want either, but here we are and I’m doing the best that I can at it.

Sanders (Looking uncomfortable): Right, so tell us about your plans for a comeback tour.

Rayner: Wait Tara, I’m not done yet. I mean, yes, I realize I have a responsibility. But is what I’m doing so different than what goes on in any other home across the Nation? Sure, I’ve got more money, but there are a lot of girls out there making decisions as dumb or dumber than mine. Right now, some girl is having sex with a boy she hates because she has no other way to deal with her psychological problems. Right now, there’s a girl doing weed or coke or something worse because she feels like she has no other way to deal with how she feels on the inside. Am I not a reflection of that? Am I not the Nation’s girls, just magnified a million times bigger and brighter than anyone wants to admit? Sure, we can take all the glamour and glitz but by God we can’t handle the single bit of fault. Show fault, and you’re a slut, or a drunk, or a bad kid or a bad parent or a bad person. What I have to say to them Tara is: we’re the same people. The only difference is, there’s a camera on me.






This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

The Fictional Galaxy Anyone Can Edit

Too cool for school: via Boing Boing, "Galaxiki, the Fictional Galaxy Anyone Can Edit.

Dynamic, open-source fiction: galactic empires could literally rise and fall based on the creativity of the writers, the amount of time invested, and it can happen in "hyper"time - faster than real time. Entire histories can be written and changed in a matter of minutes.

Or, it could end up a mud-mire of vandalism and egoism.

Either way, it's a hella-cool, interesting experiment.

Writing Things

Is what I've been doing this weekend. The creative juices were flowing (and the deadline was approaching) so I cranked out a short story for the next Blue Kingdoms anthology. The first draft is done, but I think it's going to need a little more work to get it to where I want it to be. Sometimes it can be hard to do genre-writing without being ironic or even sarcastic, but I think I walked the line pretty well in this story.

While I'm on the subject of writing, Lifehacker posted a link to an awesome online writer's resource - a massive collection of links to various online tools. It's like that "writer's toolkit" software I used to have back in high school and college, except online and free. Worth bookmarking for sure.

The Zombie Apocalypse: From The Space Needle

Fair warning: I'm still getting a wireless signal up here (thank you, Clearwire!) but the laptop is just about out of batteries, so if it looks like it's about to die, I'm just going to hit "publish post" and hope the Intarwebs does its thing.

The funny thing is, I've had this plan for years. I remember back when we lived in the apartment and I realized that the perfect place to survive a zombie apocalypse in Seattle was the Space Needle. Why? Think about it:

There's one way in and out: an elevator and service stairs. Now that the power's out, the elevator is not a problem. A little welding and some creative furniture rearranging and the staircase is impregnable. Those flesh-eating bastards have been banging on the door for hours and it hasn't so much as cracked.

I can live up here for quite some time. There's a restaurant on the top floor with plenty of food (and a shitton of good wine - at the very least I can drink myself to death). Depending on how long it takes them to die, I can start to plan long-term: there's enough open space to grow food. And since I'm the only one up here - now, anyway - it's not like I have to feed an army. There's a subtle zombie joke there.

I'm missing a few things I really want. A gun, for example. A way down would be nice, but I think I can make either a wire or a glider out of some of the plastic furniture. You know, like in Escape From New York? It's not like a grisly death splattered on the ground is any worse than eternity as a brain-eating ghoul. Seeds would be awesome too.

I did manage to find a small, battery-powered TV set. I think the thing is from the 80s, and all I'm getting is the Emergency Broadcast System message. There's only one radio station still on the air, some AM piece of shit, and it's broadcasting prayers. I guess those are as good as anything these days.

Wait, something is coming on the TV. Be right back.

[UPDATE 1]OK, well, I feel a little better. That was Homeland Security. Apparently the naval base on Whidbey is being used as a camp for survivors, and they've blown the bridge at Deception Pass. I wonder if Brook and Wendi made it out there? They had a chance if the roads weren't too bad. If it was anything like downtown though, I'm guessing not. I still haven't heard from Liz. The cellphone won't connect to anything - my office's mail server, the phone system, nothing. I'm trying not to think about it. Of course I'm failing.

Anyway, they said the military had a contingency plan for the area. I have to wonder though if it happened as quickly as it did at my office, what the hell the rest of the city - country - WORLD - looks like? I haven't seen an airplane in hours and it looks like the boats in Sound are kind of drifting around. I think one of them is leaking oil, because the water looks black down by Pike Place. Gross. The only movement below is the slow, shambling dead. I've heard a few screams, and I think they tore a dog apart a little bit ago (at least, I hope that's what that sound was.) Otherwise, things are really quiet. You never notice how much noise a city makes until it's all gone. Walk through Seattle at 4am and you'll see how much noise there still is.

Oops. Well, maybe someday you can walk through Seattle at 4am again.

Hey, that's interesting. Speaking of noise: I hear a jet. I cut up some cloth from the furniture - going to go hang it outside. Maybe this is the contingency plan and rescue?

[UPDATE 2] I'm not airplane expert, but those looked like B-52s, coming from Bremerton. They're just circling the city. I hung the cloth off the observation deck; hopefully that will attract their attention. It looks like they're heading south, maybe towards Boeing. It's kidn of hard to

HOLY SHIT white light oh christ i can't see, hopefully you can still read this and i'm hitting the right keys oh god i can feel the air rumbling going to try to click publish and maybe someone osmewhere can hear what happened air gone and here comes the heat hittomh [pdt mpw///////

Pirates of the Blue Kingdoms!

Oh yeah, I got published!

With Spain taking up most of my time last month, I completely flaked and forgot to mention some awesome news: I had a story published! Popcorn Press, run by some fellow Alliterates, put out Pirates of the Blue Kingdoms, a fantasy-pirate anthology in which my story "The Adventures of Keva the Freemariner" appeared. Fellow contributing author Paul Genesse reviews the anthology on his blog.

It's good, clean piratey fun - pick it up if you're looking for a good summer read!

Book: Newton's Cannon by J. Gregory Keyes

And then there's Newton's Cannon. Rarely do I read a book without skipping parts - usually only paragraphs - here and there, or glancing at the last few pages to see how it turns out. Newton's Cannon is the first book in a long time that captured my interest enough so that I just didn't want to do that. Rather than tearing right through, I put it down in places just so I could savor the last third.

Premise: Sir Issac Newton discovers alchemy - or rather, the applications of it. Alchemy is kind of a mixture of magic and quantum mechanics - in the context of the book, it's all scientific, but there are certain aspects of it that aren't really covered by our modern scientific understanding. Newton's discovery touches off an age of invention that brings the world into a kind of steampunk age, with pistols that shoot lightning, machines that communicate over enormous distances, and more. England and France have squared off against each other, both trying to find an advantage, and France might just have that advantage, with the unwitting help of one young Ben Franklin. Oh, and Blackbeard the pirate makes an appearance.

Newton's Cannon is the first of a series of four books collectively called The Age of Unreason. Keyes' work is one of those rare treats where the execution of a cool premise is just as good as, if not better than, the premise itself. I've already purchased the second book in the series, A Calculus of Angels, and frankly I can't wait to read it, too.

Pulp Fiction

If a news story about African gold pirates operating deep underground isn't rife with pulpy plot possibilities, I don't know what is.

Six-Word Stories

I can't really give credit here because I've seen this all over the Internet, but the editors of Wired put out a call to SF writers to create stories in six words. The results vary from "meh" to "awesomely awesome," but it's worth reading.

Free Short Story!

Want to read a free, awesome short story? Of course you do. "What's expected of us" by Ted Chiang is a sci-fi short-short about free will and determinism. Sent to me by a friend.