Zine!!!

It was suggested to me that my idea for my zine is a little too ambitious and I'm simplifying the whole thing and plan on working on the same project for the next two assignments. I'm doing 16 pages for this first zine that are some of the most important pages from my overall idea (which is a total of 40 pages) and then I'll finish up the others for the next project. I'm bringing in my mock-up to class and my drawings are drying at home right now. All I have to do this next week is finish my drawings and put the saved text over them and print and copy! Sounds simple but...

Distributing Chapbooks

With the chapbooks, I kept the distribution very simple because this is not the kind of work I normally do and not something I want people to know me for doing. I had fun with this project and decided to distribute the books in a fun way. I gave a few to my boyfriend's family so that they can distribute them at their workplace to a few friends who have interests in the arts. I also gave some to my friends and mailed some to various relatives and friends across the U.S. so that my chapbooks can make someone smile. I have gotten really good feedback so far from the people who have received them and gotten back to me. Everyone was very "touched" and "impressed" and plan on showing their friends and coworkers. Hopefully, this distribution will help me find professionals that are interested in my work.

Past Work and Work in Progress

The majority of my work at SAIC has been Writing, FVNM, and some Painting/Drawing courses and now that I’ve gotten into my last semester of school, I’ve rounded out my body of work to involve themes of Southern Gothic, grittiness, dark comedy, satire, gore, and the Uncanny. Most of my screenwriting, playwriting, long and short fiction have revolved around the development of serial killers and the relationships between strange but relatable families in the small Southwest towns of Texas, which is where I am from. This body of work has greatly helped me to better understand the inner workings of my family, my personality, and helped me to develop my own character and to become a better artist. I have seen my writing, film, and painting grow over the past four years and it is very important to me to look back at the work I did in High School in Texas and to see how much the work grew by the end of my Freshman year here in Chicago. Now I am at the point where I would like to start getting my work out there through short stories, gritty children’s books, and possibly a short story that revolves more around illustration than anything. I want to learn how to make the different kinds of books in this class and be driven to put my work together and finally get finished products from it. A lot of my short stories and other works remain unfinished because I keep coming back to them over and over again because I like to recycle and change things. I’ve gotten to the point though, where I want to get feedback on a finished handful of books and get them out there for people to see and I think this class is the way for me to buckle down and accomplish this.

Below is a sample of a short story I am currently working on. It should be finished later this week and will probably be one of the stories I make a book into, though it will be condensed and shortened. This is just a rough draft, but I would love to hear feedback on it if anyone has the time to read it. Criticism is very helpful!

Zippo

            Before sundown I shotgunned some decent weed with Suzie in the ditch behind school. She has a lopsided face, no chin and a huge forehead, mousy hair and scabby arms. Her laugh is contagious and I like that. As I blew smoke between her soggy lips I could feel the crust in the corners of her mouth but I didn’t mind. I heard Freddie walking toward us. I didn’t stop the shotgun until his booted toe kicked me hard in the tailbone. My lip hit Suzie’s snaggle tooth and she pulled backward, holding her mouth. I got in his face pretty quick.

            “What the damn deal?” I stand a couple inches taller than him. He looked half scared for a second.

            “Why you still here?” Freddie turned on Suzie. She stared up at us stupidly, gave me a dirty look and huffed her way up out of the ditch. The big dirt stain on her ass made me smile, which Freddie mistook.

            “You ditched me for that whore?”

            “Uh yeah you crazy shit, just ‘cause I meet up every day don’t mean I have to. That bitch would’ve gone down for sure.”

            “Gonorrhea.”

“Nice way to block the cock. You jealous?”

“That bitch has gotten with everyone in town and she’s ugly as shit, who you kidding?”

“I meant jealous of her, queer.”

I was either very stoned or he hit me really fucking hard because I woke up sprawled in the bottom of the ditch. Freddie was sitting on top of my chest holding his Zippo and burning a spiderweb from a small branch. I watched the trailing fibers sizzle between his fingers as he forced them to light above my face. Freddie was always doing things like that. We’d come across some baby birds by the side of the elementary school and we’d taken turns crushing them in our hands, feeling their small fluffy feathers twist as their limbs were crushed. Some young first graders passed by and we yelled at them to stop and pay the price for stepping on all these helpless birds on the path. The kids knelt by the birds, trying to revive them with pokes and prods. They cried and we got a good laugh.

I gently tested my swollen, bloody nose.

“It broken?”

I shook my head, “Get off me.”

He judged my face.

“You ever ditch me again, I’ll kill you.”

His lips spread over his teeth in a slow smile. I shoved him off me and scrambled to my feet. He finally stopped smiling,

“George is gonna meet us at the Wilsons’ place.”

I asked why.

“Creepy Crawling.”

This started over two years ago. We’d been drinking at George’s place, shooting Craps and then throwing Cricket and a game of Mouse on the dartboard. We ended up by the tracks with several gasoline bombs, passing a bottle of Jim between us. When the 11:30 train came roaring out of the flat blackness we started hollering and running alongside the rumbling metal, George’s fatass wheezing somewhere behind us. We’d played a lot of Chicken with that train over the years. It was Freddie’s idea to throw little bombs inside the open cars flying by. We were dangerously close to stumbling under the grinding metal. When we’d run out of bombs and the little fires had faded away in the distance, we trudged back into the heart of town.

George was slurring and whining about why Dee Rogers wasn’t interested in him. I pointed out that he’s fat and stupid. George and Freddy agreed. We ended up in Dee’s front yard. The door was unlocked, like any other house around, so we let ourselves in. The living room was very brown and I stared at a stuffed dog for an entire minute before George shoved me. Freddy poked around, looking for the liquor cabinet while George and I quietly began rearranging the furniture. We put chairs in tall stacks on top of tables, the couch ended up lying on its arm, hanging pictures were flipped, mirrors were turned backward, and we shoved a few small souvenirs in our pockets, grabbing as many liquor bottles as we could carry. George and I choked on our muffled chuckles while Freddy flicked his Zippo open and closed. When the living room was finished, we left the front door wide open.

After that, it became our favorite game. George gave it the name, Creepy Crawling as people began to catch on that someone was messing with everyone’s furniture. We had to get creative with breaking in because people started locking their doors and more and more were buying dogs. We had to bring treats for the dogs and a roach clip to unlock the doors. George said we had to be smart about it and never do the same house twice for a couple months. We did a house every couple weeks or so.

We’d never done the Wilsons’ house before and tonight would be the first time. We knew they were a very old couple and had one of the nicest houses in town, a well-kept lawn, painted shutters, vines on a trellis and a roofed porch. We crept to the side of it and quietly climbed the short fence into the backyard. George was surprisingly nimble at hopping fences and could be quiet as a mouse when he wanted. Freddie was in a very dark mood, hardly saying a word as George and I dropped our backpacks at the side of the porch. I asked him why he still had his bag on and he told me to shut up so I dropped it.

George tried the front door but it was locked. We went around back and discovered there was a small window leading down to the cellar. Freddie and I managed to push George through the opening and I hopped down next. We were frozen, listening and barely breathing, waiting for our eyes to adjust to the lack of light. Objects began to take shape in front of me: a small table, wooden racks mostly filled with wine and beer.

The window above slammed shut. George and I turned back to it. Freddie grinned as he lit a gas bomb in his hand with his Zippo. His arm swung above his head as he threw the bomb through a first story window of the house. George jumped at the sound of the window breaking and looked up at me, I could only stare back.

“There’s people in the house,” George said.

I tried the cellar door but it was locked from the other side. I dragged the little table to the window. After climbing up on it I managed to get the window open and hoisted myself up and out of the room. I turned back, putting my arms through the window to help George. He stepped up onto the table, it wobbled a little and he grabbed onto the small window ledge as the table crumbled beneath him. I grabbed his arms, trying to help him climb up and out of the cellar but he was too big. The veins were popping out all over my body as I strained.

“Pull yourself up.”

George’s fat red face was desperate. His arms were going but he didn’t have the muscle to pull himself up. The edge of the windowsill dug into me and the smell of smoke was very strong. The sweat from our arms made it a slippery task.

“Don’t leave me here,” George started to cry a little and I could hear his feet scrambling against the cellar wall trying to pull up. I put my knees under me and with one last heave I managed to rip him out through the window and onto the grass.

We took off down the road away from the house. Freddie was nowhere around. It wasn’t until I got to my house that I remembered we’d left our backpacks in the backyard. My school worksheets had my name on them in that thing.

I lay in my bed that night wondering what would happen to us the next day when the authorities found out we were to blame for the house being a little burned. I doubted anyone was hurt since the fire wasn’t blazing or anything. Then the guilt started to sink in. The Wilsons were so old, they probably wouldn’t wake up to the smoke or the heat and if they did, would they have been able to get out in time? The other houses wouldn’t have realized for a while and hardly anyone has a smoke detector around here. I pulled a cigarette out of my pocket and smoked it slowly, wondering why Freddie would be out to hurt me or George. Even if he was just trying to make a point, we could’ve been killed and will definitely be blamed for the fire. Manslaughter charges could be in my near future instead of a high school diploma. Or I could wake up to the smell of gasoline and smoke, possibly to the sound of laughter and a flicking Zippo.