fiction

River Manor: Behind the Series!

Ryan Brady Leave a comment

RiverManorPoster1

My friends and I created a season of television for the internet. I guess you could call that a web series. Or a miniseries. You can call it whatever you want. I wrote 6 intertwining stories and then we filmed them and now we’re showing them to the world to see if the world hates them. That’s the gist.

Here is where I’m going to post all of them and then write about each one along with adding behind the scenes photos and videos, mostly for my own enjoyment, so if you happen to take something positive away from this or are entertained in any way, that’s all gravy to me. Okay cool!

Oh also, S1E1 means Season 1 Episode 1. We’re all learning!

S1E1: “The Deli Caper”

I’m not good at writing pilots or introducing characters. I don’t like spoon feeding exposition and that is what a pilot wants to be most of the time. I had to be reminded the whole time we were filming this to make sure and say everyone’s names so the audience knows what to call us. Even that makes me uncomfortable. I don’t like insulting an audience’s intelligence, although in retrospect I should have bowed to that whim a bit more than I did.

I decided as I was writing the season that I was just gonna throw the audience into a whirlwind and see how they like it. Which is what this pilot ended up being. Also, the pilot sets up a big theme for the series which I call “filling the shot.” I wanted most shots to have 2 or more things happening in them at once. I wanted the audience to have to watch the episode a few times to catch everything. One of my favorite movies is Ocean’s 11 – I’ve watched it around 25 times and I still catch new things to this day. It gets me going, so I assumed it would get other people going as well. If you’ve already watched this, watch it again and see what new things you find. In fact, that applies to all of these episodes. Watch them all about 10 times if possible.

Oh, and the shot of us running across the backyard and Marc getting pummeled? Jo really hit him. Hard. Don’t be fooled by her tiny stature. She hits like a monster and we did that 6 times. Marc was sore for a week. It was hilarious.

DSC_6526DSC_6503 DSC_6507  DSC_6531

S1E2: “Everyone is Poisoned”

This is the first episode we shot which was purposeful. I wanted our first go at making this series to only have the 4 main characters in it so that we could build some semblance of chemistry and then carry that over to other episodes where there are more characters with screen time. This is also the day we realized GBaby’s character is wonderful in his simplicity which would be a constant theme throughout the season.

I go back and forth between what episodes are my favorites and this one always seems to pop up in my mind. I love Steph’s makeup, I love the Frasier scene & the good cop bad cop with Marc and Elliot, I love the dubstep Frasier at the end and how GBaby keeps eating the poisoned food the entire time. In fact go back and watch this episode and just watch GBaby. You’re welcome.

Marc and I acted out the good cop bad cop scene most nights for 4 months prior to shooting this. In fact that is the way most of this series was fleshed out. Marc and I sitting on our porch and acting the entire episode ourselves. We rewrote the entirety of episode 4 that way, but more on that later. Also, as a last note, this is the episode we had Alex Meeske on set for and you can tell if you know him that he was there. That warbler line G says? That was his. Fun facts!

IMG_9404 IMG_9406 IMG_9407 IMG_9408 IMG_0851  IMG_0855

S1E3: “Elliot Finally Shuts the Fuck Up”

This episode was to do 2 things. First off I wanted to show that Elliot’s character is basically the house scapegoat and secondly I wanted to introduce every character the audience hadn’t met yet.

At Elliot’s forced wedding we meet his insufferable brother Peter played by one of our Executive Producers, Johnrobert Vergati. You also get to check up on our local cockneyed talking delusion ridden Milk Toast played by our EP/DP Dylan after meeting Milk in episode 1 along with the ever quiet and mysterious Olive Druthers played by Stephanie Vergati who has a nice lil’ monologue in this episode. Then we add Olive’s best friend Lola Montez played by Allie Rivera, one of the funniest humans I know, throw in some Robinson Mahler, who brings a sort of grounded delusion you don’t really get anywhere else in the series played masterfully by Justin Hagen and then Jo is back, no longer tied up and in straight up in the dating game with Marc who is eye banging her most of this episode. Oh, and I can’t forget Abigail playing Elliot’s new Russian mail order bride, Ulyana Larinov!

This is a good time to talk about how we shot these scenes. There was no script. There was a detailed outline – sometimes I would give people lines to say, sometimes I didn’t. That means we built every new scene from scratch as we filmed it, did an average of 6 takes per shot with two cameras running, and usually used the last take.

We talked a whole lot prior to shooting about these characters with every actor who I chose specifically for their ability to make funny shit up on the spot. Some of the best parts of this series are things I didn’t write, and that’s my favorite. I bring this up soon after bringing up Abby’s Uly because she was so super worried she wouldn’t nail the Russian accent that she had me write every word of hers out. She then came in and murdered it anyway at which point I started making her say more things she hadn’t practiced, much to her dismay and much to my delight. And hopefully yours as well.

Also, it was raining that day. All of these shoots were one day long and that day the wedding was supposed to be out in the back yard but it was raining. Turned out to be a blessing in disguise because the garage looks like the absolute worst place to have a wedding, which Lola points out and to me makes it that much neater.

Here’s a behind the scenes video of JR hitting Elliot in the balls a bunch of times:

S1E4: “In Stapp We Trust”

Up until a few weeks before shooting began in the Summer of 2015 this episode was something completely different. Originally this episode was going to be called “Bed and Breakfast” of which the general gist was going to be that the boys opened up a B&B a la those food carts people open sometimes where their main selling point is being mean to their customers.

The boys plan goes awry once the first two people trying out the B&B is Lola and Olive and Lola basically takes over the entire day as GBaby and Marc escape by swimming away down the river while Ryan yells at them to come back and follow through on an idea for once instead of running away. In response, G and Marc tell him to shut up and keep swimming.

In all reality I wanted an episode that explained how good of friends Lola and Olive were and that idea was my chosen vehicle. But from idea to execution it felt weird. It just wasn’t written well and I didn’t like it which is something I made clear to Marc one night after coming home from the bar. And it was in that moment Marc pitched that he start a cult, and then I pitched that it be about Scott Stapp, and then we both improv’d the entire episode in the hallway in about 15 minutes. Then, still a little drunk, I opened up my laptop and wrote the episode, intertwining the Olive and Lola story line into the Stapp story line. Marc gets a writing credit on this one and deservedly so but he also brings a gravitas in this episode that was absolutely amazing to watch from the other side of the camera. He hit his stride acting wise as a cult leader, nonetheless. I don’t know if it’s the best one, but it’s the one we all laughed the most on set and that’s for damn sure.

S1E5: “Step Up Your Hat Game, Fool”

Most of the people around me thought this episode would suck from the beginning and I can see why. This is the most insular idea I chose to do. It’s based on inside joke after inside joke that I had the task of making into outside jokes as well. Step Up Your Hat Game, Fool acts in dual capacities. One is as the 5th episode of the first season of River Manor and secondly it is basically a time capsule for my late 20s. And from the outside looking in that looked like, to everyone else around me on the project, like not that much fun.

Until you see Marc and I screaming at a camera, or G fighting a plant, or Elliot dumping Sunny D on himself – Until you hear the soundtrack that JR put together – until you see that this episode is by all accounts a concerto of dialogue that ebbs and flows with a rampaging sense of urgency – until you see all of those things live I can very much understand how you could think it would suck.

Thankfully I love this episode and how weird it is. AND I HOPE YOU DO TOO sorry that was pushy have a nice day LIKE IT LIKE IT NOW.

S1E6: “Olive’s Low Key Get Together”

Season finales are important to me. When I was being a child I didn’t read enough, and it’s not because I didn’t enjoy reading. It was because Television was so god damn entertaining.

As I started to figure out what stories were and the kinds of them that I liked, I realized that one of my favorite parts of a Television series is that it’s stretched out. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end – and all of them matter. With a movie you can skip the middle sometimes and still be just fine in the last 20 minutes. Television doesn’t allow for that. There are small details everywhere, there are character developments that happen in mere moments, and there is an ongoing decay that you as the audience member are tasked to observe and understand. The season finale is the ultimate payoff for all of it.

River Manor is not exactly like television, though. Character arcs are sporadic, plot details are heavy handed, and each episode can choose to be closed into itself at any given moment it chooses. That is, until you reach the finale, at which point you will perhaps realize it was all connected the entire time LIKE MAGIC. Hopefully. At the very least, that’s what I was trying to do. You, the audience, can be the judge of the success of that.

On a more grounded level, this finale was shot on one very long Saturday that was a day of pure exhilaration for me. We were filmmaking by the seat of our pants that day more than any other time we broke out a camera and hoped for the best. It was so much stupid fun.

If you liked this series at all I would urge you to watch it again. Every episode is meant to be watched multiple times with tiny little details you’ll pick up that you didn’t see before including running gags that wrap themselves up in the finale – one of which goes 6 episodes long and is my favorite thing ever.

But anyway, thanks to everyone who worked on this project and thanks to everyone whom enjoyed it. This is my favorite thing I’ve ever done. Okay cool bye.

 

 

 

 

My Favorite Tree

Ryan Brady Leave a comment

There’s this one gigantic evergreen tree that stands alone in an open field near my house. It is big and tall enough to be the world’s Christmas tree, I always said to my Mom. I truly envied it. It had all the room it could have wanted to grow. All the space it could have ever asked for to flourish and every bit of sky above it to be rained upon and to gain the light of the sun. This tree had pride.

One day while driving by I saw a crowd gathered in the open field. In the center of them all stood a lowly tree stump protruding with gusto from the ground where the tall evergreen used to stand.

I parked on the side of the road and walked over to the crowd, pushing my way to the front. “Where did my tree go?” I offered up to no one in particular.

An older gentleman with heavy brown boots and weathered corduroy suspenders chirped up, “Someone came in the night and took it.” The crowd murmured tiny notes of agreement.

I dropped to one knee, my pants soaking in the morning dew from the ground. My eyes fixed on the stump. It was like someone grabbed the linchpin out from the machine that ran me. The tree was a part of home. When you get off the highway you pass the poorly painted building, you see that crazy lady yelling at her eight dogs, and you gaze upon the magnificent lonely tree. But not anymore. Someone had taken that from me.

The top of the stump was not a clean cut like it had been sawed off. The bark that remained was angled and sharp like it had been pulled into two by the hand of God.

“That’s not what happened.” A little voice no one could hear but me said out loud. As I turned my head I saw a little black haired girl in a white sun dress with pink flowers all over it holding her father’s hand. Her words had been falling on tall ears. Her other hand was holding on tight to an old book that was practically falling apart.

The little girls gaze met mine momentarily before she looked back at her tree. “What do you think happened?” I kept as quiet as I could to try and keep this a private conversation between the obvious child and the little girl.

“I don’t think anything” the girl scowled at the thought that she was only hypothesizing, “I know where my tree went.”

“Okay. I’ll bite little lady. Where did it go?”

“It left.”

“Left?”

“Yup. It had grown all it could here.” She looked over at me for a moment to see if I got it yet. I didn’t, so she continued to explain. “I used to come to this tree every morning and read it this book about the rain forest. Every time I talked about the number of trees in the rain forest the wind blew and the branches swayed. It was my tree but I knew it wouldn’t be forever. One day it would have to move on. Today is that day.”

My eyes blinked uncontrollably. “Why did it have to go?”

“Because it was looking for friends.” She said as a matter of fact.

“But you read to it every morning. Weren’t you its friend?”

“Yup. But I’m a person. It wanted to go somewhere where the other trees were.”

“Like the rain forest?”

“Yup. Like the rain forest. I guarantee you” Her eyes locked in on mine, stolid and true, “You go to the big rain forest and one tree there will look nothing like the others.” She looked back towards the stump. “He had to go find where he belonged.”

“But doesn’t that make you sad? You lost your tree. The place you used to go every morning to read your book.”

The little girl shook her head. “Nope. I feel just fine. He was never my tree. I was just borrowing him from the ground and this ground was just borrowing him from anywhere else on earth it could ever be.”

“But, aren’t you going to miss it?” The crowd started to disperse and the little girl got pulled by her father in the other direction. When I looked up for an answer she was skipping away. As I gathered myself I realized that on the ground next to me now was the little girl’s tattered book. In a tizzy I picked it up and stood to walk towards the father and the little girl.

“Hey!” I yelled, “You forgot your book!” The father didn’t notice my yelling at all as the little girl turned back, but only slightly.

“That’s okay! I was only borrowing it!” she yelled and smiled before turning back around and continued skipping. I turned back to look at the stump, then down once more at my new book, and held it tight to my chest.

Now when I go home I pass that poorly painted building –

I see that crazy lady yelling at her eight dogs –

And I sit down to read about the rain forest and think about that one tree that doesn’t look the same but is right at home. And so am I.

Once Upon That One Time – Chapter 1

Ryan Brady 2 Comments

My name is Ryan, I’m 50 years ahead in time of whenever you are right now, and shit has — Just. Gotten. Real.

I know, that’s confusing, and I don’t care. Listen, I don’t have a lot of time. Only like, the next few hours, and then all hell is gonna break loose. Before that happens I’m writing everything that has happened in this past year to me, my friends, and the race we still call human beings. That hasn’t changed. A bunch of stuff has changed, but we still get called that, so there’s at least one win for us. Chock that shit up to the score board, ass holes.

49 years from where you are right now is pretty much the same. It has cars that don’t fly and run on crude oil, it has solar panels that no one uses except for like 3 people and they’re always so uppity about it, and the President of the United States is a white dude and has been since that one time that other thing happened. Then it all went haywire. Because white people are the worst. In case it all goes badly I’m going to write down everything that’s happened as quickly as I can and then put this letter into the time capsule code named “Plot Device” that can very actually go back in time and warn everyone what this planet has become – which is full of ass holes.

See, it all started when this science lab where scientists were paid to do science did something other than science. They might of accidentally sort of started a chain of events that ended in all of the remaining animals on the earth to evolve into genetically enhanced versions of themselves that you could tame if you had the balls. After that, the rest of the animals (who were not already paired up with a human being) were killed off or went to the woods or something, point is they are gone. Now the only human beings and animals left on this earth have their friends and each other. Some notes that are important to the story and that I won’t explain because there isn’t time and also fuck you is that some of these animals can talk, and some can’t. The ones who can’t talk aren’t called dumb to their faces cause that’s just mean but…they are. Sometimes that matches up with the human riding them, sometimes it doesn’t. Whatever blah blah so on and so forth.

Other important things include that there are about 1000 people left alive on earth, the sun is getting hotter each and every day, Pangaea is a thing again so the land is just all mushed together, and there is an ongoing war between the two factions called The Colony and The Disciples Inside the Calamity Kingdoms. I didn’t choose those names, someone else did. Also there are The Outlaws who aren’t really a faction, they are just people who don’t give a shit and are on their own side. That’s where my friends and I come in.

We are the leaders of The Outlaws. Pretty sweet, right? Yeah, I know it totally is.

Are job is to fuck shit up. For everyone. All the time. No matter who is doing what, we fuck it up. We figure the sun will roast us alive, the seas will swallow us whole, or everyone will end up getting stabbed in the face – so we might as well have some fun before any of that happens.

Before I go on with all that has happened in the past year I have to tell you about my crew. I can’t just start using names and telling stories without you knowing some background on these people. First off there is no leader, there are alphas and betas but we all decide what to do together. We aren’t some group of douche bags with one biggest douche bag who thinks they know best. No one knows best. People who think they know best is what got this planet into the situation in the first place. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I’ll tell you bout my peeps.

There’s Abby and Mike who are married to each other. Abby, the cunning and the bold, rides Sepharoph (Seph for short) who is the king of the eagles. Mike, the logic and the balance, rides Jasper, the aging moose who is as wise as the amount of years he’s been alive grant him to be. Elliot, the wildcard, rides the Emperor Penguin Duo Koo and Stew who are strapped to his feet and make ice with their belly’s so he can slide around everywhere. Koo and Stew and stronger than most penguins and don’t like each other or change or learn lessons. There’s also Pat, who is on a brown bear that hasn’t changed at all.

Stephanie and JR are here too, they are engaged to be married on a mountain. Steph, the no bullshit go-getter and JR the deceptively kind ninja scientist ride on an albino Jaguar named Bertram and an Elephant the size of a house named Flounder, respectively. Marc, the hungry and bearded, rides a Rhino named Carl with steel for a horn that Marc forged himself in an erupting volcano. As for me, I’m on my trusty flying polar bear named Ralph who shoots acid out of every hole he has in his body. (that includes his butt)

Adam is on an iguana. GBaby is on an Emu. Kate walks. Also there are others who I will get too later as their story wouldn’t make sense yet.

So all of us are in the outpost like a year ago and then some shit got to shakin’, and I mean shaking bad. The earth basically had a fuckin’ heart attacked and changed all of its shit up. The Chancellor, the dick head leader of The Disciples, built a gravity device that brought all of the continents together again because, and I’m quoting Mr. Chancellor here, “Who needs friends when you made the continents friends once more.” Sad as shit, I know.

As all of this is going on my friends and I are all sitting around, probably intoxicated, and being all like, “woah what’s going on?” Then we found out everyone was going nuts and dying and we said to ourselves, “let’s ride our animal friends into the night and see what’s to do.” So we all jumped aboard our animal friends except for Kate because she walks and went to the biggest building we could find immediately which was a liquor store that was made to look like the Lincoln Memorial. Inside we see the guy standing behind the register who is set atop a big fucking lion.

“Whatchu doin’ fools?” said the guy with the big fucking lion. Then we proceeded to explain to him what was happening outside and he was like “we should drink” to which we were all like “yeah that makes sense.” So we all start getting fucking wasted and next thing you know we sleep through the next few weeks and wake up, only to go outside and see a barren wasteland with nothing left standing as far as the human eyes can see. Seph, Abigail’s eagle friend, flew into the sky and told us that she could see something so we all hopped aboard our animals and headed off once more.

Except Kate. She got stabbed by that Lion.

I’m Afraid

Ryan Brady Leave a comment

I’m afraid I’m not talented enough to succeed. I’m afraid that even though I put every fiber of my being into achieving my goal, it still won’t happen because I’m just not good enough.

I’m a writer. Out of all of my hobbies, writing is the one I have invested the greatest amount of true work hours into. Malcolm Gladwell said “… researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.” That might also remind you of a Macklemore and Ryan Lewis song aptly named “10,000 hours,” and for a very good reason, they are based on the same principle. To become an expert at anything according to Mr. Gladwell, you have to put 10,000 hours of practice into whatever it is. To writers, those hours can easily be translated and then subsequently measured by word counts.

So, let’s do some math! Well, I guess I’ll do some math and you just have to keep reading this. Good, I’m glad we had that talk. I am 8 days from being 26 years old and in the spirit of rounding up, let’s just say I’ve been alive for 26 years. I have been literate for 22 of those years. I have been writing stories for 10 of those years. On a weekly basis I average 800 written words, most of which are not publishable. That number includes weeks that I’ve written 20,000 words (that happened one time – it was a very good week) and others when I have written absolutely nothing.

4 x 800 = 3200 words a month

3200 x 12 = 38400 words a year

38400 x 10 years = 384000 words all time

For reference the book I just finished reading, Divergent, has 105,000 words. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is 76,944 words. Ulysses by James Joyce is 265,000 words. The longest novel ever recorded is Mission Earth by L. Ron Hubbard coming in at 1.2 million words. Granted, L. Ron Hubbard can sometimes be described as a  psychotic lunatic, but you have to give it to the dude, he wrote a whole hell of a lot of words. For even more reference, my debut novel Odessa Red (available on Amazon.com) is 45,093 words.

Now, this is not to say that the number of written words automatically equals the quality of your product. It’s just saying that as a writer, the designation I identify myself with the most, I am a relative novice. And in that light, here is the cold hard truth: I’m not good enough yet, but I’ve invested too much time and effort to stop now.

On a related note, I truly love writing and because of that love it doesn’t matter how many times I fail, I will never stop. But what you love and what you’re good at are two very different subjects. I know why I love writing. The idea that words in a particular order that did not exist previously can create entire worlds is absolutely amazing to me, and my ultimate goal is to create worlds that I love and that others can fall in love with as well.

I want that very badly, but I will never say that I want it badly enough that I will definitely succeed. I honestly don’t know if I will succeed, and I think that’s the point. I might not be good enough. I might not have the talent to describe the worlds in my dreams. But that has nothing to do with whether or not I will keep writing. I doubt myself often; mostly at night right before I fall asleep. I ask myself why I keep doing this. Why I try so hard. I read books and think that I’ll never be able to encapsulate a story like they did. But then I fall asleep, wake up, get out of bed, and do it all again. Because the elation brought on by success outweighs the misery of failure. Success hasn’t happened yet, and I don’t know if the previous statement is true or not, but I want it to be true so badly and not trying is a great way to never find out if it can be true.

Everyone has something like this in their lives. I love writing. Ask yourself what you love. I don’t know how you feel, but I know that I’m glad I’m afraid of what I love and I think you should be too. Fear drives me toward an unknown future and personally, I’d rather be afraid than be nothing at all.

About Georgia Bound

Ryan Brady Leave a comment

Updates have been sparse due to the fact that I just finished principal filming and I’m soon to be editing a short film plus I’m writing a book with a release timeline of Spring 2014 – but I thought I’d give the blog at least a little something today.

Georgia Bound (Click for PDF) is a feature length film script I wrote in the summer of 2009 and edited with the help of my friend/editor Abigail Storiale – until I had a final product in 2011. Since then I’ve written two books and a short film that is coming out this fall plus a number of other things that no one will ever see and some things that people will see if they choose too.

The synopsis for the script is: In an effort to save his relationship, recent high school graduate Jim must venture south of the Mason-Dixon with the help of his new acquaintance, a mentally unstable taxi cab driver.

The script follows this kid who is desperate but is about to find out how far he would really go to save the only thing in his life that gives him happiness. It’s a coming of age tale and really worked out well as the first thing I had ever written because the premise isn’t a new one and the story is simple.

Through writing this I learned some film fundamentals – that every page of a script is about a minute of film time – there are certain points of almost every movie ever made that you should hit including establishing your major characters and then playing around with their personalities and eventually the all if lost moment followed by some sort of redemption. The all is lost moment is my favorite because once you know about it you’ll see it in everything. It’s basically the moment about 20-30 minutes before the end of the movie where all hope seems lost and you think there is no way for these main characters who hopefully by this time in the story you are rooting for will pull this one off – but then miraculously they find a way! Most movies are like this for a reason – a large portion of the population loves the formula. So for my first go at a movie script, I used it to teach myself that exact formula.

At the time I wrote it because I just wondered if I could write a movie script. Prior to sitting in my basement for two months that summer I had never written anything of creative worth – so this was a total shot in the dark. Now it serves at a spec script, meaning that it will hopefully someday prove to someone with a bunch of money that I can write a movie. If you find the time I invite you to give it a read – I’m very proud of it, and not because I think it’s amazing (I don’t think that) but because I think that I had an idea one day and then worked on it until I liked it – which is the most important part in my opinion for anything you choose to do in life.

Have a good one,

Ryan

Chapter 1

Ryan Brady 1 Comment

The usual cycle of my writing projects is that I’ll be smack dab in the middle of one when I need to start another. The “Ian and the Bishop” short film movie cast and crew are three weeks from rehearsals and then quickly after that we start shooting. There is a bunch more to do and not a whole lot of time to do it…so what do I do with some of my free time? Write something else completely different.

It drives me insane while being the only thing that genuinely keeps me sane simultaneously. I wrote the first scene of Ian and the Bishop a month before Odessa Red was finished. I wrote Odessa Red’s first chapter half way through putting together TLDNR. It’s a vicious cycle  – which by the way would be a sweet band name. So in my usual fashion I started writing something else. So far I’ve gotten good feedback besides my editor telling me I suck at the English language, which I totally do, but I like the premise so I might stick with it after the film wraps. Who knows. It doesn’t even have a working title yet – if you think of one, let me know.  I’ve written 2 chapters and you’re about to read the first. It has errors galore and according to Abigail “misplaced modifiers everywhere” whatever that witchcraft means, but the core of the first chapter is there. So, let me know what you think.

CLICK THIS FIRST PAGE TO OPEN THE PDF DUDES

HB2

A Very Short Story: Emma’s Journal

Ryan Brady Leave a comment

“If love were easy, everyone would have it” Emma wrote. The 16 year old girl is writing in her journal like she always did before going to bed. Her eyes wander away from the page while she scowls. Her own cliches disappoint her, but she keeps on writing. Because what’s the point of meticulously documenting everyday of your life if you stop every time you hate yourself. If that were the case Emma would be less of a girl who writes in her journal and more of a girl who does literally anything else…Pretty much all the time.

“If I had to say anything to future me about love it would be this: just let it happen. Stop trying so hard. The amount of time and effort you put into falling for the right guy has just left you falling. You know that feeling you get when you’re woken up suddenly after getting thrown off a cliff or pushed out of an airplane in a dream? Well, my entire life can be summed up in that moment.”

She looks up again from the book she has been keeping since she was 11. It was raining outside. Which made sense – why would it be a clear night’s sky? That would just ease the process of longingly looking toward the stars and pondering her existence. But no. It was raining and cloudy and her life was over…or whatever.

She looked back down and put her purple inkjet pen to the page, “I live for moments of change but change is the scariest thing in the world to me….I bet a lot of people on their death beds, if asked what their favorite memories were, would come back with something amazing. Some exuberant snippet of their life that lifted them up to a height that was so out of this world gravity lost hold. Because what is the search for happiness other than your fight against gravity? It’s keeping you down when all you’ve ever wanted to do was fly…okay that sounds insane. Please, someone punt my head like a football…for the greater good.”

She exhaled and fell back onto her pillow, her journal now above her and her pen upside down, “If writing upside down makes me one step closer to an astronaut I implore whoever finds this journal in 100 years to call the embassy…or anybody really who knows Buzz Aldrin’s number. I bet that guy would appreciate what’s happening in a 16 year old girl’s bed…nope, that sounded weird. I retract that previous statement BUT I REFUSE TO CROSS IT OUT. I have principles. They aren’t quite visible to the naked eye, but they’re around here somewhere….Also I just remembered Buzz Aldrin is like a billion years old so the chances of him being alive in 100 years is slim to none. One could hope, I guess. And I shall!”

She adjusted herself once more, and propped her left arm up, placing the journal down on her bed. Her gaze returned to her window – full of rain, and subtle street lights.

“I feel as though I’m living inside a water painting where everything is melting away except for me…”

She closed her journal and placed it on the ground. Her hands reached for her covers so she could tuck herself in tight, while staring straight at the sharp popcorn ceiling.

“I’d like nothing more than to melt away” she said out loud to no one in particular. She laughed. Her melodramatic moments amuse her. And since she lived for those moments she embraced them with vigor.

“Or maybe not. Maybe I should stay right here, you know, just in case…If the world is melting…let it melt. I’ll be right here, world!” She let out a big yawn and shut her eyes tight.

“I’ll be right here.”

 

Blog about that Book I wrote

Ryan Brady Leave a comment

Odessa Red Available on Paperback and and Kindle 

Before I get into this long diatribe about my own work because I love talking about myself I’ll just say if you read the book/are going to read it THANK YOU. I love you. Straight up. Make sure to share a link to it and/or review it! If you have any questions about it I would love to answer them on this blog or on Twitter @RyanBrady13 or in real life.

I’m going to be doing a giveaway after people have had a chance to read it – I have the actual pair of shoes (new, bought specifically for this purpose) that Grant’s shoes are based on. I’m going to randomly choose someone who asks me a cool question about the book/has a favorite quote and give the shoes away – and if the winner wants me to ruin the shoes by signing them I’ll be more than happy to.

——————–

My new book Odessa Red started as a free write I did in June 2011. The first chapter that exists now is about 80% of what it was the first day I wrote it. On that day I had one image in my head I wanted to convey on paper which was one guy in the middle of a street with a knife in his hand and police helicopters shining down on him. At the time I had no idea what this guy’s name was or why he just killed a bunch of people. All I knew is that he was a good guy.

This my first shot at Fiction and for very good reason. It’s so much easier to write my normal thoughts down and then mold them into an essay or a short anecdote. Writing fiction is creating an entire world which brings along intricacies such as time and physical placement and back story and emotional involvement etc. All things I never had to think about.

This book was more for me than it was for anyone else. You can tell by the end of the book I’m a better writer, which makes sense because it took me a year and a half to write 45,000 words and make them somewhat decent. (For reference a good day for a normal novelist is 4000 words, not saying they always do so, but that’s what a good day constitutes)

Writing Fiction is an extremely lonely process. My Editor Abigail is one of my best friends which made it easier so I had someone to talk about this world that was constantly being expanded inside my head. We tried to talk about it alone though because when you talk about a book that’s not a real thing at a bar in front of your other friends and you’re not a world renowned author it just gets annoying for everyone else. If you’re not living it every day it’s tough to get excited about it.

It’s for that very reason that the book is how it is and I am feeling the way I feel now. Odessa Red does not have a proper ending. It is a cliffhanger that will most likely frustrate a few readers, but that’s how it has to be. I’m very clear at the end of the book – if people like it enough I’ll keep writing it but for now I will just enjoy this moment.

This moment is a big one for me. It’s the first time other people will be able to be fully inside my head for a short period of time. I wrote an essay book in the middle of last year that was a little bit like that but not quite. The amount of time and effort I put into my last book as opposed to this one is astonishing. That’s why I HOPE everyone likes it but I don’t NEED them to like it. I got it to a place that I was very proud of and that’s what mattered to me the most. That’s also why it has a cliffhanger ending – I knew if I kept writing it the quality control would go downhill because basically…I got bored. Doing the same thing for a year and a half is tough for me and without Abigail pushing it would have never happened.

Which reminds me: Thank yous are in order. Alex Meeske had a big part in editing the first quarter of the book, and Adam Carner did a great job on the front cover with very little guidance from me. Much thanks to both of them.

I can’t say enough about Abigail so I won’t. It’s very simple: without her I would have never finished this book which has turned out to be the most proud of anything I’ve ever done. Somewhere near the middle of the process I told her, “As my editor I want these characters to be as much yours are they are mine” which absolutely happened. She rewrote a good portion of the scene that I think is the emotional center of the entire book (When Grant confronts Syd about the concept of hope on top of the police station)  – I can do a lot of things well, but deep emotional turns are not one of them and she helped quite a bit to make it real.

This moment is amazing but scary. When you release a book it’s not yours anymore. It becomes the intellectual property of anyone who reads it and grows with them. My current estimate for people who will read this book (seriously) is about 30 – which is fine by me. As long as it’s more than two I’ll be just fine.

Image

Frustrating Fiction

Ryan Brady Leave a comment

The hardest part (for me) about writing fiction is that it is a very lonely process. The current project I am working on has been on paper for about a year and in my brain for about a year and one day. During that time I have lived with these characters and seen them grow. I have seen them learn under strenuous circumstances while clinging to their previous lives – and through all of that, I am basically the same person.

It’s frustrating to know that I can so easily let these complex and problem ridden characters learn lessons but hold on to themselves in the process while I am constantly standing still, afraid to move forward in any direction.

Ya know? Either way I feel better now so…go me.