Maria Alexander News and Updates from TheHandlessPoet.com

(Midway in a conversation as we see Mickey Mouse and Cinderella wade into the crowd for a meet-and-greet.)

Me: Ah, princesses! Little girls want to grow up to be princesses.

Lord Arux: Did you want to grow up to be a princess?

Me: No. I wanted to be a Vulcan.

Lord Arux: I love you.

So, no sooner as when I'd made up my mind, I got a call late last night from Agent Gal. "The other condo people say you beat out the other three offers. Ha!"

This is the other place I had an offer out to...until I discovered that the condo is less than half a mile from the Van Nuys Airport airstrip. I didn't hear any special noise while I was at the condo. However, when I researched online, I discovered all kinds of terrible noise complaints. I thought the Van Nuys Airport was just a weeny little putt-putt private airport, but apparently there are considerable problems that would be a mere half mile away.

If I want, I've got TWO places. So to speak. But I think in rejecting this offer, I've made the right decision. Especially given the fact that I've got what I call "dog ears." I hear EVERYTHING.

Thank goodness for the advice of my manager at Uncle Walt's, who know that area well and brought the noise problems to my attention, and The Googles. I'd tried to go over and camp out, but as I was driving over, Agent Gal called and said we'd gotten the counter offer back from the condo I'm in love with, making it moot.

Whew!

The last 24 hours have been really something.

Thing the First
Yesterday, I accepted a counter-offer on a condo in The Valley. It's beautiful and I'm totally in love with it. The only thing that keeps it from being perfect is that it needs laundry hookups, but during the inspection period I can have contractors give bids for that. Because it's a short sale, I now must wait 30+ days -- probably around 45 days -- for the bank to crunch the numbers and tell me if my offer is too low or if there's another number they're looking for that better matches the market. All other offers they get on the condo are backup offers in case I decide to bail. I am, as they say, their woman.

In case anything goes wrong, Agent Gal says she's got my back. I'm not worried. I am super excited!

Thing the Second
I also at long last finished a rewrite of MR. WICKER, which I've had on the backburner since I signed with my agent back in 2006. This is big for a lot of reasons, but at any rate I feel like I can finish THRILLED! and the writing will be more solid.

Thing the Third
Apparently there's a great review of SINS OF THE SIRENS in the new issue (#61) of Cemetery Dance, with some very nice things said about the work of yours truly. I'll have to drop by Dark Delicacies tomorrow and pick up a copy, it seems. Thanks, Lisa!

If The Powers That May Or May Not Be would like to add more to this pile, I'm good with it. Bring it on!

OMG! ECLIPSESESES!

Okay, that said...really? I mean, really?

::sigh::

In this case, I like what Sanal Edamaruku, president of the Indian Rationalist Association, has to say:

"Primarily, what we see with all these soothsayers and astrologers is that they're looking for opportunities to enhance their business with predictions of danger and calamity," he told AFP.

Ain't that the truth.

So, if you get an earful from some coworker, friend or family member freaking out about this week's eclipse, saying that WWIII is about to take off, please tell them to grab their club, reclip their loin cloth and go back to the cave. Or don't. Sometimes it's just fun to watch people flip the fuck out for no good reason. While eclipses can and do affect people in the astrological sense, please turn down the Carmen Burana, have some chamomile tea and take a nice walk instead.

After watching this Spanish film, I almost had to sleep with the lights on.

Seriously.

The last few minutes of that film are the creepiest I've seen in many years. The whole thing is brilliant -- not just in the approach to steady cam POV with long, uncut sequences but in its portrayal of mounting panic and terror.

And then there's the ending. Holy Christ. Most of the night, I both simultaneously cursed the filmmakers for the terrible way they got into my head and admired their prodigious talent. But mostly what I want to know is: How the hell did they do that? (If you've seen it, you know what I'm referring to.) I still this morning have a terror hangover in my gut.

I have no intention of watching QUARANTINE, by the way, which is the American remake. But I will probably watch the sequel, despite how I feel about most sequels. I just don't believe in American horror anymore. I don't really enjoy crappy plots smeared with a little blood and some jump scares, which seems to be what American producers think horror is. I want horror to shake me up and strip me down with a great story and characters I love. We stopped doing that way back in -- when? The early 1990s? After the borefest known as BLAIR WITCH, I gave up and turned to strictly foreign horror. I have been rarely disappointed.

Lord Arux is gone this weekend on a business trip. I accidentally stalked him when I checked out a live Internet stream of his conference. (I was supposed to go with him, as it would have been an excellent conference for me, too, but lack of funds got in the way.) So, I'm home taking great advantage of the writing time.

And so, to write.

Sorry to keep filling my blog with laments and protestations, but I swear the world is stuffed full of bastards.

For example, I just got screwed on my second short sale offer in one week.

Way back in April, I made an offer on a beautiful condo in the Monterey Hills. It was what they call a short sale. I figured, yeah, it'll probably take a few months before they let me know if they've accepted my offer, but it's worth a shot. Meanwhile, I'll keep looking at other properties in case things don't work out.

I was pretty sure, too, that I had this in the bag. The agent was a lunatic. He was nearly impossible to get ahold of. When Agent Gal finally got ahold of him, he claimed he didn't have a key to the condo building, despite the fact that the lock box was on the condo door. He told Agent Gal that she'd have to "piggy back" on someone going into the building. (If you live in any gated building, you know how well that goes over with the residents.) Agent Gal, being awesome, managed to sneak into the condo complex and call me from the inside so that I could meet her. The place had been on the MLS for 118 days -- and for good reason. No one could freaking get in!

I made an offer at asking price, figuring I was a shoe-in because the chances of someone else being so bothered were slim, seeing as how there were slightly more expensive but more accessible condos being offered in that same mega complex. As soon as we submitted the offer, the agent told Agent Gal that he submitted the offer to the bank.

I continued looking. Being open to short sales helped alleviate the heaviness of foraging through foreclosures, which are often totally depressing to look at. Agent Gal continued to call and email the Monterey Hills agent every week. Then, one day last week, I was searching a short sale/foreclosure database and not only found my property still listed, but the price had raised $10k. I told Agent Gal who called and emailed the guy with a loud WTF.

He responded with one sentence in email. "Sorry, but this property has gone to foreclosure."

Translation: The agent was an incompetent, dishonest douchebag who either never submitted my offer or never told us it had been rejected.

Because I love the property and the agent's right to show had expired, Agent Gal is continuing to forage for details to see if we can't get our foot in the door on the foreclosure side. It's a long shot, but it's worth it.

Meanwhile, two weeks ago, I put in another offer on a condo, this time a short sale in Van Nuys. Agent Gal just spoke to the agent a few days ago, and he said that the offer was currently being considered by the bank -- a very good sign that things were moving along.

Or so we thought.

Today, Agent Gal and I went to the same condo complex to see another condo -- an REO (that is, a foreclosure) -- and possibly check out the condo I already had an offer on. At the time I'd seen it and made the offer, it was still occupied, but the residents were doing terrific things to the interior. I wanted to see how they'd left it. Agent Gal couldn't get ahold of the agent, so we figured we'd show up and see what was going on.

When we arrived, there was a note on the door, instructing delivery men to deliver packages not on July 15, but on the 16th. The note included a phone number. There was no lock box. Agent Gal called the number on the note, and the guy who answered -- the owner, as it turns out -- yelled at her. "Why am I still getting calls? I told that agent I'm not doing this anymore!" he said, among other things.

Translation: His agent had lied to us a few days ago. The seller no longer wanted to sell.*

I've been at this hunt since March. It's been a long, tiresome journey, where I'm learning how the banks, who got bailouts, have figured out how to screw us buyers on every front possible. I've also enjoyed first-hand experiences with real estate agents who are either insane or enormous twats.

It's not been fun.

Agent Gal sounded bummed out because I'm never excited about anything I see. The only things I get excited about are way too expensive for me. So, I don't bother working up the energy. Besides, the idea is to get my foot in the market now and take advantage of Obama's tax credit. Sure, I'd love my own place. But honestly I'm just tired of all the shenanigans.

I'll just have to keep pressing forward.



*While it's possible he suddenly came into a large amount of money and no longer wanted to give up his condo, it's more likely that he's one of those people who are in denial and would rather go into foreclosure than short sale their property. Go figure.

My deepest and most heartfelt sympathies go out to Noah and his family for their loss. I feel so terrible about what's happened that I can't say.

Back on Thursday, I cast a horary chart asking, "Where is Noah's dad, Robert Korda?"

July 10, 2009
4:28pm
Glendale, CA

I've used horary to find all kinds of missing objects -- even Robie -- but never to find a missing person, although that's an ancient, well-studied use of it.

I won't go into what the chart said, as it said nothing good. I mean, no one needed a damned astrology chart to tell them what they already feared. The Moon was "void of course," which William Lilly et al say means the matter at hand will not turn out well. The planet representing Robert was Mercury, and it lie in the 8th house (the House of Death), just about to sextile Saturn (planet of separation and endings) in the 10th house (which represents the public and the father, among other things). The next aspect the Moon would make, once it left Aquarius, was to sextile Pluto, the planet of death and the underworld.

There are lots more details, but you get the drift.

I mostly saw the sorts of things you don't want to tell a person who is grieving unless they ask. At first I thought I wasn't supposed to read it because of the 0 degrees Sagittarius ascendant and the void of course Moon -- both things that traditionally are supposed to give an astrologer pause before proceeding with the reading. But an older and wiser horary astrologer told me I was indeed supposed to take a look. (You can see this conversation on my Facebook profile for a status posted July 11, 11:04am. You'll see what I told him.)

I woke up in the middle of the night last night and couldn't sleep, thinking about that chart and what it said -- in particular, something about it happening in "the neighborhood" (3rd house Moon, just parting from Neptune) and the how the Moon had just left Neptune -- a planet that represents confusion, intoxication, spirituality, and hospitals, among other things -- before it went void of course.

At around 4:30am, I left a couple of notes for people who looked like they were in the loop. Then, the next morning, I checked online and learned that Noah's father had been found dead the night before. One news source says he was found in custody of the coroner's office.

Although it was natural to ask a horary question about something of this nature, I couldn't deal with the answer. What good is it knowing? LAPD homicide and the coroner will determine what happened -- although, if it means anything, I saw no indication of foul play.

I'm just so very, very sorry, Noah. Here's hoping that the authorities can bring things to closure so that you and your family can begin the healing process. Meanwhile, we're all thinking of you during this terrible time...

Over the years, I've been hearing both veteran and amateur fiction writers chirp, "Screenwriting is easy!"

What they mean is: bad screenwriting is easy. Poetry is easy to write, too -- bad poetry, that is. (Lord knows we've got plenty of examples of that in horror. Examples that have even won Bram Stoker Awards.) People seem to think that all you have to do is write a few words per line -- hey, it doesn't have to rhyme, right? -- and voila! A poem!

It's so EASY!

No, dumbass, it's a BAD poem. A GOOD poem -- like a GOOD screenplay -- takes years of study, sweat and practice to write. A huge number of people will never write a good screenplay or a good poem. Not because they're not talented writers, but because the rules and finesse of the discipline escape them. Some people, though, can learn. It might take years of practice and study, sure. But just because they can write in one discipline doesn't mean their writing extends to every discipline out there.

It's especially appalling when professional writers use this "easy" talk. We need to respect one another's disciplines. The only thing the various disciplines have in common, folks, are words. The rest takes study, discipline, savvy and talent to write for well.

It's like the French chef who specializes in his own ethnic culinary arts stepping in and saying, "Oui! I can make ze sushi. C'est facile! You just roll ze raw fish in the ze rice, non?" We would call that arrogant, wouldn't we? It seems fiction writers -- or whoever -- don't seem to realize how insulting this attitude is to the professionals who make their living writing screenplays or what have you. There's a reason that poetry collections full of work by people who are not poets often suck. Brilliant fiction writers often write abysmal, coltish poetry. Why? Because they are not necessarily poets. (Most, I say, are not poets and can't write their way out of a wet paper Plath.)

I see this play out at Uncle Walt's all the time. We've had some enormously talented writers take the test for the job I do and fail. It's not because they aren't brilliant writers. It's because this kind of writing not only takes training and talent, but it also takes the ability to mimic the various voices of Uncle Walt's websites. Sure, it looks "easy" -- as does poetry and screenwriting -- but not everyone can do that well enough to be paid for it.

And neither should you expect it when you approach a new discipline. Yes, I think there are people who could do my job who simply haven't tried yet. But no, I don't think it's "easy" and that anyone and his pet banana can do it who happens to be a writer.

So, the next time you're approaching a new discipline -- whether it's screenwriting, poetry, memoir, or what have you -- please have some respect. Don't assume that just because you can put words in respectable order that you can write well in a form that's relatively new to you. It's arrogant and insulting to the people who have worked in that area for years.

The world doesn't afford writers much respect to begin with. Let's at least give it to one another.