Tag: humor

Buy ‘Jake and the Dynamo’ Today

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Jake Blatowski can’t wait for high school—basketball, calculus, and a cafeteria that isn’t under investigation by the health department.

But he’ll have to wait: A computer malfunction has assigned him to the fifth grade!

It’s bad enough that he bangs his knees on the desks or that Miss Percy is going over long division . . . again . . . but Jake has to sit next to Dana Volt, a perpetually surly troublemaker determined to make his life a living hell.

Worse yet, Dana secretly belongs to a coalition of girls who protect humanity from the horde of deadly monsters plaguing the city—monsters that have chosen Jake as their next target!

Jake’s no hero; he just wants to make it to varsity tryouts. But now the impulsive and moody Dana is the only one who can save Jake from certain death—and Jake is the only one who can save Dana from herself.

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I believe ‘ViVid Strike!’ is an under-utilized source of dank memes.

The Children of the Night, What Sweet Nougat They Make

I am currently working on the sequence in the second volume of Jake and the Dynamo in which Jake assists Magical Girl Nunchuk Nun in a battle against vampire pastry chefs in the catacombs under the reconstructed Basilica of St. Peter’s in Rome-in-Exile.

I’m not sure it’s coming out the way I want, but I think this is pretty funny:

Pushing off from the armrest, Jake regained his feet and found himself facing a black-robed figure with a bone-white face. This gaunt creature’s head was a pale dome, entirely without hair, but marked on the left side, just above the ear, by a peculiar, puss-filled boil that somehow put Jake in mind of a half-formed eye. The creature’s unusually long and knobby ears ended in flaccid points. Although the rest of his skin was pale like that of a corpse, his lips were a bright red—not quite like lipstick, but more like cold sores that had spread to entirely encompass his mouth.

With a snake-like hiss, the vampire stretched out one thin, bony hand. His long fingers, tipped with yellowing, claw-like nails, grasped a huge cupcake topped with a high, swirling mound of almond-colored frosting.

He glided toward Jake almost as if he had wheels on his feet, and his pustule-like lips slid back, revealing a set of countless crooked, needle-like fangs. Although most of the windows were dark, a single panel—an image of the Christ raising two fingers in solemn blessing—glowed with a funereal blue-white light, the color of the waning moon. That light cast a sepulchral pallor over the vampire’s corpse-like face and made his wet teeth glisten.

“Our mont-blancs are on special this week,” the vampire whispered coldly. “They’re half off. Get them while supplies last.”

A sweet hint of chestnut met Jake’s nose.

His throat was dry, but he swallowed painfully. “I’m … I’m allergic to nuts, actually,” he rasped.

The vampire hissed again, and then suddenly lunged.

My writing process often involves listening to a single song over and over again. For most of the first volume, it was “You’re Mine” by Disturbed. For the vampire scenes in the second volume, I’m mostly listening to this:

#memes

#memes

Laughing through Sorrow: A Meditation on the Magical Girl Aesthetic

I have a theory that I have a hard time explaining, one I have held for years and have constantly struggled both to articulate in essays and to encapsulate in my fiction writing. A recent Amazon reviewer of my novel Jake and the Dynamo has, I think, captured it well:

There are times when the laugh lines come so fast you can’t catch your breath and other times when the insight is so deep you can feel it all the way inside you. The author is very familiar with his source material and understands the consequences of its tropes far more than the creators that develop it. Jake is very identifiable and you really feel for him. The central magical girls—Pretty Dynamo, Card Collector Kasumi, and Grease Pencil Marionette—are deep and well-drawn. You feel their triumphs and their pain. Things you took for granted are exposed from entirely new angles. But it is also rip-roaringly funny.

I am still grasping at the proper words, but what I think I want to say is that the grandest or saddest stories should begin with comedy. I take my influence largely from comics, so if I were to name the comics that best capture how I believe stories should be written, I would point first to Bone by Jeff Smith and Amelia Rules! by Jimmy Gownley. Continue reading “Laughing through Sorrow: A Meditation on the Magical Girl Aesthetic”