The Whitechapel Project

Not a lot to say about this episode, honestly. The voting was to learn a bit more about Liz, so I did that while seeding another part of the puzzle to come. Really, I’m trying to get things moving to the act three break, which means that things have to get worse for Six before they can get better. I’m getting pretty comfortable with writing scenes where Six is in his own head, so maybe I need to work towars other kinds of scenes going forward. I’ll have to think about that. (To be fair, I’ve been really ill since just after I posted the last episode, so I’m a little spacey right now — if there’s something I’m forgetting about the writing of this episode, I’ll go back and update this entry.)

In other news, I’ve moved my personal blog over to WordPress as well, so you can find that now at http://eddyfate.com. That blog is about writing, game design, gaming, and general geekery, so if any of that’s stuff you like, go ahead and check it out. For those following my LiveJournal, both this blog and eddyfate.com will feed into the LJ, so no need to change your subscriptions if you don’t want to.

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Previously on Whitechapel

Six killed again. This time, his victim was Liz, the mysterious woman who met him in the hotel he woke up in after a hospital stay. The murder was much more intense than previous ones, as he was under the influence of Jack the Ripper while it happened. Six even started thinking of the unnatural urges inside of him collectively as “Jack.” After the murder, Six was covered in blood and had to think of a way to deal with the situation he was now in.

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Due to today being a company holiday (and thus, a reason for me to spend several hours drinking with my coworkers), I’ll be recording and posting the next episode of Whitechapel tomorrow.

Episode 14 was both the easiest and hardest episode of Whitechapel I’ve written thus far.

It was easy because, in many ways, it’s an episode I’ve had in mind in some form for months. Even the voting went the way I was hoping (for the first time ever, I might add), so it was great that I didn’t need to think about it or do any planning or try to make it all hold together — I could dive right in and really go to town on a scene I’ve been looking forward to.

It was hard because I made myself incredibly uncomfortable writing it. I’m not sure it’s the scariest or goriest stuff I’ve written, but it’s certainly the most intimate.

I’ve always had a bad relationship with death, because a lot of people in my life have died suddenly and tragically. Some of my first memories are of a cousin of mine who died one night in her sleep. I dumped my step-father’s ashes into Lake Erie after a prolonged fight with cancer. I just buried my grandmom earlier this year, and a friend just died earlier this week. I won’t go so far as to say that death has dogged my every step, but I’m certainly no stranger to it, and it’s been a part of my life more in the past six months than it has ever before in my life.

Maybe that’s the reason why I write horror and crime drama, so that I can try to come to terms with it. Some people block it, some drink, and some just obsess about it for weeks and weeks. I put all that grief and pain and anguish into stories about horrible people doing horrible things. (And I drink.) I think it’s a balance that a lot of horror writers have to come to terms with, that darkness within that they have to tap and spin onto the page. If it works well, you can tell an amazing story, even if you end up with a few sleepless nights as a result. But hey, if I’m going to lose sleep to my inner demons anyhow, might as well entertain some people along the way.

I was still uncomfortable when it came time to record. Rather than shy away from it, I tried to throw myself into the performance, and for the first time I did the whole episode in nearly one take. I recorded and had it edited and up in record time.

I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback on both the writing and the performance, which I greatly appreciate — thank you for the support.

It helps me to come to terms with my own demons.

Today, my distant drinking buddy and fellow asylum inmate Chuck Wendig posted a bit about the search terms people use to find his blog. David, my webmaster, was all like “Oh yeah, we can totally do that too,” and I was like “Well totally do that,” and he was like “totally, I’ll do that.” (Note: That may not be quite how the conversation actually went.) I expected a fair amount of weirdness, just because people might be searching for something in Whitechapel, London, and stumble across my site. But there is some cool, some interesting, and a fair amount of weird. Let’s take a peek into the hits, shall we?

• white chapel sweatpants: This came up a lot. A whole lot. Most of the hits were from Germany. Is there a brand of sweatpants named Whitechapel? (Answer: Kind of. http://www.imperial-clothing.com/shop/catalog/product/view/id/26403/s/whitechapel-logo-sweat-pants)
• mister poll sitting on his face: Whoever Mr. Poll is, I hope he’s feeling better.
• mur woods: I think I referenced Mur Lafferty once on the blog. Do they mean Muir Woods?
• whitechapel you really didnt need to see this: Wow. Thanks a fucking lot, Internet.
• does whitechapel inhale: No. It stabs. It stabs so much.
• chuck wendig: GET OUT OF MY BLOG, CHUCK.
• allyvie.com: A website that doesn’t appear to exist. Again, less with the subtle reminders of obscurity, Internet. Thanks.
• tiger stripes eden ep: I didn’t know this even existed until I looked it up. So… uh… thanks for the free publicity?
• myspace mission to murder
• what happened to assshare.com: Also “candy assshare.” It has to be three s’s. You can guess what kind of site it is. What does it have to do with my story of murder and amnesia?
• The Podge Cast and Bearswarm: Looks like they send a lot of traffic my way. Return the favor and give their podcasts a listen.
• little smiles car wash: This has to be a strip club. Or it should be.
• something changes when she glances: Did I write that line?
• whitechapel underwear: I’m not going to Google this one. I leave that for the reader to pursue if they desire.
• timetopuke.com mr hands: Another website that doesn’t seem to exist. Does Mr. Hands know Mr. Poll? Maybe they can go bowling or something.
• ergofiction: Ergofiction also sends me a lot of traffic. Much love!

The Internet continues to be a strange and magical place.

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Previously on Whitechapel

Six discovered that he was tied to the notorious Jack the Ripper. Liz found him in a local hotel, and took him to a car wash to inform him that his clothing had been bugged by Richard Marsh, a.k.a. Mister Rich, an agent of Lacuna. Once the clothing was disposed of, she drove him to a house that she claimed was theirs. Six didn’t recognize anything on the inside, and a nagging suspicion led him to realize that there were no photos of the two of them together. He suddenly got a headache, the kind that came before a manifestation of his powers. Liz pointed a gun at him, and told him it’s too soon for him to have a headache. She begged Six to not force her to use the gun on him.

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Man, things have been crazy this week. Gained a car, lost a fuel pump on a different car, ended up selling that car only to not be able to sell it, all while shopping for houses and guest-hosting another podcast (the Darker Days podcast for you White Wolf fans). It was only through a few things falling apart tonight that I was even able to have time to write a post-mortem this week. Lucky for all five of you who read it.

Just about every writer I know goes through a phase where they’re just sick of working on a project. It’s usually around the middle of the project, that point where they just look at everything they’ve written, think it’s all crap, and can’t face putting down another word forward. It’s the point where many people just abandon the project and find something else to do, but some force themselves to sit down and crank out just a few hundred more words.

I hit that point with this episode. I threw a null choice at the end of episode 12 just to round out the set, and ended up getting that choice delivered to me. I had no idea how to work a house into the episode. Further, I knew instinctively that I needed to have this episode have some kind of action in it, but wasn’t sure how I was going to get from episode 12 to an exciting end of some kind in episode 13. So, on Sunday, with deadline looming, I just starting throwing down words on paper and hoped that something coherent came out.

As I wrote, I suddenly put a lot of pieces together in my head — things I’ve been sitting on for weeks and months all just clicked in my head. The characters flowed, the scene made sense, and I had a clear picture of how it was all going to end up. (Of course, some revelations made me want to go back and rewrite some earlier episodes, but I held firm. I will continue on with the material I have thus far created.)

Whitechapel is over half over, and I feel for the first time that things are starting to wrap up. I’m already seeing a way ahead (not the way ahead, since I’ve learned never to trust how you bastards will vote), but I’m not entirely sure how it will all end. While I have a bit more insight behind the curtain, in many ways I’ve reached a point where I’m learning about Six as much as you guys are.

And that’s amazingly cool. I’m looking forward to uncovering the next episode.

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Previously on Whitechapel

Six woke up in a hotel room. After a few clues, he uncovered the fact that he is somehow tied to the notorious Jack the Ripper. A mysterious woman named Liz found him, and told him to keep quiet as they made their way from the hotel. Six spied a black van that he thought was similar to the one that held the men who knocked him unconscious, but it turned out to be a red herring. Liz drove Six to a car wash in the middle of a bitter Ohio winter, and told Six that his clothing had been bugged. She also revealed that they had been lovers once, and as they pulled out of the car wash, Liz dropped the biggest bombshell of all: that the bugs in his clothing may have come from Richard Marsh, also known as Mister Rich, an agent of the organization that claims to own Six – Lacuna.

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I realized going into this episode that the setup was similar to earlier episodes — a mysterious figure leading Six into a car and driving him around, and having some connection to one of Six’s memories from episode one — so I tried to play with the formula a bit. Since the voting was so overwhelmingly against her being involved in some sort of trap, I not only turned the black van into a red herring, but I also dropped another piece of information I had been holding on to: Mister Rich’s real name, and the organization he works for. Of course, I’m setting up that Liz and Mister Rich are going to be at odds in how they interact with Six.

The car wash thing was something I’ve had in mind for a couple of episodes, once I realized that Six was bugged (or at least, is told he’s bugged). There are times when I can’t even get cell reception in a car wash, and I certainly can barely hear anything in some of them, so it seemed a plausible (if really odd) location.

At one point, I was going to make Liz European. While Michelle can do a decent variety of European accents, they weren’t working for me, so I told her to revert to her normal accent. I had a brief joke about pants/underwear lined up that I had to cut, but the change in accent still works with a few options I had in mind.

The choices at the end of the episode seem a bit random, but I have a few ideas on what will happen next based on them. To take the one that won’t get voted in by the end of the night as an example, if she had gone back to the hotel she would just be in town for a few days, and that would have set up the next encounter. And there will likely be some form of bad encounter soon — Six has been having it easy the past couple of episodes.

Cover of "Close Encounters of the Urban Kind"

Long story short: an anthology I’ve been published in is open for pre-orders. Buying a copy would be awesome.

Details: Pre-ordering opened today for Close Encounters of the Urban Kind, the fiction anthology by Apex Book Company. This anthology features my short story, “Gloomy Sunday.” It’s about a washed-up private detective, his government-employed ex-girlfriend, and a song that kills people. While the story isn’t directly tied to any events in Whitechapel, it does share elements with it (most notably the Lacuna organization, a first-person narration style, and a tendency for me to be really horrible to my protagonists).

The special pre-order price is $15.95, and the book will be available for sale in April 2010. If you’ve been a fan of Whitechapel so far, picking up a copy of this book would be a great way to support me.

The link to the pre-order page is here:

http://www.apexbookstore.com/collections/frontpage/products/close-encounters-of-the-urban-kind-edited-by-jennifer-brozek