Brian Trent dot com

A muggy week in CT, but an exciting one… and not just because of the new Bond movie trailer. I received a phone call Monday from an acquisitions fellow at the McGraw-Hill publishing company. They are one of the bigger publishers of textbooks in the world. Back in 2004, The Humanist published an article I wrote on how civil liberties are being systematically reduced by the two-punch assault of government and corporate entities. From Walmart stitching RFID chips into their products, to the government pushing the National ID card and PATRIOT ACT onto us, some core freedoms are being stolen.

The article was well-received, and is still responsible for a good percentage of mail I get (both the good and bad.) It was even required reading for the National Debate on civil liberties conducted by H. W. Wilson.

So this guy from McGraw Hill wants to republish the article in an upcoming anthology. A little negotiation, and the deal was signed.

Even more exciting is that one of my articles was accepted for publication at Strange Horizons!

They are a cutting-edge, award-winning magazine of science-fiction and speculation. I’ve been trying to break in for a while now… so I’m absolutely delighted! My piece examined a what-if question in history. What if such-and-such had happened? How would history have unfolded differently? More on that later. The article is scheduled for a Fall 08 publication date.

My girlfriend and I are making our way through all of Alfred Hitchcock’s films. There is an immediacy in his directorial technique which is very engaging. While I agree that Psycho is probably his most accomplished work, I have always loved Vertigo. Also on my favorites list is North by Northwest, Saboteur, and The Birds. Rear Window is refreshing in the way it makes use of an extremely small set (though Hitchcock’s movie Lifeboat has the all-time Hollywood record… as well as the cleverest Hitchcock cameo ever!)

I understand that they are remaking The Birds, with Naomi Watts starring. I am not a fan of sequels or remakes as a general rule. Sequels and remakes usually screw up everything they are trying to recreate. Fact is, I can only think of six films which ever produced a sequel as-good-or-better than the original, and in the remake department the list is even shorter: Two. So we’ll see…

Ok, some random thoughts on July 3:

* Franz Kafka was born on July 3 in 1883. Seven years later on the same day, July 3 is again immortalized when Idaho becomes the 43rd state of the union and immediately cranks out my favorite source of Vitamin C — the potato.

* The potato, of course, was already immortalized by the Irish Potato Famine which ended in 1852, the same year that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

* Stowe died on July 1 in Hartford Connecticut, about a half hour from my house. Hartford was the location of one of the deadliest fires in U.S. History — on July 6, 1944 — in what is known as the Hartford Circus Fire. That same year, George Stephen Morrison graduated from Flight School in Pensacola, Florida. George is best known for having a son named Jim.

* And that son — Jim Morrison — died on July 3, 1971, eighty-eight years after Kafka was born on the same day.

Of course, 88 is the year that Roman poet Valerius Flaccus died. Flaccus wrote a Latin version of The Argonautica, which was the basis of the movie Jason and the Argonauts showcasing the special effects of one of my heroes, Ray Harryhausen. And how old will Ray be next June?

88.

Random Fact:

151 years before they were discovered, author Jonathan Swift wrote in Gulliver’s Travels that the planet Mars had two moons, and even gave their correct distances from the main planet. He was also extremely close on the exact rotational orbit of the moon Phobos. No one can explain how he figured this.

Quote of the day:

We have it in our power to begin the world over again.
- Thomas Paine

This past Saturday I was one of four writers who sat on a Science-Fiction panel at The Yale Bookstore, to discuss how the genre sees the future. More to the point, the event was called “Literary Futures,” and one of the main themes was addressing the concerns of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. 

Censorship is a lifelong concern of mine — my novel Remembering Hypatia is about the destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria, after all. That was 1,600 years ago, and we like to think that something like that couldn’t happen today. After all, the collective knowledge of the world isn’t in one place any longer, right? I mean, it’s too bad the ancient Greeks hadn’t made contact with China, who at the time were using wood-block printing to achieve literary mass production. Better than copying everything by hand.

But today (and this is a point I made at Yale) we are becoming a digital world. Without hard-copies, censorship can now occur in an insidious and invisible way. Put it this way: Yesterday’s burnings required at least 451 degrees; tomorrow’s censorship will be done not with torches, but with a search-and-replace command.

Let’s call it the Digital Razor. It slices, slashes, and murders without shedding any blood. I’ve written about this very subject here. Movies are altered (E.T., Manhunter, Star Wars, to mention just a few) and by doing so, history itself is altered just a little. The sleight-of-hands behind the curtain…

It was a great discussion. The New Haven audience was terrific, and I had the chance to meet with fellow panelist Esther M. Friesner, a Nebula-award-winning writer (and editor of the anthology Chicks in Chainmail.)  She has a wonderfully sharp sense of humor, and we spoke for long after the event was over.

Later that afternoon, my girlfriend and I went strawberry picking — kind of funny, that an hour after I was talking about the far future I’m suddenly indulging in one of the oldest activities of our hunter-gatherer origins. I wonder if digital strawberries will tell our brains they are as good as the real thing.

Finally, this day ended with a thunderstorm — something that conjures my love of both the past and future. Years ago, I wrote a poem about how storms had inspired our dreams of Heaven and Hell, science, religion, and philosophy. Why not? Ancient people would have no idea what was going on in the sky. Rain falls… hence manna from heaven. And the superheated sonic booms in the clouds… what else could that be but a really angry god demanding blood.  Too bad so many people still believe that:

But I love thunderstorms. The seething dark clouds, electrified claws that split the night, the rain scrubbing everything down, the water vanishing into hidden chasms to make underground oceans we’ll never see.

Random Fact:

The deepest mankind has drilled toward the center of the Earth is 40,230 feet (roughly 7 miles) deep. No signs yet of an inner ocean… or James Mason and Pat Boone running from dinosaurs.

Quote of the Day:

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.– Edward R. Murrow

I like to think of a writer’s struggle in military terms… the quest of a lone warrior against a mighty empire. Robert E. Howard would have enjoyed the metaphor.

This summer I decided to step up the attack: I have pitted my work against a medley of contests, magazines, publishers, and various competitions. There are two ways of looking at writing; you can do it quietly, on the backs of envelopes like Emily Dickinson, and not really care about connecting to the world beyond your four walls. Or you can actively campaign in public arenas, with the publishing world’s equivalent of Roman Emperors watching from above.

I’ve just been informed of two small achievements. My poem “A Library Died” just won 7th Place in the Writer’s Digest International Poetry Contest. I wrote it about my great-grandfather, Frank Cipriano, who passed away at the age of 96, and could still remember the streets and sites of his native Naples. At family gatherings, he could sit off by himself, and take mental tours of the Italy he knew.

The other news is that my Travel piece “Mountain of Ghosts” won Honorable Mention in the Best Travel Writing Competition. You can see the list here.   It is a recounting of my hike up Mount Fuji, throughout the course of a night, to reach the peak in time for sunrise. My friend Alice snapped a pic of the moment, which you can see on the About the Author Page here.  Japan is an amazingly beautiful and unique country. What’s most interesting is that in spite of all the hyper-industrialization there, it still manages to retain its mystical spots, wreathed in mist and time, for people to enjoy. Japan doesn’t exist in the present; depending on where you go, you’re either in yesterday or tomorrow.

Across thousands of miles, it is impossible not to write about it. But then again, for a writer, it is impossible not to write.

The Connecticut Muse asked me to comment about writing once. “You know you’re a writer,” I said, “If the poetry book on your kitchen table was a pile of napkins last week.”

You don’t choose to write. It chooses you, and you obey.

Random Fact:

Gunpowder was invented by accident by Chinese alchemists 1,100 years ago. They were trying to make an elixir of eternal life.

Quote of the Day: “We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.” Titus Livius

MY name is Brian Trent and welcome to my blog. If you’re really interested you can check out the ABOUT THE AUTHOR page, but suffice to say that I’m a writer for life. I write books and films and poetry and columns; short stories and investigative pieces; historical works, science-fiction tales, and mainstream contemporary stories. I have no interest in being pigeonholed into one category, branded with one set of expectations or allowances. I like a lot of things, and there’s certainly enough to explore in this life. I plan on updating every Thursday, so you’re certainly welcome to come back and hang out.

Why a writer? I can only say that for as long as I can remember, it was the only career path I ever desired. I used to keep legal-size yellow pads on which to scribble my first stories. Then I graduated to various typewriters, and now the computer. Maybe in the future we’ll be composing stories directly into everyone’s ocular implants… something like an Amazon Kindle in real-time.

As I type this, the summer of ’08 has just turned up the heat and humidity. So I’ll keep the whole welcome/intro stuff short. The modern world is all about lists, so here’s 12 Random Things About Me if you care.

1. I was an illustrator’s model for an outdoorsman survival guide in the late ‘90s.

2. I was born the same day that George Washington laid the cornerstone for the U.S. Capitol (September 18)

3. My employment history is cut in the same mold as Mark Twain. I have been a restaurant manager, hospital clerk, journalist, editor, cell phone technical support, bookseller, martial arts instructor, English teacher, film production assistant, painter, landscaper, library assistant, ESL tutor, and proposal writer. I figure steamboat pilot is inevitable.

4. I seem to be one of the few people who love broccoli rabe. If you do as well, we should start a club or something.

5. My favorite author of childhood was Ray Bradbury; years later, I was honored to have a story published in a literature anthology right alongside one of his.

6. I am a mead and sake drinker.

7. Paris is a great city, but it is also the first place I was ever in a fist-fight.

8. I was the keynote speaker for The Yale Bookstore’s Author Series during National Banned Books Week.

9. I am the author of Remembering Hypatia, which has won several awards; the screenplay also won Honorable Mention in the 2007 Writer’s Digest annual writing competition.

10. I am also the author of Never Grow Old: The Novel of Gilgamesh, which was nominated for Book of the Year by ForeWord magazine.

11. I write a regular column for Populist America, and have contributed to The Humanist magazine.

12. Dogs are fine, but my best animal friend was a ring-tailed lemur named Nikos. (He passed away two years ago from a respiratory infection.) Whenever we went hiking together, all children in the vicinity assumed I was filming an episode of Zoboomafoo.

And here’s two entirely random facts:

1. In as many years as there are people (6.5 billion as of this writing) the sun will become a red giant and destroy all life on Earth.

2. A giant squid’s eye is as big as your average dinner plate.

Quote of the Day: “Time is the stream I go a-fishin’ in.” Henry David Thoreau

The screenplay for “Remembering Hypatia,” co-authored with writer/director Marty Lang, has just won Honorable Mention in the 76th Annual Writer’s Digest Competition. The screenplay faithfully translates the novel into a form fit for the silver screen. But which actress should play Hypatia?

During my book tour, I was assailed by fans demanding that Nicole Kidman, Keira Knightly, Diane Lane, Angelina Jolie, or Cate Blanchette play the doomed philosopher.
I’d love to hear your feedback.