Assorted Crap: Who's Chris Geary-Durrill?

"...it's not where you were born but where you belong..."—Bono, U2

I've been writing fan fiction off and on for at least twenty years - starting out with the inevitable Star Wars, going through Tolkien, stampeding through Elfquest, exploring Michael Moorcock's Multiverse, and even dropping in briefly on McCaffrey's Pern. I didn't really start to find my own "voice" until a few years back when I finally realized that I didn't know a goddam thing about dragons, elves, rayguns, or unicorns, but I did know people slightly better.

Uhhhhh...sort of.

I think my best stuff, fan and private, comes from that direction. Not so much as "Look at so and so, he-she-it has magical powers or super-techno strength!" as how people cope with the world around them, how what appears at first to be a gift can also be a curse, and how perhaps being or having amazing abilities, still doesn't save you from having to deal with an overflowing toilet, an unfaithful lover, or a bad job. In other words, the insults and injuries of every day living.

A lot of my stuff is told from the viewpoint of nobodys, or second fiddles. My ambition is to some day read the entire novel, Don Quixote from the viewpoint of his servant Sancho Panza. Part of this comes from the fact that for most of my life I've never been on top. I do not know what it's like to be top dog. But I do know what it's like to be the second or third one down the ladder.

Or off the ladder entirely.

I do not say this out of self-pity or lack of self esteem. It's a simple fact of life: Not everybody can be the prima ballerina, the famous surgeon, the test pilot, the first person on the moon. Somebody has to clean up the mess, drive the tour bus, or prep the patient. Janitors, if you take Red Dwarf's word for it, have adventures of their own. Greenriders have their own intriguing peccadillos, and sometimes the omega male of the pack has a few things to say about the world we live in that are worth hearing.

In other words, I generally don't write about kings and other alphas. I might mention one now and then, but it's the underbelly, the alternate view, the exploration of hints and allegations that I prefer.

Perhaps it's because I'm lazy.

Another influence is Shakespeare. I came into Shakespeare fairly late in life, and I'm glad. Shakespeare really doesn't mean anything to most teenagers. It's just a bunch of words. To fully apprecieate Shakespeare's plays, you need to have had your ass kicked to the nearest horizon a couple of times. It also helps that when you touched down on the next horizon, you landed in broken glass or a pile of dogshit.

Japanese manga and anime have also helped - stories are to be peeled back, layer by layer, like an onion, or a rose, each layer revealing twice as many mysteries as there are answers. Let a story tell itself - take your time - you'll know when it's time to end when you reach the end.

QUESTIONS CHRIS GEARY-DURRILL IS FREQUENTLY ASKED:

1. Just how many cats do you have? Two. I have two cats because I do not have three.

2. Are you really that short? What do you think?

3. Name some of your (current) favorite authors: Terry Pratchett, Jane Austin, Dorothy L. Sayers, Hunter S. Thompson, William S. Burroughs, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Shakespeare, Truman Capote, H.P. Lovecraft, Emily Dickinson, Camille Paglia, and Stephen King for starters.

4. What bands/musicians/vocalists do you like? U2, Led Zepplin, Sarah Brightman, Pearl Jam, Warren Zevon, Journey, Asia, Enya, Clannad, Tannahill Weavers, R. Carlos Nakai, Stevie Nicks, Loreena McKennett, Fleetwood Mac, Chris Isaac, Roxy Music, Pink Floyd, John Lee Hooker, Glen Miller, to name a few. I also like bluegrass. Can't stand so-called Country, I like the older "O Brother, Where Art Thou" stuff.

5. Comics? Anime? The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Fat Freddy's Cat, R. Crumb, Cherry Poptart, The Cartoon History of the Universe, Sandman, Preacher, Mars, Chobits, Oh! My Goddess, Blade of the Immortal, Trigun, Witch Hunter Robin, Cowboy Bebop, Lone Wolf and Cub, Clover, G.T.O. Yurusi Yatsura, Galxy Express 999, Akira, What's Michael, 3x3 Eyes, Appleseed, Battle Angel Alita, Ranma 1/2, Bubblegum Crisis, Wish, and Domu, A Child's Dream

6. Movies? Shows? I really don't like television all that much, but I do a lot of PBS, but even then I only like the National Geographic shows, Nova, Mystery (When I remember), The Antiques Roadshow, and Ken Burns documentarys. I also enjoy America's Funniest Home Videos because it continually reinforces Darwin's Theory of Evoloution, and Drew Carey's Whose Line is This Anyway? British titles include: Red Dwarf, Fawlty Towers, 'Allo 'Allo, You Must be the Husband, Hi Dee Ho, Mr. Bean, Are You Being Served, Dr. Who, AbFab, The Young Ones, Black Adder, The Irish M.P. and Monty Python. I also enjoy some of the weirder stuff, but only years after the fact when I can get the entire set in DVD so I can watch it like a "novel": X-Files, Buffy, and Twin Peaks. Movies? Patton, The Seven Samurai, Zatoichi vs. Yojimbo, the Zatoichi series in general, Aliens 1-3, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Jackie Chan films, Amelie, The City of Lost Children, Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Empire of the Sun, Rebel Without a Cause, A Touch of Evil, The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Good,The Bad, and The Ugly, Every Which Way But Loose, The Others, Moulin Rouge, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (original), The Haunting of Hill House (original), the Kenneth Branaugh interpretations of Shakespeare, and the Royal Shakespeare Company's version of A Midsummer Night's Dream (Why? For one thing it's sans Callista Flockhart...) I collect oddball and recent interpretations of Shakespeare's work. Anybody know where I can get a copy of the Kabuki version of Hamlet or Macbeth? Seriously, I enjoy the old classics that everybody steals lines from or refers to. They blow a lot of the newer ones out of the water without even trying!

7. Do you consider any vacation a waste unless you see an old cemetery-mansion-ruin? Not so much a waste as a missed opportunity. I prefer off the beaten path. Tourist traps do not interest me unless they have been sprung and are full of writhing, screaming tourists. I like the odd little nooks and crannies that you don't see in the tour packages. I once spent a day in the ruins of a Civil War era church in the swamps of coastal South Carolina. If I hadn't have noticed it on the way to a well known destination, I never would have met the place.

8. Where do you get your story ideas? From random phrases overheard in public places, from NPR broadcasts, from nightmares and daydreams, from stories I overhear, or heard as a child. "What if..." usually starts the process.

9. Ken or Joe (Kagaku Ninjatai Gatchaman)? Neither. Nicholas D. Wolfwood of Trigun. Bad for the heart, but good for the soul.

10. Angel or Spike? Cassidy of Preacher. Foul mouthed, self-centered, childish, bad tempered, greedy, a bit of a drunken party animal, and kinda shopworn around the edges.("We heard that yeh wee silly bitch! Soon as owd Cass finishes off the pint of strawberry Haagen Daz what yehs hid in t' freezer, yeh can count on me comin' t' yeh an givin yeh a righteous thumpin'!) I can handle that - he's somebody you can have fun with just so long as you don't turn your back on him or start to take him seriously. On the other hand, Angel's a brooder, pretty to look at but imensely frustrating to deal with every day. Spike would be good for a big bout of lewd adolescent fun - just don't leave your spare change laying around.

11. Vash, Nicholas or Spike (Cowboy Bebop)? Take a number, but only on my own terms and one at a time.

12. Are you really that big of a bitch? Try me.

13. PC or Mac? You'll take my Mac away from my cold dead hands.