Not your mother's Meat Loaf

The Things I Carry: Meat Loaf's Bat out of Hell & Back into Hell


My first exposure to Meat Loaf was in 1993 when "I'd Do Anything for Love" hit the radios. I was 13 and painfully weird and my father was dying of cancer. It was a rough year.



I was immediately in love. So I did what any fan girl did and bought everything I could find at the local Half Price Books (because I was poor). I had all his cassette tapes (because I wasn't cool enough for a CD player) and I ran them ragged. My mom remembers when he was touring college towns in the seventies and my parents didn't understand why I would want to listen to it at all. It only added to the appeal.

Just like Melissa Etheridge had reached into me and sang my painful outsider heartstrings, so too did Meat Loaf's voice and Jim Steinman's songs reflect an escapism that I desperately.

Now granted, I didn't ride motorcycles and I was far from experiencing "paradise by the dashboard light," there was a grand, fantastical element, an angsty hormonally driven truth, that resonated with the future storyteller within me. There was an S.E. Hinton vibe (also a personal favorite) about the true nature of being oppressed and teen-aged. Of being able to smash things or just fly away. It was my audible equivalent to Piers Anthony and Dean Koontz, and Orson Scott Card. Only with death and motorcycles and sex (gasp).

And there should be no surprise there is even a werewolf element.

Bat Out of Hell just celebrated its 40th anniversary. Its my age. Even after all these years,  on my really bad days when I just need to shove the world away for a while, you will find me blasting it as I drive my mild-mannered, four-door, charcoal gray sedan around town. You'll see me nodding my head to it as I roam around the grocery store to pick up a gallon of chocolate milk.  From the first chords overlaid with a revving motorcycle, I am on a highway and free.

As with most things that I carry with me, the meaning has changed over the years. Sometime it was about rebellion. Sometimes it was all about sex. And sometimes it was just about owning the demon that you carry around with you.

I have never been ashamed to say that I Love Meat Loaf.

And maybe some day I"ll get around to actually riding a motorcycle.

As always, Carry on,

Amanda Arista
Author
www.amandaarista.com

EDC- Every Day Carry: Writerly Addition

Every Day Carry- The Writers addition

The Things I Carry.

So I went to New Orleans recently and visited The National WWII Museum. You have to go. I have never been to a museum that was so geared toward storytelling and it gave me goosebumps. Go visit. You'll thank me later.

As standard museums do, there was a lot of mention of daily carry: usual mess kits, guns, ammunition, cribbage sets, and papers for letters to sweethearts (seriously- those guys knew how to say I love it and it was swoon-worthy).

My Hubby joked that my writer tote probably weight as much as their ruck sacks. So we weight it. And it wasn't quite there, but it was enough to get me thinking- If I mentally carry books and ideas and friends, what do I physically carry with me.

So here is my Every Day Carry as a Writer:

1). Computer- I schlep my Macbook with me everywhere. I might actually die without it, so I'm never going to take that risk. Not pictured here as I am currently writing on it.

2). Notebooks- Even though I take the computer everywhere like a second child
, there are always things that need to be drawn or diagramed. I am very aware that I process different information in different ways through different mediums. Today, its only one notebook. Sometimes, if I'm really getting into it, its three. And a plotting book. And poster board.

3). Post-its- I got this little case from a conference and have never left home without it. Funny thing, the post-its go on my computer and my notebook. And my everyday post-it carry varies from the regular to the 4x3 size in bright pink.

4). Pens- At any given time, I have enough pens to sink a ship. And in varying thickness and styles. You never know when you might need to draw a rainbow or what kind of surface you will need to draw it on.

5). Small first aid kit- I'm super klutzy and always prone to allergy attacks, bug bites and blisters. This is why I don't go outside often.

6). Current book- Right now I'm on a Dresden kick. Next, I'm rereading some Alice Hoffman. I can do e-books, but I still like a paperback to carry around with me.

7). Boring stuff- wallet, keys, TONS of hair ties, my work badge (Doctor Who, of course).

8) Coffee- Probably more vital than the keys. I always have a coffee cup with a few instant coffee bags with me. Sometimes, I even have a creamer and sugar packet just in case I end up someplace shady without coffee accessories. Current favorite- Einstein Bros Bagels. Feel free to send me a few dozen of these!

9). Phone- This I couldn't live without, but it does live in my purse. You never know when you'll need to look up something, or need to take a picture of a cute guy, or need to listen to just the right song to get a scene going again.

So there you have it, the list of my EDC. Yes, I will probably have back problems when I get older, but each piece helps me process my life of being a writer and prepares me, because you really never know when your muse is going to strike!

Until next time, carry on.

Amanda Arista
Author
www.amandaarista.com

Family isn't about blood

Things I carry: The Nature of Different Friendships

I was sort of wondering what to write about this month and Helen solved my problem! Which I thought was sort of perfect, because isn't that was friends are supposed to do? Find you when you are lost, comfort you when you are struggling and help you kickass when the time arises. 

I'm sure I have mentioned this a few times, but I'm adopted. The entire notion of family is different for me than it is say for my husband who has two biological brothers that look exactly like him. Its crazy- confusion has ensued. I think that not having people that I look like forced me to look deeper, listen harder to people to make sure that they were on my side. I looked for actions and words to mean family, not just a similar nose shape. 

So here are some on-screen and on-page relationships that really resonate with me, either as something I have found or as something that I've always wanted in my chosen friends. These friendships have defined friendship for me, the best and worst parts. 

Nostalgic friends: Stand by Me. Now most people a little older than me will say it was all about The Goonies, but for me, it was all about these four boys. Now as I watch the movie, I think it was the framing of the story that made it resonate.  Gordie, Chris, Teddy, and Vern taught me there is power in allowing people to be what you need them to be when you need them to be that. These boys were the outcasts, but they were the outcasts together, and that's what they needed. We can look back on these types friendships with a golden nostalgia and a thankfulness that these people were in our lives, even if it was just for a summer, or to find a dead body. 

School Friends: AKA, the people who become who they are while you are figuring out who you are AKA College. I went old school for this one. Horatio to be has always been the model of the classic college friend. Him and Hamlet bonded at the University of Wittenberg and Horatio came with Hamlet to bury his father, to be a good friend in this tumultuous time in Hamlet's life. But the true nature of Horatio taught me that friends should know who you are going to be, see the potential within you, and will sing your praises even when you are not there. 

And I bet there were some crazy times at Wittenberg!

The Power Friends- The Craft. You know, sometimes it just takes a posse to really get the mojo going. Now, I have never actually been part of a coven, though my mom thinks I was in high school, but there is a synergy that happens when girls get together for a common cause. These power groups let each member feel wanted and strong and independent. But they can also get toxic and start to be exclusive of other people. 

And I always really did want to be a witch. 

The Life Friends- Elizabeth Bennett and Charlotte Lucas. Even though these two characters have drastically different viewpoints on love and marriage, they remain friends. Even though Elizabeth couldn't have made the choices the Charlotte did, she didn't just stop being friends. Elizabeth took the time to talk and understand Charlotte's choices and they remained companions through a  transitioning time in everyone's life. This taught me that the good ones stick around, the good ones listen. And they support the decisions that make you happy. 

The Self-promoting Friends- As you can see, I have marinated in friendships so of course, I wrote them into my own book. Jessa Feychild is a spoiled little brat but she is Violet's spoiled little brat. They were friends before they were prophesies and they remain steadfast through breakups and apocalypses. Jessa and Violet will always be together. And I think that is the most powerfully displayed when Jessa nearly rips the world in half trying to rescue Violet from the other side of the Veil in the last in the series. 

So these examples of friendships are the ones that have stuck with me through my life, that have defined friendships for me. 

Until next time, carry on. 

Amanda Arista

www.amandaarista.com

Author

Love is messy, love is kind.....wait- that's not how it goes.

The Things I Carry- Love is messy.

So, I know that this is supposed to be an all things fiction blog, but I find myself ruminating on Romance recently. Maybe its because I'm plotting out two romance series right now, but I have a feeling its primarily because I'm celebrating my twelfth wedding anniversary today. Twelve years of marriage to the same man. Seeing the same face every morning for 4,380 mornings.

That's a lot of mornings.

As much as I want to say that its been easy, it hasn't. In fact, I'm coming to terms with the fact that sometimes what I read in books (and sometimes what I write in books) is only the shiny, brand new love, and rarely the dingy because its been washed for 12 years kind of love.

So I love it when I find something that hits on that note, that Love is Messy idea, because love in real life is messy, and complicated, and gets rusty if you don't use it, and that's okay. Its actually better that way.

There are a few things that I carry with me to help me remind me of this notion. And Yes, some of them come from Rom Coms.

In Someone Like You, which is based on the book Animal Husbandry by Laura Zigman (HILARIOUS, btw), there is a scene at the end in which Jane (Ashely Judd) realizes that when you are at your worst, love is at its best. And even though the movie ends with a sweeping kiss a swelling music, I still carry with me the notion that when I'm a total wreck, a very hot Hugh Jackman will dry my tears.






In Edward Norton's directorial debut, Keeping the Faith, the three main

characters find out that love is complicated but possibly the only thing that everyone can believe in. In this movie, Rabbi Jake Schram falls in love with his childhood friend Anna Riley, but so does his best friend, Fr. Brian Finn. Yep, you read that right, a rabbi and a priest are best friends and a girl gets between them. From this movie, I carry the notion that love doesn't plan on ruining everything, it just sort of happens, and those who think that can efficiently plant it in their lives are going to have a rude awakening.

If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know that I re-read Alice Hoffman's The Museum of Extraordinary Things recently. This book is perfection. Beautiful, and intriguing, and just perfection. In there, one of the main characters gives a piece of wisdom that really resonated with me. That perfect beings, like angels, can not love the way that flawed humans can. They can not feel the depth and breadth of it because they are perfect. Only the flawed can find love. I think that line sunk into me in conjunction with the line from Leonard Cohen "There's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." We have to be flawed so love can find its place within us.



So without being too mushy, remember that love, like a great plate of spaghetti or an amazing cheesy enchilada, is messy. And that's okay- the best things usually are.

Until next month, carry on.

-------------------

Amanda Arista
Author
Amandaarista.com

A new meaning to Fight Club

The things I carry with me: Everyone is mid-battle

So I know that you know that I had one of those child things a few years ago. The Bean has changed a lot about my life, but mostly, made me a lot calmer.

I just don't get frustrated with life like I used to. Most of my expectations of how people "should" do something have been tossed out the window.  Doesn't mean I don't empathize with people who are having a hard time dealing with life's expectation gaps.

The more plates I spin (worker, mother, daughter, writer, teacher), the calmer I tend to get and the more understanding I have. I think it has given me an insight that I carry with me in my life and in my writing.

Its best put in the most mis-cited quote on the internet. As I searched for an image, I found that it was said by Plato, Buddha, and John Green. All brilliant. All said cool stuff, so in my head, they can share this.

The notion I carry with me is that everyone has plates spinning. Everyone has a battle they are fighting (internally or externally). Everyone has a wound they are protecting, and everyone has armor to shield who they really are. Whether they know it or not.

In my writing, this means that each person who says something, who has an impact on my main character, gets backstory and a level of awareness about their wounds. Now, I'm not talking write out biographies for the guy that serves her coffee, but he does have history. And you have to respect that history if for no other reason than to give each character a different voice.

I think in life, this makes me just try to wait one second to consider someone else's story. We are all characters in our own journeys figuring out how to be heroic. Everyone is working through a path they might not know about, so just be kind.

When I oriented my thinking to this notion that everyone is plowing through their own Heroic Journey, I get the choice to be an antagonistic force, or the ally, or the mentor. And honestly, sometimes I am lazy and just want to be a tertiary character. Or after a bad day, I realize I'm the antagonistic force. But I might have the power to help them, to be kind, to lessen their plottings for a while.

Carrying that notion with me helps not only in my writing to make sure that I am considering the whole person, past-present-future, but also helps me just be a little kinder, because I optimistically hope, that when I come to an Ordeal in my life, there are a few allies to help me out as well. Because ultimately, we are all fighting together.

Until next time, carry on.

Amanda Arista
@Pantherista
www.amandaarista.com

What do you sacrifice?

The things I carry with me: American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

So many things to say about this one. I think I read American Gods in college and it changed what I thought about everything. Screw Philosophy 101, I had my own new textbook about what was meaningful and what was not.

American Gods is about Shadow Moon who falls into the employment of Mr. Wednesday who is on a cross-country quest to unify the Old Gods against the New Gods that American's have created: Media, Technology, and  everything else that American's sacrifice themselves to.

And then there was Neil Gaiman himself. A British author who had managed to capture the problem with the American condition. He is a hard-core feminist, someone who animately believes that dragons can be beaten, and an author who crossed genres with little more than the bat of an eye. If you've seen the new Lucifer series on FOX, that's a brain child of Gaiman. If you remember Coraline, that made buttons scary for me, that was Gaiman as well.

So what exactly do I carry with me from this extremely influential author and this paramount of a book?

1). That we determine what we worship and what we expend our energies on. The most powerful part of American Gods is that people created the gods based on what they sacrificed their time, blood, sweat, and virgins to. The power is really within people, the gods take it and live off it with very little in return. I carry with me the notion that I choose what I deem sacred. I choose what I spend my time on, no one else.

2). World-building doesn't have to be middle earth. As Kim Falconer talked about here, World Building is just as important to your story as who is in the plot. Gaiman was an inspiration that Magic could be found in everyday life with normal humans knowing nothing about it. World building was research into the normal horrors that could be magical, as well as strange things that could have a double story. Its pretty much the philosophy behind Urban Fantasy, only Gaiman took it to a national level and not just a city.

3). When things get bad, make art. When things are good, make art. Art can change, can be used to make the world better. It seems like more and more, we need to fight for what we believe in and Art is a powerful force to make out point.

So, in case you didn't know, STARZ is making a miniseries of American Gods starting on April 30th. I am very nervous about this as this book is a fundamental part of who I am and what I do. So hopefully next month, I will be able to report that its natural wonder was not stripped away, but that it faithfully imparts the lessons that the book did.

Until next time, carry on.

Amanda Arista
Author

"If the apocalypse comes, beep me."

The Things I Carry with me: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Twenty years ago, on March 10th, 1997,  a little show about a girl chosen to fight vampires aired on
TV.  I was in high school at the time and already a fan of the movie that had proceeded it, so I was game for the show.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer became my weekly fix through high school and college. My roommates always thought it was strange that I programed my VCR to record it (wow, dating myself there).

Joss Whedon, creative genius behind Buffy and a million other awesome things, has been quoted as saying that Buffy was meant to be a cross between My So-Called Life and The X-Files. It was meant to be a monster-of-the-week format where the Scoobies would figure out what was attacking their high school/college.

That is the first thing that I carry with me even today as I write and as I absorb storytelling how-to's. Monsters on the outside should be suited to the monsters we have on the inside. Only when you defeat the monster inside can you defeat the monster outside. When Xander was feeling down about being single, up popped a monster who wanted to give boys the Kiss of Death. When the Scoobies found dissonance among them, a monster would pop up who was literally a combination of other monsters, then they would have to come together to fight. I carry this notion with me in everything I write- make the outside mirror the inside.

The other thing that Buffy showed me and I really carry with me is that every one needs to have their own voice. Buffy was the voice of our generation, because she was the VOICE of our generation. She had a lingo that wasn't like all the other things on TV.  I read somewhere once that Whedon and his crew would write the script and then process the lines through a Buffy-filter or a Willow-filter to make sure that the lines sounded like they belonged to the characters. It was a step that the show took that other people didn't take to make their characters sound like teenagers.

Listen to Buffy for years not only changed the way I talked, but that I also carry with me when I write.

Do I know enough about my character to inform how they would speak and describe things? Have I done enough character development that I know exactly what their catch phrase would be? Voice has become my own little soap box and I have Buffy to thank for that.

There are a million other ways that Buffy has shaped my creative side, but character-defined Monsters and Voice are the two that I seem to unpack from my knapsack more often than naught when I am ready to write about things that go bump in the night.

Until next time.

Amanda Arista
Author, Diaries of an Urban Panther
www.amandaarista.com
@pantherista

And now I'm just dating myself

The Things I carry: White Dwarf

This one is a little literal for this year's theme of things that I carry with me. I've been doing a little Winter Purge, throwing out stuff that has hidden in corners and collected dust and just not been very useful.

I was cleaning out my VHS tapes. Yes, I HAVE been carrying around VHS tapes with very specific movies that I taped when I was in high school until I found DVDs of their contents. That's how much these movies were part of who I am and the stories that I tell.

Upon those VHS were three of my favorite movies taped from FOX: Generation X (a miniseries of junior X-men complete with Jubilee), Newsies (which i was able to get on DVD- no one can resist a singing Christian Bale), and White Dwarf.

Ah White Dwarf. How do I describe you? It was sort of like Northern Exposure in space. Now, how was that for dating myself? It was about a fancy city doctor who was sent to a planet at the edge of nothing for his service year before he could go back to the city and live the fancy life. Pretty simple concept.

But there were aliens, and Typhoid Mary, and red oceans. There was a boy who had shifter sickness, and a prison, and creepy twin girls who aged at different rates. It was crazy and I understand why it might not have been the most popular thing on the planet. And I was pretty sure I was the only person in the world who saw it, but then I found this.

I think it was the world building that really captured me. This planet did not rotate on its axis like earth and as it orbited its white dwarf sun, one side was perpetually light and the other perpetually dark. The light was civil and there was a princess and the technology was on that side. The dark side was unknown and the people were seen as savages and there was a constant war between the light and the dark.

And then, it caught you with a right hook when the spirits of the planet, Lady Light and Lady Dark, appeared to the young doctor to help heal the divide of their people.

Bam. Story. Done.

I loved it. I still love it and have maybe watched the pirated version on YouTube. I still think about the planet and its people, and the main characters arc that is so simple but perfect for the world it was placed in. The characters were like nothing I'd seen before and I wanted to be on that planet exploring with that doctor. Sounds like maybe another doctor that I love now who travels in his big blue box.

So I carry it with me that even simple can be elegant, even with terrible production values. You don't need a lot of bells and whistle to resonate with a story teller decades later.

And if you find it on DVD, let me know.



Until Next month...
Amanda

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Amanda Arista,
Author, Diaries of an Urban Panther
www.amandaarista.com

Things I choose to carry

Welcome 2017!

Thanks to your predecessor, I am going to kick your ass.

Sorry if that offends, but this is war. As the great Billy Joel said, "We didn't start the fire," but this year, we are going to make it our submissive little puppy.

So now becomes the time to choose your weapons, right? Take with you what you need and leave behind all the stuff that is just weighed down. As a female, I do this about once a month with my purse. This year, I'm doing it with my life.

In order to do that, I have to figure out exactly what I'm carrying. I have recently become familiar with the notion of Family of Origin. Boiled down, it means that you are the sum of everything that you have witnessed, done, absorbed, consciously and unconsciously. Its the unconscious stuff that really kicks you in the butt. Family of origin, when known, can be a powerful tool to help figuring out why you hold truths sacred, or how you define the universe.

While sorting through my truths, I discovered that what I watch and what I read has a LOT to do with how I think and what I think about the world. Wow. Knowing that some day some little girl might read Diaries of an Urban Panther and take something with her for the rest of her life. Geez. What a responsibility. I LOVE it.


So one of the things that I will take with me is Grandmother Willow from Disney's Pocahontas. I think that the essence of the tree spirit has sort of infiltrated how I see our connection with everything. Even trees. Everything I do, say, sing, write- it ripples.

Ripples start out small but echo out for miles. They are a change to the status quo, and someone has to start them. Someone else will see what I do, say, sing, write and perhaps they will take that with them.

Now, I'm pretty sure that I'll never actually talk to a tree. I will never have a raccoon or a hummingbird follow me around. I will never have such perfectly straight and untangled hair.

But I will listen. I will watch and be still and wait to make sure that what I an doing is the best for everyone, not just myself. Because it ripples.

And what I have found, is that when everyone is happy, fed, healthy, and feels secure, I am happy, fed, healthy and feel secure. Funny how it works that way.

So we are going to call this year "The things I carry" as an homage to Tim O'Brien's powerful masterpiece about his experiences in the Vietnam War. Its the movies & books whose messages have taught me how to live and that I still carry with me.

Maybe they can help teach you something that you might need to completely own 2017.

Until Next month...
Amanda

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Amanda Arista,
Author, Diaries of an Urban Panther
www.amandaarista.com