I neglected to post yesterday, but I received my copy of Inside the Aquarium yesterday in the mail. It's hardback, but doesn't look too long. I plan to start reading it next week, over the Thanksgiving holiday break. I have a week off from classes and plan to spend at least the first half of my time away with my girlfriend. Unfortunately, her program is not nearly as benevolent as mine and I will be spending time alone with her cat for the first several hours of each day. Lots of free time to read, I guess.
If you have any other suggestions for reading material for me, please let me know soon so I can get my hands on it quickly. Specifically, I'm looking for recommendations of work on sensory deprivation. Anything and everything will help, but please keep in mind that I'm a layman and need any reading material to be either drastically simplified (as opposed to technical) or illustrated (charts work, too).
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Light Reading
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Flashbacks
This is meant to be a flashback in the middle of the story ...
There were five small huts clustered around a larger, squarer building in the center of a clearing. A few villagers were wading waste-deep in a creek that ran alongside the northern section of the pentagon-shaped town. Two small children were playing near the opening of the large center building but stopped and stared at Martin as he emerged from the foliage on the edge of the creek. A young woman walked topless from behind one of the huts and looked curiously in his direction. She then turned unceremoniously and walked through the entrance, with the two children scampering from the larger building to follow.
At almost the same moment, the villagers in the creek put aside their fishing nets and approached him. One of the older-looking men stood directly in front of Martin with the other three men standing to either side. Martin and the man looked at each other, but said nothing. The men’s faces were barren of expression, as if they had come to Martin to investigate his strange appearance in their community but that they did not know what else to do.
Two boys came out of the eastern-most hut carrying an assortment of spears and other flesh-rending tools. They couldn’t be any older than 15, but they had a murderous look in their eyes. Without even turning to look at the boys approaching with their various armaments, the men in front of Martin changed their expressions. They had the same look in their eyes as the boys and began to shout in unison; their voices resembling the Borg groupspeak Martin was familiar with from Star Trek reruns.
That was when Martin realized that no one had called the boys. No one had called the men from their fishing. The woman who had taken the children away had not even spoken to them. There had been no noises in the village since Martin had arrived besides those coming from the distant animals in the jungle.
Martin took a cautious step backwards and bumped into someone standing behind him. He turned quickly, pulling his sidearm in the same motion, and came face to face with the woman he had seen on the other side of the village. She was standing with four other villagers who had all somehow crept around the huts and behind him, cutting off his way back into the jungle.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Recommended Background Reading
A friend of mine recently recommended some background reading for me so I can make my story more realistic. To get the same input from you, I think it would be best for me to give you a rough rundown of my storyline.
- US military establishes a small guerilla force that fights independently in a war in the Brazilian rainforest (I need a reason why we'd be at war with Brazil)
- A soldier in this unit (a sniper) is exposed to some chemical that causes severe sensory deprivation that lasts for a day or longer and drives him crazy. The chemical is either a weapon either army is using, or some sort of pollen given off by an exotic yet-to-be-discovered plant
- The soldier returns home and slowly regains his sanity in a mental institution
- He is released home and returns fully to society shortly before the same chemical is intentionally/accidentally released in the US
- He works to rescuse survivors of the subsequent chaos and help his loved ones regain their own sanity. Due to his previous exposure, he is either immune to the chemical or can just find his way back to reality much more easily.
My friend recommended I read Inside the Aquarium for more support about the sensory deprivation aspect. The book is supposedly about a defector of the ultra-secret Soviet GRU who went through a sensory deprivation test. He gives a lot of detail about what it was like.
Unlike Kaavya Viswanathan, though, I will not be copy-pasting or even paraphrasing sections of reading material you suggest. I will include a references/recommended reading section at the end of the story and will only be using these materials to better polish my mental image of the story. People say you can only write what you know; while I might be a highly imaginative person, I have no idea what sensory deprivation or sniping, or the jungle, or insanity might really be like. I'd like to have third party input to make everything more believable.
Friday, November 03, 2006
Recent Webpage Updates
Those of you who frequent this site have probably noticed two minor additions on the right-hand side. The first is the inclusion of Google Ads. I subscribed to Adsense as a way to increase the cash in my pocket before I go abroad. If you're a fellow blogger, you might want to look in to the feature. Check it out here.
The second addition is a blunt statement: "I use Google Analytics!" This is just the title I needed for a new page element. I installed a java applet that will tell me how much traffic my site gets per day and where my readers are located. This will help bolster my confidence in my own writing as well as let me know more about you: my readers. If you want similar features on your site, check out their information page.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
A Beginning
Anyone from the military, please give me an idea for where this could happen and who they could be fighting. Please also let me know if I'm getting any of this right.
There was a hollow thump as the enemy soldier’s corpse hit the ground. Sergeant First Class Martin Bradley allowed the breath he was holding in to escape slowly while keeping the rest of his body perfectly still. The soldiers on the road below him scrambled for cover, leaving their fallen comrade lying face-down in a muddy pothole. Martin had chosen his target for no particular reason, merely trying to hit someone near the center of the group to provide enough chaos for the ambush.
He noticed a flicker of movement near the rear of the convoy and smiled as he watched one of his own men toss a grenade under the trail vehicle. A slight turn of his head to the left allowed him to see another soldier do the same with the lead jeep. The stereo explosions came almost together, boxing in the remaining two trucks and causing the confused enemy soldiers on the road to clot once again near the convoy’s center.
Looking through his scope, Martin tried to figure out who was giving the orders. Unfortunately, everyone seemed to be shouting something and he was not much for reading lips. Martin watched from his perch atop a boulder-ridden hill a few hundred yards away as the other six soldiers began to fire from their positions into the mass of disorganized combatants. He eased the bolt of his rifle back and locked another round. There were only five enemies left fighting, and he took aim at the one who seemed to be returning the most fire at his six concealed friends.
The other four fell quickly thereafter and the skirmish was over with no casualties on the winning side. “Good shooting today, boys,” Martin whispered into his mouthpiece before inching backwards over the hill. “Stay safe and I’ll look for you stateside.”
Martin knew he would never see these men again, though. He would probably never even find out who they were. They were all members of an elite American guerilla unit, individually deployed behind enemy lines to sabotage enemy operations. Martin received his orders via a small satellite phone he carried and would usually sit above a single road for days at a time waiting to snipe a high-profile enemy commander being driven to one conference or another. This particular engagement had been planned weeks ago through the same satellite network. Regular ground troops would be at this position in another day or so to recover the supplies from the remaining trucks; Martin’s job had merely been to cover the small six-man strike force that took the convoy out.
Now he needed to move to another rocky hillside a few miles north. Intelligence claimed several regional commanders would be traveling to a strategy conference at the capital and a few would be using that road. Martin had standing orders to eliminate as many military personnel on the road as possible before the conference so friendly forces could set another ambush. Catching the enemy traveling in a false sense of security and eliminating their top commanders would aid in the demoralization of the enemy ranks and bring victory within reach.
