"Drunk or sober, Mick is the only guitar player alive who could handle what we were doing. I mean, personally I think Mick is the greatest guitar player in the history of rock, but I’m biased. What I do know is that we auditioned about thirty people, and none of ‘em could hack it. And it wasn’t just that we were replacing an essential component to the band, or that we had a bunch’a people who were good players but shitty human beings – I really genuinely liked most of the ones who came in. But when it came down to playing the actual songs that the band had written, any replacement of parts sounded wrong." - Angel
Michael 'Mick' Rodriguez was originally created to be the antagonist of the Valerian's Garden subplot. In the original incarnation of the band, he was the singer, and Angel was his girlfriend, the guitar player - slash - songwriter. The crux of the conflict was going to be the fact that Mick was taking all the credit, while Angel and her best friend TJ (Angel, TJ, and Mick were the only three names set in stone from the start) lamented the fact that they were overlooked, though Mick had the charisma to carry the spotlight.
Slowly and carefully, Eli would have convinced Angel to try to sing, herself, and the band would have continued as a foursome. However, after my initial brainstorm, I realized that the whole point of the conflict was the fact that Angel needed to 'find her voice,' so I decided the ultimate irony would be to make her the singer. She was now singing, and Mick, while still her boyfriend, was playing guitar.
Another evolution took place when I decided that the story did not need a black and white rendition of good and evil inside the band proper; it needed to have five separate personalities with strengths and weaknesses all their own. Mick's ego was jettisoned and projected onto their manager, Mick's friend Eddie. His main problem was now chronic alcoholism. Still, his purpose was to cause friction at the beginning of Eli and Angel's relationship, and then fade out.
However, I like the idea of redemption. He showed up two months later, clean and sober, simply wanting another chance. Since then he has been the iron will of the Garden, dedicated to the point of fanaticism. This is partly due to the fact that he is now playing with a focused mind, and partly due to his own guilt over what happened during his alcoholic days.
He was born in Los Angeles and lived most of his life in the surrounding communities. His parents were highly dysfunctional, and his father was also a severe alcoholic, constantly out of work. His mother kept the family - Mick and a younger sister, Julia - clothed and fed by working multiple minimum wage jobs in between his father's spotty employment.
Mick quickly lost interest in school, and officially dropped out at seventeen. Through his three and a half years of highschool he excelled in his music and music theory classes, but languished in all his other classes. All he wanted to do was play music. After dropping out, he started sneaking into the area clubs to hang out with the local bands and listen to them warm up. He fast talked his way into a job as a guitar tech for local Led Zeppelin tribute band Time and Space at the age of eighteen, and from there was a fixture in the scene. Mick earned a reputation as a sought after session/replacement player through his quick learning and hard drinking. It was through Time and Space that he met Ed Carlson, who would become the first manager for Valerian's Garden.
One day, he got a call from a friend named Marcus Claude about a bunch of kids who lived across the street from him. Two guys - brothers - and a girl. They were always talking about starting a band, and now that they had a little money saved for gear, they were getting themselves going. First, they needed a new guitar player, and Mick was the first person Marcus thought of.
It was lust at first sight between himself and Angel. He was entrenched in the scene and could have any of the random women that hung around the bands that he wanted, but none of them offered anything of substance. Angel was a different story - she wasn't part of the scene. She wasn't a loud party girl. She took drugs and she drank, but her priority was on the music that TJ, Rob, and herself were creating. Also, the fact that she was more introverted than the girls he was usually around presented an irresistable challenge to him.
Angel thought he was everything she was looking for. He represented the ultimate dream for her - he was doing what he loved without regard for what anyone else thought of it. The fact that he blended with the rest of the band so well and seemed to get along with TJ cemented it for her. It was nearly six months after their first paying gig that the honeymoon was truly over.
Mick's main problem was that he was suddenly in decent money, compared to what he grew up with and what he was used to. Having lived well below his means for years, he spent the extra money on extra vices, and before too long he was drinking all the time. When sober he was quiet and thoughtful, but when he was drunk he would often become loud and abrasive, and verbally abusive. This was a sharp contrast to Angel and TJ, who would get loud and silly when on something.
Part of the reason that Mick's problem was allowed to get progressively worse was the fact that Rob's problems were far, far worse. As bad as he sometimes got, he was always able to work. Additionally, they could see what he was doing. Rob kept a lot of his use to himself and the drugs he was on were far worse than alcohol. Of course, the result of this is that by the time Rob was out of the band and Sex and Nine had joined, they were a well - oiled machine except for Mick's continued drinking.
After he was fired, I thought about how this affected the dynamic. Now, Angel was both singing and playing guitar, and therefore her mobility was cut. This was the very dynamic that I wanted to avoid when I first moved Angel to vocals. I wrote up a scene where Mick contritely called her and asked if he could return to the band. He did not make any mention of resuming their personal relationship; by this point she was firmly entrenched with Eli regardless. As originally written, they voted Mick back into the band for two shows and decided that he could stay. Since then, that scene has been modified to be referred to in flashback instead of written out, and has been modified to include the fact that the night Mick was fired was the last time he drank; the firing was a wake up call to him. He had played with a few people in the inbetween time, but it was never the same, likewise, Valerian's Garden as a foursome was never the same.
Since then, he has earned his place as the guts of the band, to go along with Angel's soul and TJ's heart. He spent several years in a self - imposed penance where he agreed with all of the band's decisions, even the ones he disagreed with. He almost never spoke up for himself during band discussions; the only time he ever voiced and held his own opinion on anything was when it came to how he was to specifically play certain songs.
Mick just kept his head down and played.
Physically, he was based on Slash, with slightly shorter, less 'big' hair and no hat. The rolled up flannel shirt, the cigarette hanging from his lip, and the low slung guitar were all an homage to Slash. In addition, Mick's details as an 80's style rocker cemented my continuing quest of having every member of the band look like they belong to a drastically different genre.
As it stands, Mick is second only to Angel when it comes to how they want to play their concerts. Angel and Mick continually challenge each other to play one more song, despite how exhausted the rest of the band may get.
If anything should ever arise to challenge the future of Valerian's Garden, it's possible that Mick would take the first bullet, even before TJ, even before Angel.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Character Profile - TJ
"Teej was the fearless one. He always walked into every situation just... believing that everything would be okay. Even the guys in school who were always fuckin' with him, calling him fag, and all that jazz... he had this confidence that you can't touch." - Angel
After Angel, the most important person to the evolution of Valerian's Garden was Travis Johnson - nicknamed TJ. He developed as the band's bassist because he was Angel's best friend, and it was done in homage to the friendship between Marilyn Manson and bassist Twiggy Ramirez, and, later, between Otep Shamaya and Evil J of the band OTEP. Also, referring back to Eli Flair and Ivy McGinnis, I'm a fan of intergender friendships that more closely resemble family.
He did not start off nearly as fleshed out as Angel (who was not fleshed out to speak of at all, either) - the base details that I had for him were simply that he was Angel's best friend and the two of them co-founded the band.
After a while I decided he would be gay, just to throw more diversity into the group and illustrate them even more as a group of five completely separate people who manage to make incredible music together. I decided he would be a private person with a significant other in Los Angeles who does not appear in the story at all. Other than occasionally being called a faggot by unsympathetic antagonists, and "Aunt TJ" as a term of endearment by Mick when he talks to Angel's daughter Mariella (as in Aunt TJ and Uncle Mick), it does not play a role at all in the story of the band.
I liked the idea that Angel and TJ were opposites, so where Angel is goth, TJ is more glam. The golden age of music for him was in the 1970s, with the rise of glam and punk. His favorite musicians and groups include David Bowie, the NY Dolls, MC5, KISS, Tool, Alice Cooper, and Led Zeppelin. Where Angel is reflective and unsure of herself, TJ is impulsive and confident.
Angel and TJ became friends due to his outgoing nature. He aggressively pursued her after they met by chance, offering her copies of his favorite music and rides home in his brother's car, and always wanted to know what she was reading or listening to. Even with his confidence, he knew he didn't fit in in Spencer, and when he saw her he thought she didn't fit in, either - so he decided to see if they might be able to fit in together. His friendship gave Angel the confidence she needed to find herself again.
His family was also the opposite of hers. While Angel was an only child with parents who went back and forth between not really wanting her and not really caring about her, TJ had an older brother and two laid back, involved parents. As happens often, this family 'adopted' Angel into their lives pretty much without question.
It's safe to say TJ got his confidence from his parents. They were both flower children in the 1960s, and his father was an environmental lawyer and mother was a kindergarten teacher. They lived in Omaha for most of his childhood, but moved to Spencer when TJ was in highschool after his father had a series of heart attacks and his doctor suggested a change. They remain in Spencer to this day, and TJ takes care of them financially. Morgan and David Johnson were always tuned into their children. They discussed everything from drugs to sex to politics with them whenever any questions were raised by the kids directly, by television or newspaper, or by someone passing by. Their goal was to have well informed children who would be able to make informed choices based on what they knew and felt, not based on what society thought they should do. Their friends were always welcome at the house and there were plenty of full houses in Omaha, but for reasons unknown, they (Morgan in particular) took a particular interest in Angel. Perhaps it was because she seemed ended up as Rob and TJ's first completely mutual friend, or because she had such a strained relationship with her own parents. Regardless, 'home' quickly meant the Johnson house for Angel, and she spent many nights there whether TJ or Rob were home or not.
Part of his confidence probably came from his older brother, Rob. Rob is three years older than TJ, and at first glance, his total opposite. He has their mother's brown hair as opposed to TJ, who has their father's blonde hair. He was interested in fast cars and team sports and weightlifting, which helped him when he joined the school band as a drummer before the family moved. He and TJ always got along, despite their lack of common interests, and anyone who thought they would mess with TJ would always have to deal with inevitable retribution from his big brother. The fact that Rob always had his back allowed TJ to grow up as he wanted to without worrying about the impression other people would get from him.
It would have surprised him to learn that Rob was jealous of his confidence. Rob was a jock in high school as well as a band member, and he was constantly concerned with fitting in with his peer group. While TJ was part of the 'in' crowd due to his family ties, he never gave in to any form of peer pressure; quite the contrary, he acted as if he was above the very concept of it.
TJ's first love was music; the first major purchase he ever made for himself was a refurbished guitar that he taught himself to play. This was partly why Rob started playing drums: it gave him and TJ something in common that they could do together. Even before they moved to Spencer, they would get high and talk about starting a band, but TJ always got the sense that Rob wasn't as serious about it as he was.
Rob would eventually become involved with a girl named Sadie, who he knew from college. They would remain together through the Johnson brothers' move to Los Angeles, his substance abuse problem, and their return to Spencer. Currently they are married and run both a local newspaper and an all - ages club.
His problem would lead to one of the only moments that TJ doubted himself. As the band entrenched in Los Angeles, recruited Mick on guitars, and started to play shows, they all found themselves immersed in one illicit substance or another. All four drank, though Mick was fast on his way to becoming a professional, and all four smoked marijuana when playing and practicing. Angel and TJ discovered acid and ecstasy, while Rob and Sadie discovered crack. After a disastrous show on the band's first trip to San Diego, they made a pact that none of their extracurriculars would interfere with the band. Angel, TJ, and Mick managed to follow this at the time for the most part, but Rob continued to slip.
One night, Sadie called Angel, hysterical, because Rob wouldn't wake up. They called an ambulance, got him into a rehab program, and replaced him. To this day, TJ and Angel both feel incredible amounts of guilt over the decision, even though it was the right one. Even though Rob has since told them that they did what they had to do, and that he agreed that he needed to be out of the environment. TJ regards that as the day he failed his brother, and has never forgiven himself for it.
Onstage, he stands to Angel's left, in front of the keyboard riser. One of Angel's favorite tricks is to respond to a heckle of 'Show us your tits' by pulling TJ's shirt up to his chin and tugging on one of his nipple rings. It has gotten to the point where some of their hardcore fans have started to shout this solely because they know what the result will be.
Visually, TJ's look and playing style were modeled after John Lowry (John 5), currently playing with Rob Zombie. He is a highly skilled guitar player, and helps Angel fine tune most of her lyrics due to both his intuitive sense of rhythm and familiarity with Angel's style; he can see how she wants to say something sometimes before she does. In addition to his playing, TJ sings the backing vocals during live shows.
From the fans' perspective, TJ is 'second in command' of the Garden due to his co-founder status. He is the most accessable of the group due to the fact that many fans are too intimidated to approach Angel, and the fact that Angel occasionally feels overwhelmed by large groups. The other three members of the band are liked and respected just as much, but deference has always been paid.
From the band's perspective, Mick, Nine, and Sex defer to Angel and TJ just as much as Angel and TJ consider the band a democracy. All issues and decisions are made among the five of them, however, in the rare case that Angel and TJ disagree with each other, the other three will typically back off and let them work it out before they decide their course of action.
From his own perspective, TJ believes in two things: working hard and playing hard. He believes that the road, in and of itself, should be fun and should be treated like a paid vacation. However, as soon as they get to the venue, he's all business. He expects his bandmates, and himself, to start perfect and improve from there.
If Angel is the 'soul' of Valerian's Garden, TJ is most definitely the heart.
From his own perspective, TJ believes in two things: working hard and playing hard. He believes that the road, in and of itself, should be fun and should be treated like a paid vacation. However, as soon as they get to the venue, he's all business. He expects his bandmates, and himself, to start perfect and improve from there.
If Angel is the 'soul' of Valerian's Garden, TJ is most definitely the heart.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Character Profile - Angel
One Chance: The Legend of Valerian's Garden is held together by its main character, Angela Davison Flair, professionally known as Angel. She and TJ brought everyone together, and she continues to be the spiritual center of the band.
Ironically, she started out as background noise.
In the fall of 2001, while in Year Seven of the Continuing story of Eli Flair and Ivy McGinnis, I decided that Eli needed a love interest. I had attempted this before, but it always ended under the Doomed to Fail premise, copied below from http://www.spideykicksbutt.com since Madgoblin posted a pretty good definition in his analysis of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson:
Basically, it means that every relationship that a hero gets involved in is doomed to fail. It has to be, because unless there is a walk down the aisle (or even sometimes when there is), there comes a point where either (1) the relationship just doesn’t work out or (2) the relationship is working out, but the hero can’t bring himself to admit to his girl about his double life, and so it ends.
Eli Flair was not a hero, but in the seven years that I had been writing him he had been pretty much on his own. He had no living relatives, his childhood sweetheart died when he was 22, and his day to day existence was relegated to the next town, the next show. I had written him as being on the road for excess of twenty five days a month. Every relationship with him was doomed to fail because he was so set in his ways and so used to being on his own.
Angel was a change of pace. She was someone that I intended to be able to match him as a road warrior and outcast, but she started off without much of a personality besides "SINGER" and "LOVE INTEREST" stamped on her forehead. Actually, if I remember correctly I wrote a mini - story about the week before Angel and Eli met each other, to try and get a bit of background on her before I put the two together. I believe I covered her and TJ discussing Mick's drinking problem, as well as Mick's ousting from the group and the riot that followed. At the same time, as this was October 2001, I had written a brief scene between Eli and Ivy where Eli was voluntarily leaving New York to try and get some physical and mental distance from the events of September 11th.
The two stories converged and I was off and running from there. Eventually I decided I liked the Mick character too much to leave him trapped in limbo, plus from a practical/personal standpoint I preferred Angel as a non - playing singer. This would free her hands and legs to go anywhere she wanted onstage and do whatever she wanted onstage without having to worry about the next chord sequence.
At the time I had Angel as a fairly mysterious character. She had no family to speak of in California, and the only clues to her thoughts were the conversations she had with TJ when nobody else was around. I decided she would be quieter and more thoughtful than Ivy, to draw a contrast between the two of them. I decided she would be goth because that's what I was interested in at the time. I couldn't think of a band name so I asked my friend Jenny what she thought a goth band could be called.
"Um, Valerian's Garden?"
And a legend was born.
Angel's personality didn't start to truly coalesce until I started picking out isolated scenes of the band on the road and just writing them in. I decided her favorite band was Tool, and had them constantly cover "Sober" in their live show. This would become important later.
While I enjoyed writing with Angel and the band alone, and I enjoyed writing Angel and Eli together, I realized I needed to do something big to really push their relationship, so I got her pregnant. In April 2002 I wrote a series about a night out. Simple and innocent, Eli and Angel, Ivy and her boyfriend Sean went out to a rave in San Jose, California. A month later, I put together a massive short story about how Angel discovered she was pregnant, and her reluctance to tell Eli.
A few people who have read my manuscript so far have asked me why she was so reluctant. Put simply, she thought he would leave her. They had been together for seven, eight months at that point but their respective jobs had kept them largely on the road away from each other for most of it. Angel was of the opinion that he didn't owe her anything, but she was also of the opinion that he had been a loner for so long, this would be a dealbreaker. Of course, it wasn't a dealbreaker, though it nearly broke him.
This piece eventually evolved into chapters 9 and 10 of my manuscript, but when originally written, was done so from Eli's perspective. He had suffered a head injury at his match the night he learned he was going to be a father, and while slipping in and out of consciousness, mentally waged war with his own insecurities. When he woke up, he knew he had to do the right thing.
Even though it was mainly written from Eli's point of view, the pieces remained constant. TJ called Ivy in a case of tough love, and the riot, reminiscent of the night they met, seemed to me to be the perfect backdrop to the night they realized they were in love.
Also of note is the fact that this is the first time I ever made reference to Angel's past:
He looks back at her curled up with the covers. She’s just like me, he said to himself. Torn- up on the inside. Overly- protective of her emotions. Hesitant to let anyone get inside her boundaries. Tonight, for the first time, she told him her life story and the real depths of the problems she had with her family. Finally, he understands why he hasn’t met them.
At the time I had no idea what the problems were, only that she had them and that's why she wasn't counting on Eli to stay with her.
I pointed it back to the fact that Tool was her favorite band. What about them would have attracted her attention so completely?
"It took so long to remember just what happened. I was so young and vestal then, you know it hurt me, but I'm breathing so I guess I'm still alive, even if signs seem to tell me otherwise" - Prison Sex
Why I zeroed in on the absolute worst thing that can happen to a young girl is beyond me, but the pieces all started to come together. She would've felt violated and abandoned by her family since they didn't believe her (in the original draft she didn't tell them), as well as the fact that they didn't particularly want her. It has been implied but never stated, that the reason she is an only child to two parents who were fairly advanced in age was because she was an accident that they never quite 'took' to. Out of nowhere she meets another outcast mutant in TJ, who quickly took a liking to her, and in equal parts happiness and desperation, she latched onto him right away.
Sometimes, all a person needs is a friendly face. TJ provided Angel with that, and with a completely non-judgemental point of view. They compliment each other very well, and, once I started on the manuscript proper and fleshed out his family, it was abundantly clear exactly how Angel survived high school.
Once the pregnancy question was settled, Angel got much more confident in my portrayals. Looking back on her character development both before and after she met Eli, I think it definitely threaded back to her parents. She transformed herself from Angela Davison to Angel (no last name needed) on moving from Nebraska to California, and even though she continued the trend of dysfunctional relationships up to the point where she and Eli met, she had quiet confidence. After Eli, she regressed a bit, but that was mainly due to the fact that this new guy and his intimidating best friend had suddenly shown up in her life; particularly due to the fact that they met under stressful circumstances, it's not surprising that she had her defenses up.
By this point, with Ivy managing the band to cross - country tours in the van, and Eli professing his love and the fact that he's not going anywhere without her, she was able to relax and gain back her confidence.
Coming into 2003, their daughter Mariella Jade was born, and I was probably hitting my peak as far as output is concerned. I put together a series that evolved into chapters 11 and 12 of the manuscript, wherein Angel and the boys returned to her hometown of Spencer, Nebraska, to play a show. The 'real' reason they went back was for Angel to see her parents again.
Why Spencer, Nebraska? I've never been there (though I would like to go just to see what's there), but it's the hometown for two of my main characters. I wanted her to be from the Midwest because Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin met in a small town and bonded over music - the core of the Garden had to be the friendship between Angel and TJ and the way they supported each other through everything. I chose Nebraska because it seemed like it was nearly in the exact center of the United States. I chose Spencer specifically, because when I was looking up "small towns" in Nebraska, it had a population of less than a thousand: the perfect place for an anonymous superstar to begin.
No offense intended to the denziens of Spencer, Nebraska. I love you and your town and would like to visit you someday.
After the show in Spencer, she was a made woman in my little pocket of the universe. This was about when I first thought about writing a full length novel with Angel as the main character. I had a number of failed openings over the course of about a year, mainly because I couldn't visualize the opening. All the while, I kept writing.
Additionally, I wrote out the lyrics for 12 songs at about this time that became their first album, Scarred. While I don't pretend that they're anything special, I think it gave them legitimacy as an actual band that could conceivably exist.
In the winter of 2004, after completing their second album, Stitches, the band went on an extended world tour that kept them effectively off my radar until November. During this time I realized what the novel needed to be about - the band's history and foundation. The show in Spencer, and the confrontation with Angel's parents was a perfect climax. It was at this point that I started to coalesce the long, somewhat convoluted history of Angel and shaped it into a cohesive story, though it would take another year for the starting/ending point to be realized, and another three for the story to truly be cohesive.
Spring 2005 I started working on the band's third album, which ultimately became Fire Water. The lyrics on this one were a marked change from the first two, and even though I didn't have any music to go with them, I could 'hear' certain rhythms in my head, and I thought 'Come on, baby,' one of the first songs I finished, could be a 'hit single:'
Come on baby stop and stare
Point and laugh cause I don't care
Run me down and run away
You didn't have the guts to stay
That convinced me of the background. Fire Water was a surprise mainstream hit along the lines of the Smash album by The Offspring, and Come On, Baby could be their first number one single. Based on the number of one - hit wonders that popular music has given us through the years, it's not farfetched that Valerian's Garden would have some kind of mainstream attention. However, because they had independant distribution and were always on the road, I played it off that the attention had been gradually building for months until someone noticed 'Hey, this song is really popular, and the album has gone platinum. Maybe we should find out something about them?'
I also drew from Korn for this aspect of the band's existence. Their first two albums were platinum sellers, but without any clear commerical singles, they built their audience on relentless touring, so when 'Got the Life' broke in 1998, they had a massive audience built in for mainstream America.
Through it all, Angel kept evolving. I had a rule in place for the characters I wrote about that has guided me pretty well. I never went into a new character with too much of their past set in stone. When the situation arose that called for a decision, I went with what made the most sense at the time, and once decided, never changed the essence of the detail (Some things needed to change to fit the circumstances - TJ's brother Rob was a product of my second draft, and the Johnson parents, a product of my third, as well as Angel's relationship with them).
Angel's lyrics are very personal and very direct. She has used her music as an outlet for her memories. Ostensibly, the band had songs before their Spencer gig in 2003, but because that was where I first started writing them on a large scale, the 'real story' is that since she discovered her pregnancy, Angel abstained from all drugs and alcohol, and the newfound clear - headedness focused her thoughts. She did not feel sorry for herself for her past; she was angry at what she allowed to happen and what her family allowed to happen to her. Since she wrote Scarred and Stitches, she has toured the country multiple times and has circled the world, and much of her anger has dissipated, which has shown on the more imagery - focused lyrics on Fire Water.
She has little patience for ignorance and intolerance, and judges people on their actions. Her work ethic is heroic; she is always pushing for a longer tour and unannounced 'one - off' shows to work on new material in front of a live audience. Her insistence on constant touring and recording is partly due to the fact that she is having the time of her life, and partly due to the fact that her daughter is getting older and is about to start school (as of January 2009 Mariella Jade will be six years old), and they will no longer be able to pick up and go whenever they want.
Angel is equal parts fiercely private and fiercely loyal. She is difficult to get close to; as much as she has insisted she is over her past she still has a lot of trouble trusting people, however, once you're in with Angel you're in for life. She remembers the names and faces of an overwhelming number of her fans, she has fought for the road crew that traveled with the band for their first two major tours to stick with them for the third (and gave them significant raises in the process), and treats the bands who open for them as peers and equals.
This is in sharp contrast to her own experience. Lennon Murphy once said that she was told by Arista marketing people that it was not "cost effective" (paraphrasing) to push female artists, so she was essentially on her own. Angel and her boys have dealt with plenty of harassment over the course of their career, usually by hard partying bands who take a dim view of both the serious nature of Valerian's Garden and the way they routinely blow the other bands on the bill out of the water, and by the fans of those bands and their catcalls. Valerian's Garden has not signed with a major label because they are not able to gain sufficient assurances that their artistic integrity would not be compromised; instead, they have released their albums on a large independant, CSE Records, due to the relationship that both Eli and Ivy have with the owner. Angel's opinion is that she would rather release a record that has very little marketing buzz and get the word out herself with a long, drawn out tour.
Thematically, Angel's heroes have been Maynard James Keenan, Jim Morrison, Bill Hicks, Louie Armstrong, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, and the other early Jazz musicians. She was deeply inspired by their improvisational skills, and encourages the band (and herself) to improvise when they think they can make it fit the current song. Due to TJ's encouragement she has honed her own improvisational lyrical skills to the point where she can keep going with a rhythm and a beat almost indefinitely, and she has in turn encouraged the rest of the band to do the same. This has the added affect of making each show unique for their fans.
She has been studying and practicing shamanism for several years now, though she has not incorporated much of this into her work as she does not feel she knows enough about it to do justice.
As part of her relationship with her fans, Angel wears a bondage bracelet on her left wrist that covers an Omega-shaped scar. The bracelet has four separate metal rings on it that she attaches various charms to every night. Fans have begun to bring charms to shows in hopes that she will trade off with them - and she does so fairly often. She refers to the fans as "Darklings and User Poets," as a term of endearment.
Angel is my favorite creation to date. I think it's because she came to be during the period (2002 and onward) where I'm happy with the things I've written. Reading back on what I've written in the past, the quality is hit and miss before 2002. Since then, everything has had much more cohesion and unity, and I think it shows in the character.
Ironically, she started out as background noise.
In the fall of 2001, while in Year Seven of the Continuing story of Eli Flair and Ivy McGinnis, I decided that Eli needed a love interest. I had attempted this before, but it always ended under the Doomed to Fail premise, copied below from http://www.spideykicksbutt.com since Madgoblin posted a pretty good definition in his analysis of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson:
Basically, it means that every relationship that a hero gets involved in is doomed to fail. It has to be, because unless there is a walk down the aisle (or even sometimes when there is), there comes a point where either (1) the relationship just doesn’t work out or (2) the relationship is working out, but the hero can’t bring himself to admit to his girl about his double life, and so it ends.
Eli Flair was not a hero, but in the seven years that I had been writing him he had been pretty much on his own. He had no living relatives, his childhood sweetheart died when he was 22, and his day to day existence was relegated to the next town, the next show. I had written him as being on the road for excess of twenty five days a month. Every relationship with him was doomed to fail because he was so set in his ways and so used to being on his own.
Angel was a change of pace. She was someone that I intended to be able to match him as a road warrior and outcast, but she started off without much of a personality besides "SINGER" and "LOVE INTEREST" stamped on her forehead. Actually, if I remember correctly I wrote a mini - story about the week before Angel and Eli met each other, to try and get a bit of background on her before I put the two together. I believe I covered her and TJ discussing Mick's drinking problem, as well as Mick's ousting from the group and the riot that followed. At the same time, as this was October 2001, I had written a brief scene between Eli and Ivy where Eli was voluntarily leaving New York to try and get some physical and mental distance from the events of September 11th.
The two stories converged and I was off and running from there. Eventually I decided I liked the Mick character too much to leave him trapped in limbo, plus from a practical/personal standpoint I preferred Angel as a non - playing singer. This would free her hands and legs to go anywhere she wanted onstage and do whatever she wanted onstage without having to worry about the next chord sequence.
At the time I had Angel as a fairly mysterious character. She had no family to speak of in California, and the only clues to her thoughts were the conversations she had with TJ when nobody else was around. I decided she would be quieter and more thoughtful than Ivy, to draw a contrast between the two of them. I decided she would be goth because that's what I was interested in at the time. I couldn't think of a band name so I asked my friend Jenny what she thought a goth band could be called.
"Um, Valerian's Garden?"
And a legend was born.
Angel's personality didn't start to truly coalesce until I started picking out isolated scenes of the band on the road and just writing them in. I decided her favorite band was Tool, and had them constantly cover "Sober" in their live show. This would become important later.
While I enjoyed writing with Angel and the band alone, and I enjoyed writing Angel and Eli together, I realized I needed to do something big to really push their relationship, so I got her pregnant. In April 2002 I wrote a series about a night out. Simple and innocent, Eli and Angel, Ivy and her boyfriend Sean went out to a rave in San Jose, California. A month later, I put together a massive short story about how Angel discovered she was pregnant, and her reluctance to tell Eli.
A few people who have read my manuscript so far have asked me why she was so reluctant. Put simply, she thought he would leave her. They had been together for seven, eight months at that point but their respective jobs had kept them largely on the road away from each other for most of it. Angel was of the opinion that he didn't owe her anything, but she was also of the opinion that he had been a loner for so long, this would be a dealbreaker. Of course, it wasn't a dealbreaker, though it nearly broke him.
This piece eventually evolved into chapters 9 and 10 of my manuscript, but when originally written, was done so from Eli's perspective. He had suffered a head injury at his match the night he learned he was going to be a father, and while slipping in and out of consciousness, mentally waged war with his own insecurities. When he woke up, he knew he had to do the right thing.
Even though it was mainly written from Eli's point of view, the pieces remained constant. TJ called Ivy in a case of tough love, and the riot, reminiscent of the night they met, seemed to me to be the perfect backdrop to the night they realized they were in love.
Also of note is the fact that this is the first time I ever made reference to Angel's past:
He looks back at her curled up with the covers. She’s just like me, he said to himself. Torn- up on the inside. Overly- protective of her emotions. Hesitant to let anyone get inside her boundaries. Tonight, for the first time, she told him her life story and the real depths of the problems she had with her family. Finally, he understands why he hasn’t met them.
At the time I had no idea what the problems were, only that she had them and that's why she wasn't counting on Eli to stay with her.
I pointed it back to the fact that Tool was her favorite band. What about them would have attracted her attention so completely?
"It took so long to remember just what happened. I was so young and vestal then, you know it hurt me, but I'm breathing so I guess I'm still alive, even if signs seem to tell me otherwise" - Prison Sex
Why I zeroed in on the absolute worst thing that can happen to a young girl is beyond me, but the pieces all started to come together. She would've felt violated and abandoned by her family since they didn't believe her (in the original draft she didn't tell them), as well as the fact that they didn't particularly want her. It has been implied but never stated, that the reason she is an only child to two parents who were fairly advanced in age was because she was an accident that they never quite 'took' to. Out of nowhere she meets another outcast mutant in TJ, who quickly took a liking to her, and in equal parts happiness and desperation, she latched onto him right away.
Sometimes, all a person needs is a friendly face. TJ provided Angel with that, and with a completely non-judgemental point of view. They compliment each other very well, and, once I started on the manuscript proper and fleshed out his family, it was abundantly clear exactly how Angel survived high school.
Once the pregnancy question was settled, Angel got much more confident in my portrayals. Looking back on her character development both before and after she met Eli, I think it definitely threaded back to her parents. She transformed herself from Angela Davison to Angel (no last name needed) on moving from Nebraska to California, and even though she continued the trend of dysfunctional relationships up to the point where she and Eli met, she had quiet confidence. After Eli, she regressed a bit, but that was mainly due to the fact that this new guy and his intimidating best friend had suddenly shown up in her life; particularly due to the fact that they met under stressful circumstances, it's not surprising that she had her defenses up.
By this point, with Ivy managing the band to cross - country tours in the van, and Eli professing his love and the fact that he's not going anywhere without her, she was able to relax and gain back her confidence.
Coming into 2003, their daughter Mariella Jade was born, and I was probably hitting my peak as far as output is concerned. I put together a series that evolved into chapters 11 and 12 of the manuscript, wherein Angel and the boys returned to her hometown of Spencer, Nebraska, to play a show. The 'real' reason they went back was for Angel to see her parents again.
Why Spencer, Nebraska? I've never been there (though I would like to go just to see what's there), but it's the hometown for two of my main characters. I wanted her to be from the Midwest because Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin met in a small town and bonded over music - the core of the Garden had to be the friendship between Angel and TJ and the way they supported each other through everything. I chose Nebraska because it seemed like it was nearly in the exact center of the United States. I chose Spencer specifically, because when I was looking up "small towns" in Nebraska, it had a population of less than a thousand: the perfect place for an anonymous superstar to begin.
No offense intended to the denziens of Spencer, Nebraska. I love you and your town and would like to visit you someday.
After the show in Spencer, she was a made woman in my little pocket of the universe. This was about when I first thought about writing a full length novel with Angel as the main character. I had a number of failed openings over the course of about a year, mainly because I couldn't visualize the opening. All the while, I kept writing.
Additionally, I wrote out the lyrics for 12 songs at about this time that became their first album, Scarred. While I don't pretend that they're anything special, I think it gave them legitimacy as an actual band that could conceivably exist.
In the winter of 2004, after completing their second album, Stitches, the band went on an extended world tour that kept them effectively off my radar until November. During this time I realized what the novel needed to be about - the band's history and foundation. The show in Spencer, and the confrontation with Angel's parents was a perfect climax. It was at this point that I started to coalesce the long, somewhat convoluted history of Angel and shaped it into a cohesive story, though it would take another year for the starting/ending point to be realized, and another three for the story to truly be cohesive.
Spring 2005 I started working on the band's third album, which ultimately became Fire Water. The lyrics on this one were a marked change from the first two, and even though I didn't have any music to go with them, I could 'hear' certain rhythms in my head, and I thought 'Come on, baby,' one of the first songs I finished, could be a 'hit single:'
Come on baby stop and stare
Point and laugh cause I don't care
Run me down and run away
You didn't have the guts to stay
That convinced me of the background. Fire Water was a surprise mainstream hit along the lines of the Smash album by The Offspring, and Come On, Baby could be their first number one single. Based on the number of one - hit wonders that popular music has given us through the years, it's not farfetched that Valerian's Garden would have some kind of mainstream attention. However, because they had independant distribution and were always on the road, I played it off that the attention had been gradually building for months until someone noticed 'Hey, this song is really popular, and the album has gone platinum. Maybe we should find out something about them?'
I also drew from Korn for this aspect of the band's existence. Their first two albums were platinum sellers, but without any clear commerical singles, they built their audience on relentless touring, so when 'Got the Life' broke in 1998, they had a massive audience built in for mainstream America.
Through it all, Angel kept evolving. I had a rule in place for the characters I wrote about that has guided me pretty well. I never went into a new character with too much of their past set in stone. When the situation arose that called for a decision, I went with what made the most sense at the time, and once decided, never changed the essence of the detail (Some things needed to change to fit the circumstances - TJ's brother Rob was a product of my second draft, and the Johnson parents, a product of my third, as well as Angel's relationship with them).
Angel's lyrics are very personal and very direct. She has used her music as an outlet for her memories. Ostensibly, the band had songs before their Spencer gig in 2003, but because that was where I first started writing them on a large scale, the 'real story' is that since she discovered her pregnancy, Angel abstained from all drugs and alcohol, and the newfound clear - headedness focused her thoughts. She did not feel sorry for herself for her past; she was angry at what she allowed to happen and what her family allowed to happen to her. Since she wrote Scarred and Stitches, she has toured the country multiple times and has circled the world, and much of her anger has dissipated, which has shown on the more imagery - focused lyrics on Fire Water.
She has little patience for ignorance and intolerance, and judges people on their actions. Her work ethic is heroic; she is always pushing for a longer tour and unannounced 'one - off' shows to work on new material in front of a live audience. Her insistence on constant touring and recording is partly due to the fact that she is having the time of her life, and partly due to the fact that her daughter is getting older and is about to start school (as of January 2009 Mariella Jade will be six years old), and they will no longer be able to pick up and go whenever they want.
Angel is equal parts fiercely private and fiercely loyal. She is difficult to get close to; as much as she has insisted she is over her past she still has a lot of trouble trusting people, however, once you're in with Angel you're in for life. She remembers the names and faces of an overwhelming number of her fans, she has fought for the road crew that traveled with the band for their first two major tours to stick with them for the third (and gave them significant raises in the process), and treats the bands who open for them as peers and equals.
This is in sharp contrast to her own experience. Lennon Murphy once said that she was told by Arista marketing people that it was not "cost effective" (paraphrasing) to push female artists, so she was essentially on her own. Angel and her boys have dealt with plenty of harassment over the course of their career, usually by hard partying bands who take a dim view of both the serious nature of Valerian's Garden and the way they routinely blow the other bands on the bill out of the water, and by the fans of those bands and their catcalls. Valerian's Garden has not signed with a major label because they are not able to gain sufficient assurances that their artistic integrity would not be compromised; instead, they have released their albums on a large independant, CSE Records, due to the relationship that both Eli and Ivy have with the owner. Angel's opinion is that she would rather release a record that has very little marketing buzz and get the word out herself with a long, drawn out tour.
Thematically, Angel's heroes have been Maynard James Keenan, Jim Morrison, Bill Hicks, Louie Armstrong, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, and the other early Jazz musicians. She was deeply inspired by their improvisational skills, and encourages the band (and herself) to improvise when they think they can make it fit the current song. Due to TJ's encouragement she has honed her own improvisational lyrical skills to the point where she can keep going with a rhythm and a beat almost indefinitely, and she has in turn encouraged the rest of the band to do the same. This has the added affect of making each show unique for their fans.
She has been studying and practicing shamanism for several years now, though she has not incorporated much of this into her work as she does not feel she knows enough about it to do justice.
As part of her relationship with her fans, Angel wears a bondage bracelet on her left wrist that covers an Omega-shaped scar. The bracelet has four separate metal rings on it that she attaches various charms to every night. Fans have begun to bring charms to shows in hopes that she will trade off with them - and she does so fairly often. She refers to the fans as "Darklings and User Poets," as a term of endearment.
Angel is my favorite creation to date. I think it's because she came to be during the period (2002 and onward) where I'm happy with the things I've written. Reading back on what I've written in the past, the quality is hit and miss before 2002. Since then, everything has had much more cohesion and unity, and I think it shows in the character.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Introduction
I should have done this from the start.
In any case, good evening and welcome. My name is Pete Russo, and I'm the author of the (as yet) unpublished finished manuscript, One Chance: The Legend of Valerian's Garden. To date, the manuscript is 95,907 words and has been rejected by three different literary agents. I promise to keep all zero of my readers updated as more roll in, as at this point there are still five agents that have not yet responded.
I'm not entirely sure if I'm legally allowed to list the ones that I've sent my query to as yet, though it's not like anyone is currently reading.
In any case (2), I kind of wish I'd started this way back in the spring of 2003 when the idea to expand Valerian's Garden into a full novel first came to me. It'd certainly be interesting to me to look at all of the ideas that never got off the ground and the beginnings of all the details that ended up filling the thing out.
For the book's main character, Angel, who started her life as window dressing for my ORIGINAL character, Eli Flair, I think I've done a pretty good job at turning her into a three dimensional personality with strengths, weaknesses, quirks, and neurosis. One of my peers originally told me that she knew when she had a good character because the character would surprise her as the author. I never thought a character that I created could surprise me.
I had a lot to learn.
What I ultimately want to do is link this blog and an as - yet - uncreated Cafepress store to my main website http://www.valeriansgarden.com to make that kind of one stop shopping for everything having to do with my various writing projects.
In any case(3!), what I hope to do with this blog is to keep all zero of my readers updated with how I'm progressing in trying to find an agent. I'm going to post some character profiles to give anyone who wants to know about them background information for why they act the way they do. I'm going to be updating the progress of my new manuscript (can it be called a manuscript if it hasn't cracked ten pages of a first draft yet?), Tales from the Bar.
Comments are open.
In any case, good evening and welcome. My name is Pete Russo, and I'm the author of the (as yet) unpublished finished manuscript, One Chance: The Legend of Valerian's Garden. To date, the manuscript is 95,907 words and has been rejected by three different literary agents. I promise to keep all zero of my readers updated as more roll in, as at this point there are still five agents that have not yet responded.
I'm not entirely sure if I'm legally allowed to list the ones that I've sent my query to as yet, though it's not like anyone is currently reading.
In any case (2), I kind of wish I'd started this way back in the spring of 2003 when the idea to expand Valerian's Garden into a full novel first came to me. It'd certainly be interesting to me to look at all of the ideas that never got off the ground and the beginnings of all the details that ended up filling the thing out.
For the book's main character, Angel, who started her life as window dressing for my ORIGINAL character, Eli Flair, I think I've done a pretty good job at turning her into a three dimensional personality with strengths, weaknesses, quirks, and neurosis. One of my peers originally told me that she knew when she had a good character because the character would surprise her as the author. I never thought a character that I created could surprise me.
I had a lot to learn.
What I ultimately want to do is link this blog and an as - yet - uncreated Cafepress store to my main website http://www.valeriansgarden.com to make that kind of one stop shopping for everything having to do with my various writing projects.
In any case(3!), what I hope to do with this blog is to keep all zero of my readers updated with how I'm progressing in trying to find an agent. I'm going to post some character profiles to give anyone who wants to know about them background information for why they act the way they do. I'm going to be updating the progress of my new manuscript (can it be called a manuscript if it hasn't cracked ten pages of a first draft yet?), Tales from the Bar.
Comments are open.
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