Like how I did that?  The double title?  One to be all cute and crafty and one to let you know what the actual blog post it pertaining to?  I’d say the idea was all mine, but that would be a lie.  And I am a crap liar.  Also a shitty secret-keeper.  FYI:  If you tell me you have a secret, I will swear up and down that I will never breathe a word of it over my favorite dog’s dead body.  Then you tell me, and I blab it EVERYWHERE.  I don’t have a favorite dog, and I cannot refrain from spilling my (your) guts to random strangers on the street.  So do yourself a favor and keep it to yourself.  Just sayin’.
But I digress.  How unusual.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the HBO show “Hung.”  It took me a week to figure out what program I have watched with any regularity that uses the dual title thing.  I should have known!  And to promo “Hung” (because they need me to do so on my piddly-ass blog thing) the male hooker, what’s his face–Thomas Jane, is hotter than a ball sack with a cup on for the whole nine innings.

Did you like how I did that?  I don’t even watch basketball.  Go figure.

So I’m twittering the other day and I come across this tweet about, “Can there be suspense when you already know everyone will die?”  Now, the author of said tweet provided a (now evident) link to his blog, which was a review of the latest Final Destination movie.  Gotta be number 12 or there-about.  So, I respond without looking at the link, thinking that this is a deep question for writers and quite in keeping with my (failed) plan to blog on suspense for a bit.  And BINGO was his name O.  Right?  Wrong.

Yes.  I am a Nit-Twit.  I’m getting better, though, and seeking online council from a variety of smut writers, beer brewers, and various other persons willing to “be friends” with me, or whatever the Tweet version of that Facebook shite is.

Anyway, I dive bomb in with an intriguing and well-thought-out answer (por supuesto).  I twat, “You can always play with the when,” and “If the reader cares about the characters, there can still be suspense, even in certain death.”

I thought I was onto something.  And the whole line of thought got me stuck on “On the Beach.”  You know, that old school book set in a futuristic 1960-something about a group of people living in Australia following a nuclear holocaust?  They are just waiting for the fallout to reach them and snuff their lives out slowly and painfully.  There are people starting relationships, babies, and gardens.  And offing themselves, if I remember correctly.

That was the play on “when” I was considering.  It’s been a while since I read it, and it may deserve a revisit just for nostalgia’s sake.  And while not the epitome of suspense, this dated book kept me reading, and crying, and wondering what will happen until the end.  Now, granted, I was a nerdy little kid when I read it.  Perhaps it would not strum me so hard today.  Was it white-knuckle material?  Not by a flower-pot, but it was moving, and thought-provoking, and stayed with me as an example of subtle horror done right.

And, while I cannot remember precisely thinking that “there must be a way for them to live” I know that I was.  That is my nature.  It is fiction (realistic for the time, yes) but where there is an imagination, there is always a way, no?  It is the nature of the pen.

Same with stupid sequels to a movie that never should have had a second.  It’s fiction.  And they defy death throughout.  At least in the first one, two characters survive, right?  My memory of that film is as foggy as “On the Beach,” but the hero and heroine make it, right?

Until next time when they are reborn with different faces and suffer most disturbingly for denying death his just cheese cake.

Well, the twitterer seemed to think the whole “when” thing was invalid and reminded me that he was referring to a specific blog post

(Yes; I am a twitter douche bag.  So don’t friend me if you think I am not worthy of following your book’s rise to mediocrity or your “too adorable for words” cat photos).

The tweeter added, within his allotted character count, to say that I was correct about the “caring about the character” part.  Unfortunately, that was the entire point of his post.  So no points for me.  And no one cares about the Final D 2011 characters, although people will still, apparently, pay money to see them in the theaters.

If only he realized I never even read the blog until after I felt like a jackass.
Oh wait…I guess he did.

So, that concludes my most recent rectal ramblings.  Stay tuned as I plan to denigrate the Holy Bible, or at least major parts of it, in a future post.  That, or write a poem about Clammy Clams.  Maybe both.