I tend to think that what fame has done is to replace the sea as the element of choice of adventure for young people. If you were a dashing young man in the 19th century you would probably have wanted to run away to sea, just as in the 20th century you might decide that you want to runaway and form a pop band. The difference is that in the 19th century, before running away to sea, you would have had at least some understanding of the element that you were dealing with and would have perhaps, say, learned to swim.

The thing is that there is no manual for how to cope with fame. So you’ll get some, otherwise likeable young person, who has done one good comic book, one good film, one good record, suddenly told that they are a genius, who believes it and who runs out laughing and splashing into the billows of celebrity, and whose heroin-sodden corpse is washed up a few weeks later in the shallows of the tabloids.

—Alan Moore

See, she’s got reading assignments for school. They’re given a list of categories/genres from which they are required to read a set number of books. And the teacher approves the books before they can get credit for that category. Apparently comics fit under the extracurricular category (since they’re not “real” literature, I assume). In my daughter’s mind, the Gaiman book didn’t qualify — she already had Fantasy and Extra Choice covered, after all — so she automatically dismissed it as something to read.

This was (and still is) intensely irritating for me. My daughter’s a big reader, always has been. She loves books. But somehow, school has shifted something in her head to think of a new book in terms of an assignment. She couldn’t look at something new and think “Oh, this looks interesting…” without also evaluating as to whether or not it “fits” into the terms set by her teacher. And, in the end, the assignment eclipsed the interest — which, to my mind, is exactly the opposite of what should happen.

Despite my grinding teeth, I tried to explain to my daughter (as best I could) that reading was something done for its own enjoyment and not just as an assignment. This is something she already knows, of course. But I thought it was important to mention that she could survive reading something even if it didn’t line up with any assigned (I did not at any point use the word “bullshit” though I was tempted) school categories.

Did she get it? I honestly don’t know. I’ve got enough confidence in my daughter to know that she’s going to be a reader no matter what’s been assigned.

But I can’t help feeling that it’s a damn shame, somehow.

Each Monday we do a morning production meeting at work. It’s partially a check-in for all of our active projects, but there’s also a fair amount of socializing about our weekends. This past week, one of my coworkers mentioned that she’d gone to see the latest Twilight movie. When she said how much she loved the books, three or four people offered a plain-faced, almost dismissive declaration along the lines of “Oh, I don’t read.”

There’s something wrong with that, somehow. Not just the fact that, for whatever reason, it would never occur to people to pick up a book . . . but also that there’s no sense that, on some level, anyone sees this as a problem.

And, of course, they do read. They read magazines and websites and street signs. But what they’re saying is much more specific. It’s not “I don’t read” but rather “I don’t read books.”

That’s utterly foreign to me, growing up as I did in a house full of books and people who read them. I’d be more judgmental on this point, perhaps, but I’ve been around long enough to recognize that my experiences aren’t always common. The only thing I can compare it to is that small subset of people who say “Oh, I don’t watch television” or “I don’t go to movies” — the sort of position that typically stems from a choice based on some kind of underlying moral or social or religious belief.

But “I don’t read” doesn’t seem to be a position so much as a preference. A matter of taste, along the lines of “I don’t like olives.”

But, of course, it isn’t a matter of taste — or, rather, it shouldn’t be. Your choice of books is defined by your taste — you might hate Twilight but enjoy John Grisham — but an outright dismissal of every book out there is . . . something else entirely.

And don’t try to tell me it’s all the fault of television or computers or video games or the internet. I grew up with most of those things and I’m more or less perpetually jacked in now, yet none of it has dulled my enthusiasm for the printed word. And since I’ve heard this from people of all ages, I don’t believe it’s a generational thing. I realize it might also not be such a new thing either . . . but it does seem that when I hear “I don’t read” these days, there’s no sense of “I know, I know…” behind it. I think, way back when, that used to be there.

All I hear these days is defiance. Of what, I have no idea. Perhaps of my own elitism for assuming that anyone who doesn’t read is, somehow, missing out.

The holidays are, more or less, here. With that in mind, I thought I’d put together a quick list of “Books for People Who Don’t Read” but it seemed more interesting to open it up to everyone in the comments. I’ll start us off with a few of my ideas but throw yours into the mix as well.

I love being a dad. Not a day goes by that I don’t feel grateful for my son and daughter. They’re moving faster and faster every day now, edging into their teen years. I can’t wait to see what they become, to watch where their lives take them. But it makes me a little sad as well.

The good news is, I’m not done yet. My wife and I are expecting. This is our first together and it’s an exciting time.

Just in case you were wondering why I’m working so hard to get the next book done by May.

And if I don’t make it, you’ll know who to blame.

Sharing your work with people online produces a variety of outcomes. One of my favorites is waking up to fan mail from someone on the other side of the world. One of my least favorites is waking up to rejection notices, like I did a few mornings ago.

In related news, my “Chimera” project is on the market for anyone looking for a good science-fiction/action series. Otherwise, it’s going back in the file cabinet and will likely serve as raw material for the novel I’ll write after I finish the one I’m going to write after I finish the one I’m writing now.

Go ahead and try diagramming that last sentence, kids. But don’t blame me if your head explodes.

Speaking of recursive oddities: The advertising agency I work for specializes in differentiation — that is, helping our clients identify and promote the things that make them stand out in the marketplace. Our corporate tagline is “Exactly Like Nobody Else” and the company bought all of us very nice Land’s End shirts with the logo and tagline embroidered on them. The irony of everyone here having the same shirt reading “Exactly Like Nobody Else” wasn’t immediately apparent, but it’s now impossible to ignore — particularly on days like today, when seven out of the ten employees all wore our shirts. The atomic weight of such recursive irony could collapse around us and form a black hole. Of shirts.

In my last post, I mentioned I was finishing up a new play called “Drawing Away”. Well, it’s all done and you can find out more about it (and download a copy) on the Works page. If you do give it a look, let me know what you think.

With that out of the way, the next revision on my list was some long-overdue refinements to my adaptation of “The Odyssey”. A week or so back, someone who worked on the original production at Northwestern College contacted me to see if the script was available for production at a theatre in Illinois . . . which put just the right amount of heat under my efforts to get things cleaned up. I got everything done just in time to send it off to their selection committee last week and I’ve also put up a copy here for everyone else. As always, let me know what you think.

It was interesting, coming back to those scripts after such a long time. As I said in my post last week, “Drawing Away” is a reboot of the first play I ever wrote — taking the basic premise and reworking it around a slightly different plot and cast of characters. I ended up using much more of the original dialogue than I’d planned; through no grand planning on my part, it just seemed to fit better into the plot than I expected. All in all, I like this version better. But check back in another twenty years.

Tightening up “The Odyssey” presented a different set of challenges. By the time it got to the rehearsal process, I’d done nearly fifteen drafts on the script. The original text, of course, is a massive and wandering story — and I spent most of my time trying to figure out how to do it justice without getting lost forever among the twist and turns. Coming back to it now, I was pleasantly surprised at how well I’d managed on the whole thing. Here’s hoping the selection committee agrees.

(The production at Northwestern was a lot of fun. The music in particular has stayed with me. The composer did an excellent job with the score and I’ve always regretted losing touch with him before I could get a copy of it for myself. Reading back through the script again, I could still hear the haunting voices singing . . . fortunately, I have a DVD of a brush-up rehearsal and was able to pull the scene out and share it here. These, of course, are the sirens…)

…deur’ ag’ iôn, poluain’ Oduseu,
mega kudos Achaiônn, nêa katastêson,
hina nôiterên op akousêis.
ou gar pô tis têide parêlase nêi melainêi,
prin g’ hêmeôn meligêrun
apo stomatôn op’ akousai,
all’ ho ge terpsamenos
neitai kai pleiona eidôs…

The next major revision will probably be an adaptation I did of Calderon’s “Life is a Dream” from a few years back. Once I catch my breath, I mean.

It seems strange to think of it now, but there was a time when I was convinced that I was only a playwright. With the exception of the occasional poem or short story, everything I wrote was meant to be performed by live human beings in front of live human beings. This wasn’t by design or even preference, however. Everything that took shape in my head naturally seemed to gravitate towards the stage. There were a couple of odd things here and there — good ideas I still haven’t figured out how to write in any form — but it was overwhelmingly obvious that I was a playwright, first and foremost. For whatever reason that was where my creative energy naturally flowed (some people have offered their theories about this but I won’t get into those here).

Somewhere along the way and 30+ plays later, the tide has shifted . . . well, broadened might be a better way to describe it. There are a lot of different tributaries branching off of that flow now. If anything, it’s the theatre branch that’s the weakest these days (the same theories mentioned above provide a compelling reason for this as well).

I’m not complaining. But it does leave me with a lot of work that’s never seen the light of day . . . yet.

Recently I went through my files and cleaned everything up, reorganizing forty years of detritus as best I could. There were lots of fun discoveries — plays and stories and poems I’d forgotten about, most of which were forgotten for a good reason. And there were plenty of little scraps from past lives that left me cringing — but like the bad writing, it’s all just prelude to where I am now. And here is good.

But there was some good stuff, too. As well as a surprising number of things that I just flat out don’t remember writing at all.

Which has left me wondering what to do with it all. Apparently I’m not the only one. My colleague Tony Delgrosso recently posted he was gathering up all his oddments at The Half Empty Moleskine and it’s pieces like this one that make me glad he is.

The regular (and patient) readers of this blog know I’ve been making noises for a while about a new podcast. The good news (pun intended) is that it’s out there and now you can hear some of those literary orphans that have been hiding in the back of the file cabinet.

There are a few episodes already, ready for download. If you want the fancy .M4V iTunes version, click here to subscribe. If you’re more interested in the RSS feed, you can get that here. If you want to get your grubby little mitts on the individual files or an MP3 version, they’re right here waiting for you. And if you want me to come to your house each week and perform it live in front of your closest friends and/or housepets, then make me an offer. No freaks.

Just for fun, each show comes with a free PDF download of the readings from that week — just in case you’d prefer not to have to listen to me all the damn time.

And if that weren’t enough…

A few days back I was sorting through a number of things and realized that I’d never been “between projects” during National Novel Writing Month before. Usually when NaNoWriMo rolls around, I’m balls elbows deep in something and can’t stop what I’m doing to participate. And although I’m currently hard at work on my next novel entitled “Pantheon” (at least, that’s what my bio says), the truth of the matter is that I’ve allowed myself to get distracted by too many side projects over the past few months and “Pantheon” hasn’t really gotten the attention it deserves.


Which leaves me at a crossroads. Do I keep “Pantheon” on the back burner and fire up NaNoWriMo? Or do I use November to work on the thing that I was already planning on doing, which was going to leave “Pantheon” out anyways?

Very difficult decision. I’ve got a couple of good concepts that could fit nicely into NaNoWritMo. But then there’s the matter of the other November project I’d been planning.

Who know . . . maybe I’ll do both. It’s certainly possible but, either way, it seems that poor little “Pantheon” might just be getting short shrift once again. At least until November has come and gone.

As I said above, winter is here. We haven’t seen snow yet, but I’m told by Girija that in Hindu culture you sacrifice two goats and leave their heads at the gates of the temple, making a stew to serve to the first two strangers who happen through the gate.

As much of a fan as I am of snow, it seems rather hard luck for the goats.

And besides, the snow will be here soon enough.

*******************

When I’m this busy, the first thing that invariably gets cut down is sleep. Next is reading. I can do without the first one but not the second.

I don’t get a lot of magazines (apart from the comics, of course) but a few years back I discovered Esquire at my older brother’s house and have been hooked ever since. Usually I spend thirty minutes or so with each issue some afternoon and then set it aside. But lately I haven’t had time enough for that. I finally caught up to the June issue and this photo accompanying the Stephen King story ‘Morality‘ took me aback.

I sat there staring at the page for a few minutes with an odd feeling at the back of my head, like someone’d snuck in during the night and burgled a few things and I’d just noticed.

I showed the photo to my wife and asked her what came to mind. She got it on the first try. It was like someone had taken a snapshot of the opening of my play ‘The Red Boy’ and I thought for a moment that my citizenship in Alan Moore’s IdeaSpace had been revoked.

However, once I got up the guts to read King’s story I was relieved. Not a bad story, overall. But from a completely different territory than ‘The Red Boy’ fortunately for my sanity.

But, boy oh boy, take a look at this picture and then go read the first few pages of this play. You’ll see what I mean.

Having a long daily commute has made it easier to listen to books, fortunately. I just finished listening to Scott Anderson’s “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” and, I have to say, I found it to be a fascinating (and inspiring) study. Highly recommended.

On the strength of a footnote in Anderson’s book, I picked up a copy of Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, and am enjoying it a great deal as well.




And, here and there, I’m reading another book by my wife’s grandfather — the inestimable Ken Jones, that original Mad Men character I’ve mentioned here before. Like the last one of his I read, this one involves the Advertising business. Only this time around, it’s set in Singapore and somebody’s been murdered.

Ken just turned 90 this past weekend. Still writing every day, too.

I should be so lucky.

“The enemy of most authors is not piracy but obscurity.”

A few days back, Dave Charest posted that on Twitter, perfectly encapsulating a line of thought that’s been haunting me for the past nine months or so.

More on this a bit lower down in the post…

* * * * * *

In all honesty, I didn’t plan on taking a Summer Hiatus — and, really, given the amount of work I’ve gotten done over the past few months, I still could use a vacation. But if I went off somewhere for a week, you can bet I’d spend most of it writing.

Once the dust settled after moving earlier in the summer, I got sidetracked by the aforementioned secret science fiction project. If you’ve been following along on Twitter or Facebook, then you already know that the project is a comic book treatment/proposal called “Chimera” and that it’s been sent off to my friends in Singapore. So we’ll see where that goes.

(Speaking of which, let me offer a belated “Welcome to the World” to the lovely and perfect Ms. Prudence. And congratulations to her excellent parents, Gavin and WeeNee. Nice work.)

Interestingly enough, since completing the preliminary outline and scripts for this project, I’ve found a handful of upcoming movies and comics that share some of the same elements. There’s no direct correlation, just some interesting thematic parallels and plot points. But I gave up on getting frustrated by that sort of thing a long time ago. We’re all tapped into the same frequencies, so it’s no surprise when we resonate along similar lines.

In the documentary The Mindscape of Alan Moore, this is referred to as “Idea Space” and that’s just as good a way to think about it as anything else.

(For certain kinds of brains, that movie is a mind-stretching experience. I recommend it.)

Any time I didn’t spend on “Chimera” over the past few months was spent working on a poem.

That’s right. One poem.

I spent a ridiculous amount of time on this particular poem. And all I have to show for it are about twenty-three pages of handwritten gibberish, incomplete villanelle rhyming schemes, and no poem.

I am mad at this poem. It is in a time-out right now and if it’s very good, I might let it out someday.

Bah.

I also finally finished a new play that had been languishing on the back burner for what I thought would only be a few months but which, surprisingly, turned out to be a few years. But it’s done now and once I tweak some formatting, I’ll be posting it here for one and all to enjoy.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that it isn’t actually a new play at all. Truth be told, it’s actually a complete reworking of the first play I ever wrote. Hard to believe, but that was over twenty years ago. And the idea/premise for the play is even older, going back almost thirty years.

I always felt like that premise deserved somewhat better than what my nineteen-year-old self was able to do with it. A few years back something shifted inside my head and I said “Yeah… that could work.” So I threw out most of the story and characters, retooled everything, kept the bits that worked, and put it all into the hands of a girl named Elizabeth to see what she would do with it. As a character, Liz surprised the hell out of me and I’ve grown as fond of her as anyone I’ve ever written.

Most surprisingly, the things that didn’t work in the first version of the script — all those things I wanted to resolve and repair — are still present and problematic in this latest version. I’d blame Liz, but it’s obviously the writer’s fault.

At any rate, the name of the play is “Drawing Away” and I’ll be posting it sometime this coming weekend. Stay tuned for details.

In the midst of all of this, an old acquaintance from college got in touch via Facebook. Usually getting pinged by someone from the past is a bit of a mixed bag (I’ve whined about this before) but, for many reasons, that wasn’t the case this time. And, in a surprising degree of coincidence and convergence, twenty years ago this acquaintance had played the lead in the original version of the play that I’d just finished retooling. Coincidence? Alan Moore probably has something to say about that sort of thing as well.

Somewhere, I’ve got a VHS of that play floating around. I’ll try to pull a scene or two and post them here. If nothing else, there’s a high degree of nostalgia for me. That was at the beginning of it all, one of a very few specific milestones that I can point to and say “There. That’s when I felt my life shift on its axis.”

But, for once, I didn’t resent Facebook for reconnecting me with someone from the past.

As many of you know, I have a day job working in Advertising. Most of my time is spent helping my clients navigate the thorny paths of various online mechanisms for connecting with their audiences, customers, and so on. I’m reasonably competent at what I do, fortunately. And it’s a fairly enjoyable way to earn a living.

In the past month or so, I’ve had the opportunity to help one of my clients take their first little baby steps into social networking. What this means is that, for all intents and purposes, I’m spending a couple of hours a day on Twitter and Facebook as my client. Actually, there are three different and distinct brands that I’m managing, across two different networks (that’s six accounts total). I’ve got seven different browser tabs open at all times, a 3×3 TweetGrid that runs real time searches on related terms, and an ever-evolving strategy for helping my client participate in these conversations in a way that’s meaningful, human, and worthwhile.

It is, as you might imagine, a hell of a lot to keep straight onscreen — to say nothing of inside my chronically porous little Gemini brain. And I still have difficulty coming to terms with the concept that I get paid to do this sort of thing.

Fortunately, they haven’t heard about “Stripper Friday”.

Not a bad gig, really — at least, it’ll do until that whole “Writer” thing ramps up.

Although it does remind me of the old “First you do it for love…” thing.

And on that note, back to the beginning…

I have a couple of semi-announcements to share.

First off, I recently put together a portable sound studio similar to this one. Which means that, over time, I’m going to (a) Re-record both “Assam & Darjeeling” and “Matters of Mortology” to improve the overall production quality and clean up the rough edges in the original recordings; and (b) Begin a new podcast with an open format more suited to conversation, interviews, and shorter pieces. The re-recording could take a few months, of course. But I expect the new podcast to kick off sometime in October.

Second, if you’re one of the many people who’s written to me about getting ahold of a copy of either “Matters of Mortology” or “Assam & Darjeeling” that you can hold in your hands and read with your whaddyacall actual eyes, then good news is on the way. Starting with “Mortology” in a few weeks, both books will be released in a variety of formats: Softcover, Hardcover, PDF, and a few of the eBook readers (Amazon’s Kindle is for sure, the Sony Reader is a possibility as well).

It’s an . . . experiment, of a sort. I’m very interested to see how it goes.

Watch this space for details.

* * * * * *

Speaking of which, it’s time now for something I really should do more often…

I met author Tony Delgrosso on Twitter some long while back. Not sure how we connected but he’s clever and funny, so I bet that had something to do with it. Sometime last year, Tony began publishing his novel “Mr. Abernathy” online in installments. It’s a fun yarn and Delgrosso does a good job taking some of the classic thriller elements (Secret Nazi research, time travel, and [maybe?] UFO technology) and crafts an enjoyable, engaging book out of them. I wrote a review for it on GoodReads, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it here as well.

Another reason I like this book is that it’s from an author taking steps to promote his work outside of the traditional (and increasingly, frustratingly hermetically-sealed) publishing industry. It’s a bit inspiring and, like the man said, “it is a comfort to the unfortunate to have companions in woe.”

You can pick up a copy of Tony Delgrosso’s “Mr. Abernathy” online.

Nothing to it really, once everything was said and done.

With chaotic detritus from the recent move still littering areas of the new house (and my own psyche), we celebrated my fortieth birthday a bit early on Saturday night by escaping to my favorite restaurant, Tres Lobos.

No one took a picture, but I’m sure I was grinning like an idiot. I love Tres Lobos for their excellent Camarones ala Diabla (a dish so good I am unable to bring myself to order anything else on the menu) as well as the guy who roams between the tables on Fridays and Saturdays, singing the hell (and his heart) out of Mexican karaoke standards. Unfortunately, I forgot my video camera and was unable to record it when the singer (bribed by my father-in-law) came over to sing for my birthday! Alas.

You’ll just have to settle for this shot captured on my iPhone and take my word for it how awesome it all was.

The month of June showed up, wandered through and pointedly reminded me that (a) It wasn’t quite my birthday yet, and (b) I still had a lot of unpacking to do. Ninety-five percent of everything in the new house is squared away, of course. There are those boxes in the attic to organize, sure. And that old roll top desk isn’t going to take itself to the salvation army, no matter how much I beg it to.

But it’s really that little room in the basement where most of the trouble is — and by trouble, I mean books . . . boxes and boxes of them. They’re teetering everywhere, spilling out their contents like roadkill left in the tracks of the moving van. And unless I get them sorted out and put away, that little room in the basement won’t ever become an office where I can actually get some writing done.

I have a wishlist of things I need to get in order to make it a bit more homey, a bit more of a working space (a rug, some better lighting, a comfy chair) . . . but it’s really the boxes and boxes of books that are keeping it from being more than just extra storage in the basement.

I’ll get it there, eventually.

Saturday afternoon (before the evening’s festivities) I went to go see my daughter perform in her end of the year ballet program and ended up enjoying it much more than I expected to. Apart from the typical parade of positions and exercises, the company also performed a number of pieces and — to my surprise — I actually enjoyed them. A few of the older students were really quite good. I’m judging this based on (a) My lack of interest in (or enthusiasm for) ballet in general, and (b) How much I enjoyed watching them perform.

Best of all was a boy, maybe twelve years old, who completely, utterly, and obviously loved what he was doing so much, it just lit up his face and (by extension) the whole stage every time he was on. I tracked him down in the lobby afterwards and said “Listen kid, you don’t know me at all but I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your dancing. You were obviously having a lot of fun and that made it a lot of fun for the rest of us.” A little old lady overheard us and came up to tell him, in essence, the exact same thing.

And he just beamed like the sun, bright as anything.

I never quite understood the parents who absolutely forced their kids to do ballet or sports or theatre or music or whatever. They might say it’s to teach them discipline or expose them to the arts or show them ideas of teamwork and fair play, but more often than no, it seems like most of the kids don’t really want to be there. They’re enduring it, of course, because their parents are forcing them to do it.

That looks like a perfect recipe for aversion therapy to me.

I’m not saying that these things aren’t important. I’m just saying that your precious little offspring aren’t necessarily cut out to be ballerinas or a concert pianists or a champion quarterbacks — so lighten up, Santini . . . and let the kids have some fun every once in a while.

As a parent, I think it’s my role to light as many lamps as possible and then step back to see which ones draw my kids in, which ones kindle that same light within their eyes that I saw on that boy’s face this past weekend.

As a parent, that’s what makes me proud of my kids, seeing that light pouring out of them — whether or not they win the state championship or perform a flawless arabesque.

All of which is a roundabout way of blaming my mom and dad for all those boxes of books. They had things they wanted me to try out (piano lessons, freshman basketball) . . . but mostly, my parents influence is that they left books lying around everywhere. It seemed like everywhere you turned someone, everyone in the house was always reading something. But, of course, my parents never sat me down, forced a book into my hands, and said “Read, goddamnit.”

Books were stacked on the nightstand next to the beds, the shelves in the family room, carried in briefcases to work. I snuck them into church. We packed them up to go on vacation with us. They were everywhere.

That’s pretty much what my house looks like now. I’ve got forty years of books . . . and this birthday, my family happily added a few more to the stacks: Crowley and Steiner from my wife, vintage comics from my son, and an Amazon gift certificate from my parents that will almost certainly get spent on even more books and comics. All I have to do is find a place to put them all.

Also, I need to read them.

One of the things that hit me during this past move was not just how many books there are, but how many I’ve either not read in years or (gasp) never read at all. I’m going to need to remedy that, I think. As much as I love reading, I see no reason to hold books and comics hostage — especially if they’re not ones I plan on ever reading again (if at all).

Also, it’ll free up some space on the shelves. Which would be helpful as I am almost certainly going to need it.

At work on Monday, they sang Happy Birthday and there was a big chocolate cake with Batman on it. Yay.

The company I work for doesn’t allow people to work on their birthdays, so on Tuesday (my actual birthday, for those of you keeping track) I spent the day with my wife and had a wonderful time going out to breakfast and pushing the cart while she loaded it up with plants and flowers from the local nursery. Back home, I caught up on the overwhelming birthday wishes coming in from everyone online, read a bit from the Aleister Crowley biography that Keeley bought me, and then took a very very very long nap.

I woke up to more well wishes from the Internet and the smell of a fresh rhubarb pie baking downstairs. While my most excellent wife got a special birthday dinner started, I went off to collect the kids from various locations. My daughter brought a key lime pie to add to the mix, my son found some vintage comics for me, and my wonderful in-laws arrived. Together, we all demolished the beef stroganoff my wife had prepared.

And that, more or less, was that.

Not a bad way to spend your fortieth birthday, when you stop to think about it.

Lying in bed a few weeks back I found myself drifting in and out of a vague dream about a clone on the run from some sort of shadowy government agency. In my half-waking mind, the components of a story started to come together. Upon waking, I was surprised to discover that it held together pretty well. For a few days afterward, I’d find myself returning to the idea and playing with it further.

After a week or so, it occurred to me that I’d (quite by accident) developed an actual, honest-to-goodness idea for a series — well suited to either television, animation, or comics. The closest thing I can compare it to is Alan Moore’s run on Swamp Thing — but I should probably leave it at that, for now.

I say “by accident” because it’s not the sort of thing I do on purpose. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever done it before. Although I’ve had ideas for individual episodes or issues of an already established, ongoing series — the world will perhaps never know the joy of watching, for instance, my “lost” season of Mad Men — I’ve never really come up with something new that was obviously an ongoing series.

The reason for this is, I think, because most of what I read is finite. Novels, plays, short stories, poetry — they all have an ending. Even in the world of comics, my favorite series tend to be the ones that are standalone volumes or finite storylines: Sandman, Cerebus, From Hell, Promethea, the various Gaiman/McKean collaborations, etc. As I’ve gotten older (no, I won’t say “matured”) as a reader, I’ve found the endless story arcs, crossovers, and reboots in most of the mainstream comics increasingly tedious and even insulting.

So it’s strange to have this sort of story coming together in my head . . . but it’s also a lot of fun, as well.

And it’s perfect timing, really. My work on Pantheon has been a little slow of late, as it’s difficult to find the time with everything else going on. We’re moving households in about a week and it always seems that there’s something else that needs to get done first. But it’s been good to have a nice little idea to play with for a while. Once things settle down a bit, I expect to have a strong outline and treatment that I can share with a few connections. After that, we’ll see where it goes.

It’s been nice too, talking about it with Keeley. My current project (the aforementioned Pantheon) began life as a collaboration with her. So it’s been fun to tell her what I’m thinking and then bounce ideas back and forth. In addition to the clarity that comes from simply talking over a story with someone else, she’s given me a lot of little things to consider around various chacters and plot points. I’ll owe her a story credit, when the time comes.

It’s a science fiction story, by the way — at least, on one level it is — and that’s a nice change as well since that’s not a genre I usually spend much time in (either reading or writing). I wouldn’t say it’s hard SF, at all. It’s more of a technological thriller, which sounds a bit odd even to me. Again, not typically the sort of thing my mind immediately comes up with.

But, so far, it’s working for me. At the very least it’s a good exercise to go through in the midst of the moving cyclone.

By my last count, I think I’ve moved about 20 times in my life (that’s 20 separate residences, not including different dorm rooms in college). At the time, it never seemed like that much . . . but it adds up, apparently. The end result is that I’m very, very good at packing. Especially books. There’s about forty-five boxes of them now.

Also, it’s taught me how to plan ahead so that the week leading up to the day when the truck shows up isn’t a hectic mess of last-minute preparation and stress. Oddly enough, we’re only moving one block away. That’s all. But you still have to go through everything, no matter the distance. So I’m disrupting my life, my writing schedule, my peace of mind, and the delicate psychic landscape of my offspring to go one block south.

But we need the room. The kids are getting bigger and we’re all starting to bump into each other a bit more than before. And sometime next year our family is likely to get even bigger, so there’s that to plan for as well. The timing couldn’t have been better. Just as we started getting serious about looking, our landlord had a bigger place open up down the street. That it has a pool table in the basement wasn’t the only deciding factor, I assure you. But it did help take the sting out of the idea of moving again.

As did the realization* that, with a little bit of imagination and some elbow grease, I could have an office again. It’s been a long time since I had a separate space where I could spread out and work — the past few years, I’ve set up shop at the kitchen table after everyone’s gone to bed. It’s been fine (I got two books and a full length play done that way, after all) but it’ll be nice to have things be a bit more grounded.

(It’s also the room right next to where the pool table is, so that’s okay.)

*It wasn’t my realization, of course. I’d been thinking that the back room would end up being storage. Keeley was the one you said “You know this could be an office…” and, as usual, she was absolutely right.

Out at Aurohn Lake last week, I got the chance to prove my devotion to her. Down near the southeast side of the lake there’s a spring where watercress grows in thick, abundant beds. The terrain gets a little swampy down there and one wrong step will find you sinking fast. No one’s entirely clear on how deep the mud goes, but (as I found out later) the rumor is that a cow was lost down there back when the angus beef farm was still in operation.

While Keeley was picking her ‘cress, I went off to take some photos of an interesting mold formation on a nearby tree. Coming back, I watched her shift position and loose her footing. She grabbed an overhead branch and I immediately went into rescue mode, taking one huge step into the seemingly solid center of the watercress.

I sank immediately and my knee boots were suddenly filled with water and mud. Trying to pull out one leg only made the other sink deeper. My main concern was that if I sank to my waist, my camera and my iPhone would be ruined.

As I am somewhat smarter than a cow, I was able to get back to solid ground eventually — all without losing my precious tech, but soaked from the thighs down. As I dumped the gallons of water and mud out of my boots, my only regret was that we didn’t capture the whole thing on video. Ah well, next time…

I will say this: based on the salad my wife made later that night, the watercress was well worth the risk.

I’ve been dropping hints here and there for a while now, but here’s the full story…

A few weeks back I received a professional inquiry from a company in Singapore, interested in my novel Assam & Darjeeling. They’ve got connections with companies here and overseas, everything from comics to anime to manga to you-name-it. Pretty exciting stuff, really. It’s exactly the kind of inquiry you want to get and it’s hard not to say “Oh man, this is really going to happen.”

After a number of e-mails and phone calls back and forth, they asked for permission to “pitch” the story in their conversations — which was perfectly fine by me. I prepared a packet for them that included a synopsis, sample chapters, and about an hour’s worth of audio from the podcast. Along with this, I included a release that allowed them to discuss the story in their meetings but also clearly outlined where the boundaries of the relationship were. Thus armed, off they went.

Throughout all of this, everybody was enthusiastic and hopeful but the conversations were tempered with a healthy does of realistic expectations. All good stuff.

Reporting back, they let me know they’d had some conversations (I don’t know if I can say with whom, so I won’t) and those had gone well. There was a lot of interest in what they were now calling the “property” and also a handful of questions and ideas for me to consider.

I work in advertising so I’m used to being open to ideas from other people. And my work as a playwright has taught me that there’s often good energy generated when different ideas come together. And I know enough about the Industry to not be offended by the term “property” in relation to my work.

Not surprisingly, some of the questions reflected the typical concerns that crop up in any meeting with Marketing people: Who’s the audience? Is this a book for kids or adults? What’s the demographic?

I have these kinds of conversations all the time. And, admittedly, Assam & Darjeeling isn’t perhaps a story that lends itself to age-based marketing. And there was a tone in the comments I was hearing that suggested it wasn’t a matter of trying to define what the audience was, but to redefine the story for a specific audience. As I wrote in my response “Oftentimes, this tendency results in a redefinition of the story to meet what marketing perceives to be the expectations and/or tastes of that audience. The results of that effort are not always successful.”

Diplomatic but valid.

Polite disagreement crept in on a few other points as well. There was a comment that the title was perhaps too “obscure” and also a concern that it sounded “too feminine” — this last one was pretty baffling to me.

Alternate titles were suggested that were more interesting (to them) and more in line with the theme of “payment” at the center of the book (as perceived by them). Since that concept isn’t, in fact, the central theme of the story, I didn’t mind offering more polite disagreement.

To help clarify where I saw the audience for the book, where I saw a market for the book, what I believed the central theme to be… well, I thought it would be helpful to point them towards a few things that resonate on a similar frequency. It takes some kind of gall for an unknown author to invoke masterpieces like Pan’s Labyrinth, Grave of the Fireflies, Night of the Hunter, and To Kill a Mockingbird, but I did it without apology. And they seemed to understand where I was coming from.

Overall the conversation was a good one and everyone involved seemed genuinely interested in finding common ground to make this a successful venture.

But there was a question that been nagging at me since the beginning of our conversations and I followed up with an e-mail to ask it: Where were they heading with all of this?

See, to me it’s a book first and foremost. But my conversations with them had run through a wide range of possibilities including anime, manga, comics, feature films, merchandising, etc. — none of which I’m opposed to, of course. But in my mind it all grows out of that book I wrote. I had the impression they had a different focus. So I sent off my e-mail and waited for a reply.

The next conversation was, by everyone’s standards, a hard one. They were still quite interested in the property but they had serious concerns that they wouldn’t be able to do much for me if they didn’t have the freedom to explore everyone’s ideas in their conversations. That is to say, if someone had an idea in a meeting — say, for instance, to change the names of the characters — they needed to be able to run with it. And I had to accept the fact that whatever this things turned out to be — movie, manga, Saturday morning cartoon series, or breakfast cereal — it was likely to be different than what I’d written.

But, of course, I could count on them to stay true to the spirit of the original idea . . . in some form or another. They had a lot of faith in the property as a franchise of some kind and I could be confident that I’d get my share of the royalties. But in order to be successful, to take this property as far as they could go, they needed complete creative control. They needed, in short, to own the “intellectual property” outright.

Well . . . golly. Where to begin?

The phrase “complete creative control” is not one that sits well with me as it sometimes predicates an artist getting screwed with their pants on. Coupled with the assertion that “you’re just going to have to trust us” I could feel my inner Temperamental Artist getting his hackles up. I know my history, I’ve gone to school on the experiences of people like David Mamet, Jack Kirby, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and plenty of others. I don’t pretend to have the clout or expertise, but I do have the same rights and responsibility to my work.

More questions from me only weakened the confidence on both sides: What about the novel I’d written? Would I be free to publish it? Would I be free to write future stories about these characters and settings?

We ended the conversation at an impasse, both of us had some thinking to do.

We spoke last night and it went pretty much the way I expected it would. These are very nice, well connected people who have a real enthusiasm and drive for what they do. I have no doubt that if I agreed to their terms, they would make something out of the property and take it as far as it could possibly go.

But I said “No.”

I’d be lying if I said it was an easy decision. I’ve been working and waiting for a chance like this a very long time. I’d love to be (as Tom Waits said ) big in Japan. I’d love to see what a director like Tim Burton or Guillermo del Toro (two names mentioned as possibilities) might do with the story on the big screen. I’d love to see Assam and Darjeeling lunchboxes and Juniper action figures and, sure, even Black Annis breakfast cereal (okay, probably not that).

But to follow that path, on the terms they offered, would mean that the book I’ve spent so much time developing might never see publication — at least, not in the original form. And I would have no control over how it ultimately did come to market. Neither would I be free to write anything else about my characters because, of course, they would no longer be mine.

And I don’t want to stand aside and watch as my characters get swallowed up in the belly of the whale.

Whether it’s the smartest thing I’ve ever done or something I’ll regret for the rest of my life, my reasoning is pretty straightforward: I have more stories to tell. Darjeeling is very, very precious to me and I’m not done with her yet. And there’s quite possibly a whole book about Edgar somewhere out there. And not a day goes by that I don’t think about poor Juniper and how he got his heart broken. Those are all stories I want to tell.

I feel an obligation to make sure they’re told, an obligation to the characters themselves. They need me.

And I need them.

Although I’m disappointed things didn’t work out, I’m not angry at these nice people who were so interested in my work. They’re just doing what they do, after all. And I wish them success in their other efforts.

Mostly, I’m grateful that this story has traveled this far, so far. And this episode gives me faith that it will, in time, find its way into the right hands.

Until then, give the story a listen (iTunes or RSS) and then drop me a line. I’d love to hear from you.

——————-

UPDATED: Got a very nice note in reply from my main contact at the company who showed so much interest in my book. Good to know we understand each other and that our paths might cross again sometime. These aren’t bad people, their business model is just different than where I’m trying to go. They respect my work and my position, and I respect theirs.

And I appreciate everyone’s support and comments below. It means a lot and I hope you’ll spread the word, tell your friends about the book, even leave a review on iTunes if the mood strikes. Who knows what doors might open, thanks to you?

The past few weeks have been extremely busy. I’ve had to set aside almost all other writing and editing projects (yes, The Spring Chap being one of them — all apologies to those of you who are waiting patiently) in order to finish up a number of things for a . . . well, I’m not sure what to call it, really. All I know at this point, all I can say is that one of my books has gotten some attention from an unexpected area. Conversations with very nice people are ongoing. At times it’s quite exciting. At other times I cannot help but think of il gatto e la volpe.

This is the sort of thing that keeps me up at night, pacing and talking to myself. Rest assured that when things solidify a bit, one way or another, I’ll have more to say about it here.

With all of that going on, it was nice to take some time out this past weekend for a visit to Aurohn Lake. I brought along the copy of Burrough’s A Princess of Mars that I’d gotten for Ken. I’ll be reading it at the same time he will be, although he’s read it before — the first time was back when he was a boy, sometime around the 1920’s. I’m hopeful that we’ll have some interesting conversations afterwards. And then it’ll be his turn to pick a book for us to read.

I’ve already got one of his (unpublished) novels waiting on my nightstand. Pinnacle is a fictionalized account of his work on the groundbreaking car commercial for Chevrolet that first put an automobile on top of a remote mountaintop in the middle of the desert. It’s a pretty commonplace image now in advertising, but Ken did it first back in 1964, and without computers. I’m interested to read the book . . . but I’m looking forward to exploring Mars with him as well.

While we were out there, Keeley, Jeff (her father), and I took a nice long walk around the lake, through the forest, across the meadow, and back again. It started with a liberation of the last few milkweed pods. Across the lake, we spied a trespassing ATV that took off at the first sight of us, which gave us all something to grumble about. But the trespasser was quickly forgotten as we saw a few deer early on — a brief flash of the tail, the bounding into the thicker trees — and a surprisingly non-nocturnal possum that trundled as fast as it could away from us through the underbrush.

Last time we came through the forest a few weeks back, it was bitter cold and the little ponds were frozen solid. This time, however, the warm weather had broken things down considerably and was performing the alchemy of spring that invariably turns everything into mud.

In the distance, perhaps outside the boundaries of the Aurohn conservancy, we could hear gunfire. Far off through the trees, we could just barely make out the edge of a lake on the neighboring property. About the time the gunshots started ringing out — it’s nowhere near hunting season, by the way — we watched a herd of eight or nine deer plunge into the frigid water and then scramble up onto the ice to make their escape — their hoofbeats breaking through here and there as they drummed across the surface.

One of the deer floundered for a while in the icy water and it was breathtaking, excruciating to be unable to do anything but watch. To our relief, they finally made it up and across the ice after their herd.

The gunshots continued. I don’t have a fond place in my heart for hunters, particularly not out of season poachers. Fortunately, my phone has excellent coverage out there in the middle of nowhere and I was able to put a call back to Ken’s and let them know.

This could also serve as my last communication, I thought to myself, before the tragedy struck.

There’s a hill just past Five Bar Gate where the forest ends and the back forty takes over. Just under the crown of the hill is a large hole leading down into a burrow. On top of the hill, the tall grass is matted down where the deer sleep. It’s the perfect spot: sheltered by trees on two sides, high enough to see predators coming, accessible enough to allow escape into deep cover.

Last time we were out, Keeley and I left apples there and I was happy to see that they were all gone. All through the forest and on the crown of the hill, we scattered the new batch of apples and carrots that we’d brought along this time. I’ve been reading A Field Guide to Demons — which isn’t really about demons so much, at least not in the pea soup sense — and I suppose some might say we were leaving offerings for the local gods. In truth, I just wanted to give the deer and the unseen burrow dweller (groundhog perhaps?) a nice treat after the long winter.

I like that little hill. I’d like to have a small, one room cabin up there with windows on all sides. All I need is a wood burning stove for warmth and tea, and a table and chair. I’d go there to write every day, if I could — and if it wouldn’t disturb the deer or the underhill god (groundhog, woodchuck . . . whoever it might be). That would be a good life. I’m surprised Ken never did something similar but, of course, he did. It’s why they moved there in the first place.

In the meadow beyond, the heavy snowfall and high winds of winter had flattened out most of the tall grass, so Jeff and I went down to the far edge of the lake to see what the ATV might have been up to. We also wanted to check and see if anyone had set out traps for the rumored-but-as-yet-unseen beavers (and, of course, spring them as a part of our subversive community service). No traps, fortunately. But no beavers either.

From there, it’s an easy walk back. When we got there, Ken’s wife Alice was on the phone checking on the provenance of the ATV and the gunfire. The collection of discarded beer cans we found along the way didn’t make them any more pleased about the trespassers.

But they were quite interested in the various books I’ve got on my iPhone. In addition to the excellent Classics application from the iTunes App store, I also had the Kindle application installed with my recent purchase of the Burrough’s book.

Scoffing at first, it didn’t take Ken long to get the hang of using the app to read. But he said what everybody else seems to say about the Kindle: “Well, it’ll never replace the pleasure of reading from a real book you’re holding in your hands.” I can’t say I disagree with them. Alice used to be a librarian and, watching her play with the iPhone, I had a sneaking suspicion she wouldn’t have minded having one of her own.

But I was most interested to hear, a week or so ago, that the Kindle store had opened up to direct submissions from authors. Having spent some time playing with the formatting and preparation of a document for that platform, I’m fairly confident that it’ll be one of many avenues by which I put my work out there in the next few months. Unless, of course, the cat and the fox come through.

The evening ended up with a stop off with Keeley’s parents for a nice big barbeque dinner on the way home, washed down with tose overgrown “tall” über pints of beer that everyone seems to be serving these days. All of which only made it that much easier to go home, snuggle up with my wife, and fall asleep well before 10 o’clock.

I woke at 3AM, wide awake and had some difficulty convincing my mind that we didn’t need to go downstairs and have one-sided debates about titles and audience age demographics. Eventually, I won out and fell back asleep in time to be completely late getting up for work the next morning.

A cot would be nice in that cabin too, now that I think of it.

————————————————————-

I have about fifty different tabs open in Firefox, seriously straining the patience and functionality of that application. Here’s my attempt to close a few of them…

It was the twittered birth of Roadhacker and Dirty Snowflake’s baby Maeve that led to the discovery that I am, according to the Mayan astrological system, a White Magnetic Dog. So that’s all right, then.

If I ever get a little cabin somewhere, I’ll almost certainly need a shelf for this. At least, unless I win one of these someday. If so, then I’ll pick up the idol from the HPLHS’s excellent adaptation of Call of Cthulhu instead.



And while we’re on the subject of Things I Want Someday, a few of these plushie skulls from Lana Crooks would look good on that shelf too. And they might also be great decor for a baby’s room as well. Or maybe we can just hire this fellow. Excellent stuff, but I do have to admit that these pillows might be taking it a little bit too far — at least, in a baby’s room.




And in case you missed it the first time, two of my online friends had a baby and twittered the whole thing. When I told my wife about it, she said “No electronic device of any kind will be anywhere near a birthing room, right?”

As with my vague non-news report above, I thought it best to adopt a neutral position in response. For now.

That, my friends, is a whole lot of writing. And he did it all on his own.

Although he’s rounding the corner into his nineties, he still writes every single day — poetry and articles, as well as the odd advertising blurb or copywriting gig. And he’s been keeping a daily journal for what’s probably sixty years or more.

Ken’s quick-witted and spry and doesn’t mind regaling a much younger and infinitely less-experienced writer with stories from his life and career.

So, he’s a god and I’m lucky to know him.

Whenever I see him, Ken never fails to ask about my work — both at my day job with the agency as well as my extracurricular creative efforts. He’s incredibly generous with his attention and encouragement, and he’s genuinely interested in what the current scene looks like.

As an old radio guy, he’ll sometimes ask me if I remember the classics — Inner Sanctum, The Shadow, and so on. Seeing as how I’m a bit of a powerdork and grew up with very cool parents, I can actually hold my own in some of those conversations. And, as someone who has spent a fair amount of time sitting in front of a microphone recording my novels, I’ve got a lot of appreciation and enthusiasm for the uniquely audible world of radio.

Of course, these days a lot of that world has been transplanted into podcasting. As one of the best-natured curmudgeons I’ve ever know, Ken’s got a healthy interest in new technology but he also isn’t above calling it bunk from time to time. One of the things I’ve been looking forward to is opening him up to the world of podcasts (via his new Mac and iTunes), because I think there’s some really terrific stuff available there — all the past “nostalgia” shows that are available, as well as what’s going on right now.

I remember a number of years ago, when I heard of podcasts for the first time. I have to say, I didn’t quite get it. This was long before the iPod and it seemed like a real fringe movement. At work, there was the programming intern who listened to MIDI files of classic video game music scores. There was the other intern who listened to podcasts. I didn’t get it. At all.

Eventually, I found my way into podcasts — both as a podcaster as well as a listener. (But I still haven’t figured out the appeal of the MIDI file thing yet. At all.)

One of the things I hear a lot from people is “I don’t have the time…” or “I don’t know where people find the time…” to do something new — whether it’s listening to podcasts, or getting involved in a social networking site, or even just sitting down and reading a book (“Do people even do that anymore?”). Like anything else, you end up making the time for things that you enjoy. All you have to do is get over that little edge at the outset, the one that seems like it’s more trouble than it’s worth to start.

The tipping point for me was in the convergence of the iPod, iTunes, and NPR taking the fairly bold step of putting out a lot of their content for free as podcasts. It was being able to get This American Life and The Writer’s Almanac right there in my hands, whenever I wanted it. That did it for me.

My own listening habits have grown over the past few years and they’re fairly varied. The number of podcasts in my playlist tends to fluctuate between ten and thirty different shows (in fact, I just added a dozen or so new ones today). With all of that rotation, there’s really only a handful of ‘casts that I listen to on a fairly consistent, faithful basis.


RadioLab
This is at the top of the list, hands down. It’s a hard show to describe to people, but it’s somewhat accurate to say it’s a superb melding of the sensibilities of This American Life with content from that Science class you never went to in college. Outstanding stuff. The hosts/producers Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich have a lot of fun with the material and it’s hard not to get caught up in it all. I’ve been listening to this one for over a year and every time there’s a new episode, my little geeky heart just leaps for joy. And, unlike other shows, this one has a considerable shelf life; the reruns are just as good the second and third time around.

Favorite Episode: There are so many good episodes available through the WNYC website and iTunes, but a good place to start would be with either their episodes on the War of the Worlds, Space Capsules, or Emergence — but, really, they’re all great fun.

RadioLab website | Subscribe to the show at iTunes

Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me
This show drives me to work every Monday morning. The classic panel show format is a lot of fun and host Peter Sagal has a quick, clever mind. His rotating panel of guests always seems to be having way too much fun taking apart the newsmakers of the week. My personal favorite is Paul Provenza but they’re all lots of fun chasing after jokes together.

Favorite Episode: When Kevin Clash and his slightly better known alter-ego Elmo came on the show. Wickedly funny stuff.

WWDTM website | Subscribe to the show at iTunes

Welcome to Mars
This is the only terminal podcast in the list. For twelve episodes back in 2006, writer Ken Hollings unpacked the period of time running from 1947 through 1959. It’s a fascinating tour of the emergence of UFO culture, conspiracy theory, B-movies, and the psychedelic generation. Great, great stuff and lots of fun listening to Hollings make subtle little connections underlying seemingly unrelated facets of what he calls the “American Half-Century”.

( Full disclosure: I have to admit that I found the Theremin-infused sci-fi score a little wonky and intrusive, especially in the earlier episodes. But it calms down for the rest of the series.)

Ken Hollings’ website | Download the show from iTunes

The Moth
I only recently ran across the storytelling collective called The Moth but it’s rapidly become a favorite. The premise is pretty simple: Each week they publish a new episode in which someone tells a true story (without notes) in front of a live audience. The stories run the gamut of emotion, from the hilarious to the heartbreaking. And there’s nary a sour note in the bunch.

The Moth has been a storytelling institution for over a decade, and I’m embarrassed to admit I hadn’t heard of it before. But, thanks to the podcast, I’m hooked.

The Moth website | Subscribe to the show at iTunes

The Sound of Young America
If I had a talk show, I’d interview all my heroes — writers and comics artists and comedians and musicians and magicians and directors — no matter how obscure. And, during every interview, I’d be a quivering mass of fanboy joy.

Jesse Thorn (aka “America’s Radio Sweetheart”) is already doing that show. It’s excellent and I hate him for it. I would have given anything to do something so cool back in my twenties. I just sent in my monthly support donation too, just to show how much I despise him and his excellent, cool show. That’ll show him. Punk.

Favorite Episode: There’s so many to choose from. His interview with Chip Kidd is great, as is the conversation he had with Mark Evanier about comics legend Jack Kirby. And the John Hodgman vs. Jonathan Coulton episode is a lot of fun. He even got to interview Neil Gaiman and Harry Selick when Coraline was released, the bastard.

The SOYA website | Subscribe to the show at iTunes

Studio 360
Kurt Anderson’s got a great show on Public Radio and I was a very happy man when they made it available as a weekly podcast. As a free-form exploration of the Arts and Culture, you can’t do much better than this. He brings in great guests to chat — musicians and writers and artists from across the spectrum — but the backup segments are always interesting and compelling. This is a show that invariably sends me to the Web so I can look up some book or album they mentioned and add it to my wishlist.

Favorite Episode: They spent an hour on The Great Gatsby last year and when it was all over, I ended up wanting another hour’s worth. That’s good radio.

The Studio 320 website | Subscribe to the show at iTunes

I Should be Writing
The title says it all, really. I ran across Mur Lafferty on Twitter one day last year. Her longstanding podcast is a staple for aspiring writers. She does great interviews and isn’t afraid to spend time discussing her own career ups and downs as well. She’s the purple-haired Queen of Podcasting, a real capital-w Writer, and a true trailblazer for writers exploring audiobooks as a channel to publishing.

Favorite Episode: Mur recently sat down with Scott Sigler, checking in with one of the top podcasting (and now published) authors. Eavesdropping on two pros discuss the nuts and bolts of it all? Good stuff.

The Murverse website | Subscribe to the show at iTunes

Cthulhu
One of the best things about this show is the format. The host — known only as FNH — usually starts things off with a historical exploration from the 20’s and 30’s, before treating everyone to a piece of music or popular song from the period. Each episode ends with the main feature, typically a story from Lovecraft or a related author. Best of all, the podcast is open to submissions — listeners are encouraged to send in stories of their own, or their own productions of a Lovecraft classic.

FNH has done an amazing job bringing all of this together and making it work. I can’t say I always appreciate every story I hear. Sometimes the original works aren’t quite my cup of tea or the varied production values from the in-the-field submissions leave something to be desired, but the historical and musical segments are worth the trip all on their own.

Favorite Episode: I’m a bit biased on this one, as FNH was kind enough to feature my story “Summer Salt” last year. But you gotta love a guy who’s willing to take on Lovecraft’s “The Dream Quest of the Unknown Kadath” and serialize it over 13 episodes.

The Cthulhu website | Subscribe to the show at iTunes

This American Life
This is the gold standard. Ira Glass and his team put out great stories consistently, week in and week out. Even though it’s completely free (as are all of the ‘casts I’ve mentioned here), I was happy to make a donation last year to help keep the podcast version going. And I’ll do the same again, whenever they ask.

Favorite Episode: So many great ones over the years, but I’ve got a few that I listen to over and over again. “The House at Loon Lake” is probably at the top of the list.

This American Life online | Subscribe to the show at iTunes

The Writer’s Almanac
I used to work on a shipping/receiving dock. My day consisted of opening cardboard boxes. My coworkers were, with a few exceptions, a completely different form of life than anything I’d experienced before. They spent their nights out drinking, smoking, doing all sorts of recreational pharmaceuticals and (to hear them tell it) going home with whatever female was willing enough (or inebriated enough) to let them into their bed. They staggered into work and spent the day doing as little as possible while recounting their escapades, before heading out to do it all over again.

Most of ‘em were scary, mean-tempered bastards. They had 20+ years of anger and bitterness on me and I spent my days doing my best not to draw too much attention to myself.

In contrast, I spent my nights sitting alone at home with nothing but writing to fill my time. It was probably the most productive time of my creative life, but I wouldn’t go back there for anything. It was a lonely, sad time.

I write, partially, in the hope that one day people will read my work. But back then that seemed like a very distant, unlikely dream. For all I knew, I was going to be opening cardboard boxes for the rest of my life.

But for six or seven minutes each morning, I could let all of that fear and loneliness and shame fall away. The gentle ease of the piano at the opening, so familiar and comforting, is the perfect lead-in to Garrison Keillor’s voice as he delivered the literary news and events of the day before reciting the daily poem. And then his closing “Be well, do good work, and keep in touch…” was the benediction that I held onto for the rest of the day, until I was free to write again.

Better times now, a better place. But the Writer’s Almanac is still a daily ritual in my life and I’m just as grateful for it as I was the first time I heard it.

Writer’s Alamanac website | Subscribe to the show at iTunes

So, those are some of my favorites — at least, these days. I don’t know that I’ll subject Ken to all of these (see, I wasn’t just babbling there at the beginning) but I’m sure that if he takes the time to explore a little bit further, he’s bound to find something there to catch his interest.

Enough of that, then. It’s time to get back to work. I’m behind on my deadline for The Spring Chap, one of the stories in particular just isn’t behaving well at all. It needs a severe spanking. But it’s going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt… oh, you get the idea.

So here goes…

1. My full name is Thomas Murphy Camp but I’ve been going by T.M. for the past fourteen years or so. I’d been trying to get people to do it for years but I had to move halfway across the country in order to start with a clean slate, nomenclaturally-speaking. My parents and brothers, of course, refuse. They used to call me Tom or Tommy when I was young — there was a minor meme of calling me Tuck when I was a kid (as in “Little Tommy Tucker”). In junior high I decided to change my name to “Thom” (the gods only know why now) and I regret it every time someone from high school tries to friend me on Facebook. Sistercat says that all of my name changing has prevented my Fate from finding me. I’m not entirely certain that’s a bad thing.

2. I’m a double Gemini and I have to say I didn’t used to believe all of that Astrology stuff until I read a description of my sign. It was hard not to feel like someone had been peeking over my shoulder my whole life. This is perhaps why I’m so interested in liminality, boundaries, and identity. It also adds resonance to my name, which comes from the Greek — Didymous, meaning “twin.”

3. I’m a Mac guy.

4. As a kid, I played with Mego dolls, Micronauts, Shogun Warriors, and Star Wars figures. Those were good times. One day when my ship comes in, I’m buying all those old toys and will spend my afternoons playing with them once again.

5. The first book I ever read all by myself was called A House for Willie and I was four years old.

6. The last book I read was the fourth volume of Neil Gaiman’s The Absolute Sandman and it broke my heart just as much as it did when I read the comics for the first time, years ago.

7. The book I’m reading right now is John Crowley’s Little, Big because Akela recommended it. The only problem is, I’ve been reading it for months. I lose a couple of days and then when I come back I find I have to start over again.

8. The only shoes I wear are Doc Martens.

9. I have a number of baby teeth still, with no permanent teeth beneath them. They weren’t meant to last this long and, one by one, they’re going to crumble. Soon enough, I will realize my dream of becoming a gap-toothed hobo named Gabby.

10. I do not believe in vampires. But I do believe in werewolves.

11. I don’t enjoy debating politics, theology, or operating systems with anyone. Ever.

12. I love kids. When given the choice, I will pick their company over grown-ups any day of the week.

13. I have a little bit of a thing for Julianne Moore.

14. There’s over 16,000 songs in my iTunes library. The oddest thing I listen to is probably The Conet Project.

15. I absolutely hate the recent reinvention of Batman as a guy in a black, molded rubber suit. For me, Batman will always (and only) be the one created by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm, voiced by Kevin Conroy.

16. I have no interest at all in sports of any kind. However, I took a few Fencing classes in college and enjoyed that quite a lot.

17. I hold my pen incorrectly, between the second and third knuckles of my right fist.

18. I used to be a conservative Republican and a fundamentalist Christian — but no longer. If you are any of those things, I’m probably going to Hell in your book.

19. I can do a few, moderately impressive sleight-of-hand magic tricks.

20. I hid myself in Assam & Darjeeling. So far only one of my readers/listeners has found me.

21. I hate wasps. In my personal mythology, they symbolize demonic spirits. Oddly enough, I am not frightened of demonic spirits.

22. A priest just walked by outside the window of my office as I was typing this.

23. Every so often I buy a lottery ticket, just because it’s worth a dollar to say “What if..?”

24. I cannot imagine the circumstances that would persuade me to attend a school reunion.

25. I will turn 40 in June and I’m perfectly fine with that. Life gets better the older I get and I have never been happier than I am right now.

And I think that is a perfect place to end this list. Thanks for playing along.

Oh, and keeping with the meme, I tag: Akela, Dayngr, Jesse, Twila Marie, Christine and Andrea. So there.

So, of course, I’m loving it. Unlike other writers, I don’t flee the frost — then again, I don’t have to walk a dog or carry it up and down stairs, either. Neither have I won the Newberry Medal. Perhaps there’s a correlation?

This might just be the case. My writing time over the past month or so has been disrupted by a frustrating bundle of interruptions and accidents, too numerous to mention here. It hasn’t helped that much of my time has been spent preparing and revising submission materials — easily my most hated task by far, as it feels exactly like the opposite of writing. But it is also Playing By The Rules in order to make a connection with the right sort of agent to represent my work. And with two books done and a third one on the way, I’m not quite ready to give that up just yet. Not quite.

Speaking of books and weather… I should also mention that The Winter Chap is still available. Originally, I’d planned to limit the Chaps and retire each preceding season once the new one was available. However, people are still discovering it and buying a copy (you could be one of them) so I’ve decided to leave them out there. Which means Winter is going to remain available for purchase once The Spring Chap is released in early February.

A few people have asked me why I’m doing the Chaps (a question I much prefer to be asked in writing rather than having it spoke in, say, a crowded shop) and it really comes down to vanity. I’ve got a lot of odd little bits and pieces which might never see the light of day otherwise. There’s short stories and poems and other oddments that don’t quite fit anywhere else, so this is a way for people to discover them on their own. And the price isn’t so bad for fifty or so pages of unpublished stories and poems, really. I myself have spent far more on much less.

It’s perhaps worth noting that, at the end of the day, only a dollar of that lands in my threadbare pockets. The rest of the asking price goes to feed the little children whom, I imagine, Ms. Lulu has enslaved to do her bidding. See their tiny hands laced with paper cuts banging away on staplers and saddle-stich machines? Is six bucks and some change too much to ask that their efforts not be in vain? I think not.

I’ve got about forty-seven tabs open in Firefox right now, all sorts of little interesting things that caught my attention over the past few weeks. Here’s a few to help to while away the long, dark hours of winter…

…Alan Moore’s writing another volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and this time it’s a musical — which is either baffling or genius, possibly both…

…we have a new president and someone took a picture of the event, creating a real-life Where’s Waldo…

…that nice Mr. Doctorow has some pretty good advice for writers…

…there’s this photographer named Michael Kenna that, somehow, has found a window into my dreams…

…people are starting to notice this Andrew Bird fellow and I say it’s long overdue…

…I’ve discovered that reading agent and publisher blogs like this one is akin to looking up your medical symptoms online. It’s always fatal…

…and, yes, I have heard that Batman is dead. I’m not buying it. This kind of foolishness is one of the reasons why I typically avoid mainstream comics these days.

…some poems you probably don’t want to read on Valentine’s Day…

…curdled, hurtful memories of heroin and voodoo…

…brief snapshots stolen from a Greek hotel…

…a long ride down the Tunnel of Love, and then back again…

…warnings about the inherent dangers of dating succubi and incubi…

…and some friendly advice for poets in love.

As with last season’s chap (buy now), people who buy The Spring Chap will also get a free audiobook download read by the author.

I made it back home about an hour later.

UPDATE
Here’s what it looks like now, around 11 o’clock. I’m guessing there’s about six to eight inches out there so far.

He will be missed by the wide circle of friends who loved his quick mind and his stories, but most of all he will be missed by his family, his children, and his lovely wife and best friend, Maureen.


(Earlier this morning, Maureen passed this along to me with the note: “I’ve attached a flyer that John’s children, their mother and I created… to help everyone learn about who John was and what he did.”)

All of this coincided with a comment from an offline friend/acquaintance who recently visited my website for the first time and expressed a friendly (albeit curmudgeonly) skepticism of all things online: “I worry (but not much) that we’re creating a generation of alienated loners and social misfits that substitute ‘linking’ for relationships.”

Well… thanks for stopping by.

Explaining things to other people often helps me understand them on a deeper level of my own. Apart from the strategic objectives we have for our client, I came away from the meeting with a clearer understanding of how and why I participate in these various networks. It also forced me to reevaluate my own internal rules and guidelines for that participation. I wasn’t particularly surprised to discover that I’d strayed a bit from my initial intentions, but it did give me cause to step back and think through whether or not I wanted to be where I was at now.

Twitter
Originally, this micro-blogging/streaming chat site started as a way for people to stay connected through mobile devices, by answering the question “What are you doing?” Since then, it’s evolved into an interesting little community of interconnected, micro-networks.

On Twitter, you “follow” people and people follow you. It isn’t, however, reciprocal; I can follow you but you aren’t required to follow me. And if you don’t want someone to follow you, you can “block” them (effectively rendering yourself invisible to them). You can also set your status to “private” which means you have to approve anyone before they can follow you or view your posts.

Users post single line “tweets” to the site, no more than 140 characters long. These tweets are streamed in a timeline, showing all of your activity and interaction on the site as a streaming conversation. So if I’m following you, I can see yours. And you can respond to someone else’s tweet by entering their user name preceded by the @ symbol, which adds your tweet into their timeline. You can also send a private message to someone as well, called a DM (or “direct message”).

Make sense?

I was introduced to Twitter by my friends at Fusionary a few years ago, and it seemed like a good place to lay a foundation to promote my writing and podcasting. But it wasn’t long before I was participating on a different level. The evolution from my self-serving intentions to being an active member of a community was due in no small part to the kind of connections I made on my first visit to Twitter.

I can remember picking out a few tweets from the public timeline, checking out a page or so of what those users had posted, looking at their related websites, and hitting the follow button. The first one I followed was probably Akelaa or DarkGracie. And I’m fairly certain that the first person to follow me was Mercy. It was the luck of the draw on those timeline picks, but it paid off. These are all people I follow even now, a few years after the fact, and I consider them to be friends.

One of the rules I’ve made for myself is that I can’t more than 100 people at a time on Twitter. This is more for logistical reasons than anything else. I just can’t keep track of that many other people — or, I can get way too distracted by chatting with all of them to get any real work done.

I’ve followed upwards of 200 people in the past, but I found that I continued to interact with the same core group no matter how many I was following. So I went through and distilled my list down. I find that the numbers can creep back up on me from time to time, so I try to clean it up again every few months.

It’s difficult to explain what that core group is to me. Many of them are readers/listeners who have taken the time to seek me out and chat with me about Assam & Darjeeling and Matters of Mortology — which pretty much makes my day every single time it happens.

Others are people who I think are funny or interesting… other writers that I enjoy eavesdropping on and interacting with… a few professional colleagues… some newswire alert organizations… and so on. I should mention that there are a few I follow who don’t follow me, and I’m fine with that. The list of people following me is somewhat high, edging closer towards 500. It isn’t uncommon for people on the big list to catch my attention and get added to my core list.

But the real core are those handful of people that say Good Morning every day, who share encouragement and support, who aren’t afraid to laugh or cry or rage at the sky in front of the rest of us. As such: A few nights ago I was up late and posted that I was feeling a little low, a little blue. It didn’t take long for a whole bunch of people to jump in to lend a hand — Dayngr, Mousewords, and Yvonner to name but a few. That was my core, taking care of me. Just like we all do for each other, now and again.

All in all, my interaction with Twitter is a mix of connections between a couple of overlapping mini-networks: My readers/listeners, the people I follow, and the people who are my friends. While it’s difficult to explain how that works to people “outside” of Twitter, it’s all genuine and I’m grateful for the people there… so much so, that I dedicated The Winter Chap to them.

Plurk
I found Plurk during one of many of Twitter’s “Fail Whale” moments. Plurk is a suitable alternative; consider it a variation on a theme. It’s a different kind of tool, a different kind of network than Twitter and there are some similarities, but it’s also got a number of features that are really quite nifty (inline image/video display and threaded conversations, for instance). The interactions there have a distinct quality to them, different than what’s on Twitter.

Although a lot of people have become factionalized, picking one over the other, I’m not too bothered by having a presence on both sites. I’ve got a few crossover friends who show up in both places — like Alousionist and Devyl — but Plurk is actually quite nice because it’s a point of contact with a number of my overseas friends/listeners/readers who don’t use Twitter — like Tenebrous Pau and Dakota Blackwater in England and Tere in Indonesia.

Over time, I’ve found that Plurk is a lot more work to keep up with. The conversations are longer and can go on for days. Oddly enough, my list of friends there is much shorter. But those few connections are what keeps me connected to that system.

Facebook
Facebook is a lot of things, to be sure. The use of “friend” to define connections in your network is a clever one. However, a lot of people on Facebook seem to be in a competition to collect as many “friends” as they can, as though the value of their online persona is measured by quantity.

That goes somewhat against my nature. I don’t have many friends, but the few I do have are very close to me. Thirteen years ago, moving from the West Coast to the Midwest, I lost a few of those connections that were important to me. And there are people I’ve known for years, going all the way back to middle school who are scattered all around the country. Facebook is one of many ways to renew and maintain some of those relationships.

As such, it’s the place where I’m perhaps most selective about who I accept invitation requests from. But it’s also a place where I’ve ended up adding a few of the people I’ve come to know on some of the other sites because, somewhat to my surprise, they’re people that I can call “friends” as well.

I never would have ended up on Facebook — or, at least, not so soon — if I didn’t have a teenage son. As a parent, you have to keep pace with where your kids are at and pay attention to what they’re doing, who they’re interacting with, and even engage with them in “their” world. I’m extremely fortunate that I have a very cool son with some very cool friends, who don’t get into too much trouble and don’t mind “friending” the old guy.

MySpace, Bebo, Pownce, Identi.ca, BrightKite, et al
There are lots of other systems and networking sites out there. I have a profile page on a fair number of them and I use Ping.fm to post updates to them all at the same time, but I don’t really consider them a part of my online community. First off, there’s just too damn many of them. And a lot of them don’t do it as well as the few I’ve mentioned above.

The one exception is LinkedIn. This is a networking site geared towards business professionals and that’s chiefly what I use it for. I have a profile there and actively make and maintain connections with people — mostly folks I’ve I’ve worked with — but I don’t stream my Ping.fm to it, for reasons which are obvious if you follow me on any of the other networks.

“What are you doing?”

Well, that went on a bit longer than expected.

But to come full circle, my discussion earlier this week made me take a step back and look again at my presence on all of these sites and networks. In my media ethics and mass communication classes in college, there was sometimes an underlying, McLuhan-esque concern about the dehumanization that came about from the adoption of technology.

Looking back, it does seem odd that someone teaching media classes made it a point to not watch television (he even had a “Kill Your Television” bumper sticker). This was almost twenty years ago, before personal computers were so common and certainly before the advent of Internet in society, so perhaps things have changed.

It certainly left me with an uneasy distrust (and even scorn) for popular culture and technology. But I got over it. Obviously.

And yet… there’s an echo of it in the comments my site visitor made earlier, and I have to admit that I slip back into that border-line Luddite mentality when I go through periodic reassessments like the one I did earlier this week. But if you’ve stuck with this so far, it’s obvious that there’s a lot of things happening in these places that are interesting and valuable to me on a variety of levels. If anything, the chief result of my self-audit was a validation of all of the good things I mentioned above. However, it did cause me to reassess and revise my friend/follower/following lists on the various sites.

In all honesty, there was just too much to keep connected to. The bigger those lists got, the less I enjoyed the interaction. The more of an obligation or chore it became. And there’s really only two solutions to that problem.

Since I wasn’t going to unplug entirely, I had to take a closer look at my lists.

This is a touchy subject. Lots of people feel bad on one level or another if their friend/follow request isn’t reciprocated. And being removed from someone’s list is often viewed as a personal rejection. Some people feel it, deeply. I admit, I’ve felt it myself from time to time. Which is why I’ve take the time to formalize my interaction along all these different channels, operating at a level appropriate to my relationship with people I know (and with people I don’t).

If you got filtered out on one of them, it’s possible that we’re still connected on another one. If that’s not the case, I can only say that it wasn’t personal. Most likely, we just didn’t share a whole lot of interaction, activity, or connection.

Who know? Maybe we’ll reconnect down the road.