“And at the same time as this I’ve been working upon my novel Jerusalem which is at the moment on a pretty spectacular chapter where I’ve got a massive four dimensional hallway up above the world that is only above one area of the world geographically but it is above it in every particular moment of time. So it’s this immense hallway, two miles wide, a mile high, and running down it is a naked old man with a naked 18 month old baby girl riding on his shoulders, and they’re running down the length of time and they are seeing the big freeze when the Greenland ice shelf melts and the Gulf Stream stops, and then a bit further on there’s a sort of a more jungly area, where presumably the warming of the planet has kind of counteracted the cooling down that would happen in these latitudes if the Gulf Stream were to stop, and you’ve got post-humans, genetically engineered to survive in a world with less food, and then after a few more thousand years of pounding down this corridor there’s no more people any more. And then you start to get mega-fauna that have come up from the drying oceans, giant squids that are using their bodies as basically digital televisions, using the pigment cells in their skin to mimic their surroundings, and land whales that look as if they’re part goat! Because I found out that apparently when whales came up on to land for the first time, the thing that they were closest to genetically was the goat. So I’ve got these horned whales with hooves, dragging themselves through these clearings, you know, towards the end of time.”

I just finished rereading Moore’s first novel Voice of the Fire. It’s easily one of the top five favorite books on my shelf. I cannot wait to get my hands on “Jerusalem”.

Read the whole interview here.

Friday evening…
I’m sitting in my underground lair, tapping away on this much-overdue post with little bit of help from a bottle of hipster tonic water and The Real Tuesday Weld.

It’s been over a year since I gave up alcohol, over a week since I gave up meat. And now I’ve got my eye on caffeine. It looks like my primary addiction might turn out to be cold turkey.

Of course, the lair is probably teeming with all sorts of free radicals and dangerous emissions. If the EMFs don’t get me, then the incense probably will.

Death and Other Exaggerations
Having spent the majority of the day sequestered in meetings, I managed to avoid the mild firestorm of rumors regarding Steve Jobs.

Virtually everything I do professionally and creatively is, in one way or another, implemented using something developed by Apple. Most of the entertainment and media I enjoy comes through those devices as well and, in all likelihood, was created using Apple products or deeply influenced by them.

And while there is a pantheon of exceptional minds at work there, no one disputes that Steve Jobs is the Monad.

His resignation last month wasn’t a surprise. Neither will be the news of his death.

I’ll feel it, when he goes.

I felt a twinge of that earlier this evening, seeing the faint edge of the ripples spreading out from the now-unconfirmed posting from CBS News.

He didn’t just change the world. He changed my world.

And I hope he still is — I hope he still will be — for a long while yet.

Life in a Day
Speaking of life and death, of legacy and loss…

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here, but absolutely the best thing I’ve read in a long, long time is Daytripper by Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon. I got a copy for my birthday (appropriately enough from my father*) and, after staying up late and sobbing all the way through it, I promptly gave it away the next day to a visiting friend.

Then I bought a new copy. I’m sure I’ll give that one away as well, in time.

It’s just plain beautiful. You should read it.

At the very least, read my soppy, effusive review of it here on Goodreads.

* You’ll have to read it to understand why.

The Music of the Spheres
About a month ago I got an invite to Spotify and it took me about five minutes to realize that springing for the premium level was a no-brainer.

I have to say, it’s completely revolutionized the way I listen to music.

I don’t just have to say it, I want to say it. And I do, to almost everyone who’s patient enough to listen.

I know when something really, really works when I find myself proselytizing for it everywhere I go.

(And it’s not even an Apple product, so that should be even more persuasive coming from me.)

Giving it Away
I spent last night and tonight getting a load of books ready to ship out. It feels good, signing copies of Assam & Darjeeling and Matters of Mortology, wrapping them up in my secretspecial paper.*

I’m really looking forward to sending them off.

It’s a bit of work but I wanted to get it done ahead of the end of my giveaway on Goodreads. There’s ten copies of each book . . . and there’s almost 2,000 people hoping to win one. That feels good as well. I’d send each and every one of them a copy if I could.

The contest ends this weekend, but there’s still time to enter as well. So why not give it a shot?

*Sorry. You’ll just have to buy a signed copy to find out for yourself.

Where the Heart Is
I noticed a few weeks back that there was a house for sale around the block from where we live. It was a nice big place, lots of character and all I needed was a quick peek in some of the windows to start obsessing over it. A quick peek online only added fuel to the fire.

After a few weeks of meandering by it whenever I happened to have the baby out for her walk, I finally got up the guts to contact the realtor about it . . . and received an immediate reply that the house was already sold.

Mild obsession means only mild disappointment. I shrugged it off and went on, operating under the assumption that the gods would lead us to the right place in the right time.

Just like always.

This evening I took the baby for a walk. Following her directions, she led me straight back to the house.

Helping her climb the front steps so she could peek in the front window, I realized I had only myself to blame.

(It’s worth mentioning that my wife — though more than willing to indulge me — did not share my obsession. She notes that the house “looks like a frog” and that she didn’t like the look of the “scraggly-ass” pine trees out front. She’s right on both counts.)

Where the Heart Is, Part Two
My two oldest children are in Ghana. They’ve been there for over a month and they won’t be back until just before Christmas.

With Skype and Facebook and texting it’s barely manageable. I wish they had a more reliable (and more accessible) Internet connection. I wish they were able to spend more time talking with their baby sister. And I wish teenagers were a little more interested in talking to their boring old dad.

I’d also like it if they spent less time around crocodiles.

But it’s a good experience, travel is a real gift at their age, this sort of adventure is a rare thing and blahblahblah . . . hell. I just miss ‘em.

Preview of a Review
I’ve been reading Scott Roche’s Ginnie Dare and enjoying it. I’m looking forward to writing a proper review once I finish, but you probably won’t go wrong if you just go ahead and check it out. It’s a nice, solid Sci-Fi yarn.

Preview of a Preview
Right now, The Cradle is going through the final round of proofreads. At some point this weekend I’ll record a healthy hunk of it for the next episode of The Gospel of Thomas. Because I’m a tease.

The book goes on sale in October. But you’ll probably want to read Assam & Darjeeling before you pick it up (or listen to the preview on The Gospel of Thomas).

Like the lady said: Spoilers, sweetie.

Review of a Review
And, not too long ago, Odin wrote…

One of the reasons I liked this story so much is that it put me in mind of many of the Russian stories I’ve read. Mr. Camp made me feel like I was once again pouring over the words of Dostoyevsky in The Brothers Karamazov where the story is told by the author with minimal dialogue rounding out the scenes.

It’s not often (i.e. never ever) that my work gets compared to Dostoyevsky. While I don’t feel I deserve the comparison, it made me very happy.

And, of course, you can read, listen to, and buy Matters of Mortology here.

Mercury Rising
Over the past few weeks, I’ve heard more people than ever discussing how the planet Mercury being in retrograde was affecting their lives. That I heard anyone discussing it at all was interesting because, well, it’s something I usually haven’t heard people talk about before. Strangers seemed to bring it up all around me.

Also, many of the people I know personally who bemoaned the effect on their communication, technology and so forth . . . well, it seems to me that they’re usually having trouble with their communication, technology, and so forth all year round.

But poor Mercury gets all the blame.

“Welcome to Adventure!! Would you like instructions?”

The table was octagonal. Above it hung a globe of frosted glass set inside an inverted basket — a relic of the earthier home decor from previous decades, when remnants of the handmade counter-culture were co-opted and made legitimate by the middle class.

Somewhere in the world, godless Commie hippies worked on their communes, gathering their crops of marijuana and poppies in large baskets appropriated, like their drugs, from Asia.

Contrariwise, my respectably middle class, conservative Christian mother flipped a basket over, made it into a lamp, and hung it from a chain in our family room. This was creativity and interior design. This was evolution. Hey… it was the late 70′s.

We sat in the irregular pool of light it cast on the table below, I on one side and my friend Benny on the other.

The table, perhaps three feet across from side to side, was bare between us. My memory stains it the color of old honey, inlaid with darker panels in which knots float in the polished surface. I never cared much for that style. It unnerved me.

It was everywhere in those days — furniture, paneled walls, car dashboards — the dark swirls rising like the gaping mouths and faces of those calling out from the Underworld.

Yes. I was that kind of child.

I wonder where that table is now?

“You’re at the end of a road. There’s a building in the distance.”

I can hear his voice . . . even still, even now.

I see Benny’s face there across from me, the flat gaze staring back. Almost a challenge, almost a dare.

This was no mere game, I understood. This was a serious undertaking.

Our friendship was a fluke, really. An alphabetical accident, forced together on the first day of school by a seating chart and the coincidental conjunction of our last names. He sat to my right. I do not recall who was on my left.

By then, I’d changed schools more than a few times. I knew what it meant to be The New Kid… To be outside of every joke, disconnected from the local customs and history… To puzzle over the unfamiliar rituals, to try and suss out the relationships and social order… To fail at all of these, to be awkward and unknown.

Our teacher’s name was Anita Niblett. She was, she told us in her strangely accented seagull voice, from Georgia. Neither of these things are significant in and of themselves. They merely added to the strangeness of the day.

Seventh grade. Never the easiest time for anyone. But it should have been easier. This was a new school, established that same year to serve as a feeder for a local high school. All the teachers and students were starting fresh on Day One. We were all The New Kid, in our own way.

But not really. It was clear that first morning that most of the other kids had a history, knew each other from previous schools or from their churches or little league. That made it worse somehow. I’d been counting on the promise that everyone would be new. It had been a selling point, my parents smoothing over the rough patch between my old school and yet another change.

And now, sitting there in the front row of Miss Niblett’s class, I discovered that I was the outsider yet again.

“Across the chasm, you can see a window high up on the opposite wall. There is a figure in the window, trying to get your attention.”

I wasn’t alone. This kid on my right, he was obviously as disconnected as I was. Neither of us knew anyone. And so we were forced by proximity and alphabet to make small talk with each other. It was either that or sit silently in our own little bubble of shame.

I remember the awkward introduction, the odd rhyming intonation of his first and last name. I might have said something about it, made a joke. I don’t remember. I’m sure we must have spent some time sounding the other, me and Benny . . . like lost cavers calling out and listening for echoes, hoping for familiar landmarks.

“You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all different.”

That’s what you do as kids, meeting someone new: You conduct a quick survey, looking for continuity in musical taste or favorite television shows or sports teams. My experience in most of these did nothing but distance me further from other kids. They didn’t read comics, I didn’t play sports. I wasn’t yet interested in pop music and they’d long ago given up their action figures. I’d been getting used to less and less common ground with anyone.

Memories are vague, nearly thirty years later. But I remember that, somehow, at some point, Tolkien was there. Perhaps one of us had a book — the dogeared copy of The Hobbit that I’d stolen from my older brother and read obsessively. Or maybe Benny was the one with the book and I noticed it there on his desk.

Maybe we just started talking and, luckily, the gods were there to throw down a cable in a form that would be familiar and comforting to us both. However it happened, we managed to grasp the line, desperate not to be lost here. Not alone.

“It is now pitch dark. If you proceed you will likely fall into a pit.”

It’s one thing to make a new friend, to hang out at recess and during lunch. But the real test comes with the first sleepover — the after school ride home, opening the door to a stranger and letting them into your private world… Wondering what they are thinking of the house, of your family… Suddenly aware of the lingering stuffed animals on your bed, the Star Wars toys still in circulation on your bedroom floor, the comics and books on the shelves…

Can you stand each other’s company outside of the classroom? Is there more to your friendship than just the playground alliance you’ve formed?

Hell, can you manage to get through a night without getting bored or sick of each other?

Harder than it sounds, especially back then. This was before the Internet, of course. Before video games and home computers. This was before cable television and the VCR. Looking back on it, I wonder how the hell we ever managed to fill the time.

At some point after dinner, we ran out of things to do. Benny suggested we play a game. I have a vague memory of him describing something he played, something on one of the computers at his dad’s office — I had only the faintest idea of what a computer even was, really. But Benny seemed to think that we could play this game. The lack of technology wouldn’t be a problem.

He knew the game, practically had it memorized. He would be the computer. I would be the player.

We sat down at the table in my family room.

The name of the game was Adventure.

“You’re at the end of a road. There’s a building in the distance.”

And with a simple sentence or two, we were off and running. I would listen to Benny’s descriptions and then suggest a direction or an action. He would then provide me with the next description or obstacle or puzzle.

Almost immediately, I was hooked. Time and distance might be exaggerating the memory in my mind, but it seems to me that we stayed up until well past midnight. I don’t know how far along I got in my inaugural exploration of the cave. I recall the hollow voice saying “Plugh” so I know I at least made it to Y2 on that first outing.

I remember learning the vocabulary of the game, the limits of the two-word command. The peculiarities of the descriptions and how the word “look” would only tell me so much about my surroundings. I remember testing the boundaries of the world itself, finding my bearings.

And I remember spending a long, long time trying to get the attention of the person in the window on the opposite side of the chasm.

Benny was incredibly patient with these experiments, given that he’d been playing the game for a long, long time and already know most of its secrets. I got lost in no time in a maze of twisty little passages. I was probably doomed. I wasn’t smart enough to systematically find my way out.

But I did. He probably let me off easy, let me find my way out even if I didn’t deserve it.

It occurs to me now that it must have been a bit boring for him.

“I will be your eyes and hands. Direct me with commands of 1 or 2 words.”

For my part, I was having a grand old time. I can’t say why that was, exactly. I suppose it was a bit like being a character in a book — playing the role of reader and protagonist alike. Some of it had to do with the intrinsic value of this sort of game — just enough description to let your mind visualize the whole thing without defining someone else’s vision instead of your own.

Everything he described, I could see it perfectly in my mind. I can see it even now. It is unchanged, nearly thirty years later.

I feel nostalgia for that place. I dreamed of it often.

I dream of it still.

“There is a threatening little dwarf in the room with you!”

A surprise, to find I wasn’t alone in this place. And there was danger here, more than just a false step or a wrong choice.

Benny said the words and my mind readily called the dwarf into being. I’d read Tolkien. I’d seen movies. I knew what dwarves looked like, what they should look like.

But my imagination had other ideas, filling in that particular blank with, inexplicably, an illustration from an old Legion of Superheroes comic.

Odd how the mind works, the way it bridges gaps with whatever raw material it has at hand.

“It is now pitch dark. If you proceed you will likely fall into a pit.”

It was inevitable that we’d shift from playing the game to making up our own.

After that night, my life revolved around adventures. I didn’t go anywhere without a binder packed full of scribbled notes, sheets of graph paper tracing out the careful walls and pitfalls of our my dungeons and mazes. These I populated with traps and puzzles, characters and monsters culled from my books on mythology and from faerie tales… from Lewis and Tolkien… from my own imagination.

We sat at recess and during the lunch break, Benny and me, our heads bowed over our notebooks and graph paper. We employed any excuse to duck the excruciatingly dull PE session in the afternoons. I found new reasons to ignore my homework in the evenings. I scribbled ideas in the margins of sunday school handouts and the church bulletin.

I was, without realizing it, taking my first steps as a writer.

“With what? Your bare hands?”

We killed a dragon once, he and I together. We were playing the game properly, on a computer at his father’s office. His parents had dropped us off in the morning on Saturday and we’d spent the whole day — most of the evening as well, if I’m remembering correctly — exploring the cave together.

There was a dragon on a Persian rug and, like most of its kind, seemingly invulnerable to any attack or trick.

In a flash of insight, we defeated it with a single word.

Exuberance doesn’t begin to describe our triumph. It was a proud moment, to say the least. I still feel a swell of pride, even now. We cheered, grabbed each other’s arms and jumped up and down, our fists raised to salute the acoustic tiles overhead and, presumably, the stars beyond.

Then I wet my pants.

I’d been holding it for a while, my bladder bursting with the pop we’d been swilling all day long, dancing back and forth on my feet with anticipation and, to be honest, growing discomfort at the pressure in my lower abdomen . . . but unwilling to pull myself away even for a few minutes, lest I miss anything that happened.

“There are faint rustling noises from the darkness behind you.”

We’ve all been there, so many of us. We’ve explored the cave, solved it’s puzzles, sounded it’s depths. And yet, not one of us saw the same thing

This was the strength of those games, Adventure and the ones that came after. They were nothing more than text on the screen.

We made them up ourselves, as we were playing them. That was how you played them.

The intimacy of that kind of interaction with Art barely exists today in any other form.

Somewhere along the way, people started referring to comic books as “Graphic Novels”. As the readership grew up a little bit, it gained some maturity and respectability — which, in turn, it tried to impose on the medium.

The same is true of those text-based games. They’re called “Interactive Fiction” these days — a label that, to my ear, sounds a little too academic for something that was so engaging it not only caused a thirteen year old boy to wet his pants, but also compels a forty-two year old man to admit to it now. Proudly.

Books are words on a page, sure. We follow along and visualize our own version of things, as much as the author’s descriptions will allow us the freedom to do so. But even the movies can change those, though. Whether we like it or not. And long after the closing credits fade, we might find ourselves dodging box office artifacts during a rereading of a favorite book.

Not in these games, not in these games. They had just enough description to serve as a framework for the imagination, just enough for your mind to fill it.

They are some of the truest forms of Magic available in our reality.

We made our reality. I can describe the cave in detail to anyone who asks. It is staggering to me, even now, to realize that my cave would not resemble the one that Benny saw.

But we were both there, together. We saw it all.

“You’re at the end of a road. There’s a building in the distance.”

The table was octagonal.

Eight is a lucky number, for some. The eighth card of the Tarot is Strength or, historically, Fortitude. The woman and the lion. Kindness and perseverance, self-control. Discipline. It is associated with Hercules and Gilgamesh, among others. Heroes who performed tasks and fought monsters.

Eight sides makes a star with twelve points. Twelves facets to the Zodiac… Twelve faces in a deck of cards… Twelve people to decide the fate of the judged… There were twelve labors that Hercules undertook… And twelve men have ventured out into the dark to walk the surface of the moon…

Eight sides. A stop sign, perhaps. Like the one at the end of the road at which I was standing.

I sat at the table. Benny sat across from me.

I was at the end of the road. There was a building in the distance, a well house for a large spring.

I headed towards it to find out what was inside.

“Magic is said to work in the cave.”

Full disclosure dictates that I admit that this essay has been sitting inert on my hard drive for over a year now. From time to time, I’d open it up and tap a few keys . . . never really finding the thread of what I wanted to say, but wanting to say something about Benny and these games we used to play.

(I should say, he isn’t Benny anymore. Like me, he made use of his own magic to change his name and identity. Oddly enough, I don’t call him Benny but he doesn’t call me T.M. His magic was stronger, I suppose.)

We’re long out of touch now. We drifted in high school — to be honest, I was the one who drifted — and managed to reconnect briefly in college, long enough to be roommates. Annoying the hell out of him on a daily basis — and I was damn annoying to live with, as all of my college roommates can testify — was the final nail in the coffin.

From time to time, we’d bounce an e-mail back and forth. Maybe once every five years or so. Then Facebook showed up and gave us an excuse to, at least, nudge each other every year or so. One afternoon a few weeks back, he posted a photo on his wall: His son sitting in front of a chessboard, with a comment that Benny was teaching him to play.

I added my own comment, something along the lines of “After that, you’ll introduce him to Colossal Cave maybe?”

Later that night I was poking around YouTube, trying to shake off the general fog I’ve been under for the past few months. For some reason, desperate for distraction, I tapped in the words “Colossal Cave” and “Adventure” and discovered this little series in which D.G. Jerz introduces his son to the original Adventure game. Fun stuff.

These led me, in turn, to Jason Scott’s excellent, magnificently dorky “Get Lamp” documentary — chronicling the history of the original Adventure and all the games that followed after.

It’s a great movie, if you’re as much of a dork as I am . . . so I highly recommend it.

Scott’s film brought it all back for me and, since nostalgia is powerful magic in and of itself, I went and dug out my old maps from my filing cabinet.

That I’d saved them all of these years says something, I’m sure. I knew I’d need them again, sooner or later.

Then I opened up this essay once more, threw away most of what I’d written, and put myself back in my seat at that odd octagonal table across from my friend Benny . . . back where it all started.

Back where I started.

“Storms are, by nature, and among other things, scary, awesome, chaotic, terrible and beautiful all at the same time. My personal theory is that you cannot look at a storm brewing and not feel anything stirring in your gut. Likewise, in going through an art gallery, the masterpieces that have stopping power are not unlike storms in that they evoke emotional responses from us are the very same ones we consider great.”
— Edmund Shern, from Turbulence: The Art of Storm Lion

I don’t usually do this sort of thing but…

As many of you know from reading this site, I’ve had some conversations with a development company in Singapore about a few projects. Regrettably, we never got far enough to find out what. However, although we’ve never been able to find the right combination of circumstances for working together, I’ve followed Storm Lion and their progress with no small amount of interest over the past few years since they first reached out to me about turning “Assam & Darjeeling” into . . . well, something. I’ve no doubt they would have done exciting and amazing things with it, if we’d been able to work out the rights.

So it was a bit of a surprise and disappointment to hear the rumors this past weekend that they were possibly closing their doors — and right on the eve of their big splash at ComicCon later this week.

Sad stuff but, as it turns out, the reports of their demise are (hopefully) exaggerated. News today came through that Storm Lion isn’t quite ready to throw in the towel just yet. Their ComicCon plans will proceed full speed ahead, as will the launch of their new art book “Turbulence”. I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek of the book a week or so ago and it’s full of great work from great talent.

If you’re going to ComicCon this week, stop by Storm Lion’s booth (#4122) and say howdy to Edmund and the team for me. While you’re there, show your support by picking up a copy of “Turbulence”.




———————

I’ll be doing a reading at the Grand Rapids Art Museum this Friday evening, the 23rd of July. The reading starts at 6pm and three other local writers will also be reading: Adam Schuitema, Jennifer Armintrout, and Tanya Eby (who was nice enough to set the whole thing up and ask the rest of us to join in). If you’re going to be in town, stop by and clap loudly. There will be live music afterwards and fun for all. I don’t know that there will be books for sale at the event, but I’ll be handing out vouchers so attendees can order a specially priced copy through my website.

Or if you’ve got a copy of “Assam & Darjeeling” or “Matters of Mortology” you want signed, bring it along. I’ll have my pen at the ready.

Hope to see you there.

Longtime readers of this blog — and anyone who had to sit through a meeting with me in the late Nineties and early Aughts — might remember my enthusiasm for a little Apple device called the Newton.

I won’t go into it’s history here, but I absolutely loved the Newton. It was a great tool for writers, lightweight and easy to use. It had a (for the time) a nice long battery life — surprisingly enough, it could run on AA batteries in a pinch. It had a nice set of native applications, including a more than adequate word processing program. And it easily sync’d with the Mac OS, making it a snap to move project files back and forth.

And, despite the bad press, I never had any difficulty with the amazing (but much maligned) handwriting recognition software.

As I said, I loved it. I first started using a Newton when I managed to cajole my bosses into buying me an eMate — a stripped down laptop running the Newton OS and sporting an amazing clamshell design that marked the first major design revolution at Apple. I took it to meetings and stopped traffic. People came in from the halls to ask about it. I could have sold a hundred of them just by showing up on client sites with it in my hands.

I loved it so much, I scraped together money I didn’t have to buy the MessagePad, a handheld “brick” version that offered much more processing power and versatility than the eMate. It wasn’t as visually impressive as it’s younger sibling, but the MessagePad stayed in my hand wherever I went.

The first lines of a short story that would eventually become Assam & Darjeeling were written on it. As was the first scenes of my adaptation of The Odyssey. Plenty of other poems and short stories and ideas started (and, sometimes, stalled) on the Newton as well. And, after shelling out a few bucks on eBay, I got my hands on a modem. So now I could do e-mail too.

Long after Apple abandoned the platform, I hung on to my Newtons (in fact, I still have them up in the attic, along with my first Mac). Sure, it was dead technology at that point, but I was still using it. In my own defense, I might very well be the person who coined the term “Zombie Technology” is justification for my commitment to the platform — with it’s eerie green glowing screen, the label was an apt one.

But eventually, I had to let it go. It was just too difficult to use in conjunction with the OSX platform and, ultimately, what had once freed me up as a writer was now slowing me down. So I buried it, tamping the dirt down as gently as I could.

Since then, I’d see little signs that the ghost of the Newton still wandered the halls of Cupertino. The scribbly little cloud puffs when you deleted a file in OSX were a cut and paste job from the Newton OS. And when the iPhone and Touch appeared with their neat little square apps and convenient dock at the bottom of the screen, I felt a familiar twinge in my fingers. Despite the disdain that Steve Jobs was rumored to have for the Newton, it was undeniable that some cannibalization was being done.

With the Touch and, later, the iPhone, I found myself once again wandering around with technology welded to my hand. And I was perfectly happy.

But . . . this was an iPad review, yes?

I apologize.

After dropping a few well-placed hints earlier this year, the nice people I work for were kind enough to give me the green light on ordering one of those newfangled iPad gizmos with all the trimmings. And they even sprung for the 3G model, pretty much ensuring that I could irritate all of humanity no matter where I went.

When it got delivered last Friday, I was out of the office taking care of Baby Sophie. Using up the last of my cajoling tokens, I was able to convince a coworker to bring it to me at the end of the day. Once the baby settled down for the evening, I started playing.

Life is, as I’ve often said, very good.

Like most everything Apple makes these days, the iPad was a breeze to activate and configure. I was off and running within minutes. You forget what a relief that is, until you have to work with something from another company.

I’d been waiting a while to get my hands on the iPad and the first hour of using the damned thing was punctuated by a series of delighted chuckles. My lovely and patient wife endured a barrage of “Oooh! And it also…” comments throughout the evening. She didn’t wholly appreciate my referring to it as Sophie’s new baby brother, but she loves me enough to know when I’m (most likely) joking.

Overall, the iPad feels great. It’s just the right size to carry in one hand, without being too heavy. And it doesn’t feel too small in two hands. After a few hours, I could feel my iPhone getting jealous.

As a media device, the iPad is outstanding. I’m not an HD or Blu-Ray snob and I don’t have a television the size of a king size mattress, so watching a movie or TV show on the iPad is no problem for me. And once you start using the YouTube, ABC TV, and Netflix apps, the geek joy goes even higher. Now I can finally watch “Lost” and see what all the yammering is about.

As an internet device, the iPad is a joy to use. These kind of things can be clunky and more trouble than they’re worth, but Apple long ago cornered the market on interface design. So it’s a relief to use a device that requires little or no time to learn — especially if you’re already familiar with the iPhone or Touch. The e-mail interface (particularly in landscape mode) is very clean and easy. And the browsing experience is terrific. Much has been made of the lack of Flash compatibility but, in all honesty, I didn’t even run across a Flash “hole” until after a day or so. And, even then, it didn’t really diminish my experience overall.

As a book reader, I’m going to make an obvious prediction and say that the Kindle’s days are likely numbered if Amazon doesn’t do something dramatic. First of all, there’s the Kindle app — which worked great on the iPhone already and is now even better on the iPad (and both of my books look great as well, just saying).

I have to admit, the new Apple Book Store seems a little derivative of what Amazon and some of the other book reader apps have already done. But that’s a minor quibble. I expect it will evolve. My only peeve with the Apple approach to books is their adoption of that damned “page turning” animation. It’s an effect I’ve always disliked when I’ve seen it elsewhere online or in interactive media. I don’t like developers pretending a screen is paper. It’s a bit condescending to their user audience and forcing the digital to ape the physical analog world just seems wrong conceptually. Programmers should be looking for new ways to let new media deliver content, setting it free to be itself instead of pretending it’s something it isn’t. But hey, that’s just me. I have issues.

(I won’t weigh in on the closed system approach Apple has taken to the device and the iTunes store as a whole. That’s a subject for a different time. Suffice it to say that the Kindle versions of both Assam & Darjeeling and Matters of Mortology are both DRM-free. Amen.)

And I was surprised at how well comics translate to the device. After downloading a number of free issues for the ComiXology and Marvel apps, I can see the appeal of, say, having the whole Claremont/Byrne run of X-Men at your fingertips. But I don’t really see anyone giving up either the social aspect of going to their local comic book store each week, or the tactile pleasure of holding the comic in your hand. I’d say the same is true for digital vs. physical books . . . although the author/publisher in me is more than a little excited by these new media, channels, and devices. Again, that’s a different post for a different time.

I’m not a big time gamer but there’s definitely a whole new level of development waiting int he wings thanks to this device. It’ll be very interesting to see what kind of content gets produced, to see how far the adventurous programmers can push the interface and user expectations. Or if they just, y’know, settle for porting over Pac Man to yet another device.

A lot has been made of the touchscreen interface and keyboard. Personally, I didn’t have too much trouble using either. I type very, very fast on a conventional keyboard, so the onscreen one slowed me down a little. A few common keys are out of place, which led to a bit of hunt and peck from time to time (I did miss the Newton’s handwriting recognition more than once, though). But overall, it seemed perfectly serviceable. I expect I’d be able to hammer away on it or a few hours at a stretch without too much trouble. Although my preferred writing program Scrivener won’t make it to the platform any time soon (if ever), the addition of an iPad version of the Pages software is a welcome addition. I won’t be writing my next novel on it, but I bet more than a few chapters will get banged out on it.

So . . . long story short, I really like the iPad — and not just because it reminds me of how much I loved the Newton. Technically, I supposed you’d say it’s a “tablet” — living on the technological continuum between smartphones and laptops, serving as a hybrid that shares select features and functionality of both. In that context, it’s quite successful. My biggest disappointment is that I don’t own one of my very own. At some point soon, I’m going to have to share it with everyone in the office. I’m not by nature a selfish person, but it’ll be very, very hard to give it up when the time comes.

A few weeks back, I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon training a number of middle managers on social networking. I started off the session by saying: “I grew up reading comic books and science fiction. Which is another way of saying I’ve been waiting my whole life for the real world to catch up. At long last, I’m finally living in a world that I used to read about. And I love it.”

The iPad is just one more reason why.

——————————————————————

Things I Did on the iPad in the First 24 Hours

• Tried not to squee too much about it on Twitter.
• Composed, sent, and replied to a boatload of e-mails.
• Watched the latest episode of “Doctor Who” and the first four episodes of “Lost”.
• Made notes for a new poem about Sophie that I’ll get around to writing about the same time she starts sleeping through the night.
• Bought a book from the Kindle store.
• Downloaded and read the free Clairmont/Miller Wolverine #1 using the Marvel app.
• Wish more than once that DC would put their comics out there.
• Spent $100 on work-related apps.
• Sent our accounting department a reimbursement request for the aforementioned $100.
• Obsessively polished the screen, just like every Apple device I own.
• Wrote this blog post.

Things I Didn’t Do

• Porn.
• Skype.
• IM or Chat.
• Buy a book from the Apple store.
• Buy a comic book from Comixology or Marvel.
• Use the dock or wireless keyboard we bought to go with the device. Didn’t really need ‘em.
• Share it with anyone.

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.

“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.

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.

No jitters, not worried at all.

The faculty potluck is a bigger concern than the show, oddly enough. I shouldn’t have worried. Everyone is very hospitable and kind and in a way I wish I’d gone to grad school. I could have ended up teaching at a small college somewhere, talking about writing all day.

But, hey, I’m using my major. Which is more than what I can say for most people.

The food is good and everyone is terrific but I end up doing what I’ve typically done at faculty parties for the past fifteen years. I find a little kid and start talking about comic books. Daniel is just a year older than my son and he tells me he’s working on something. He shows it to me and I’m more or less blown away. It’s got drama, good writing, nice page composition . . . I mean, it’s not Jack Kirby or anything, but it’s amazing that an eleven year old kid put it together when he’d only seen for or five comic books in his life.

Seriously. There’s no comic book store in Orange City. The kid found some comics at a garage sale and, apparently, figured it out from there.

Warming up to his subject, Daniel gets started on how he wants to hire some more writers and artists and start a company of his own and I realize I’m talking to a young Stan Lee — which is impressive and scary all at once.