I should say that my process is a little bit different than usual right now. It’s NaNoWriMo, so I’m working on a smaller project and trying to make better use of the available technologies in order to get it done within the deadline.

Last year, I managed to finish two novellas, one of which — a small follow up to Assam & Darjeeling called “The Cradle” — will be out by Christmas (yes, I’m running late).

All my work last year was done on my iPad, using Evernote — which worked very well for my purposes.

This year, however, I decided to finally find a way to make the Scribe software work for me. I’ve had Scribe for a year and, despite my best efforts, I’ve had trouble finding the right headset to capture my vague ramblings during my two hour commute.

(And, before you send me your suggestions, I should mention that I’ve gone through at least seven different Bluetooth and wired solutions.)

For a while, I gave up ever making it work. Which was a shame, because that almost two hours of driving time was a real opportunity to be productive.

But I decided to give it one more shot this year for NaNoWriMo . . . and after a number of false starts, I eventually found this microphone/headset on Amazon which seemed to do the trick. Quite nicely, in fact.

What this means is that my NaNoWriMo project this year is being created almost entirely through the spoken word, rather than typing or writing.

A bit of a risk, I’ll admit. but I’ve always trusted my voice. When I find myself at a brick wall, a good session of walking and talking to myself will usually help get things back on track.

And so far, it’s been working fairly well. I’m well past the target word count set for this point and certainly on track to pass the 50,000 word mark. Given my current progress — I’m just over 30,000 words — I expect to hit the goal well ahead of the end of the month.

I don’t know if I’ll be done with the first draft by then, but this is a story that’s been percolating for a long time in the back of my head and without NaNoWriMo it probably would’ve been a few years at least before I ever got around to writing it. So that’s okay.

So far, so good. The microphone does a good job of filtering out the ambient noise of the car and the scribe software is fairly good at transcribing the recordings. However, from time to time, Scribe misfires and I end up with some interesting translations. The software allows you go in and correct things so that, in time, it learns your speech patterns and quirks of pronunciation.

I like technology that learns from me. I like the organic, almost Darwinian nature of it.

Tonight, however, for some reason, it choked. Utterly.

I’d been working for an hour or so — which means that I was walking around in my office, talking to myself.

As midnight approached, I stopped to import my work so far into the Scribe software. It’s an easy process and pretty routine at this point. Typically I just let it run and then cut-and-paste the results into Scrivener or Evernote so I can make any corrections I want to after the fact. And, of course, I save the audio source for reference, just in case I need them later.

Tonight I decided to peek in on what Scribe was doing . . . and what I saw surprised me.

Here’s the first paragraph that appeared onscreen as the transcription began…

of will when you are is a work in a law of the earth to all and to the are you is your own or a to her to a window or in a will of her and her is you will is a will to the are you a to the eye to her or her own go as long as you would go her as a dove or a will or is it the night to will her a long one of her of her to her or he will or will your are off to a good or a well-known and her mother are you at a that I know what you are in a third or a to God or all around with the new and will do a good is a very who will or is it a world in her of her and her are her murder or is it moral or, as you are are are are are are are are are are are are are are are those your review of it that are or I will tell you is or is is a to you or your

Not exactly what I’d been working on the night, you’ll have to take my word for it. So, figuring there was some kind of glitch, I thought I might try again.

Here’s what the second attempt produced…

Him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him and you are past or will we will work for you guys are the is will go to that are all well and good to her from her to a will or will on the other are you going to do well in a will will give you a will go to her for her or him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him both were her mother nude to him and him or him him him him him

Whoever he is, he needs to get the hell out of my software. And stay away from my mom.

Erm . . . third time’s a charm, right?

Him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him or check test test him and we will when it is a work to be a guy that I was a law will be a very good after my workout how you and I are in a to them as a children are a will to a to her and her window to in a little over five and a will to him or her off to a good or a to him on a how are you and I are in a perfect or are you a thing or to a guy a noble or to her as a loan to her role as a little boy all her weight is a to her or him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him a note and he is in a will or will not kill him will be a little under a something of a month or and he had a to below are her to go to her idol John Gartner for her or him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him or him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him a moment when he is a phone number is to have a go… away you are or know him as a by a return to him and him in a to him in a all-around with a view to him and him to do your will for him him him him him him or him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him or him him him him him him him him him or him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him him and he will him and him and him or her to a girl named veteran Aaron and how to murder your him and he won’t, and then you are doing will love him or him him him him him him

There’s something a little creepy about all that, actually.

I don’t particularly like losing work. It’s been a long time since I’ve ever “lost” anything I was working on. In fact, it’s been over a decade.

On this project, losing an hour’s worth of time isn’t the end of the world. I’ve got a good sense for where I’m at in the story and what I’m doing. There’s always the audio to go back to, if I need to transcribe something manually. And it’s turned out that this story has a lot more autobiographical elements in it than usual, so the memories I’m drawing on are fairly easy to draw out once again if I need to.

And, to be honest, in these kinds of circumstances I have a tendency to trust the process, to trust the gods.

Everything happens for a reason. If I have to rewrite something, it’s probably because something important was lost the first time through . . . and this is my chance to get it back again.

It is worth noting however that tonight I was talking about one of the first, and only, times I ever attempted an EVP session.

I’m writing about ghosts. I’m writing about technology.

And, for some reason, tonight it turns out that technology is something that — inexplicably — isn’t working for me.

Creepy.

Shrug. It happens.

Business trips, end of the year client deadlines, visits from grandparents, and the general craziness of life itself . . . and suddenly I want to go to bed at 9PM every night.

Sometimes, that’s exactly what I did.

Which is why I’ve been so quiet here and on Twitter and elsewhere.

Fortunately, things have calmed down a bit now. December is still hectic and busy . . . but I think I’ll make it from here on out.

Tea with Winterly
Woke up with Sophie this morning and came downstairs to find the air outside filling up with snow. Apart from a storm a few week’s back, we haven’t gotten very much this season. Yet.

But my baby daughter looked out at the whirling air and held out her hands, trying to touch the fat flakes as they drifted past the window. Later, we put out seeds and nuts for the squirrels.

The Winter Solstice is near. This is my favorite time of year, for so many reasons — not the least of which is how beautiful the world outside becomes. To me, there’s nothing lovelier than the face of Winter.

The squirrels got their treats today. And you might want to check back in here around teatime on December 21st. Winterly might have some more things to share in celebration of the solstice.

Just saying.

Filed Under “Yay.”
Good news last week. Matters of Mortology won the “Frightening Fiction” award at BookRix, after having been nominated as a wildcard along with the other finalists.

Most everyone said nice things, which made me very happy and grateful. And the judges were especially kind, both with their praise and their criticism.

You can read some of the community comments here. And, of course, you can get a copy of the book for your very own if you are so inclined.

Winning vs. “Winning”
Despite a few points where my word count seriously flatlined, I managed to complete my first NaNoWriMo.

What I enjoyed most (apart from the writing) was the friend connection, writing along with everyone else. It made me miss my old writer’s group a little bit.

I don’t know that it’s accurate or fair to say I “won” NaNoWriMo but I finished the two projects that I’d wanted to get done and made the 50k wordcount with a little bit of time to spare.

One project was an adaptation of my play The Red Boy. The other project was a push to finish a new short-ish story called The Cradle. That’s the one that’s got Jee in it, in case you were wondering.

So, I’m a little bit of a cheaterpants for the adaptation. Maybe next year I’ll start something from scratch.

They said it couldn’t be done, but…
…approximately ninety percent of my NaNoWriMo efforts were done on the iPad. About half the time, I used a wireless keyboard. But I also made good use of the onscreen keyboard as well. At no point was this a problem or impediment for me — if anything, it dramatically improved my ability to work. Anywhere.

And after a lot of trial and error with different software and methods for synchronizing, I decided Evernote was the only way to get a reliable sync between various devices (computer, iPhone, iPad). Although Scrivener is my preferred writing environment, the lack of an iPad version was a problem. And seeing data loss when I tested Dropbox as a hub for SimpleNote, I said phooey and went ahead with Evernote — which is probably what I should have done in the first place.

I still prefer Scrivener, though. Everything’s tucked safely away in there now, waiting for rewrites in January/February.

There’s been a lot of debate recently about whether or not the iPad is a consumption or creation device. From my perspective, both sides of that argument seem to be missing the point.

It’s both.

At least, mine is. Your results may vary. I tend to want to write no matter what I have to work with. I’ve been known to resort to post — it’s and the backs of business cards, when nothing else was at hand. One of the first sequences in Pantheon was written in crayon on a paper menu (and I’ll thank you to keep your smart-alec comments until after you’ve read it).

Just saying, you can write anywhere, with anything, if you’ve the mind to.

Coming Soon
Speaking of consumption, December is an Aurohn month — which is to say, a lot of my time will be spent getting things ready to be published.

At the top of the list is getting the 10th anniversary edition of Samantha Dunn’s Not by Accident ready for printing. As this is the first non-me book to come out from Aurohn Press, it’s pretty darn exciting. And Dunn’s memoir is outstanding. That she trusted us to bring it back into print is a genuine honor.

Time permitting, the iBook edition of Matters of Mortology will finally arrive as well. A lot of people have been asking for this one, so expect some special introductory pricing as a reward for your patience.

And I’m also laying the groundwork for both Assam & Darjeeling and Matters of Mortology to appear on a few other platforms like the Nook, Google Books, and more.

Stay tuned, more details to come.

The Cradle will Rock
When my daughter Julia found out that there was another Jee story in the works, she did her best to try and convince me it would be okay to let her read the first draft. I assured her that it wasn’t. My first drafts are pretty rough sometimes, and this one is no exception.

(I should say, this is not a sequel to Assam & Darjeeling by any stretch. It’s just that I know there’s more going on with Jee. And I want to tell those stories. This one has goats, for instance. And a lot of rain.)

That being said, I’m very happy with the story overall. It worked out pretty well and I’m looking forward to cleaning it up once it’s had a chance to hang and cure for a while. Not quite sure how I’ll share it with everyone once it’s finished. It’s definitely one I’m looking forward to reading aloud, so you can plan on it showing up in iTunes as either an addendum to the book or an episode of The Gospel of Thomas.

Speaking of which…
…I discovered this weekend that my Halloween episode got lost in the aether, apparently never showing up on iTunes or in the RSS feed. It’ll be fixed this weekend. And there’s a new one coming next week for the holidays — a sneak peek at a few pages from Pantheon, just to apologize for the technical problems.

From the Mailbag
This came in last week…

“My mother died very unexpectedly about three years ago. . . . Shortly after her death, I came across the Assam and Darjeeling podcast. At first I thought I was morbid for enjoying it so much, but as I listened I realized I was slowly working though saying good-bye to my mom. I have no idea how or why it happened, I’m just glad it did. When I think of where my mom is… what she’s doing… how she’s feeling… I almost always think of you and your book…”

Well. There’s no way to feel about that, except humble and grateful. And I am.

And finally…
Since it went on sale earlier this year, Assam & Darjeeling has sold about 145 copies (hardcover, softcover, and Kindle combined). While that’s not a staggering amount of books sold, over 3,000 people have downloaded the free PDF. As near as I can tell, the free audiobook version has seen about 24,000 downloads from all over the world (that’s a jump of ten thousand in the past month or so).

Lots of these people have written to me, to let me know what they thought of the book. Which pretty much makes my day, every single time.

I write for a lot of different reasons but, well, that e-mail from last week is about the best thing I could ever hope to do with one of my books.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. In the span of about a week, someone very kindly nominated Matters of Mortology for an award (and it won), someone wrote me the e-mail you see above, and someone else called me an amateur.

I don’t know that I’m a particularly masterful writer, in terms of using the language or doing particularly good things with the words themselves. I have a lot of quirks and idiosyncrasies, I wander down tangents and overwrite everything to death, I don’t follow a lot of the accepted rules of grammar or vocabulary (chiefly because I’m rather ignorant of most of them).

If I do manage to put the right words together in the right way once in a great while, it’s just dumb luck or the gods lending a hand. Hard, long effort can sometimes nudge a few of them into the right place as well.

What I hope is that, underneath it all, there’s something there. An idea, a character, an energy that might resonate with someone. I take it on faith that this will happen from time to time — if I am lucky, if I work very hard, if the gods are kind.

It’s coming up on the year’s end. This has been a good one for me and mine — we end it weighed down with unexpected kindness and undeserved generosity.

Like I said, humble and grateful.

“You see. No shock. No engulfment. No tearing asunder. What you feared would come like an explosion is like a whisper. What you thought was the end is the beginning.”

A few days ago on Twitter, J.C. Hutchins asked people for their favorite Twilight Zone episode. Along with the list of usual suspects people mentioned (To Serve Man, Living Doll, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, and so on…) I threw my own personal favorite into the ring: George Clayton Johnson’s Nothing in the Dark. And, like anything, picking your favorite Twilight Zone is an ad hoc exercise in psychological analysis.

But the truth is that the Twilight Zone is one of those rare things, where it’s virtually impossible to pick one single episode as your favorite… impossible to single out the one that’s the best. The show contributed far too many classics to the canon. There are a few odd clunkers in there, to be sure (and the less said about the ill-conceived, ill-fated feature film from the 80′s, the better). But the show — and it’s creator and host, Rod Serling — occupy a well-deserved place in Television history.

When I was a kid, the Twilight Zone was on TV every single day. It came on at noon and then again at midnight, two episodes back to back. And holidays typically saw at least one local station running a 24 hour marathon (regrettably, this last tradition seems to be waning as cable takes over for the local stations).

I probably started watching the show with my older brother Scott. But we were all fans on one level or another. It wasn’t uncommon for someone in our house to hum the tell-tale theme (“Do do doo doo, do do doo doo…”) to indicate when something strange was going on. As a matter of fact, my mother did this on Facebook a few days ago.

I don’t remember what the first episode I watched was, but I was hooked from the very beginning. When I was out of school during the summer, it was part of my daily ritual to watch the show while I ate lunch. Later that night, already a confirmed night owl, I would stay up and watch the midnight round of shows as well. This went on well into high school and beyond. If they were still on, I would do it now.

I didn’t know it at the time — in fact, I wouldn’t realize it for at least a decade into my own writing career — but the Twilight Zone served as my first lessons in storytelling. I don’t think there’s a story I’ve written that doesn’t owe some debt to the show, either in pacing, theme, or character. And I know I’m not the only writer who would say this (and say it proudly).

As the current “Twilight” offers opportunities for a new generation to identify with the strange, the outcast and the darkness… so too did Rod Serling open up a doorway to another world, welcoming permanent residence to this skinny, slightly off-kilter kid.

And, without looking back, I gladly stepped through.

That was over twenty-five years ago, but I still am proud to consider myself a citizen . . . of the Twilight Zone.

———

While I was writing this post, I was disappointed to find that episodes are not available for instant viewing through Netflix. Someone really needs to get that fixed as soon as possible.

However, my faith was restored when I discovered that Wikipedia entries for individual episodes include a transcription of both the opening and closing narration by Mr. Serling. This amazes and delights me.

Once again, I find that I am not alone.

After my iPad post a few weeks ago, this picture cracked me up.

Quick Quiz

Is the phrase “T.M. Camp is mine.” either
(a) What the bill collectors whisper when I answer the phone late at night.
(b) The opening salvo in a cease-and-desist letter from the director of a Transcendental Meditation retreat.
(c) The start of a very, very, very nice compliment I received in a recent e-mail.

Answer below.

Birthday Book Bingo

Last week people on Twitter fought and kicked and clawed to get their hands on free copies of Assam & Darjeeling and Matters of Mortology.

Well, maybe it wasn’t that violent. But thanks for playing along anyways, kids. The books have all shipped. Hope you enjoy them.

And if you weren’t one of the lucky ones this time around, we’ll do it again sometime. I promise. It was too much fun not to.

Birthday Book Blues?

Don’t forget: If you really, really want to read one of my books you could always buy a copy. All you have to do is click on one of the covers over there on the right.

It’s worth noting that Lulu has free shipping all summer long, Amazon and Barnes & Noble are selling it with a big discount right now. And people are also ordering autographed copies directly. And there’s also a nice, crisp free-to-download PDF out there for each one, too.

Just saying…

Jay Garrick’s Lament, The Sequel

Back when my first child was born and I was supremely unprepared for the impact of a new baby in my life, I had a schedule that allowed for four to five hours of uninterrupted writing time every night. It’s almost sixteen years later and, boy oh boy, have times changed.

I have less time now, of course. And I’m way better prepared, having been through this a few times now.

Even so, Sophie is kicking the crap out of me.

She’s pretty darn cute, though.

Either the extremity of sleep deprivation utterly wiped out any memory of how hard these first months are, or she’s come to earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of ordinary mortals.

All of which is to say that the “forthcoming” joke on the Acknowledgements page of Assam & Darjeeling sounds less and less funny to me every day.

I started a short story just before Sophie was born — it’s the next Jee story, as a matter of fact — and the baby’s early arrival threw me off kilter for weeks. I did my best to chip away at the story a little bit here and there, but it wasn’t long before my momentum had flagged and I’ve been struggling to get it rolling again.

It’s driving me a bit crazy, to be honest. It’s not writer’s block. I’ve got it all together and ready to go. The story is right there, ready to be written. But it needs the full flood of effort and not the few rivulets I can squeeze out here and there.

(The delay hasn’t been a total washout, however. In the intervening weeks, I’ve made a few discoveries — minor things for the most part, little conversations and images scattered here and there. But they were worth the wait, so I shouldn’t complain too much. One bit in particular is something I’m very proud of, although I suspect I didn’t come up with it. Writing, for me, always feels like I’m eavesdropping on someone else, something Other. Metaphysical blog post on this topic to follow.)

Someone asked me about my process recently, specifically how I kickstart something that’s lost traction. Here was part of my answer…

“What works best for me is to start over. If I’ve been away from something for a period of time and find I can’t quite pick it up again — even though there’s no earthly reason why I shouldn’t be able to — I’ll read everything through as far as I’ve gotten and then do a quick sketch of the story: It’s overall shape, the sequence of events, an inventory of important things to include. Once I have that, I’ll start writing again from the beginning, transcribing my original draft and tweaking it as I go along, referring to my sketch whenever I have something new to incorporate. Usually by the time I get to the end of the previous text — the spot where it stalled — I’ve got a full head of steam built up again, and I can just keep chugging along.”

Hey, works for me.

Once the new story’s done, it’s time to wake up poor little Pantheon and get it rolling again. There’s a lot of work there, a big book waiting to be written — so it’s going to take a lot of work.

And, honestly, I’ve no idea how long it’ll take. I’d like to think I can have a first draft done by the end of the year. But there’s no way to know. All I can do is write as much as possible, as fast as possible.

Well. It’ll take whatever it takes.

Another Reason Why I Hate Summer

Now that it’s Summer, my coworkers enjoy opening the office doors in the afternoon. This brings in the breeze as well as large black flies and even the occasional wasp. They buzz around my head, retreating to tap against the top of the tall windows next to my desk. Eventually, they come back to divebomb me again. It’s maddening.

I have a deep, intense, and slightly pathological dislike of flying insects.

As I type this, my skin is crawling. I’m like Matt Cable over here.

On the Wagon

Speaking of which, I stopped drinking alcohol when Sophie was born. It’s not like I was a falling down drunk or anything, but I probably knocked it back more than most people usually do — typically late at night while I was writing.

So, faced with a unpredictable sleep schedule, an increasingly complicated set of priorities, and rapidly evolving stress levels… Well, the last thing I needed was “a psychoactive drug that has a depressant effect” (Shut up, Wikipedia.)

I haven’t really missed it at all. I find that I’ve got no desire for it. I’m not anti-drinking or anything like that. I’m just walking past that aisle in the grocery store now. And it’s become a little bit of an interesting exercise for me, even a challenge. I don’t have a set timeframe, so there’s a bit of “Let’s see how long I can go…” underlying it all. It’s also interesting to see how people react when the subject comes up. Some get a little twitchy and uncertain, as though I’m one Michelob Ultra away from becoming Montgomery Clift.

Really. I’ve just got a baby girl to take care of, after all. I pretty much did the same thing when her older brother and sister were born.

Recently, someone on Twitter mentioned they were reading Stephen King’s On Writing which led to an interesting conversation between a few of us about what we liked and/or hated about the book. I didn’t mention it at the time, but I’d already been thinking about King and his book. Parts of it are surprisingly personal and frankly confessional. I enjoy the memoir aspect of it most of all, and his revelation about his own addiction was startling.

However, one of my main points of irritation is King’s assertion that most (if not all) writers are drug addicts and/or alcoholics. He essentially claims that “we’re just wired that way.”

Call it denial, but I don’t buy that at all.

Tea on the other hand? Now that’s a drug I won’t be giving up any time soon.

And the answer is…

“T.M. Camp is mine. No I’m not a stalker and definitely not insane..what I mean is…well, maybe it’s a little hard to put into words but just like you I have shelves dedicated to Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman and Dave Sim…but everyone…everyone knows them…at least now anyway with the success of movies. But I DISCOVERED “Assam and Darjeeling” on the iTunes podcast. I don’t care if you wrote it and created it…I found you…”

I love getting e-mail like that. Seriously. That sort of thing makes my day.

Assam & Darjeeling is just starting to get out there and the early response overall has been very positive. We’re seeing reviews go up on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, as well as sites like Goodreads and LibraryThing. But more wouldn’t hurt. So don’t be afraid to put your own out there, if you’re so inclined.

And if you really want to help out, go into your local bookseller and ask them to order you a copy. Do it three or four times, tell them how much you like the book and that you’re buying copies for all your friends. Don’t forget to mention how much you wish I’d come to your town for a signing/reading.

You never know what might come of it.

Copies are going out to bloggers and reviewers as well. If you fall into one of those categories, you can request a review copy directly from Aurohn Press.

Coming Soon?

Some very nice people have asked me when my next book is coming out. Having blown through Assam & Darjeeling and Matters of Mortology, they’re reduced to subsisting on The Gospel of Thomas and whatever clever things I manage to say on Facebook or Twitter.

As I said above, the next novel is a ways off. If you listen in to The Gospel of Thomas, you’ll probably hear excerpts over time. And eventually it’ll have it’s own free audiobook/podcast. But we’re easily a year away from being able to buy a copy. Unfortunately.

However, it occurred to me recently that I actually have a few older books that are just a few steps from being ready for the world. I haven’t talked about them much here. In fact, very few people have even seen them. In all honesty, I’d forgotten about them until late last night when I was moving a few things around in my office.

Through no fault of their own, I don’t think about these stories much in the context of the rest of my work — although, upon reflection, they fit in rather well. I created them for very personal reasons, as one-off gifts for people over the years.

But a few of you had been asking for new work and I’ve been thinking about that. I read comics, after all. I know what it’s like to wait for the next thing to come out, and wait… and wait… and wait…

And there they were: Two books sitting on the shelf all polite and patient, just waiting for me to remember them.

So. That being said, Aurohn Press has tentatively added them to the 2010 schedule. If all goes well, the first “new” book will be released this August.

I should mention that it’s a children’s book, of sorts. A picture book.

It’s called The Jupiter Egg.

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.

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, 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.

I’m just now starting to come out of the foggy haze that washed over me last week — a low fever, chills, and not much else to show for it all. I felt bad enough to notice but not enough to take off of work. My coworkers kept offering me various cold medicines, despite my insistence that it does very,very bad things to my personality. It took me a few days to realize they want to see how bad “very, very bad” actually is.

I’m feeling much better now, thanks.

It’s November which means it’s National Novel Writing Month. Regrettably, I haven’t been participating in NaNoWriMo as it didn’t really line up with my work on Pantheon. Maybe next year I can take the time to get to one of the other stories from the Matters of Mortology cycle. There’s certainly more from that world I want to explore and a month should be the perfect amount of time for a little side trip through one of them.

So, no NaNoWriMo for me this year. I am writing but it’s not going to be done in a month. Optimistically, it will likely take another four months before I’ve got the current project to a point where it feels like a solid first draft. Realistically, it could be six months or more. As I learned on Assam & Darjeeling, real life has a tendency to get in the way of real writing.

I’ve enjoyed cheering on everyone else at Plurk and Twitter who are battling their way through NaNoWriMo, though.

It’s a really terrific idea, setting aside a month to push through something towards completion. Too often, writers (myself included) get a little discouraged or distracted by what we’re working on, going back over the same passages again and again without actually moving through to the end. A commitment to NaNoWriMo is a great antidote for that tendency.

(And that’s the last time I’ll use the acronym NaNoWriMo on this site until December — no, wait…)

I’ve written about it before, I know, but I’ve found that writing out a first draft in longhand — and sometimes the second as well — is a perfect way to protect myself from going back and trying to edit and re-edit what I’m writing. I’m not anti-technology at all, of course. But I’ve found that (for me) there’s something very gratifying about having the pages pile up in real time, line by line. And you end up with a very interesting artifact that has heft and weight beyond the amount of space it takes up on the hard drive. The four notebooks in which I wrote the first draft of Assam & Darjeeling are some of my most treasured possessions. If the house ever goes up in flames, I’m diving out the window with them and the family photos.

Another reason that NaNoWriMo (sorry) works is that it forces a writer to stay connected to their own continuity. The past few weeks have been a rough time for me, thanks to unforeseen wrinkles in my schedule and fighting off being sick. And so, when I (for instance) left a dapper little prick named Trip heading down Swift’s Row to teach “Saint” Stephen Murphy a lesson… well, unfortunately I’d forgotten what exactly Trip’s lesson was to be, once I got back to him.

And thus we build our little palaces along the shores of our mind… and then we can only stand and watch as the waves roll in.

I’m sure I’ll think of something sooner or later. If not, I can always count on Trip to come up with it. He is shaping up to be a bright fellow. He’s going to have to be, if this story is still headed where I think it’s headed.

It was just November, and now it’s nearly gone. Thanksgiving next week but there’s already snow falling around the state. I work out near Lake Michigan and we got 2-4 inches earlier in the week. Back in town though, it was sunny. People kept asking where I’d come from, with all that ice and snow on my car. No one got my Niflheimr joke, which was a disappointment.

But I have bigger problems to contend with. Winter is here and the gods apparently decided I don’t really need a functioning heater or defroster in my car. Which is… problematic when the temperature is dropping daily. We’re averaging in the 30′s right now, with 20′s and below overnight. It’s only going to go lower as the world tilts and that long cold shadow slides across us. And ice should not form on the inside of the windshield. So let’s get that fixed this week, yes?

The Winter Chap has sold a handful of copies, which is nice to see. You could even get one for yourself. And it’s seasonal; there’s a Christmas story in there that I’m particularly proud of. Consider it your donation to my personal battle against the Frost Giants.

And next comes Christmas. I don’t have a lot of good ideas for gifts this year, so I’m considering just buying myself some of these to replace the family and friends I’m sure to lose.

The new project — working title: Pantheon — is still coming along slowly, due more to some genuinely frustrating time and schedule constraints than any creative issues. The lack of time to write is becoming an increasing annoyance — and not just for this project. It’s been this way for a long time. I cannot help but feel envious of the writers who manage to make the shift to full-time. One day…

For almost twenty years I’ve tracked my time during the day in fifteen minute increments which standard when you work at any kind of advertising or marketing agency. It’s also an interesting place to keep your head on a regular basis. Once that mindset becomes routine, it’s difficult to turn it off. During the day, that time is time spent (usually) in support of a client. It is productive time and (usually) profitable time. Meaning, we will invoice someone for it. Which is why it is tracked so closely.

Off-hours, however, the mechanism remains the same but I’ve found the mental tracking inverts. Instead of tracking productive time, I unconsciously note unproductive time. Even your normal (e.g. real life) activities are measured in those terms: Making the kids’ lunches, emptying the dishwasher, a phone call from a friend, watching television, writing this blog post . . . those fifteen minutes add up to a lot of time.

Which is rough when you live in a world where time not spent writing is time not writing. It’s lost and whatever might have been written is lost as well.

Early on in DC Comics Kingdom Come by Mark Waid and Alex Ross, we get a glimpse inside the life of The Flash — who has become so fast that he lives between the ticks of the clock. This has, in essence, removed him from reality. When I first read that, I couldn’t help but think “Yeah, I get that…” Or perhaps it’s just the Mercury helmet I relate to.

Possibly I’m just another whiny writer blogging about not having enough time — at least, some of the time.

Speaking of unproductive time, had a very nice weekend. Got a little bit of work done on Pantheon and the new podcast, as well as a considerable amount of noodling on the October Surprise (which has now grown into two separate and rather different surprises, so I’m trying to decide which one I want to do more).

Spent Saturday afternoon wandering through one of an antique mall in one of the dilapidated warehouses near my house. Approximately ninety-eight percent of the merchandise was there during my last visit six months ago, most of it junk. I did spend some time marveling over a remarkably well preserved Steiff Hitler. Toys and dolls of political figures are nothing new, apparently, but it was still odd to think of a child in their crib cuddling with little Adolph.

“There’s a story in that somewhere,” I thought to myself.

“Yes,” I replied. “And Rod Serling wrote it like fifty years ago.”

I did manage to turn up a couple of vintage fountain pens. They sounded like maracas when shaken, a sure sign that the ink and reservoir sacs within had disintegrated. But they were beautiful and quite inexpensive (likely due to their frozen levels and the crumbled mess inside), so I decided it was time I learned how to restore vintage pens.

Back home, Keeley took a nap and I spent a happy hour or so gently disassembling the pens — a Parker and a Welch — and cleaning out the petrified muck from inside the barrels. A few quick searches online, and I had an order in for replacement sacs and some shellac. Updates on my progress to (hopefully) follow soon.


Sunday we spent the afternoon with my wife’s grandparents out at Aurohn Lake — rapidly becoming my favorite place on the planet. Typically, I don’t get nostalgic for places but there’s something very special about this spot. Maybe it’s the determination of the beavers, doggedly blocking the spillway on the dam despite our efforts to keep it clear every few weeks. Keeley did the honors this time around, while I watched and took pictures.

Or maybe it’s the hill, just beyond Six Bar Gate at the edge of the forest. At the summit, there are spots where the waist-high grass has been matted down in gentle depressions by sleeping deer, like snow angels. And to one side there’s a large, wide hole that leads (I’m sure) deep into the hill where a badger in a waistcoat sits by a fire, checking his pocketwatch and ignoring the little showers of soil that fall into his teacup from my pacing overhead.

A card table and a folding chair, a few fresh pens and my notebook . . . sounds like the perfect place to spend an afternoon, writing and looking out at the view.

Then again, it’s probably just the milkweed pods — caught in the midst of their annual, slow motion explosion. We each did our part to ensure that they continue their dominion over the eastern edge of the lake.

Regardless, it’s a wonderful place and it was a good day. I spent much of it talking about writing with Keeley’s grandfather and digging through his old radio scripts from the forties.

Rounding the corner into Halloween, I though it might be appropriate to share this little papercraft Poe. I’m considering the logistics of making hundreds of them and setting up an invasion on the lawn and porch for trick-or-treaters. Perhaps not.

After that, it’ll be time to vote. Here’s my official endorsement.


Winter will be upon us then. Much as I am looking forward to its return, this story has made me very sad. Here’s hoping Phoenix lives up to its name.

Speaking of which, this film is either brilliant or disturbing. Or both.

Either way, I want one of those zombie puppets.

Which gives me a nice reason to mention that the latest episode of the Cthulhu podcast features a recording of my short story “Summer Salt” — which makes me quite happy. New episodes of the Cthulhu ‘cast are one of the things I check for whenever I fire up iTunes, so I was doubly pleased when FNH told me he’d accepted the story.

If you’d prefer to use your eyes instead of your ears, you can read the story here.

But you might soon be outnumbered as there are new subscribers still signing up for the “Assam & Darjeeling” and “Matters of Mortology” podcasts. You could still be one of them, just click on the download links here and here.

I received a very nice note last week from a listener in Singapore who has been loving “Assam & Darjeeling” — which gave me a silly smile to wear for a few days.

And while we’re on the subject of smiles, although The Dark Knight had it’s problems I have to say that I agree with most of the hype about Heath Ledger’s portrayal of The Joker. My only quibble is that it overshadows Aaron Eckhart’s work as Two-Face, which was also excellent. And we got a trailer for the Watchmen movie, which I have no doubt will begin to generate more and more hype until it comes out next year.

And, yes, the “other” hype is true too: The new iPhone is outstanding. I’m still saying thank you to the powers that be for giving me one. Doublestuff kickass, to say the least.

(Oops. I forgot to mention that once the two current podcasts finish up, I’ll be starting a brand new one. This next one will be a bit broader, more of an anthology, and much more collaborative with the audience. Details shall follow later this week.)

On the publishing side, I’m currently regrouping after most of my efforts on the BEA trip this year have yet to produce anything fruitful. There’s still a few open leads that I’m waiting to hear back from but this weekend will mark a change in my efforts to connect with an agent, thanks to some good ideas and resources that proved worthwhile for an author friend of mine. As always, stay tuned.

The new project proceeds apace. The writing is going well. It’s going to be a long book.

For what it’s worth, the new book is called Pantheon.

It wasn’t all food poisoning and friends, either. I acquitted myself admirably by clearing a number of logs and muck that were clogging the runoff grate on the dam. A close inspection of the debris showed telltale teeth marks. Looks like the rumors are true: There are now beaver living in the lake.

Out in California, most of the rest of them are gathering for a week in Santa Cruz. I might still be able to make it, if the lottery gods finally pony up. Otherwise, I’ll have to lump it here in the Midwest.

The third book (working title to follow just as soon as I make up something clever) is coming along in little nudges. I don’t have a good read on how long it’s going to take me to get it to the end of the first draft but I think I can see the end way, way, way out there if I squint and shade my eyes.

End of the year, let’s say that for now. I reserve the right to completely blow past my own deadline, should the need arise.

Speaking of gods, there are a couple of t-shirts from WearScience.com that are just cool enough to make me wish I’d seen them before my birthday. I especially like this one and this one.

But this one, is nigh unto irresistible.

Other flotsam and jetsam…

I’d like to believe that I would create animated films like this one if I had any kind of graphic talent at all. As such, I’ll have to content myself with words alone.

Speaking of which, I’m delighted to report that my story Summer Salt will be featured in an upcoming episode of the Cthulhu Podcast. Yay.

Also, I expect to have the delayed Other Super Secret Podcast will get pushed out there as well. Possibly.

No words from agents and publishers. With respect to that nice fellow over there, I’m already writing the next thing. It’s all I can do, really.

Really.

“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.”
– Anais Nin

Been back home for a week or so — well, going on two weeks now — and I’ve been following up with the handful of contacts, leads, and introductions I made while at the BookExpo America.

Apart from some good connections, the only other notable thing to come out of the trip was that I started writing the next project, my third novel. If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you might have noticed more references to gods than usual. You might as well settle in and get used to it, because that’s what the new project is about.

It’s a bit of a shift, really. I’d had another project planned and plotted, ready to start writing . . . but it just wasn’t there yet. Anything I did felt forced somehow. After a few weeks of working but not feeling it, I decided to set it aside and let my subconscious work on it a bit more.

It wasn’t the project’s fault. There was something off in me and I just couldn’t get in the right position to flip the switch.

If the other project felt forced and difficult, digging out our old notes and sketches was like coming home . . . and I’ve already slid into the work with a sigh of relief.

Who knows, maybe in a few years I’ll come back to the other project and find it’s right there, ready to go.

The second project — the new project, the god project — was one from five years ago that was originally meant to be a collaboration with the excellent Keeley Geary (now my most excellent wife). Although she’s graciously relinquished the story and characters into my hands, I expect she’ll still be involved in the plotting and development process — if for no other reason than I’ll keep asking her annoying questions and trying out ideas on her.

LaDawn Driscoll (a new Twitter friend) recently twittered the quote from Anais Nin above, which serves as a perfect compliment to this one from Homer’s The Odyssey: “For the gods are never strangers when they meet…”

Taken together, Homer and Nin do a pretty good job of summing up where Keeley and I started with this new story, way back when.

I’m not in a position to say much more about the new project just yet, but suffice it to say that I’ve got a lot of writing ahead of me.

And I’m looking forward to it.

This is what it’s like: A big convention hall filled with booths, books and people everywhere. Thousands of them. It’s overwhelming sometimes and, eventually, all that I have left are little slices of memory and anecdote…

…stormtroopers in full regalia, posing for pictures with anyone who asked…

…the gorgeously plastic stepford drone handing out free books by L. Ron Hubbard, tempted to ask if he’s still writing…

…a familiar face from the night before, enviously listening as he tells me about the cheeseburger he picked up after all the parties; I’ve not eaten anything of real substance in 24 hours…

…stacks and stacks of free books, people dragging totes and crates on wheels full of them, weighed down with swag like something out of, well, Dante…

…the self-publishing ghetto — a sullen, heartbreaking ghost town; there but for the grace of God…

…the first-time author in the overstuffed chair at the Wizards of the Coast booth, probably half my age, giving me some much needed encouragement, good humor, and advice…

…Alec Baldwin, getting his coffee situated before signing a woman’s book…

…realizing that my left hand has been shaking for over three hours…

…weighed down with books thrust upon me, so glad when one or two of them look promising as something I might actually enjoy reading…

…reminding myself that I’m not here to browse, not here to stand in line with the fanboys — I’ve got more important things to do with my time…

…facing a room full of what should be agents but finding only empty tables, abandoned at the end of a long week…

…doing my best to not remind the exceptionally snotty and rude women from a UK publisher that we kicked their ass at Georgetown, once upon a time…

…calling my wife, listening to her answering machine message because her voice is all I have, all I need to make it over this…

…some very kind and friendly ladies from Chicago who keep handing me the various horror and fantasy titles they publish…

…a line of people wrapped around the center, Leonard Nimoy at a little table at the front…

…the semi-famous comedian and his wife and child, navigating the crowd and trying to ignore the people following them; again, there but for the grace…

…one last friendly, familiar face from the night before — a quick chat outside on the sidewalk, a welcome little flash of grace before the end of a long day.

There was more, but that’s the day in review.

My highest expectations were not met and I barely avoided my worst (all the way through Georgetown, ladies).

I made some good connections, I got some good leads, a few business cards.

I might have even made a friend.

Altogether, that’s more than I had when I started.

Once I get back, the real work begins.

But first . . . I need to eat something.

Also, thanks in part a a bout of insomnia that kept me up until 4 o’clock this morning, it looks like I might get the fourth draft of Book One done by the end of the week. If that schedule holds true (and it might) then I have high hopes of the fourth draft being finished within another couple of weeks.

Which is, depending on how you look at it, good news for all of you who wrote in inquiring about your chances for getting on the Reader’s List.

Bless your hearts.

At this point, I can say that the majority of it works fairly well. Apart from some unavoidable contrivances, the characters are appealing, the story is interesting, and the general shape of the thing holds together for the most part.

At a deeper level, there are brief glimpses of something in the writing that fascinate me. Little echoes of style that feel very much like something new — or, at least, something new for me. None of these were written “on purpose.” I think there may actually be a good Writer in there somewhere. I can hear a new voice in certain places and I very much like how it sounds.

However, much of the prose is overwritten, sloppy, and awkward.

I’m not being self-effacing here. If anything, I’m being too kind.

Which is why I began working on the fourth draft earlier this week.

The work is moving along fairly quickly, but it’s a bit frustrating to have everything grind to a halt whenever a particularly bad passage shows up. Most of these have been relatively easy to resolve, fix, or simply cut completely . . . however there have been a few which take a fair amount of time to sort through. And, only seven chapters in, I know that there are many more coming down the road.

The fatigue factor is difficult to overcome. I find that the best way to stay focused, to not just skim along, is to read it out loud. That’s been a part of my revision process for years and it’s always a great way to find the sour notes.

It’s also time consuming. I need this to be done, but done well nonetheless.

Fortunately, there’ll be a break after this round. This current draft really is my last shot before it gets into the hands of a few readers (the literary equivalent of beta testers). Six months ago I made a list with thirty or so people on it — a few family members, some friends and acquaintances, a handful of of absolute strangers with whom I share a tenuous online connection at best.

Realistically, I expect that I’ll narrow that list down to perhaps five lucky people who are patient enough to take a shot at reading through it.

It’s a thankless job, for the most part. No golden ticket, no year’s supply of chocolate. At best, they get to read something new and have bragging rights if it turns out to be good. At worst, they can chuck it out twenty minutes into it.

I’m not looking for much in the way of feedback, just a high level, honest response: Did you like it, did you care?

Really, it’s time for someone else to read it.

But before I get there, I have to be honest with myself. It just isn’t there yet . . . but only just. This next draft should be all I need to get it past that line, hopefully well past it.

And then I can start on the next phase: Figuring out how to get it into the right hands of agents and publishers. I bet that process is not nearly as much fun as it sounds.

First, I know what Juniper wants. This had been a mystery to me for quite a while. But I think I’ve found it . . . even if, hate to say, readers will still be mystified.

Second, and more importantly, I’m fairly certain I know why he wants it.

Also, there’s a new cat here (in real life, not in the novel). He was a stray that somehow just ended up getting taken in and cleaned up and Vetted and here we are now. He’s called Chesterton — which, Keeley tells me, means fortress or (appropriately enough) camp.

Vincent is putting up with him for now, so that’s okay. They’re both sitting here, on opposite sides of the couch, taking baths and generally trying to ignore each other as much as possible. They still fight sometimes, usually early in the morning. It happens.

Some good work tonight. I am happy about it and feel glad to have been the one writing it.

And now it’s time for bed.

Fifty pages in, I just can’t seem to find the channel. There’s a lot of good writing in there, a lot of plot and character and for some reason I’m not sure where I am.

No idea why.

This isn’t writer’s block. This is something diffferent.

Somewhere along the way, I must have taken my hand off the wall of the maze.

Tonight . . . I’m reaching out, blindly, trying to find it again…

I wish I had the money.

I’m writing a novel, you know. I could name something after someone for money. Just, um, just give me a minute to think…

…right. There’s a diner in the novel. I can name it after you. Just pay me lots of money. I’ll even give some to charity.

What do you think? Your very own diner — in the Underworld, no less.

And, possibly, some rare form of immortality, should the book ever be published.

Plus, all the milkshakes you can drink.

After spending the last nine months of my life struggling to stay awake until midnight, I’m suddenly awake at 2 am with my laptop and a dwindling battery and the Jewlery Channel babbling away in the background. (Actually, I’m kind of getting addicted to the Jewelry Channel. Especially the loose stones show.)

It’s the rain. It’s the thunder. It’s the heat.

I used to have insomnia, real life Edward-Norton-Begging-Brad-Pitt-To-Hit-Him Insomnia. There was a time in my life where I would wander around the house until three or four in the morning, simply unable to go to bed. (There was also a nasty year where I wanted to sleep, I could have slept, but I wasn’t allowed to. The less said about those times, the better.)

And now I can sleep again — at least, that’s what I thought until tonight. Suddenly.

First it was the heat. Then it was Dante.

Now it’s the rain.

Four minutes to two.

Ugh. I’m going to bed. I may be back…

There’s a scene or two in the movie The Commitments where the character Jimmy Rabitte is seen interviewing himself about his own (self-imagined success).

I’m not too proud to admit that I used to do that, from time to time. At a certain point, I had some long commutes between school and work and home, so I’d talk to myself about what I was writing as a way to keep my brain from turning into mush after hours of driving. It also may have satisfied some other, more narcissistic need, but maybe that’s just the mush talking.

But I’ve been interviewed for real as well, a few times here and there. Recently, I got an e-mail from one of the cast members of the recent production of my adaptation of ‘The Odyssey’ asking me some questions as part of an interview for/from their playwriting class. Since I completely missed any opportunity to record the many brilliant things I said while I was there for the show, I thought I’d include it here as a sort of coda to the production.

I don’t pretend for a moment that this is in any way an informed point of view. For what it’s worth, reading over this a few days after I sent it, I found any number of spots where I should have said something different. I’ve resisted the urge to clean things up a bit and make myself smarter. For whatever that’s worth…

What?s the hardest part about the work of a professional playwright?

Full disclosure: If a professional playwright is someone who works full-time and supports themselves as a playwright, then I am most certainly not a professional playwright and should be immediately ejected from the interview.

However, if a professional playwright is someone who has had their work produced by a professional company, then I suppose I can continue without feeling too much like a poseur.

To your question then: There’s no single overwhelming challenge working as a professional playwright. The internal and external difficulties you face are myriad and often overwhelming. I know many, many people who started off down a similar road and — for any number of reasons — decided to stop. In most cases, their internal motivation/desire wasn’t sufficient enough to overcome the external pressures.

You have to want to write, to write plays. Not for money (God knows), not for fame (don’t get me started), but because you love to write . . . and you have to be strong enough in that love, that you can tune out the external realities.

Externally, it’s difficult to find a theatre willing to take a chance on new work. Most theatres simply can’t afford the risk in the current economic and creative climate. An unknown play by an unknown playwright isn’t a particularly compelling draw for audiences, whereas more established work (last year’s Broadway hit, Shakespeare, Sondheim, take your pick) is more reliable at getting people in the seats and keeping the doors open.

Added to this, I am my own worst enemy. I don’t write the sort of plays that might have an obvious hook for producers or audiences. I don’t write about social issues for instance, which is often what people are looking for. That’s a convenient position for me to adopt, as it allows me to adjust my monocle and beret, dismiss rejection and keep writing under the assumption that I’m just too daring or unique for the commercial mainstream.

Which all goes to say that I am extremely grateful when someone does choose to produce one of my plays.

Internally, I struggle as well. Because there is little or no financial reward for playwrights — at least nothing substantial enough to survive on — then I have to spend my days paying the bills in other ways.

Finding (and sometimes fighting for) the time to write is the biggest challenge I personally face. Invariably, it’s in the evenings or on the weekends, stealing an hour or so (sometimes much less ) wherever and whenever I can in order to write. I liken it to the people you see scrounging for spare change in the couch cushions and picking up pop bottles on the sidewalk in order to make ends me.

I scrounge for time. Fifteen minutes between meetings, a good half hour while the kids are having baths and getting ready for bed, five minutes waiting for my turn at the barber . . . that’s when most of my work happens. When I get a longer block of an hour or more, I’m in Heaven.

What was your first published work? What did you think when it was published?

I’ve never had work published, although a number of my plays have been produced so I’ll talk about that instead.

It never really hit me, having something produced for the first time. I loved seeing it done, but I was fortunate to know a director who wanted to do the play and so it was fairly seamless the first few times I had something produced.

But the first time that someone produced one of my plays without any connection — not a friend from college, a colleague, someone who knows me — well, that gave me a hope I didn’t know I was lacking: “Someone wanted to do this, not because they knew me but because they loved the work I’ve done. It wasn’t charity or obligation all those other times.”

But in each and every case — whether it was a connection or a cold reading that led to the production — I have always said the same thing to myself afterwards, since the very first one: “Please God, please please please don’t let this be the last time…”

What did you have to go through to get it published?

Since I’m unpublished at this point, I’ll answer the question from the production side of things: I had to get used to the necessity of promoting my own work and commit myself to the task.

I have worked for years in marketing and am fairly good at it. But when it comes to marketing my work, I lack a lot of confidence. Sending scripts out to contests and theatres around the country, agonizing over the cover letters and application forms, worry if I should have typed the envelopes instead of handwriting them . . . it’s a grueling process and it’s very easy to let it slide.

But it’s the crucial last step and if you don’t do it, then all you have is a box full of paper no one has read. Getting rejections back is no big deal to me. I’ve had some fairly significant rejections in my life — on a creative level as well as a personal one — so that doesn’t bother me.

What bothers me is the feeling that I should be doing more. Finding the time to write is hard enough, as I said earlier. Finding the time to do the right thing with the writing is even more difficult.

Typically, what you have to go through — either for publishing or production — is just a lot of boring, grueling paperwork . . . the sorts of activities that have about as much interest as doing your taxes and are in many ways the opposite of the activity of writing.

What is your favorite part of being a playwright?

Apart from the actual physical act of writing — which is my favorite thing in the world to do — the best thing about being a playwright is watching someone else bring it to life.

I had the good fortune to hear the author Neil Gaiman give a lecture a number of years ago. He’s an award-winning novelist and screenwriter, but he made his mark writing comic books. At the lecture, someone asked him what his favorite medium was and he said comic books — because when his part was finished, he got to hand it off to someone else who would bring it to life and, in essence, he got to shift from being the author to being the audience.

He likened it to being an architect and designing a house but being delighted and surprised when you walk through it and see how they’ve built and decorated what you did in the blueprint.

Being a playwright is an awful lot like that. I know some writers struggle with feeling like they lost control of their work — the recent profile of Edward Albee in the New Yorker a few weeks ago really horrified me at how obsessive he is about the direction and performance of his work. That kind of thing seems to be the opposite of theatre to me. Or, at least, the kind of theatre I love.

I have good ideas and from time to time I write them well. But it’s the electrical charge of someone else’s mind rubbing up against those ideas — the director, the performer, the audience even — that makes them glow with life.

I get way too much credit, in my opinion, as a playwright. I have the easiest and the most fun of everyone involved in the process.

What kind of education did you get for the job? What would you recommend?

I am so uneducated, I’m not sure that I’m even qualified to answer this question.

My education as a playwright was fairly informal, trial-and-error. I had a head start because I was an actor for a number of years and worked with a very good director who tolerated my lack of training and process and helped me cultivate my skills as a performer.

But even as an actor, I had a very textual and meta approach to the character and the play. I was, in essence, looking at things from the author’s side — understanding the shape of the story and what my character needed to be in order to bring that to life for the audience.

There was no presence of Method at all, no emotional connection internally. I was never “in the moment” and I was always aware, at a microscopic level almost, of what the audience was seeing.

I’m not certain that, had I been educated in the process of playwriting, that I would be a better writer. However, I would be more connected to the professional side of things. I’d have better connections, I’d know more about how to get things out there in front of agents and producers, I’d have a professional foundation and training that could better support my writing. That’s the biggest value I’ve seen with my educated colleagues.

My cousin is a professional playwright, she went to school for it. It’s odd because we were never close, grew up thousands of miles apart, and both ended up in very similar pursuits. I’m not a competitive person at all, but there is a sense for me when I look at her accomplishments and experience. All of that came from her education.

My advice would be, if you want to do it, start as an undergraduate and major in Theatre. Forget about trying to find a proper major to make your parents happy or to give you something to fall back on. Now’s the time to do what you want, lay the best foundation you can for yourself. Dreams have a shelf life, after all.

So pick your major and take every damn class you can, work on every show (play your part, if you get one, but also work backstage and in the box office and in the costume shop, know it all inside and out), go to auditions during the summer at your local repertory and civic theatres, direct short scenes with your classmates, dig in to every aspect of the world that you can, and above all else you need to write every day and ask people to read it.

If you’re up for it and you can afford it, find a good graduate school — not the one that has the reputation for turning out great writers but the one that’s a good fit for your personality. Beg, borrow, and steal to get accepted. Mortgage off small portions of your immortal soul if necessary . . . and then do it all again: Take every class, go to every show, audition, etc.

And write every day. Even if you skip all the rest, you have to write every day. You are not a writer unless you’re writing. Having good ideas don’t count.

I didn’t do all of those things, some days I wish I had.

What are the most important skills? Most overrated?

Most important: Listening. Keep your ear to the ground, there’s a lot to learn from if you pay attention. And there’s a wealth of voices out there. Listen to everyone around you and learn how they show everything about who they are and what they care about in their words, the things that they say and don’t say. It’s all right there and if you can learn to see those things, you can learn to create them for your characters.

But also learn to listen to your own work, learn to listen for the false notes and find the broken pieces that you need to fix.

The most overrated?

(pause)

Despite what I said earlier, I think education can be extremely overrated. It’s not a magic bullet and I know plenty of writers who spend their time in graduate school being coerced into writing like their professors, playing the name-that-literary-fad game. I’m not convinced that it’s necessary for everyone.

But, on reflection, I think that money is overrated. Especially for a playwright. This isn’t the place to cash in. Get your work out there, get it seen by as many people as possible . . . it’s not the remuneration (although, again, God knows…) but the audience.

Clive Barker is not a favorite of mine by any stretch, but someone who’s career and singular vision I respect. A few years ago I found a couple of volumes of his plays in a used bookstore. They were from his early days and, although I more or less hate reading plays, I picked them up out of curiosity more than anything else.

I didn’t expect them to be very good, so I was surprised at how much I enjoyed reading them. There were little flashes of Brecht and Stoppard and Beckett — playwrights that I like a great deal.

But what impressed me most about Barker was his foreword which said (paraphrasing from memory): “If you’re a small theatre company with no money but you’d love to do one of my plays, don’t be afraid to ask. I’ll make the big professional companies pay royalties, but theatre is meant to be done and not just read. We can figure something out…”

I thought that was terrific and quite surprising since this was at the height of Barker’s popularity and he was selling millions of copies of his novels and writing/directing films and making a lot of money (actually, maybe that made it easier for him to say…)

Regardless, it’s an approach I’ve tried to have with inquiries about my work. Getting paid is great, but let’s not stand in the way of getting the show up and running. In that same spirit, I put scripts out there for free download at my website in the hopes that someone will want to do them.

I don’t worry too much about people producing my work without permission — it’s a small enough world and instant karma’ll get them in the end (if I don’t get them first).

How often do you write? What sort of thing do you write?

I try to write every day. At one point in my life, I had over five hours of uninterrupted writing time. I was younger, less experienced in my own process, so I wasn’t very productive. I wish I had that time back now.

But, one way or another, I’m writing every day.

As far as what I write, it’s a fairly broad spectrum. Plays, obviously. A lot of short stories and poetry. I am about halfway through my first novel, so that’s what is taking up a lot of my focus these days.

But I also write as a big part of my day job, which has been very helpful for me in my creative life as it’s taught me how to be more economical and efficient with my time, how to manage and keep deadlines, and how to know when (and when not) to listen to input.

Topically, most of my work deals with a handful of issues related to the supernatural, mythology, and fantasy. Even if it’s a realistic setting with naturalistic dialogue and action, the undercurrent of the play and plot is likely to be supernatural. I like living in a world where we’ve got something larger and unseen superimposed over everything around us. I like writing about it as well. Neither the world nor writing would be as interesting to me without that other, unseen world.

The most personal aspect of my writing is my poetry.

What is one piece of advice you would give an aspiring playwright?

Oh, you only wanted one piece of advice? Sorry.

Well . . . not just for playwrights, but everyone who wants to write, I think I’d have to reiterate what I said earlier: Write every day. This is your only chance — this fifteen minutes, this half hour, this afternoon — to write what’s needed today. If you wait, you will be different, the opportunity will have shifted, and what you could have written will have been lost.

Neil Gaiman, again: “We owe it to each other to tell stories…”

Don’t be afraid.