Current Events

Leaving tomorrow for Portland for the Footprints reading/signing at Powell’s at Cedar Hill Crossing in Beavertonm alongside Jody Sherry and Brenda Cooper. Looking forward to this, though my wife has a work committment she absolutely can’t get out of (it’s the major thing she has to do every year). But my lovely daughter is coming with me. This will be the first time she’s come with me to an event like this. This would be more impressive if this weren’t my second reading/signing ever, but still. Since I will be occupied, my mother is coming along.

We’re going up a day early because it’s a pretty long drive, plus I’ve never really spent time in Portland before, and have always wanted to, so we’ll spend the day enjoying the city. My daughter is only nine, and is justing starting to get into the world of books and reading (its a struggle sometimes, mostly because of the California educational system’s over emphasis on regimented programs like AR, which serve to make reading all about quizzes and points. I’m looking forward to sharing this with her, so she can get a better idea that these books have people behind them, and I’d like her to meet Jody and Brenda. She sees me plugging along, getting grumpy and yelling about stupid character tricks, but I’m not sure she’s ever met another real live author.

So … it will be a couple of days of feeling like a real writer before I return to the world of cat-gack and laundry folding. Not that these things aren’t important.

An open letter to certain people in my life …

I am using the term “people” loosely here.

To my children: No, you did not pick up the living room. When I asked you to pick up the living room, and you dragged me by the hand to show me how clean it really is and how I really should be happy with it, these are the things that I saw: an open cereal box laying on its face on the floor, a wiimote, a plastic plate with five half-eagle bagel bites from yesterdays lunch, some underwear I really hope is clean (no, son, it is not mine! I gave up the spider-man underoos months ago), shoes, a hannah montano fuzzy poster set with markers, an open board game, coloring books, a couple of empty plastic tumblers, dice (I must assume this is connected to the board game?), kleenex, and a paint brush. When I said I wanted to the floor “vaccum ready,” I guess I wans’t being clear enough …

To my dogs: The deer are not a threat. I repeat, the deer are not a threat. Neither are the joggers and early morning walkers, or the people pushing baby carriages. The mail carrier may be considered a threat when she is carrying bills, but she also brings us our netflix movies, so we’ll give her a pass too, ok? YOU CAN STOP BARKING AT ALL OF THESE THINGS!

also, the midnight bark is not a competition. I understand that you need to relay the information about those lost dalmation puppies, but there are plenty of you out there, you don’t need to get it across the whole county by yourself.

Feel free to bark all you want at the zombies, though. But we won’t know it’s zombies if you are barking all the time …

To the wii fit: No, I will not tell you if I have seen Tiffa in a while. I will not tell you how she’s looking these days. And I will not tell you if she’s dating anyone. It’s over, man … let it go.

that is all.

5 things …

My wife has challenged to be more positive in the comments I make out loud. Apparently, non-stop snark can be grating on the people around you, who knew? I think i may have driven her over the edge during an America’s Next Top Model marathon, when I responded to every emilinated contestant’s tears with “Now go do something useful with your life!”

So, in that spirit, I am going to write about 5 things I am enjoying right now.

1. Last Exile I am a long-time anime fan, but I’m not really into the mecha or the weirdo super-powered kids stuff. I like the trippy sci-fi aspects, the riot of mad ideas, translated through a different culture. This sometimes is not copacetic with sense-making … but this one is my favorite ever. I love the prussian steam-punk vibe, the characters, while adhering to certain anime archetypes (hello, stoic hero with a past, cute kid with bug eyes and a mysterious power, and you, super-pilot teenager) are beautifully developed and animated, and the wolrdbuilding is completely trippy, yet makes perfect sense by the end. Plus, its a story about my favorite thing, a band of plucky rebels on the run. And weird are they/aren’t they alien creatures. I first saw this a few years back out of order of G4’s anime unleashed block, and have been rewatching it on Netflix’s instant system, which, if you haven’t tried it, is wonderful.

 

 

2. Anathem by Neal Stephenson

This book has been much written about and reviewed already, so I will just add this … This is his best book. It may be a contender for my favorite book of all time, actually. I read the last 200 pages in one day. Yes, the beginning is a little bit of a challenge as you must first become familiar with an insular world before you are cast out into the rest of the story, but it is an amazing experience. Plus: super space nija monks vs. well … that would be telling. But that moment the central mystery locked in place … wow.

 

3. Poseidon and the Bitter Bug by the Indigo Girls.

another amazing album, no suprise. Ghost of the Gang might be the most uplifting song about suicide ever. Plus, they used my favorite painting of all time as the album cover. As I get older, I find I am identifying more with Amy’s angry poetry than I used to. It used to be the Emily songs that grabbed me. That probably says more about me than about them, because I’m fairly certain Amy has not mellowed over the years.

“Tonight I’m gonna take that ride for the years we missed and the frieds that died …
side swipe baby on the road somehow with a pack of dreams, we just weren’t allowed
Maybe you’re walking those halls all quiet and sad …
sitting in the dark all scared and mad
feel my hand reaching out and don’t forget
where you come from, baby, cuz there’s truth in it … “

4. www.unclutterer.com. I suck at it, but am trying to get my house organized and uncluttered. This site offers advice and inspiration, and a lot of pictures of gorgeous workspaces I will never hope to be able to emulate. They did inspre the “landing strip” now in the entryway, which has been helpful. If only they could come up with a simple system for “processing” laundry that does not involve me folding it all.

5. wii fit. Trying to lose the last few pounds, as wel all are, this thing has been an invaluable training tool. It’s also helped get me focused on core strength and balance, which revealed some things I needed to work on, and explained a lot actually. Love the questions … “wow, you’re really unbalanced, do you trip and fall a lot?” which, yes, of course …

It’s a little clingly though. It scolds you if you miss a few days and lately has been asking me if I’ve seen other members of our little user group. It even asked me if one of them looked like she was gaining weight, losing weight, of staying the same. It’s starting to creep me out.

and no, I will not be sharing my wii fit age with you.

On process

I’ve become very interested in the nuts and bolts of how other writers work, for some reason. I used to be obsessed with this, to be honest, when I was realy wanting to write but for some reason not able to make it happen. I guess I was always hoping I’d stumble upon some secret way of doing things that would make it all click together. Obviously, never happened …

anyway, blame Tobias Buckell. I find particulalry apt the picture of himself plotting, as my process is similar, but sometimes looks a lot like me surfing random crap on the internet for “inspiration” and, of course “research.” A wikipedia addiction can be a terrible thing.

Anyway, my process has finally evolved into something that worked for me. I am at the point now that I can make the writing happen when I need it to and not be at the mercy of the muse, who never really shows up at the right time, and usually babbles on about a hundred different things at once when she does. yes, those of you who know me in real life, my nine-year-old, red-headed, adhd daughter is probably my muse given physical form.

So, if you are like me and like this kind of thing, here is the process …

step 1 — (we’re starting at part three of a writing day, but you’ll see why in a second) “compose” three pages (or so) in my moleskine notebook. With my handwriting, this is usually about 1000 words. I find that I cannot feel creative trying to write first drafts on a computer screen. There’s something about the feel of the paper as its texture makes certain vibration in the pen or pencil as it’s moved across, something very tactile that accesses deeper layers in the brain. I’ve tried to do it straight to the computer, but the work is not as good. Once this is done, I put the writing away for the day.

step — 2 this usually happens early in the morning. I take what I typed up yesterday, which has been printed out in green ink, and mark it up with a blue pen. I try to do this as I read it aloud. This is the “bleeding smurf” phase of the writing, and it hurts about as much as it sounds. This is the phase of the murdered darlings. Then I go back into the word document, and make the marked changes. I print the day’s work out and leave it in the computer tray so I do not lose it and waste more paper and ink reprinting it (as you can see, there are multiple challenges here).

step 3 — I get out the moleskine and I type in what I “composed” the day before. The first time in, I type it in green, so I’ll know where the fresh stuff is. It also helps psychologically so that I’m not committed yet to specific phrasings or sentence structures, and for some reason don’t feel as bad about undoing the work I’ve done later.

return to step 1.

It seems like it would be a lot of extra work, and would slow me down to do it this way, especially the writing and then retyping, but working this way, with sort of a rolling three day edit going on, it prevents me from getting bogged down in the whole-project editing phase, which is where a lot of stuff dies because I hate editing and the thought of doing a complete project all at once, in all the detail it would require, makes me get out my procrasti-nation issued passport and head anywhere else but here. Usually, final read-throughs are much less painful this way.

i was thinking about posting a picture of my desk here too as that is all the rage these days, but have decided to spare you the horror. Besides, i would need to get a release from all of my star wars expanded universe action figures, who are currently involved in a major sith vs. jedi campaign. So far, the Jedi are holding the territory around the water fountain, but Mara Jade is having a hard time fighting off Darth Talon, who’s sneaking around the computer speakers … se we should probably wait until they’re done. It’s just polite …

Damned Baptists would be an awesome name for a band.

I like to say my first favorite TV show ever was Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. This is not true. My first favorite TV show ever was Charlie’s Angels. My favorite Angel? Surprisingly, not Farrah Fawcett’s Jill. It was Chris, her replacement, played by Cheryl Ladd. But Farrah Fawcett was cool too. My favorite Farrah era was her crazy years, where she babbled on Lettermand and there were stories that she was throwing wild parties and defecating on her own lawn (I blame Ryan O’Neil). This was just after the critically acclaimed Burning Bed years. But I was too young to watch that. Still, Farrah, I salute you. Go gently into that good night. You deserve the rest now.

And Michael Jackson’s Thriller was the first album I ever really wanted to buy, but wasn’t allowed to because it was unholy rock music(yeah, right!) and my church did not approve. This was also the era in which I was not allowed to go see Return of the Jedi because the church frowned on its members going to “the show,” and the cool kids called it in 1984. Damn Baptists … sorry, I know I’m going someplace bad now. Michael Jackson’s amazing flame out out of weird accusations and long-delayed projects (hello Katrina relief song?) was just as entertaining as Farrah’s. But Michael’s work was good. Black and White is still my favorite MJ song (will not go near Man in the Mirror), but I always thought he was kind of a sad case always trying to reclaim a childhood that was stolen from him by the mass media and an abusive father.

I think we all kind of knew it was going to end suddenly, so Michael, go get some peace as well now.

weirdness note: I found out about MJ’s death via a twitter message form Randall Flagg. This will give me something to talk about with the psychiatrist next week.

Sorry, I got nothing on Ed McMahon, except that I was always really hoping he was going to show up at my house with balloons and a giant check, and am still somewhat disappointed it did not happen.

Anyway, Farrah, MJ, ED … go gently and all that …

adding her condolences:

What it wants to be … ?

Lately, some current projects have spiralled out of control. This is not strange for me. A short story I was working on, with an eye to a specific anthology, kicked out the 6000 word roadblock and kept racing along. Right now, its double that. And to really do the story justice, it probably needs to be about 30,000. No one publishes workes of 30,000 words right now. WAAAAAY too long for a short story market, and much too short for a novel. I guess it could be serialized, especially since it does follow a pretty specific three-act structure, but you really only get to serialize if you are a big name. Me? Not even a name, let alone one of any size (no fat jokes, please).

And I could bludgeon it down, get it under 20,000 maybe. But It’s a complicated piece which relies on some (if I may say so myself) pretty intricate worldbuilding. So this entire idea is probably not one to be used in a short story. And I really, really don’t have time to start another novel right now.

Fortunately, another story which can easily (at least with some judicious editing) slide in under the word count presented itself, and I’ll be turning that in instead.

And I’m hearing murmers from the publishing world that they’re actively looking for novels now in the 50-60,000 wd range from new authors, and this other idea can easily become that. And that brings up the question I have … do I just write them as they come and put no word count imposition on them, or do I need to find a structure for this type of thing. I always hate it when new (it’s mostly new) writers say “well, i just let the story flow through me,” and more alarmingly, “these characters just started writing themselves and told me what they were going to do.” Yes, if your story is alive, situations and motivations will present themselves to you in surprising and challenging ways, but you’re still in charge of the story. Abdicating your authorial responsibility and just writing what comes to mind usually devolves into lazy cliche. Yes, Jerry B. “I don’t kill off characters I find them dead” Jenkins, I am looking at you.

But this is a digression. Should I be letting the stories be what they want to be, or do I try to get them into some form that has an actual hope of selling? Just wondering …

Footprints out soon! And a signing!

Just wanted to put up a notice that Footprints, an anthology published by Hadley-Rille Books and edited by Eric T. Reynolds and Jay Lake, will be coming out this month. The date I’ve heard is July 19th, but I am not certain of that. What I am certain about is that I will be signing/reading from Footprints at Powell’s Book at Cedar Hill Crossing in Beaverton, Oregon. I will be appearing with Jody Sherry and Brenda Cooper, other writers from the anthology. I will probably be reading from my story, “Dust in the Stellar Wind.”

This is only my second signing ever, so of course it still feels weird, even if it is a nice chance to feel a like a “for-real grown up writer” for a couple of hours. I then return to my daily life and realize I’m not much of a grown-up anything. So, it’s all good.

And I know that all of my dozens of fan (not a typo!) will be really excited about this, but i’m really looking forward to it.

Revenge! A viral short story about (it may be reasonably guessed) revenge! Or maybe something else. It’s up to you.

Ok, so here’s the thing. I was tagged by Unfocused Me in a viral short story project. Someone started one, and we’re trying to see how many ways it could branch out, and what hops tend to die out. I’m not sure who’s tracking this, but there it is. So, first, here’s the rest of the story, before it got to me:

Splotcy:

The Story:
The ground crunched beneath my feet. Besides my noisy footsteps, I heard only the sound of the gentle crackling fire behind me. Its faint orange light lazily revealed my immediate surroundings. Beyond the glow, there was total blackness. I whistled. I took the small rock I had been carrying and whipped it away from me, expecting a thud, crack or plop — but a soft yelp of a cry answered. (Splotchy)

Freida Bee:

“Crap! I forgot all about Monster,” I realized. “I must be drunker than I thought,” I spoke aloud to no one in particular, though an owl answered my drunken slur. Ever since my neighbors have been giving me grief for the way Monster chases their cats and poops in their lawn, I haven’t felt comfortable staying in my house. I’m pretty sure my landlady is thinking about evicting me, so I’ve decided to lay low for a while.
To the surprise of no one…

Lass:

The night turned darker. A storm blew in. It was, in fact, a dark and stormy night. Too drunk to worry about Monster’s rock-inflicted head wound, I stumbled back to the campfire, where I found the ghosts of John Fante and Charles Bukowski roasting hot dogs, drinking whiskey and singing sad songs about women. The ghost of Fante whispered in my ear, tales of love and loss, and I found myself walking slowly down the trail to the river, where I suddenly found myself…

FreshHell:

Falling down an embankment. Instead of rolling into the river, I landed on what felt like a raft. I crawled around it, the storm pelting down on me, adhering my thin clothes to my body like a second, very wet, skin, and discovered that it was indeed a raft. I could feel the huge humps of the logs (smooth and barkless, unlike Monster, the cur!) that had been lashed together with a waxy hemp. A pretty decent job, from the looks of it. Not that I could see anything; the storm had rendered the night blacker than the farthest corner of a monster-filled closet. If I could find where it was tethered to the shore, I could cut it loose, leave this place and all these drunken hallucinations for good. Hell, I could even…

unfocused Me:

… wreak my terrible vengeance on the people who had forced me into hiding in this crummy town, so small it didn’t merit a point on the map, so pointless that it didn’t even have a name. The farmers who fought the surrounding land for a living just called it Town; the townies didn’t call it anything except “this shithole” or, if they were ambitious or lucky enough to leave, “that shithole.”
I had come to this shithole after running out on an arrest warrant back home in River. I brought Monster, even though being so … distinctive, he made it harder to hide; I couldn’t just leave him behind. The crooked judge who signed the warrant, the weaselly sheriff who swore out the complaint against me, and most particularly old man Berringer; I’ll get them all.
My plan unfolded before me, surprisingly simple. With this raft, I would simply float down the filthy, slow-moving river to Springfield. The backyards of both the judge and Berringer each extended down to the river; taking care of them would be easy. The sheriff would be harder; even if he weren’t on duty, his home was on the other end of town.
No matter. I’ll figure it out when the time comes. They’ll pay for framing me for…

and now, mine, and I apologize for the fact that I am, aparrently, unable to limit myself to any sort of implied word count (i’m working on it!).

… no. Thinking about that wasn’t going to help me find the raft. Thinking about that was only going to blur up my eyes, which were already fighting that rainwater. And if I got any more upset, Monster would … well, Monster would react, and that wasn’t going to help things either.

Rebecca. Why could I not stop thinking about this, now that the thought was introduced.? That had always been my problem. Let some seed of a grudge in … it was over. This explained why I was no longer welcome in the state of Indiana, and why I’d been kicked out of three high schools and one community college. But Rebecca, she wasn’t a grudge, was she? She was …

… Her smile and her open hand, the first person I’d ever met who had not looked at Monster with animal fear, but come up to him, cooing, offering the friendship the animal yearned for. Me, spending an hour a day in that open park by the Carnegie Library, where Rebecca spent her days stacking and filing and putting away books. The librarians were her caretakers, though Berringer’s third wife, her mother, was supposed to be doing the job.

Berringer didn’t care. He had his twelve children, each of them planted in places of wealth and power in the town. One daughter married to the sherrfif, a son married to the judge. Others were doctors, lawyers, the superintendent of schools, head of the Chamber of commerce. Rebecca was the thirteenth. And she wasn’t wanted anyway. The fact that she was not like the others … that just made it easier for him to use her as a tool when he wanted. She was great for a photo-op, a heartwarming local interest story, when he needed the press.

Thirty years old in body, she had the mind and spirit of a seven-year-old girl. And me, just a little younger than she was, in town dealing with my Mom’s old house, getting it ready for sale so we could pay for her life in the nursing home. I knew no one in this town, but Rebecca welcomed me, met me for lunch in the park, played Frisbee with my old beast-dog, and brought me books she thought were interesting. She could read the picture books well-enough, better than a lot of people, actually , and read to Monster and me as we ate sandwiches on the grass. Maybe it was a little bit weird, this friendship, but there wasn’t anything wrong with it, either.

So, why had her body been left in my mom’s house? Why had they said I’d killed her? I knew what they’d done, that deputy, that woman who I’m sure even now has a bullet through the back of her head for helping me escape, had told me exactly that. Berringer had his own daughter strangled and dumped in my house just so they could arrest me for doing it. I just didn’t know why.

As he passed me, Monster kicked up muddy river-water. He gave a little whimper, and licked my hand, and this, as it usually did, calmed me down. Maybe he knew where the raft was … he ran ahead, an excited bark joining with the sound of rushing water. And something else now, a rustling in the reeds. He stopped, and barked again, and I sheltered my eyes from the rain so I could see who was coming out of the woods. I stooped and picked up another rock. One way or another, this would end. I didn’t care about adding a real murder to my crimes, not now.

Monster whimpered and pawed the mud as she stepped out of the woods. Rebecca.
I dropped the rock, as she said ….

there. I now tag Carre, Jennie, and Jasmine

Apologies … and a request.

I would like to apologise to the cast, the crew, the writers and producers, and most importantly, my fellow fans, for my unabashed love of the show Kings. I doomed you. I am sorry.

Dollhouse, same thing, although you’re not officially cancelled yet (maybe I should not say I like it publicly, because that never goes well.)

I add you to an illustrious list: Firefly, Wonder Falls, Drive, Pushing Daisies, Eli Stone, Veronica Mars, and others I’m certain I will remember later.

I would also like to add Heroes to the list, but it was not cancelled, it just started sucking really, really hard, so I pretend that it has been.

So, new tactic:

NBC, please, please do not renew Chuck, it is not at all a fun and quirky show my entire family adores, not at all. In fact, we tune in solely to mock it, mst3k style. My wife sooo does not have a crush on Zachary Levi (you can admit it honey. wait, don’t yet), and my thoughts about Yvonne Strahovski are all about I wish they would not let someone so unattractive defile our tv screens. The supporting cast is not at all hysterical, and I am not one of the people who wants to purchase a Jeffster t-shirt. And really, the end-of-season plot developments did not promise an invigorating evolution for next season. The fact that Captain Awesome is so awesome that he goes all the way around to being a lovable dork? Not at all awesome.

So, in conclusion, NBC. Please cancel Chuck. We want that hour of our lives back every week.

FOX, please cancel Dollhouse as well.

That is all.

edited to add: Part of it worked!

Dispatches

Yes, I’ve neglected this blog and need to stop doing that, but let’s move on. Here’s a catch-up post with a lot of random stuff I probably could turn into individual blog entries if I wanted to take the time to really develop them … but right now most of my writing time is taken up with noveling and short story-ing, but more on that later.

Some of these thoughts have been inflicted on my facebook/twitter friends, so I apologize for any redunancies for my facebook/twitter friends, who may have read some of these thoughts before. Again, I apologize for the redundancy.

The swine flu is freaking me out, mostly because of my memories of The Stand, much of the first third I read while staying overnight by myself in the apartment of a friend who did not have a television, and lived in one of those run-down, kind-of redneck apocalypse neighborhoods. And I think there was a wind-storm. Add that memory to the mini-series with a cart-pushing Kareem-Abdul Jabbar ringing a bell and shouting “Bring out your Dead!” and you can understand my feelings. And yes, I know it’s all hype and this is really just a regular flu season with some unfortunate early medical reporting, but y’all are going to have to humor me if I take my family and start heading to Boulder, just in case, ok?

The writing is going pretty well right now, despite the fact that I’ve had a for realz day job the last month or so. It looks like it’s winding up now, so I will be forced, once again, to work with no externally imposed structure, which is always a crap shoot.

Right now how I’m writing short stories between chapters of Maps of Perdition, and I have a couple of Beta readers (Hi, Lena and Jennie!) looking at the chapters as I’m going along. A couple of people who are readers but not necessarily major sci-fi fans, and they help me make sure the characters are working and I’m maintaining internal consistency. Just finished chapter three and am now working on a bright-happy retro-future space opera short story, kind of using a doc savage and his team in space concept. The main problem is it’s threatening to turn into a novel, but I keep beating it down.

Well, there’s that problem, and zombie plotcreep, but I’m avoiding that pretty well too.

I’m really looking forward to the release of Footprints this summer. I’ll post the amazon link as soon as it’s up there. But for now, here is the cover:

I am especially excited because this collection is co-edited once again by Eric T. Reynolds, with Jay Lake as co-editor. There are some fantastic writers in here, such as James Van Pelt, and Lawrence Schoen, as as I read the proof and looked at the contents list, it felt a little bit like a game of “one of these things is not like the other…” but there I am. Who’da thunk it? Side note: thinking of changing my pen to “and more …” but my wife said that probably wasn’t a good idea. For a full list of the writers in this collection, go here.

And I would like to thank a good friend who has some connections, and who had my copy of Barren Worlds surreptitiously removed from my bookshelf and returned it with this inscription inside the front cover”

You may have heard my very manly squee a couple of days ago when I first saw this. So, thank you Liz!

anyway … this is getting long, so …

I am now on twitter. you can follow me, if you care to. my userid is chadgrayson. I should actually say “please follow me so I don’t feel like a loser,” but that might be just a little too pathetic, so i probably should say that. Please disregard that previous sentence.