Well, Hello

So, it's a been a long, long time since I've posted here, eh? I've been busy...

• Saamaanthaa (2011)
• Chosen (2012)
• Relict (2013)

In paperback and in Kindle and Nook formats. Pick them up, give'em a read. And if you find your attention span or busy schedule doesn't allow for much book reading, Relict is a novella -- nice and short.

The Boys are Back in Town

The boys came back yesterday, and seemed to have a good time in Ohio. They got haircuts while gone -- I'm guessing Exene had her family pay for that. They were very glad to see me, especially B2, who kept hugging me and kissing me and telling me he loved me. Very cute. B1 was glad, too -- the first thing he did when he got in was he aimed his new telescope at the Moon and called me over to look at it. Sure enough, he'd zeroed in on it perfectly, and it was fun to look at it in detail. I can tell in his quiet, Capricornian way how much he digs that telescope.

Cannot believe the end of 2011 is nearly here. What a year it's been, too. I jokingly call it "The Year of the Dave" to my folks, just from all of the stuff that has gone on this year, and the contrast from 2010 to now for me.  The last several years have been surreal, really. I'm tackling 2012 head-on, not with resolutions (because I really don't believe in resolutions per se -- that whole New Year's tradition feels contrived to me -- you should be resolute every day, not just one day a year, right?) but with a To Do List (TDL), stuff I need to get done. 2011 was very productive for me, across the board, but I want to get much more done, so I'm on that.

Jackhammer

Somebody with a jackhammer started working streetside at 5:00 a.m. sharp! Haha! Life in the big city!

I didn't go to that show the other night, btw. Lame. But it was so cold and blustery, and that club was such a PITA to get to (that is, if it were summer, I'd have simply biked up there, but in winter, other transportation options = PITA), and since the ticket was only $15, I passed. Guess I'm getting old! Bahah!

Work has been crazy-busy of late. Which is fine by me, in truth -- I don't mind being busy at all. I never get people who complain about being busy; it's part of the deal, hello? You go to work, you work, right?

JACKHAMMEREREREREREERERERERRERERERER

Gonna do my usual morning write, now. 

Cipherpunk'd

The latest book I'm writing is coming along very well; I'm about 20% done with it, after 3 weeks, which is a new speed record for me. I've mapped out the three parts of it, the chapters, the narrative arcs, all of that stuff. Am well-pleased with it. I even cooked up a cipher for a part of it, just having a bit of fun, tossing a puzzle into the book for the readers. Lots of folks use computers to craft ciphers, but the real problem with those is you can't ever get a truly random computer, so patterns can be discerned with computer-generated ciphers. No, the only way to get real randomness in the mix is to do it old-school, pen-and-paper, that kind of thing. Anyway, the cipher in the book is an intricate one, took me awhile to craft it. Just a bit of mischief for the reader. Good times, right? Bahah! It was just something that popped into my head while writing it, something one of the characters would definitely do, so I ran with it... F IIMF PRLBR DOSFKT OX

I concur

Worst Ending in SF TV, Ever.

I agree with this, too...

Renowned fantasy author George R.R. Martin expressed his extreme disgust with the series' writers for producing this ending, saying on his livejournal: "Battlestar Galactica ends with 'God Did It.' Looks like somebody skipped Writing 101, when you learn that a deus ex machina is a crappy way to end a story...Yeah, yeah, sometimes the journey is its own reward. I certainly enjoyed much of the journey with BSG...but damn it, doesn't anybody know how to write an ending any more? Writing 101, kids. Adam and Eve, God Did It, It Was All a Dream? I've seen Clarion students left stunned and bleeding for turning in stories with those endings."

I think the "Danger, Will Robinson" moment to the show really came with some mix of the Final Five and, worst of all, when Ellen Tigh was revealed at the Final Fifth. Ellen "What the Fuck?" Tigh? She's the Fifth Cylon? Who could possibly give a shit about that? When that happened, I was like "Oh, no...." and it spoke volumes of what was coming down the pike. And really, the whole Final Five (hate that term for them, btw -- makes them sound like a playoff in basketball) plotline was a whole lot of nothing -- none of those Final Fivers really did a hell of a lot to justify the buildup surrounding them. Especially since all but two of them basically continue on being what they already were beforehand, more or less. Weak. The story got hijacked by the God(tm) shit and it gutted and filleted the story. And what's Starbuck? Is she a goddamned ghost? Or another of those fucking "angels" that get touted? Whatever. Lame. Weak. Bad.

Nothing worse than a bad case of Writer's Hand intruding on a story. I always avoid this in my stories, because it's annoying to have something happen because the Writer wants it to, or is at wit's end and cops out with "Because I said so." Lame. Some serious writer's fatigue must have set in on some level, or else the writers wrote themselves into a corner and decided to pull the ripcord and hope the cop-out wasn't caught by the majority of viewers/fans.

Seeing that ending made me very glad I didn't watch the show real-time, or I'd have been hugely pissed and would've felt cheated. Even when they were pimping out God(tm) in the story, I kept hoping that we'd see the  robot God(tm) as some grand AI (and, let's be honest, the closest we'd ever come to a god in this world is an AI -- the combination of omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence that equals "God" would be a singular quality of a powerful AI).

But, instead, it's kept all mystical and behind the curtain, subsuming the entire storyline and all of the characters, scuttling "Galactica." Whatever. Big disappointment. The first two seasons are solid. Third season is entertaining, before Hell's Bells being sounding and drowning everything out.

Beyond the Wheel

Did I mention getting a new back wheel for my bike? A whole new rim? That frickin' tire would misalign every year, and this year, I finally had a spoke break, so I was just through with it, told the bike guys to replace it. My whole life of biking, I've never had more trouble with a bike than with this one. Anyway, they put on a nice, tough back wheel on it, although I haven't had much opportunity to ride on it, because it's been raining all frickin' week. This is about the rainiest fall I've seen here in Chicagoland.

My boys love the Bond movie, "Goldfinger." They love James Bond in general. Cracks me up. B1 loves the gadgets and the spectacle, while B2 loves the bad guys and thinks Bond's tuxedo is tops -- I actually filmed him singing the "Goldfinger" theme, which was adorable. If B2 saw me in my tux, he'd love that, would want his own tuxedo! Thankfully, he doesn't know I have one!

While looking for some appropriate "Goldfinger" images, I stumbled across this, which cracks me up. Bahah!

I'm in a pretty good mood today, as I managed to come up with a proper ending to a book I'd had written years ago, but had never quite gotten the ending I liked for it. I think I've alluded to it before in here. It's a Young Adult story, I think. That's my nearest guess. Now that I have the ending I like for it, I'll edit it and see if I can get anybody to pick it up. A tough sell in this market, but I'll try to find a home for it. I'm just relieved I got the right ending for it. It's very rare for me to get stuck on a story like that, and this one was like another albatross hanging around my neck (Exene taking the original honor for that, of course, the Lifetime Albatross Achievement Award), but this story was in second place. But I think I got it. On yet another read-through, we'll see how it goes. I shouldn't feel bad -- Tolstoy wrote something like 12 drafts of "War and Peace" -- which would have me going squarely out of my mind if I'd been in that situation. This latest revision will be a cakewalk by comparison.

My folks are seriously eyeing property in Florida. I think they're looking to sell their place in Santa Barbara and settle down in Florida. I think they were missing seeing the rest of the family (since nobody else in our family is on the West Coast), and they were also realizing that they could sell their place for a fortune and buy something particularly fab elsewhere. I always thought their trek to SB was quixotic -- there's a reason why it's like the retirement community for Hollywood. I mean, yes, it's beautiful, but it's also crazy-expensive out there, and if you're not coasting through senescence on residuals, it's a daunting prospect for everybody else. We'll see how Florida goes for them. The boys won't mind that, since they love the ocean (although B1 loves mountains as much as I do -- my Dwarvish boy. He was talking about that the other day, how much he loved mountains and hills. Cuted me out).

Falling Leaves

Went ambling through the city last night, since the weather was so good. Lots of people out, enjoying it. Already nearing the end of September, with October nipping at one's heels. This month flew by. I need to buckle down and get into my autumnal writing groove. I've got so many pieces to work on, it's going to be hard to choose. At this point, I'm tempted to just do them alphabetically, but I know that'll never work with me. I'll need to do them based on either how soon they can be completed or else which ones inspire me most. I just know how I am, especially for first drafts -- I have to go with inspiration, first, just to get that first draft done. Then the discipline part kicks in with revision.

Did you see that stuff about neutrinos? I am hoping it's corroborated, because that'll be awesome, will pull the rug out from under physics for generations, which'll make for a lot of excited/perplexed/enraged physicists. We'll see. Science is fun. Haha!

Punkin' Pie

I hit Target today for a bit, got the boys some fall/winter supplies, like hats and what-not. The weather is autumn-lovely today, that cool-but-sunny thing going on, very pretty. Good sleeping weather, really.

I had an idea for another story pop into my head, quite out of the blue. Well, really it was something I was mulling over for awhile, and then, while at Target, it just clicked, and one of the characters really cohered for me. That's a great feeling, although it sometimes happens when one hasn't any pen or paper handy! D'oh! That's when the iPhone is a real blessing -- the Notes function on it is useful for that, even if the Tic-Tac tap-buttons on it are so tiny, it's cumbersome if you have hands larger than a leprechaun's!

They have Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts at Target! I had to try them, and they actually were really good. Limited Edition, naturally, but damned good. See?

Up in the Air

Summer is usually my revision time for writing projects, since Fall/Winter are my prime new material-writing time, just because as the weather gets worse, the prime "writing weather" begins. Although, with this being such a stormy summer, I had more opportunities to get some new stuff done, except for the computer woes causing troubles. Anyway, taking stock, I have 10 book projects lined up, which is a ton. That'll likely keep me busy for the next couple of years, given my schedule. I also have 8 screenplay ideas, although, as ever, screenplays are elusive beasts for me, so I can't necessarily bank on those. I may turn them into short stories, so at least they'll be done in some form, versus just ideas. I'm a firm believer in writing, versus "idea-having" as so many people are about creating. People who are like "I have a great idea for X" are a dime-a-dozen; the vast majority never do squat with their "Great Ideas." Me, I never think my ideas are all that great, but I at least follow through on them and get the fuckers written. So, anyway, realistically, with the above slate of writing projects lined up, I'm good for a couple of years, at least. I try to stay disciplined and work my way through them -- two of the ideas are sequels for books I've already written, so those will likely be at the end of the line, as I really want to work on the new ideas, first.

Thunderbirds at the Air & Water Show.

Anyway, that's all that's going on with that.

July already?

Ugh. The new neighbors were up incredibly late last night, partying and smoking. Kept me awake, so I'm bogging a bit. I'll come out from under the sleep-daze.

I'm kind of amazed it's July already. WTF? Wow. When the first day of summer arrives, I always get bummed, thinking "Well, now the days'll start getting shorter." Not that it bothers me so much; I like all seasons, in truth. But it still hangs in the back of my head.

Working on a short story this weekend, something that popped in my head the other day. I haven't worked on a short story in some time, have been focused on novel-writing. But it's nice to delve into the lean-n-mean story structure requirements of a short story, after working on long fiction for so long.

Chillin'

It got damned cold today. The storms rolled in and it got cold. I'm not complaining -- after the past couple of days, some cold weather is welcome, honestly.

Work was busy in the morning, trying to wrangle a lot of things under the deadline. It's all about meeting the deadlines, as ever! That's what I love about unstructured time: no deadlines!

I've got two books I'm going to write the remaining months of this year. I think that should be just ambitious enough to keep me motivated, without being overwhelming. I still need to find homes for the others. I'm going to focus more heavily on three of the ones I have done, the ones that I think are the most marketable. The longest one is a solid work, but it's just too large to try to pimp to agents, I think, especially in this economy. I'm going to shelve that one as one to sell if I'm able to get one of the others sold, first. I don't think like a businessman with my writing, but I really need to if I'm going to sell any of these.

I have the boys most of this weekend, which'll be fun. We'll have a good time, as ever. We watched "Kung Fu Panda" the other day, which the boys greatly enjoyed. It's a cute movie, well-structured and entertaining. Jack Black is perfect as Po the Panda.

Cool

It's supposed to warm up significantly the next couple of days, although right now, it's nice and cool. We'll see how it goes.

Grateful to have a Monday off. I'll celebrate by doing laundry in a few. Hahah! Exene'll drop the boys off at some point this morning. We'll do something fun, weather permitting. It still looks like it wants to rain, and what's a Memorial Day without rain, right?

I was sketching out the premise for the new piece I'm going to be working on. It's going to be hard to classify, but, if I do it well, should be coolly memorable. I may have to do a fair amount of research on it, to get it right; that's always a tightrope for me, whether to write the story and add in the details in subsequent drafts, or whether to try to anchor the story at the outset in the right details and proceed from there. I'll figure it out.

Overcast

So, Exene dropped the boys off over here at 5 a.m. (!!) because she was running a 10K. I agreed to it, since I always enjoy time with the boys, naturally, but that was damned early. She's training for a triathlon this summer, apparently. Anyway, today's a very drizzly kind of day.

The boys are happy to be with me, as always -- B2 is conking right now, has a little bottle of hand sanitizer in one hand, and his blankie in the other. That amuses me. B1 is telling stories as he plays.

My brain is going a mile a minute and nowhere fast. There's stuff I should do, but I'm not doing it. Something about overcast days, they just sap productivity in some respects. It's supposed to be progressively warmer as the weekend advances. We'll see.

I had an idea for a new story, which I duly jotted down on some paper. I need to get back into my routine, work on that. I've not written squat in several weeks. Not from a lack of ideas; I've just had a lot on my plate. I'll get back into it.

I watched "Kick-Ass" the other day, enjoyed it. It's an amusing movie, although the conception of superheroes in it is decidedly unheroic -- that is, they are more like murderous vigilantes who basically butcher whomever they're going after (except for the feckless, clueless title "hero" -- although, when he truly becomes a superhero, at least by the standards of the movie, he butchers with the best of'em). Anyway, the willingness to kill (and use guns) is one of those lines in the sand with superheroes -- clearly, it's a nod to the realities of such activity, but at the same time, it's so unheroic as to call into question the whole enterprise. It's like when the Joker asks the veteran cop (rhetorically) why he uses knives when he kills, instead of guns. Kind of like that. Anyway, Mark Strong is good as the villain, and the movie is definitely entertaining, although it's nowhere close to a kids' movie, obviously...

Big Daddy clip

One of my favorite clips of the movie, actually. It captures the spirit of it nicely. Cage is great as Big Daddy, and Chloe Moretz is great as Hit-Girl.

Anyway, the movie's pretty damned fun. I'm glad I (finally) saw it.

Daze

I'm going to have to supplement my Great Friday with a Super Saturday and a Stellar Sunday, clearly! I'm going to get a lot of writing done this weekend. Exene has the boys, so I'm going to work on screenwriting, methinks. Try go bang some of that out. Always a challenge for me, but I've had a couple of ideas that have stubbornly banged around in my head for some time, and I want to just throw them on paper (or, well, into the computer, anyway) so they can vacate my brain. The weather appears to be very conducive for this kind of effort -- lots of rain and cold.

Station

Apparently the International Space Station (ISS) is going to be very visible lately, is going to be the brightest object in the sky short of Venus. That's kinda nifty. I'll have to check when it'll be flying over and try to spot it with B1; he'll love that, assuming we'll even be able to see it.

The weather's been pretty dismal the past few days -- we actually had snow mixed with rain the other day, although, as ever, I roll with it.

I'm going to sling out my SF novel to another publisher, see how that goes. I need to gear up for another round of querying my books to agents and publishers; never something I particularly enjoy, but most definitely part of the dance.

Things have been pretty quiet around here lately, which is why I've been fairly blog-quiet, too, I suppose. It's the combination of lots of big, bad news in the world and relative quiet at home, I guess.

Saw "Dead Snow" the other day -- I was less than impressed by it; it wasn't scary so much as it was gruesomely amusing. The stark white Scandinavian countryside was a great backdrop for horror, and those very Nordic-looking characters in it were amusing, too, but the movie was an exercise in excessive gore (so many disembowelings -- is that a preoccupation of the director?) And, sure, all that blood works wonderfully against the white snow, but the movie was pretty empty, even as escapist fare. The opening sequence was probably the best thing about it. I didn't like the way they had the Nazi zombies kind of roar -- they sounded like orcs doing lion impressions. That was distracting and off-putting. They already look monstrous, so making them roar monstrously was too much for human-scaled monsters. One of the grossest scenes has the floozie babe putting the moves on the portly film geek in an outhouse -- a sex scene in a frickin' outhouse?? Paging Dr. Freud! It was clumsily constructed -- the floozie takes an unlikely interest in the geek, joins him while he's quite literally taking a dump in the outhouse, rides him on the commode (?!?!) and the next thing we see, the geek is returning to the cabin by himself. Now, honestly, people -- this Scandinavian Poindexter (who looked more like the kind of guy who'd be giving swirlies to nerds) gets laid by the hot girl -- he just walks away from that, turns up in the cabin to swill some more brewskies nonchalantly, leaving her back in the outhouse to get rather gruesomely killed by one of the Nazi zombies?? Terribly constructed scene, clunkily rendered (and gross -- maybe putting the moves on a guy while he's taking a dump in an outhouse is a time-honored Scandinavian courtship ritual? Shudder.) The alpha guy stumbles across a cave that appears to be a kind of lair for the zombies, and actually leaves a couple of perfectly maintained MP40 submachine guns alone, even as he discovers the severed head of his missing girlfriend. Later, he picks up a German machine gun (from somewhere) that he mounts on his "snow scooter" (aka, snowmobile), and briefly uses. But seeing the guy see those submachine guns in this cave, seeing actual horror and carnage, and the guy's military service background is referenced in his first scene -- I was thinking "Helloooo? Pick up the fucking guns, Sven; there's zombies in them thar hills." Instead, he gets to engage in some sloppy disembowelment (see?) knife fights with the zombies. Anyway, these zombies are very fixated not on eating brains, but on eating guts. They do it every time they get after somebody -- you see them gobbling guts. So, either the writer had some kind of fixation on bowels, or the director did, or they both did, because it flows through the whole movie (haha -- "flows"). There are some darkly amusing moments in the movie, here and there (I won't spoil them, if you're inclined to see this movie), and a couple of reasonable scares that are mostly a product of a spliced zombie bushwhack coupled with a BLAST of sound, but this movie didn't rise above the promise of its premise, in my view. You can tell the director is a fan of Sam Raimi -- he opts for that kind of kinetic gore approach to horror, that over the top, so bad it's good kind of aesthetic, but the characters aren't strong enough to carry the narrative.

Sunshine

Beautiful day today, like proper Spring, instead of bogus Spring -- cool temperatures, lots of sunlight. Pretty.

6100 words.

Stormy Weathers

The big storm appeared to have moved through the city last night. I slept through most of it, only woke up briefly during one of the bouts of thunder. There's still a lot of wind blasting through the city.

4000 words.

Writing, Inc.

Haven't written in the past few days, just doing the business end of writing, which is my least-favorite part, which is why I have written tons of things and have only sold a few of them. I've accumulated lots of intellectual capital, and need to put that to work for me, get it out in the marketplace, where it'll do me some good. I'm great with people, am creative and prolific, but I'll never be a businessman. Know thyself? I do.

That's why I'm hoping to find the right agent to shepherd me through the publishing business. The writing good fiction part I have down; I just need that right agent to click with me and nail the business end of things, to find the right homes for the books I've written. I'll be happy to write the stuff, if they'll be happy to sell it for me.

The irony for me is that "salesperson" is something that is often thrown my way as something I could do -- not from anybody who knows me, but reading about my personality type, and so on. I am good at communicating enthusiasm, to be sure, but the notion of selling people on things is anathema to me. In my view, if somebody wants something, they want it; trying to talk them around to buying something makes me feel icky. I hate when I'm in a store and a salesperson hovers around, asking if I need any help, or if they try to steer me to pricier products, etc. The entire interaction unsettles me -- I feel sorry for the salesperson, trying to make their commission; I feel annoyed at them for interposing themselves in my world -- it's just not my thing.

There are plenty of people who are good at it, who excel at marketing and self-promotion, but I'm simply not one of them. Appreciate the work I do, appreciate me, or move on; I'm not going to try to sell you on my merits. I try to shelve that when I work on queries, but it's difficult. I've yet to write a truly exemplary query. I have seen plenty of bad queries, and mine are far better than those, but I don't write high-concept fiction. My fiction rewards the reader when they read it, versus being some killer concept at the front end that can wow somebody from curbside. I don't put a lot of stock in high concept, because it's a gimmick -- to me, it's like those SyFy movies-for-cable like "Megaroid Versus Land Squid" or whatever -- the kind of thing where you might go "Huh" and peek at as a guilty pleasure, but is so many intellectual empty calories. I have plenty of ideas, write stories that are packed with ideas, but they are not high-concept stories. No "Snakes On a Plane" stuff (that being an archetypal high-concept movie).

I focus on writing well, writing beautifully (even if I'm writing horrible things, I pay such attention to the language, you have no idea), having memorable, believable characters, and writing an airtight plot that is very carefully composed. There are always plenty of ideas in my stories, salted through out it. There are no land squids, however.

I don't think I could come up with a high-concept story idea if I tried. And it would feel false to me, unnatural. It would be the fictional equivalent of the salesperson hovering at your elbow, walking on the balls of their feet, grinning eagerly, trying to steer you to something you didn't want. Not my game at all.

Just the same, I've been trying to be dutiful about the business aspects of things. I can't use an "eat your broccoli" idiom for this, because I love vegetables. Except for beets. Okay, it's like eating beets for me. *shudder* But I'm doing it, because I have to.

Howling

The wind keeps howling. I should be asleep, but I'm not ready to sleep, yet.

Exene dropped the boys off earlier today, as she apparently had a hair appointment. I was fine with that, since I always enjoy more time with the boys, and they always have a good time.

B1 and I were talking about reentry vehicles, comparing the classic American conical reentry vehicles to the Soviet-era Vostok spherical ones -- B1 astutely conjectured why the Soviets used spheres, and I explained to him the different approaches of the respective space programs. He loves that stuff. We watched "The Right Stuff" in the wake of that conversation, which is an enjoyable movie, hearkening to a truly bygone age in our society. Amazing, really -- once the space shuttles are grounded, that'll be it for our space program -- in the wake of the endless budget crunch debates, the lopsided tax policy, I can't imagine any programs being funded in the near future, barring some serious shift in national priorities. Like they say in the movie: "No bucks, no Buck Rogers." I remember reading "The Right Stuff," man, I must've been a teenager. It was so long ago. A good book. Tom Wolfe is a good writer, or was one, anyway. Manages a narrative agility bound to a journalistic style.

I'm working on the new SF book; again, momentarily shelved the "contemporary" story just because I wanted to dive right into the SF book sequel while everything was still fresh in my head.

I don't really like talking about my writing; I'm truly the type to write more, and talk about writing less. Plenty of blowhards like to talk about writing, how they could do it if they had the time, or that they have great ideas for stories, but the real truth of it is that they never get around to writing them, because it's hard work, entirely thankless. As I've told someone in the past, it's not called "great idea-having;" it's called "writing." A great idea for a story is not a story.

The same goes with any creative endeavor -- everybody thinks they can do it, but most of them can't. And of the few who actually do it, fewer still are any good at it, and of those few, even fewer are truly great. I think I'm a good writer, but I don't think I'm a great one. Time will tell, if I can ever get those necessary breaks to make it happen. I certainly don't cut myself any slack with my work; I'm easily my toughest critic, and always will be. I trust that instinct. I try to do my best, for what that's worth.

Cold

Frickin' cold this morning -- 27 degrees. Yowza! Lots of wind.

Good writing weather, though, so I'm not complaining. And it's sunny, so it's at least pretty. And the radiators are on, so it's actually warm in here. Amazing to think that March is nearly over.

7100 words.