The next stepping stone

So I'm a little less grouchy, and possibly have my next project to boot.  Today I finished first draft of a little piece called 'The God Box,' and after a day or so of letting that part of my brain rest, I think I'm going to tackle a project that's a bit different.  My friend Jeremy has designed and published his own gaming system, Mana Punk, and the other weekend my wife and I helped play-test a module that he'll be releasing soon.  It was a fun session, and I got to explore a new character personae that really annoyed my wife. (always a plus)
Once upon a time, when I played AD&D, I would get all kinds of bizzare ideas for dungeons and scenarios that I would detail down to the color of the stone that made up the walls.  This was, however, before I learned to write down every single thought I had, because sooner or later they all find a use.
I still kept imagining, though, even after I stopped playing, and these days it all goes on paper.  Sometime ago, I thought of a special little village, tucked away from the prying eyes of the world.  Beautiful things are wrought in it's houses and huts, but there's a reason.
Coming soon to a gaming store near you.  Will I mention it here?  Hell, yes.  The world is mine, after all.

My first stepping stone has sunk

If I haven't said it yet, I'd like this little place to be at least a bit 'family-friendly.'  I have a wide range of 'colorful' language that I tap into all too often, and while I know what I really mean, someone reading this can't hear the little variations in my voice that keep me from sounding like I have an IQ of point eight.  That's one of the limitations of the printed word.
That's the only reason this post doesn't start with the word F**K.
As you will have read, the first place to ever cough up precious dough for something I wrote was an e-zine called Absent Willow Review.  I found them when searching on Duotrope, and while I have an inherent distrust of e-publishing, I liked them.  They didn't buy stories, but I had been collecting a steady streak of rejections from most of the small list of places that did.  I was getting depressed about the whole damn mess, especially when I submitted something and had to fill out a little bit about myself, because they always ask you to list the last couple of places that you have been published.
So I sent it in, and I had a few soul-searching mopes soon after.  Once something is out, it's out.  Goodbye First North American Anything rights.  Did I mention that the list of places that buy reprints of horror fiction is even smaller?
When I got that e-mail saying they would be putting 'Roaming' up, I gasped like a soap-opera heroine.  Then I went downstairs and shaved. (Don't ask.  My wife asked, and I didn't have an answer) Then I printed out the e-mail, circled those magic words in red ink, and left it where my wife would find it when she got up, as it was then about one AM.
When I later got the OTHER e-mail, saying that my story had won their monthly editor's choice award, which would net me fifty dollars, oh boy, don't be anywhere in the room with me if being around the mentally unsound makes you nervous.  That was IT.  I had made money reaching into the little bag of nightmares in my head, and as of that moment, the world was a different place.  It was mine.
Absent Willow Review has shut down.
Drop the F bomb?  I will unleash a god-damned S**T-storm of thermonuclear F**K-nukes.  I will spew venom at you, him, her, and innocent passers-by until everyone within a thousand miles is pumping blood from their ears.  I will pull a Tarentino and carve the name of that blessed e-zine on the forehead of every poor SOB who looks at me with a puzzled expression because they never even heard of it.
All for nothing.  It's gone.  All those SOB's who never heard of it, can now never go check it out.
Upside?  None that I can see right now.  Gimmie a few days.  It took me a bit just to be able to write this.  Hopefully I can still say this place is 'Family Friendly.'

The next part

Man, I really stink at updating this thing.  That's on the plan to change.
So the first draft was finished.  I've picked up something else in the meantime, a little bit called 'The God Box,' and it's coming along nicely.  But the book needs to be rewritten, and the more I look at it, the more I realize just how much of it needs to be rewritten.  There are parts that when I read them I blink, and then mumble, 'Who the hell wrote this crap?'  The good news is, when I start all the way at the beginning, and skim completly through to the end, I've got a grin on my face that goes from ear to ear.
Thanksgiving was fun.  My wife and I prepare the traditional holiday pasta instead of cooking a bird, and this year we invited any and all of our friends who likewise didn't have plans to come over and relax.  There was a ton of food, and many a conversation about good movies, bad movies, and bad film/TV adaptations of comic books.
A full week of work to get through, and then my wife and I have a date at the gun range so she can get some time in with her Christmas present, which I gave her a month early.

Keep daydreaming.

WWSW

Which, of course, stands for 'What would Shakespeare write?'  I remember a conversation I had with my daughter, Maddy.  We were discussing 'Romeo and Juliet,' and she said that of course, she had read it.  She was in school, after all.
I remember my days of reading the same play, and how much fun I had when I was even younger than she is now listening to a vinyl record of 'Macbeth.'  The witches and the ghost scared the hell out of me, and during the summer when I had the time I would stay up late in the living room, listening to it over and over again.  The power of the play enthralled me, but I guess I was too young to get all the mature bits.  Growing up, I was told over and over again, in a thousand subtle ways, how the Bard's work was high art.
Then, I got my hands on one of the various Complete Works.  I still haven't read everything, but imagine how shocked I was as I went through 'Titus Andronicus.'  That stuff was raw.  I knew then why I had never seen that play in any schoolbook, and I hated every English teacher that I had ever had for cheating me of it.  They tried to educate me, but all they did was take a still image of something that lived and breathed, and scrub it and bleach it to make it clean and sanitary.  Then they served it up with pomp and circumstance and said, 'Isn't this beautiful?'
These were the plays people went to see for amusement, not enlightenment.  They were the primetime of their day.  If Shakespeare was around today, he'd be writing 'All my children' meets 'Saw.'

First draft is done

It's done.  I finished the last chapter earlier today, and I got the last few paragraphs of the epilogue written while waiting for my meal at Outback.  The first draft of my first book is done.
I know there's a ton more work I'm going to have to put into it.  It has to be rewritten, and all the blank spots where I just put the main idea in brackets have to be fleshed out.  Plus I need resolve all the contradictions that I created when I was halfway through a chapter and thought, 'Wouldn't it be cool if I did it THIS way instead?'
I started this book a few years ago.  I can remember sitting in my room back at UTA and scribbling a few paragraphs, thinking how cool it would be to write a book.
If I'm honest, it's a big regret of mine that I didn't work harder at my writing back then.  I have no idea what Roja would look like if I had completed it, because so much of the book it filled with places and events that I only experienced later.  Maybe it would have been better, maybe worse.  Even if I didn't write my book then, I could have finished short stories.
This is what I want to do.  This is what I want to get up in the morning and think about while I'm eating breakfast.  This is what I see myself doing from this point on until I'm gone.
I already know which book is going to be next.

The home stretch

I'm working on the last chapter.  I've filled in a small gap in an earlier segment that I had left unfinished simply because I work on one at a time, on paper, and had tucked that one into my notebook and forgotten it.  Once I finish this chapter, the only thing left will be the epilogue.  I already know I'm going to let it sit and ferment for a bit before I start the rewriting, but just being able to type in the words, 'First draft is done,' will be pretty amazing.
I've done a couple of quick readings, and it's amazing how different the story is now form when I started.  I'll start a segment or a chapter one way, and in the middle I'll think, 'wait, what if --' and then make a left turn at Albuquerque.  Now all I have to do is finish the damn thing, and then rip through it from beginning to end and make sure it makes sense.  No problem, right?
Just like pulling teeth with a set of tweezers.

Oh boy, what a weekend.

So my wife and I went to ArmadilloCon.  She went to hawk her wares, and I went to pick the brains of any authors who were brave enough to subject themselves to questions from the masses.  We loaded up the truck, and left after I got off work on Thursday night.
We made it as far as LaGrange, when the truck suddenly stopped getting into any gear other than first.  We pulled over, and steam from the engine convinced us to shut it off.  It was late, and we were in not-quite-but-damn-close to the middle of nowhere.  Triple A proved useless, as we were farther away from a repair place than my wife's contract would make them tow us.  The only friend we had that was going to the con was already there.
We called an old friend who was over in San Antonio on business, and who had web access.  He was able to guide us to a hotel a mile down the road, and we crashed there for the night.  The next day, he drove all the way to LaGrange, picked us up and loaded our stuff (including my wife's entire booth setup) into his truck and drove us to Austin.  He helped get everything into the hotel, before he drove back to San Antonio.
My wife worked the Con, and I helped a bit, but sales were down from the previous year.  My wife, being a bit more socially minded than I am, asked around for anyone who had a truck and who might be willing to tow hers back to Houston.
One of the other writers at the con, a guy who had a table in the dealer's room, volunteered to help us out.  He not only gave my wife a ride over to LaGrange, but took her to buy a towing mount to pull her truck.  Of course, the damn thing didn't fit, and we ended up talking to the manager of the hotel, who was kind enough to let us leave the truck there until we got back to Houston and figured out a new plan.  During that part of the adventure, I was back at the Con, tearing down my wife's booth, loading it into the same truck of the same friend who had come all the way back to Austin, just to help us out.  Have I mentioned that he had his infant son with him?  This guy was carefully stacking our gear in the bed of his truck while also keeping his baby in arm's reach and out of trouble.  On our way back to Houston, we stopped to make sure my wife had gotten her truck going, which of course, she hadn't.
Eventually, we got back to Houston, and I'm now biking to work until we sort this mess out.  My wife is off to another Con this coming weekend, and I'll be stuck in Houston because I couldn't get time off.
Both the guys who helped us are owed major thanks, and if I can get their permissions I'll put up links to them.  They really pulled our fat out of the fire.

Texas heat, current project, and Norway

Newsflash:  It's hot.  It's hot everywhere, but down here in the southern part of the US, we're in a heat dome.  Which means right now we're the last hot dog on the grill, the one that the cook forgot all about, and we're going to be cooking here for a while yet.  Most of my poor wife's garden has died and withered, except for her mutant tomatoes, which are still producing. (I swear those seeds must be from the land around Chernobyl.  Nothing else could explain how the plants are still alive)

I had my daughter down here from Ohio a couple of weeks back, and my writing got put on the back burner.  Now that I've picked it up again, I'm cranking out Mister Donovan's Cadillac, a fun little piece that I started some time ago about a company man with a company car, one that gives him a little too much information about his perfect wife.  I actually might finish the first draft either tonight or tomorrow, depending on how I feel.  My insomnia has gotten a bit worse lately, despite the fact that I'm getting up a little earlier in the mornings and hitting the treadmill.  Then it's back to Roja.  I could wonder if my creative procrastination about finishing my first book is due to dread of exhilaration at finishing it turning to letdown, (something that happens in my head quite frequently.  Graduating from boot camp felt -- odd.) or from knowing that the next step is getting it rewritten, a process which I compare to pulling your own wisdom teeth out with a pair of tweezers.

In the news right now is a twit named Anders Behring Breivik.  This guy apparently saw himself as a crusader, and determined that it was his solemn duty to save Europe from the Muslims.  Shortly after he set off a bomb and shot a whole bunch of people, everyone who he idolized broke all speed records in distancing themselves from him.  Can't say I blame them, but it's a case of too little too late.  Breivik, in my humble opinion, was less motivated by duty than by ego.  He says he was fighting a good fight, but look at what he did, and didn't do.  He didn't run for office, saying "Elect me and I'll get rid of all the Muslims!  They'll never set foot in this country again!"  He didn't run down to his local recruiting office and say, "I want to join the army!  Can I go straight to Afghanistan?  I want to fight Muslims!"  He didn't run down to the nearest fjord, buy a boat, stock it with supplies and guns, and then sail it to Morocco, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, and launch his own one-man amphibious landing, jumping ashore with guns blazing.  All of those would require work, the threat of humiliation, and the last two would actually be DANGEROUS.  He stayed at home, in a country without the death penalty, where he was warm and comfortable.  He set a bomb, and he shot some kids.  In all the news about this tragedy, I have yet to hear that any of the people killed were even Muslim.  He killed the people who had the misfortune to be in arms reach.
That's not the tactic of a crusader.  That's the showing off of a coward.

"This is getting better by the minute" - Predator

So now I read that Borders is going mammaries skyward.  I was originally going to title this entry 'Now what?', a quote from the movie Deep Rising, which is one of my wife and my favorite movies.  It's said nearly a dozen times in the film, just as things are about to get worse.
I can rationalize it to say that in the end, this is good for the industry.  If Border's couldn't make it out here in the real world, then it needs to evolve, or go extinct.  Natural laws have no pity. (You can look that one up)
But of course, those same laws apply to me, and I have no desire to go extinct.  Forgive me for sounding cannibalistic, but this means that the distribution portion of the market for the stuff I and all my fellow writers produce is now that much smaller, so now there are a lot more of us on a very small island looking at the same, solitary can of beans, and each other.  That's the trick about writer's groups and making friends at conventions:  Unless you don't write fiction, the people you're smiling at and talking to are your competition.  Back when I trained more actively, my sensei and I were having a discussion about all the end-of-the-world scenarios that were being tossed around, and the subject of food came up.  He said, "I'm never gonna starve.  There are too many steaks walking around on two legs."
That said, I'm going to get back to my writing.

By the way, how fast can you walk, or run?

It's ----ing hot.

Been back from A-kon for a few days, and have been fighting 'Con crud' pretty much since the moment I got in the door.  Sneezing and coughing all day long would be bad enough, but down here in Houston we're in the middle of the worst drought in a century.  I would say that it's hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk, but the truth is that if you took an egg outside, it would hard-boil in the shell before you could crack it open.  So in the middle of this, what happens?  A water pipe in my yard breaks because the soil, clay-based, has contracted too much for the pipe.  Trees and grass are dying all over town, and the street in front of my house is under an inch of water.
First draft of the 'The Necromancer of Kitty-kitty' is done, and I'm going back to finishing Roja and doing a re-write on Dirty.  While I was up in Dallas, I told Necromancer to a couple of the girls working Claudia's booth, and there were gasps and giggles, so hopefully it's a good one.
At dinner tonight I came up with one of the little tidbits that so often give my wife reason to wonder why she actually married me.  I imagined someone going out to eat at a Chinese restaurant, and as they walk out the door, presumably in view of other patrons, casually pulling out a half-dozen dog collars of various types and waving to the staff as they say, "Okay, see you guys next week."

By the way, if I never write another word as long as I live, it's all my daughter Madyson's fault.  She happened to mention this game that she plays on the computer, spider solitaire.  Having never even heard of it, I looked under my games file, and foolishly opened it up, just to see how it was played.  Now I'm hooked.

Late thoughts

The day before leaving for World Horror Con, I managed to do something to my ankle, a something that REALLY slowed me down.  I could put weight on it, and shift from side to side, but the tendon screamed at me whenever I tried to press down with the foot.  Just getting out of bed that morning was agony, and I had a bunch of chores that I needed to do before the trip.  Fortunately my wife has a small collection of canes that she uses for costumes, and I grabbed one with a nice skull-head on it as I hobbled out the door.
The first thing that I discovered was that with one foot out of commision, you can't walk.  Period.  What you knew as walking suddenly becomes something that you sit on the sidelines and watch other people do as they shoot past you.  I learned to keep the cane on my good side and lean on it when I lifted that foot off the ground, so I could do something besides lift my bad foot up and set it back down again.  That was how I got to the car and drove to the store.
Second lesson, you now have one arm to use, because the other is permanently holding the blasted cane.  Even if you're standing still, you have to hold it in your hand.  If you set it leaning against something, anything, it will fall.  I learned that lesson more than once.  This made getting around in the store while holding a small basket for the few items I wanted a damned joke.
Finally I had everything except some sugar-free candy.  I wanted to be able to use my Stranger shirt on everyone, and if someone didn't, or couldn't, eat sugar, I wanted to be ready with an alternative.  I looked in snacks, crackers, everywhere I could think of, before asking for help.
This was the middle of the afternoon, and there weren't a lot of store employees around, so I went up to the front.  As I slowly hobbled up there, the lady at the service desk noticed me and we made eye contact.  It was obvious where I was headed, and you know what she did?  She turned her head and looked down at her feet.  A few minutes later when I got up there, she was very polite, and told me that the diet candy was on an aisle where they displayed all the rest of the diet food.  As she came around to show me where it was, she  said, "This way" and took off like a shot.  I watched her leave me behind without even looking back.
I did follow her, and she was waiting up the aisle.  I picked a cherry-pomegranate flavored hard candy, popped it in my basket, and made the long trip up to pay and leave.
No harm, no foul, right?  Except that look she gave me sticks in my head.  It sounds silly to say it, but I made her uncomfortable by being unable to walk.  I used to work in retail, and I've had a few handicapped customers.  You be polite, professional, and you keep your game face on.  You sure as hell don't pretend that a woman in a wheelchair can get through a narrow space, or that a dwarf can reach the top shelf.  If you're not sure, ask.
I got through the con just fine, except for dropping my cane a few thousand times.  I even encountered a woman in the lobby, also using a cane, and both of us headed to the dealer's room.  So naturally, I asked her if she wanted to race.  I can walk just fine now, and wondering where I can fit the experience in something I write.
On another note, this latest delay in finishing Roja is all my wife's fault.  She and I were talking at dinner the other day, and the subject of silly phrases came up.  She popped out, 'The Necromancer of Kitty-kitty,' and wondered if that would be a good title for something. (she writes too) I am now three pages into the first draft of it.  Damn you, my love.

On seeing 'Priest.'

Okay, I'll admit I was nervous about seeing it.  The trailers promised so much, and they seemed to be pushing into every single level of epicness that exists.  It's about vampires, and they're scary.  Hell, the vampires aren't even human, and they never were.  The cities are nightmares of steel and propaganda, and everything else is wasteland.  The church is the only authority that exists.  Everything I saw in the trailers inspired that most dangerous emotion, hope.
They pulled it off.  As I'm writing this, it's been three days since I saw it, and I've had time to let that initial rush settle.  All the cool fight scenes and witty one-liners have found their places on the endless shelves within my head.  I've been to work, and I've thought about a million other things.  When I think of 'Priest,' my first feeling is the desire to see it again.
After my wife and I had bought our tickets online and were looking around on the web, we found some of the graphic novels that the film is based on. (on Amazon) From the descriptions, it seems that the writers might have altered the storyline a bit, which only makes me want to start reading the novels.  I can't remember which, but there is one with a short bit where it looks like one of the villians/creatures comes calling on the artist himself, and, among other things, asks him if he believes in God.
All in all, worth the time.  Without a doubt.

Back from my first World Horror Con

And what a Con it was.  I got to meet a lot of great people, have a ton of fun, and attend Brian Keene's seminar for writers.  I went in my 'Stranger' tee shirt, and provoked some giggles when I went around offering candy. (Smarties, the best) What surprised me is how many people didn't glance twice at the shirt when I did it, they just thought I was giving out sweets.  Of course, the looks on their faces when I pointed it out to them were priceless.  Especially Jack Ketchum.
Brian Keene's seminar, and the panels he was on, opened my eyes quite a bit.  He really got into the business aspect of the profession, and on a panel entitled 'How much do we make,' he was the only one with the balls to actually come out and state a dollar amount.  I think he was trying to get the other panelists to do the same, but they quietly shifted the conversation elsewhere.
There was a mass signing event, and I was able to thank David Nickle for writing Monstrous Affections, and afterward I sat in at a reading by some of the folks from Shroud Magazine.
All in all, more than worth it.  The swag bag alone had a ton of books and other cool stuff.  I'm already making plans to attend next year's Horror Con.

So my wife and I were in a local gun store the other day, looking for a small pistol for her, and the guy behind the counter not only notices her tatoo, but recognizes it as Cthulhu.  This leads to a brief discussion on Lovecraft and gaming, and it turned out that he knew a friend of ours.  Now if I had written that, would you believe it?
The book is up to 88k+, and I recently got that rarest of visitors, a personalized rejection letter.  Until I read it I had forgotten that my first submission, back in 2000, I think, also got one.  If I can ever find it, I'll put it up on my wall, as if I remember correctly it was from Weird Tales.

Good evening, Dave.

So now I'm back up and working.  My machine is running, with some slightly adjusted software, ( I had to download OpenOffice to be able to open my wps files) and I'm back on the treadmill.  My first draft is up to an 82k word count, and aside from having lost a TON of stuff, like all my demotivational posters, the life has resumed.  Onward and upward.

The 800 pound gorilla is not in your corner.

So my PC came down with something like the virus in 28 days later, and had to be wiped.  If I hadn't had a backup storage that I keep my stories on, you would've heard my agonized, soul-wrenching shriek, I promise.  I got my machine back from the repair place down the road on Thursday, only to find that my sound card still needed to be reconfigured.  So it'll be Monday at the earliest before I am cyber aware again.  I am grateful to my beloved wife for trusting me with her precious baby and letting me post.

 At Con DFW, I asked a writer on one of the panels (I'll grant him anonymity) what effect he thought the filing of chapter 11 by Border's was going to have on the industry.  His answer was that it's going to make Barnes and Noble's a bigger, stronger, 800 pound gorilla.  He talked about how big storefront chains like Borders and Barnes and Noble have been struggling for a while now, against things like Amazon and the rise of e-readers like the Nook and Kindle and books you can download onto your phone.

 Yesterday I went to go reacquaint myself with the gorilla.  It's been a while since I really looked inside the Barnes and Noble's that I used to frequent, and walking in there with fresh eyes, I realized just how much of their floor space is dedicated to selling things other than books.  They have racks of kits for things like origami and keepsake boxes.  The kits have books in them, so I can see how it fits, but it's less of a book than a ready made craft set.  They also sell toys, puzzles, and calenders.  Those items, plus the non-fiction and the kid's and young adult section, took up half the store.

Over in the other half, there were sections for magazines, books on art, and travel books.  In the fiction areas, I was really surprised to see how many reprints and collections of classics they had.  I would guess that about a quarter of the stuff they had sitting out was by writers who were dead, if not long dead.  I browsed around in the science fiction section for a while, and then in the general fiction.  The sign I kept looking for, but didn't see, was 'Horror.'  On my way out, I stopped by the information desk, and the young lady there informed me that they kept the horror mixed in with the general fiction.  It wasn't a surprise, but it was disappointing.

Shall I add that Border's has a horror section, as does the Half-Price Books that my wife and I just got back from?  If what Barnes and Noble's is doing helps them survive, then I'm all for it.  There are other venues, but especially for a guy pounding out his first book, B&N is important.  They will be the ones taking a book from an unknown writer and putting it up in front of the people who buy books.  That's what will put money in the writer's pocket.

So with that in mind, I'm a little more forgiving of all the emphasis I've been hearing about how important it is for a writer to get out there into the world and sell both himself and his book.  The book-buying public's options just became a little narrower.  As writer's, part of our new job is to widen it again.  Right now B&N seems to be adjusting to what the public wants, and if you can make them want you, guess what B&N might do?

So what, exactly, to do?  Well, I heard a story, again at a convention, about how Larry McMurtry once asked his publishers just where his books were selling, and they told him they were doing well at truckstops and diners.  So he went on the road with a van that dispensed coffee and beer out the back, and spent some face time with the working class folks who decided where his books ended up on the racks: down at the bottom, or up at face level.  Something like that might not work today, but the example is a good one.  The gorilla is not a single mind.  It's made up of thousands of different people, each with their own priorities.  That's the good news.  For now, I'm off to hunt down some bananas.

*Note: When I initially wrote this entry, I had to rush.  I've since smoothed it out a bit.*

A marker reached

I hit a bit of a milestone yesterday.  A short while back, I did some research on what the 'right' length for a novel is.  A bunch of the short stories that I've written have ended up in the 10,000 word range, and while I think that length gives you enough space to tell a good, rich story, anything like that is a pain to sell because most print magazines and anthologies want 5000-6000 word pieces.  There were different opinions, but many agreed that 80,000-100,00 words is a good length.
I started this book, Roja, a few years ago, and set it aside when I got a better idea of what the market and the competition are like, and focused on short stories so that I could get my name out there on paper somewhere.  Now that I've picked it back up, the last thing I want to do is look up when I'm done and realize I have a monstrosity the size of Atlas Shrugged.  I tend to have all sorts of great ideas about other stuff that should be added when I'm rewriting something, and while I don't plan on hacking out stuff that fits  someone else's formula, one of the end goals is to have something that some hard-working editor will pay me for.
Last night, while still cursing the fact that I seem to have lost one of the handwritten sheets of paper that I'm transcribing, I looked up after hitting the 'save' button once again, and did a word count.  80071 words.  Not bad for someone who used to abandon whatever he was working on whenever he got a new idea.
Next stop, who knows?  I'll keep you posted.

Allow me to introduce myself.

So who am I?  Well, what would you like to know?  I'm a writer who still has his day job, for a start, and what I'm focusing on right now is getting some short stories published while finishing my first book.  So far I've appeared in Absent Willow Review, (http://absentwillowreview.com/) winning their editor's choice award with 'Roaming' and getting my first paid sale.  Another of my stories, Trolls, tied for third place in the Fen Con VI short story contest.
I go to a lot of conventions, hitting FenCon, ConDFW, and A-Kon regularly.  This year World Horror Con will be in Austin, and I'm really looking forward to it.  While at cons I'm usually working at my wife's booth (Pan-gaia Designs) in the dealer's room when I'm not at panels.  If you're at one of the conventions, by all means stop by and say hello.
As you might have guessed, in addition to writing horror, I'm a big fan.  Mostly books and movies, but sometimes I'll find a painting, photo, or poem that touches the same nerve.  I read King, Matheson, Lovecraft, Poe, and am constantly picking up books by people I have never heard of before. 
I listen to old metal songs that remind me of the 80's, and new pop that makes me smile.  I'm a gamer, a veteran, and I've been told by more than one friend, usually in an exasperated tone while they're in the passenger seat, that I drive like a little old lady.
What I plan on doing here is talking about the stories I'm writing, have written, stuff by other writers that I recommend, and pretty much whatever else I feel needs to be said, in that order.  This is going to be where I talk to you, people who I feel the need to comment on, and myself.  I'll give you as much as I feel might pique your interest and not send you running away screaming.

Welcome.

Near midnight, and talking to myself again.

So I've heard the advice over and over again, that to get your name out there as a writer, you need to have a blog.  A blog lets the unsuspecting public get a peek into your mind, and later everyone can look back and laugh at all the dumb things that you will have said.
Well then, here we go.  Fair warning:  If you like good horror, whether in print or on film, or enjoy thinking for it's own sake from time to time, then you and I may have many a long evening of good conversation ahead.  I can be a bit blunt, especially about something I feel strongly about, but I have no plans to use this as a soapbox.  Polite comments are always welcome, impolite ones will be edited to make you look like an even bigger fool than you are.
On the other hand, if you frighten easily, or jump when you hear your name whispered when you know you're alone in the house, -- by all means, come on in.  That chair right up front is just for you.