Gobble gobble. It's done.

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. Now all the remaining turkeys can come out of hiding, weep over the dead, and start plotting their revenge. Sure, what do you think they do all the rest of the year? Turkeys have long memories, too.

Claudia and I had our traditional pasta, as neither of us really wanted to go through the ritual of bird immolation. I like to think that the pilgrims would have approved.

Oh, and we also shared a bottle of wine. In celebration. At about two in the afternoon, I typed two words at the bottom of a file that I've been pounding on for over a year. The End.

What did I do then? I cackled like a junior mad scientist who's just invented his first death ray. That was one of those moments when I wish I owned a camera that could have been pointing at my face, just so I could see the sort of dazed, manic expression that I was probably wearing. Then I wandered around the house, probably working on odd chores like loading the dishwasher or putting a load of laundry in, though I can't day for sure.

Then came time to print a copy for Claudia to read. I've been holding off replacing my printer cartridge, even though the few times I've had to print something I get a pop up saying something like, 'Warning! Anti-matter explosion immanent!' I got the first fifty pages of 'In The Dark' out before a newer, simpler message appeared. 'End of cartridge life.' My mental rendition of “Taps' turned into the theme from 'Psycho' when I took out the old cartridge and compared it to the new one that's been sitting on the floor still in it's box, collecting dust for a while. They didn't match. Not even close. Remember that crazed laugh? Picture it turning into the guttural scream that the Predator releases as it clamps it's wound shut. I feel like a fool for having to admit that I didn't realize the printer uses a hard plastic 'sleeve.' The sleeve pops put of the printer, and the cartridge pops out of the sleeve. The problem wasn't really solved, because it never existed in the first place. I had to replace the cartridge on my old one so many times that my hands knew how to do it all by themselves. Time marches on.

What now? Now I beg, borrow and steal all the friends I can find that are willing to beta-read for me. Now I put a bit of extra polish on Roja and look for an agent. Now I get my website built.

I've also started rewriting a short story that I've had on the back burner for a while, a really nasty one. I've also started writing my next book, 'The Red Man' burning.

What the hell am I doing?

Yeah, I missed an entry. Not the first, etc.

I'm chipping away at the unfinished bits of In The Dark, and I just had one of those moments where I feel like not only did I show up at work without my pants, but I left my keycard at home and I can't even get through the door. Some very unhelpful voice in my head is asking, “What are you doing? You've never written a science fiction novel before! This doesn't have any cool monsters or ray guns! It doesn't even have warp drive! How can you write a science fiction story were no one can go faster than the speed of light?”

I know that voice. It was with me just before I signed my name on the dotted line that would send me off to boot camp and guarantee that the next four years of my life would be planned out by someone else. It told me I was making a mistake by getting married, divorced, and then married again. That whispering, shrieking, laughing voice is with me every time I make an important decision, have a chance to take something back, or see someone better or worse off than I am now. Sometimes it offers good advice, so I can't just tell it to go get lost. Hell, sometimes I listen to that voice, write down what it says, and then go use all of it in a story. Sometimes it talks like my mom or dad, or schoolteachers who I never quite saw eye to eye with. Sometimes it's even the voice of people I see every day, and who I know would say those exact things if I asked for their opinions. Maybe someday I'll stop hearing that voice, but maybe not.

In this particular case, though, I am telling it to get lost. It spoke to me while I was writing Roja, telling me I would never finish it.

Still writing.

The world's biggest marshmallow

So yesterday, my wife and I brought home a new addition to the household. She's named Diamond, is a boxer/retriever mix, and in the first hour she had established herself in the pecking order somewhere below our long-haired cat. A single paw-swipe at her nose sent her running away and hiding behind my wife, who was trying to be supportive while laughing so hard she had to sit down.

The book is coming along, slowly, but it's getting where I need it to be. I'm also looking at new markets where I can submit some of the stories I have sitting around on my hard drive. Also, I'll probably go through Roja at least one more time before I consider it ready to use as agent-bait. It's nice to have a plan of what to do. Now the only thing left is to follow through.

Some small part of my brain is also going back to The Red Man Burning. I haven't worked on it in a while, not since I missed getting In The Dark done on time (which still annoys the hell out of me). I'm having to go back to all those weird, awkward moments from when I was a kid. That's a time when you have to find your own way in a world where you have almost no say in what goes on in your own life, the people who have power of life and death over you have a set of priorities that they created long before you ever showed up, and everything from doorknobs to grocery shelves are designed for people who are six inches to a foot taller than you. Childhood has been romantisized in our culture into some magical, beautiful period in our lives when the world is fresh and beautiful and there's no lesson so hard that we can't get through it. I'm sure someone, somewhere, grew up in a place like that, but the more people I meet, the more I think that childhood is when spirits are broken and psychopaths learn just how well they're going to fit in. We all go through that period, and then we selectively scrub our memories of it until we're left with something we can tell ourselves and other people.

That's what I need to capture.

In the middle of writing this, Diamond started whining, which we've figured might be her signal for 'Could I step outside for a moment? I have some business to attend to.' I was only planning on taking her out into the backyard, but right now it's cool and misty out, with something that's not quite fog thickening up to the point where anything farther than a block away is hidden in soft gray clouds. I grabbed her leash and we both took a tour of the neighborhood while her toe nails clicked on the sidewalk, and every other sound was muted by the mist. Beautiful.

To end this on a cheery note, if I can get this to work right, I'll be posting a picture of our new dog right here. She's a big, furry lump of woof, and she's dozing in front of my desk while I'm writing this.

Still writing.

Don't trip and fall. Don't trip and fall. Don't trip and fall.

Yeah. I haven't been posting. This time of year is crazy enough, and on top of all the normal things I have a self-imposed deadline of the end of the year to finish In The Dark. So I'm running that last lap, seeing the finish line get ever closer and closer, and the image of slipping and planting myself face first into the dirt is the one that keeps popping up in my head. So I haven't been posting.

I have taken some time (small amounts) to do something besides sit and curse at my pc. My best beloved took me out to see the National Museum of Funeral History the other day, and that was a really fun place to visit. They've got hearses and carriages and vehicles to haul people, living and otherwise, that I never knew existed. Their exhibit on mourning clothes should definitely be seen, preferably when you're the only one in the building, and it's late at night.

We have good friends over to celebrate New Year's Eve, something that's a tradition in this house. Let the revelry commence just as soon as I and my wife get home from working that night.

Let it commence when I'm done writing.

Edit:  Wow, this is my 100th post!  Onward and upward!

Grinding, recreating, and dealing with squatters

Rewriting a book is like opening your mouth in front of a mirror, picking one of your molars at random, and then pulling it out with a set of tweezers. I know I've said that a couple of times before, but until I find a more apt metaphor, we're all stuck with that one. There are a trillion little places in 'In The Dark' that need patching, smoothing, or nuking and paving, and going through it is slow.

While I'm at work I'm cruising around a warehouse on an order-picker, sometimes muscling ninety-pound reels into a cart while fifty feet up in the air, so I can't keep a paper or digital copy with me. Not that I would ever write when I should be working. Never.

But I do get breaks, and it's not worth it to haul stuff from my car and then back again. So to fill those voids that would otherwise be spent talking to my co-workers about baseball or football, I've started rewriting an old story of mine, from scratch. I had the damn thing done and finished some years ago, but I think it was one of the ones that never got typed in. It was all on paper, and somewhere during a divorce, a move, and then another move, those pieces of paper ended up somewhere besides where I can find them. So I'm slogging through familiar territory and hoping I can remember all the cool parts. Of course I won't be able to, but the fun part is that I have another chance to not write all the mistakes that the first version had, whatever they were.

With Handsome Devil coming out in January, I've been putting thought into promoting it, and myself, in every single way that I can. Which means it's time to get dragged another precious few inches into the twenty-first century. So one night I wrapped my security blanket around my shoulders, and (with the help of my wife, who has mumbled more about this type of thing in her sleep than I will ever know) tried to buy a website with my name on it. Now imagine the look on my face when I found the dot com address already taken. I've known that other Stephen Pope's exist for a while now, and some of them even have my middle initial, but there was nothing about a person on the site. Just a colorful, cheery-looking ad for all the great stuff a certain web company offers. Nothing at all to do with the site name.

Was the site mine to begin with? Heck no. That company could and probably has made the claim of just taking the initiative and getting their name out there. But of course, the old, childish argument of 'I didn't see your name on it,' comes to mind. Websites are organized according to our language system, and that means some have people's name on them. That makes them not interchangeable, as it makes no sense for Ed Gruberman dot com to be a page dedicated to the life of Albert Einstein, and it was about Mr. Einstein hardly anyone would ever find it.

Should we have to pay for those sites? Yes, because that's how the computers that store the sites are paid for. That company paid for the site, and they got it. There's not really a right or a wrong at work here, I believe. Just that sense of recognizing, again, that the universe does not take our feelings into account.

So I bought Stephen Pope dot net. Now all I need is to pay someone who knows what they're doing to make me a really cool website on it, full of zombies, ninja, and sparkly unicorns that twerk. Fame and fortune are bound to follow.

Until then I'll keep writing.

Next

So, while I'm on pins and needles waiting for January to hurry up and get here, what am I doing?

I've just sent off a query to The Dreadful Cafe, telling them what a fantastic fit 'Stilling the Demons' would be for their Membrane anthology. The last time I tried to sell that story to anyone was back in October, and Tor graciously declined, so it needed some air. Yesterday my lady love and I had lunch with our friends Jen and Jeremy, who own Hot Goblin Press and the Mana Punk gaming system. He's looked over Bittermint Tea and Ironlace Orchids, and he had some suggestions about ways to tweak it. One bit of advice he gave sticks with me. When you're writing an adventure module, if you can get the players to say WTF in the first five minutes, you've got them. Jeremy's been doing this for a while, and I'm pondering ways to follow his hint.

It's bugging me a bit to have In the Dark and The Red Man Burning sitting on the back burner, but I already have one book finished, and I need to work on getting it sold. I saved a copy of it to my Kindle so I can read it during my lunch breaks, and I'm seeing a place or two where it could be stronger. I was rushed to get it ready for the Amazon contest, and I have to admit it's not as good as it could be. I still get to grouse, though. They rejected it on the first past, meaning they never read anything but my pitch.

Oh, I'm also waiting on the contract for Dirty to arrive in the mail. I can not put into words how cool it is to type those words.

Am I still writing? Hell yes.

Rocket Science

So I'm rewriting 'In the Dark,' which is science fiction. This compels me to dust off my interest in all things sciencey. A while back I heard about this weird new form of propulsion that someone is experimenting with. It seems that a LOT of a rocket's power is used to get up off the ground and into space. Those bloody huge tanks that were attached to the space shuttle? They were dropped off after it got into orbit, because their job was done. So someone a lot smarter than me got the bright idea to leave all of that stuff on the ground, and just use the power itself to get the spaceship up where it belongs. They fire a laser at the bottom of the craft, which is shaped like a parabolic dish, and that burns the air inside the dish into plasma. If I'm interpreting the information correctly, they use a pulsed laser, getting individual mini-explosions that 'pop' the craft up like a machine gun. Take a look at them here: http://www.lightcrafttechnologies.com/

I found a video of one of their tests, and damn that thing took off. They were using a test craft about the size of a cantaloupe, and it shot into the air like so many of the experiments that I've seen on Mythbusters. Then I started to imagine what something ten times as powerful could do with a ship that was already in space, away from things like gravity and atmosphere. I didn't know what I might do with that thought, but later on I got this idea about a guy who is a cop in another solar system. Bingo.

I got 'Waste Not' sent out for a vengeance-themed anthology, and submitted 'Trolls' for another one about rediscovering fantasy. I'm also still looking for someplace to send my newer, leaner version of 'Roaming.'

By the way, if you ever hope to have another productive moment in your life, do not take a look at the Internet Anagram Server. (http://wordsmith.org/anagram/) It lets you punch in a word or string of words, and it spits out every single possible combination of the letters that could possibly exist. Before I ran away screaming, I tried it with my own name, and one of the results was, 'He pens Pepto.' Not sure if that will enhance my writer's mystique or not.

Still writing.

When is a dump not a dump?

So just what have I been doing? As far as writing goes, not a whole hell of a lot. A couple of years ago I joined the safety committee at my day job, and recently the guy in charge was shuffled to another division. So now I'm trying to tell my peers to stop and look around a corner before they come tearing around it, driving either an order picker or a forklift and hauling either a thousand pounds of wire or a pallet of light bulbs. Doing that is easy. Doing it and not sounding like an asshole is a little more difficult.

I had lunch with a friend today while my wife enjoyed some silence, and while enjoying some quality enchiladas, my friend and I had a conversation about Bob from the Dresden Files, and Michael Crichten's books. This leads me to ponder something relevant to rewriting In The Dark: How do you dump a whole lot of information onto your reader and avoid losing them?

While my platoon sat on a ship for over nine months and waited to find out whether or not we were going to be sent in to multiple layers of mines, barbed wire, and people who really wanted to kill us, we played cards, watched movies on a TV that we bought ourselves, and did whatever we could to pass the time. I don't remember where I got it, but one of the books I devoured during that period was The Andromeda Strain. I had fallen in love with the original movie when I was a kid, and thought it would be a fun read. This was back during the period of my life when, while I was definitely aware that sometimes things were changed between the book and making a movie, I didn't really understand why, and wouldn't have sympathized if someone explained it to me.

Early in chapter one I realized that this wasn't exactly the story I already knew, and in that same chapter I began my education in viruses, bacteria, and all other kinds of bugs that can do nasty things to the human body. It kept my interest, because I like that kind of stuff, but it definitely broke the spell of storytelling. You do that, you're in trouble. Part of the reason Jim Butcher's Dresden books work, is because Bob is part of the story, and not just a 'talking head.' We learn the nuts and bolts of magic while the plot advances, and we never really notice that new data has been downloaded into our heads. The movie version of Andromeda Strain had to do a bit of info-dumping, and they got away with it by using shorter scenes where Person A, who knows something, has to explain it to person B so that B can go do their job. Plot advances, mission accomplished.

In the Dark is going to be science fiction. That's going to be pretty obvious from the beginning. But that still leaves me needing to say, 'Okay, people here are basically the same as you and me, with these exceptions. If you're comfortable with these specific new technologies, you'll have no problems in this world. There are no telepaths, no little green men, and no lightsabers.' I've got a bit of an advantage in that it's as close to hard science as I can make it and still have the story. I can define by exception from the real world rather than build a new world from scratch. There are a few differences, but those differences are important.

So that's what's spinning around in the background of my head while I'm trying to convince my supervisor that having everyone know ahead of time that he's going to get on the PA system and just say 'Fire drill,' is not a real fire drill. I'm sure whatever problems I encounter will end up in the book.

By the way, because I promised my wife I would post it: On Friday I came home from work, and right after I put my stuff down I went to give her a hug. When my hand went around her, it found something sharp on her back. As I pulled it up to look at what was lightly stuck in my palm, she says, 'Oh there's where that needle and thread went.' Perils of being married to a costumer. I got her back, though. When I had a reheated Monte Cristo sandwich for dinner, and she expressed her disdain for my sandwich, I thrust it at her, proclaiming, 'The power of Cristo compels you!' Getting 'that look' from her is one of the great joys in my life.

Still writing.