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.

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.

Good news and bad news

Some time, back in the distant past, I had a spiral notebook in front of me and I was trying to figure out what a middleaged-plus dockworker would do if he suddenly became near-omnipotent, when I had a giddy rush and thought to myself, 'Holy crap, I'm writing a novel.' It was a major power-trip. I mean, a novel? War and Peace is a novel. Jurassic Park is a novel. The Shining, 'Salem's Lot, and Hell House are novels. Those are examples of novels, and I'm writing one?

Of course, the reality is, writing anything that size is serious work. Writing anything that size that is coherent is a lot of serious work, and writing anything that size that's any good, well, I'll wait until someone hands me money for Roja before I make a claim to knowing what writing a good one is like. I will, however, say that rewriting a novel, even before you know whether or not it's any good, is like breaking a hole in a brick wall by throwing individual grains of sand at it.

Now imagine how I felt last week as I started scribbling on the top of a blank page and thought, 'Oh wow, I'm writing my second novel.'

I've actually had the opening section written for a while, now. But thanks to my 'special' method of organization, I may have to re-create it. The first full-sized chapter opens with two young boys enjoying their summer vacation, and that's where the wholesomeness ends. Pondering a couple of events that I want to put in it, I realize this going to be a really nasty one.

If you've read the title of this entry, you're no doubt waiting for the other shoe to drop. On Monday, my wife got up after getting one night of sleep to recover from FenCon, including the moment when some idiot in one of the elevators hit the fire alarm, and she went to work. An hour or so later, she came home. Seems the higher ups at her company decided that had a few too many employees on the payroll. They laid her off.

To say that she is upset, or that I am upset, is a bit of an understatement. They were actually pretty nice about it, giving her a bit of a safety net. But as I told her, that's like someone putting a pillow under your head and applying ice to your nose after they've kicked you in the face. It's a nice gesture, but it's a nice gesture from someone who has just kicked you in the face. Now she's looking for a job, and at the same time prepping to run her booth at Oni-Con. She's pretty damn incredible.

Still writing, and by the way? I still get that same, 'Holy crap, I'm writing a novel,' feeling as I rewrite Roja.

By the way, this week is Banned Books Week! So go read something you shouldn't!

Challenge accepted, and met

Okay, I officially call wow on myself. That bit that I noted a couple of weeks ago about Stephen King being able write a short story in a few hours really stuck in my head. So on Saturday when Claudia and I went out for lunch, I took a notebook and pen with me. As we ate, I started scribbling on an idea that had come to me a while back, about a guy who stays young-looking. I didn't stop to talk or look around or anything else.

I had it halfway done by the time we left, and I picked it back up when we got home. I finished an hour later. At about 2800 words, it's short, which is good. Shorter means it has more markets that I can send it too.

I've hit the point on Roja where I've got to start chopping some of the old stuff, the good, squirmy images and concepts that I came up with long ago. It has to be done to make the whole book cohesive with how I've decided it ends. I think that somewhere earlier I explained that I started writing this beast years ago, only to put it on hold until I got some short stories published in order to get my name out to the public first. The plan was I could take the finished book to a publisher and say, 'This'll make you money. See, people are already reading my stuff.' Hindsight being ever so clear, that might have been a mistake. Of course, when I actually read those older paragraphs and scenes, the writing is crap. So maybe it wasn't.

I don't want to just throw all that original stuff away, so I'm going to save the whole book with a new file name, and then wade into that fucking thing with a machete.

I've already decided what book is going to be next: The Red Man Burning

Can't wait to write it.