Happy New Year, with plague

So the new year is here, and I'm starting it off with a cold.  We had some friends over for our new years eve party, and I suspect that one of them passed what feels like Black Death over to me.  Of course, we can't start the year off by calling in sick, can we?
The game module is coming along, and I wonder if there's not a short story or a bit of flash fiction that could be made from it.  Something small and tasty, like peppermint and belladonna.
I stayed up way too late last night, and it's all Jim Butcher's fault.  My wife is a devoted fan of the Dresden Files series, and one of our friends is one of the people who proofreads the comic book series, looking for those moments when the writers describe a characters eyes as blue when just a few books ago some other writer said they were green. (enthusiastic readers will know how important those people are.  The magic cracks just a little when all the ley-lines don't cross in the right places) I watched the TV series, and reading the first book makes me realize just how different the TV character is from the one in the books.  The TV Dresden seemed a little too deliberately weak for me to really empathize with.
I don't go for New Year's resolutions, but I do plan to start exercising more.
Still writing.

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.