A monster of a tale…

This morning I finished writing a short story I’ve been plucking away at since 2015 but haven’t touched since 2017. I think at one point I submitted a clearly unfinished version to a friend for one of his anthologies, which he rightly pointed out. It’s something I realized I had to do to get back in the writing groove, last month, so it was good to get it done. It’s another story that is from various vantage points, which is something I’ve realized works very well for my style of fiction. I especially like the idea that different people know different things, and so assembling such stories is like putting together a puzzle. Sometimes this can work in macro, and sometimes micro, which is what this one was. It also allows me to juggle the scope of the story, where I can pull out dramatically as a kind of commentary, or dial in closely. 

Naturally I began thinking I could definitely put together another short collection with it and various other works, although first it’ll finish out its run at my writing blog. I’ve still got a lot of interesting things just sitting there waiting for a permanent home. 

Dzanc you very much...

This week I found out Dzanc Books was not going to be honoring In the Leviathan in its longlist, shortlist, or distinction of actually winning its 2023 novel contest.  And that's okay.  I'm going to keep looking for publishers.  I may revisit the utter lack of self-publishing I've done this year (except for Liz & Pepe, the 2023 Christmas collection for family I just pushed through a moment ago), or who knows?  I have some poetry collections I will probably definitely continue releasing, now that I think of it (and this reminds me that what I should be doing in the minutes ahead is write more of that)...

I of course also want to get back into the actual business of writing, which of course occurred recently with Liz & Pepe (a short work, but the lead was, like its predecessors, generously of novella length), which I kept procrastinating as more of the relevant details surfaced in the thought process.  While I found it easy in recent years to meander through writing projects, or barrel through some or parts of them, I've been in a different mode for much of this year.  I was happy, most of all, to have written Leviathan, which was satisfying on a number of levels, and while I quickly came up with new projects, knew there were older ones, and how I could improve those older ones, I didn't feel the urge to jump on them as I thought I might.  

Sometimes being rejected by a publisher or a contest will plunge me into some form of obvious depression, but that didn't happen this time, which was also an encouraging sign.  It would have been awesome to have a different result, but it was also nice how quickly Dzanc made its deliberations and announcements, and actually quicker than I was expecting.  I would've loved to have been able to write in the pages of Liz that I have a publishing contract for the first time ever, but it was also nice to not be able to, if that makes sense.  

The journey continues.

I’m just gonna reiterate this…

Writing is not always writing.

Sometimes it doesn’t look like writing at all. When I’m deep into a project and actively writing and it’s going well, I absolutely believe writing every day is a reasonable axiom. But it’s not always like that, especially if you haven’t started writing yet, or even sometimes in the middle of a project.

Because sometimes you’re not going to be writing because your subconscious knows you have more thinking to do. Because writing is mostly thinking. 

A Journal of the Pandemic #35

Somehow, since the last time I wrote an entry in this series, the pandemic has kind of begun to rear its ugly head again.  As expected, its place in common conversation has vastly diminished, even as there are efforts to bring back things like mask mandates.  Hey!  I've literally been walking around every day with a mask in my back pocket since the original mandates were lifted last year.  It remains common for those who are infected to put masks back on at least for a little while, and I still have one coworker who never stopped wearing hers at all.

COVID still makes its periodic rounds.  Infections happen, and they ripple along, and there's still the newer urge to hide them as best as possible, and it's becoming ordinary to not even know if you do have it, since testing has greatly diminished as a response.  It does seem, if anything, this latest round is marked by a relatively brief lifespan, if that makes it seem any better.

This year I've gotten to spend time with my niece, the Burrito, and family, not once but twice, the first (and second!) time since the pandemic began, and neither time came with any infection entanglements (I was a tad under the weather the first one, but even that posed no difficulties).  The first was a trip to see them and the second my second-ever trip to DisneyWorld, and second trip to Hollywood Studios, which given the five year gap between visits gave the park ample opportunity to settle nicely into its Star Wars environment (there are other features, including the classic Tower of Terror, which I rode before they arrived, and is officially the only drop ride I will probably ever enjoy).  I snapped about a million pictures of the Millennium Falcon alone.  I cannot believe this thing exists in the real world (but flies in reality about as well as it did just before the events of The Force Awakens, although the flight simulator is somehow even better than Star Tours, which of course I enjoyed again).  It seemed like there were ordinary levels of park attendance.  

It's been a month since the second visit, and I can't believe it's already happened, much less that both visits happened, within a span of months.  I'm beyond grateful.  I opted to pause an opportunity that came up last year, even though I visited my other sister, my first post-pandemic adventure, so to have gotten both scheduled and to have already occurred is a huge relief and a significant step back forward.  I never want to take for granted having experienced so much of this relatively unscathed, since many, many people can't say the same, but I felt a considerable resentment about how it played out, initially, how it disrupted things, and while it's only been a few years, just back in March I was still disgruntled over it, and now I've had a few experiences that for really only a brief moment were impossible.  Sometimes you have to let a little perspective sink in.  Forget everything else.  The important things, as long as you hold onto them, aren't so easy to shake loose.  

For three years I've wondered when these little entries were going to stop, and I guess now they're a part of my story.  Originally I would try to include my writing journey, since this is a writing blog, and yet, now, I've begun to integrate this time into the regular workings of my life.  It's not quite background yet.  But it's getting there.

Did not throw baby out with the bathwater, thank you...

I had my observation for the CDA process a few weeks back, and as such turned in Don't Throw Baby Out with the Bathwater, the professional portfolio I had to put together and previously considered compiling as an actual book (with inserts).  It probably wouldn't have mattered a whole lot how I did it, since the observer (it was a good experience, all considering, don't get me wrong) didn't spend too much time looking at it.  I ended up putting the portfolio in the same fashion as I did the collection I submitted as my thesis for college, a three-holepunch-folder.  Anyway, it was certainly interesting to work on the thing, and I have the CDA test coming up in two weeks, and that will conclude the process, and I will be a slightly more official caregiver as a result.

I have a bunch of projects I am definitely going to probably tackle in the near future.  Before we dig into that let's just acknowledge the pause I've entered in self-publishing.  This is because I submitted In the Leviathan for publication and it feels weird having that floating around at the moment and continuing the slightly less legitimate business that has sold single digits of copies of all the books I've put out in the past decade.  This means a pause for the poetry collections I don't tend to advertise here, and republication of Cloak of Shrouded Men as The Man Comes Around, and A Guide to 52, a project I tackled and abandoned previously but dug back into earlier this summer.  

Not included in that embargo would be the Christmas collections I've been doing for family.  This year's is entitled Liz & Pepe, and I've got all the elements sketched out and will probably begin writing it either in the next few days or when I'm on vacation in another week's time.  Actually, I've more or less been on vacation for most of the past week with Idalia having made its way through town.  I once again got lucky with the hurricane business, although the uncertainty of the experience this time as compared to Ian last year apparently settled my nerves only a little without having to be evacuated this time.  So I sat around waiting to see how things would turn out without really spending the time overly wisely.  Got some reading done.  That's the extent of my achievements, there.

Anyway, as I pretend I'm going to be writing Collider any minute, it occurred to me that I really ought to have the next book in the Danab Cycle in fighting shape, only to discover it absolutely wasn't, and so some of my recent writing escapades was spent revising the outline for The Fateful Lightning.  Surprisingly, I not only figured out how to do so, but a better way to do so not very long later.

All that and The Children's Crusade, which part of me really wants to tackle sooner rather than later, and maybe I really will.  Maybe I'll tackle Liz & Pepe, Collider, and Crusade all before the end of the year.  I've certainly worked on multiple projects simultaneously before!

Sometimes I've dumped a lot of projects into blog posts like this and I Grant Morrisoned them later, but it is absolutely not the intention for any of these.  Writing the Bathwater portfolio was a small but notable task in itself, after Leviathan in the early months of the year, and usually I haven't just launched directly into continuous projects (although I have on occasion, with shorter works, which is what was consuming me the last few years).  I've been pushing upward with wordcounts, getting back into full-length shape, and while there was certainly a period where I tackled that on a yearly basis, the last one remains the messiest thing I've ever written, and even the lost manuscript from the midsection I wouldn't really be happy with today.  So it's good to be at a pause.  I'm okay with it.  Wanting to plunge back in.  But this is not a writer who believes writing regularly means what some think.  Just knowing I have these major projects imminently in the pipeline is exhilarating.

Then there's the business of actually being read...

Well, technically started writing again...

 When last I wrote, I was in the midst of gridlock.  I've begun clearing space.

I just finished the bulk of Don't Throw Baby Out with the Bathwater, the professional credentials project, so I have the mental space to tackle further fiction.  I needed the space between projects.  I'd been hard-traveling, one project after another, for a year and a half, and I had planned to keep going, but I knew I needed a pause.  I always have those.  It was easier to tell when I was writing novel-length manuscripts a decade ago, but I had started doing shorter projects, and only recently started building back up the bulk.  

Now I quibble with myself: this one or that one?  I don't want to make the decision immediately.  It's okay.  It's fine.  I actually just submitted In the Leviathan somewhere.  I even had pay (it's a contest, not a vanity publisher).  I'm currently telling myself I'm not going to lose my mind when I find out I didn't make the cut.  It is what it is.  I know this one was worth writing.  I'll see how it goes.  I don't want to publish this one myself.  But you never know.

I'm trying to relax more, as a writer.  

Still haven't started writing again, but that's okay.

A few weeks back I finally spent time with the Burrito (my niece) again, and the whole experience was wonderful.  I ended up with material for the next Christmas chapbook, just not as I wildly imagined it (actively collaborating with the Burrito, who recently won an award for a poem she wrote, by the way).  The Burrito has a younger brother and sister these days.  Liz & Pepe, as I'm currently imagining the title (and see no reason to consider changing it), is named after my youngest niece (and goddaughter!) and her grandfather, my dad (Pepe is French for grandfather).  

I also cooked up another potential novel-length concept, Whitman.  Haven't yet started writing again, but I keep reminding myself that only a few months ago I finished In the Leviathan, and until the Vella era I typically took much longer breaks between long projects.  I also have Don't Throw Baby Out with the Bathwater, technically a professional development project, that I'll be writing, hoping to publish it via Kindle for a particularly professional result (these tend to end up being three-ring binders when they're done by others).  

I kept telling myself, before the trip, wait on the trip to begin working on Children's Crusade.  And here we are weeks later and I still haven't.  Yesterday was the start of a four-day weekend for Memorial Day, so I certainly have plenty of time to work on writing (which I count these trips to the library, when I do the bulk of my blogging efforts these days, as part of, hoping next, as in right after this, to tackle a sequel to Dead Butlers, the scripting exercise that led to Nine Panel Grid).  (As I write this, I'm seriously considering making it a prose effort and not another script.)  (Anyway, just a relatively minor writing effort, keeping the juices flowing.)

All this and gamely plugging Event Fatigue on Twitter occasionally, hoping some schmo will help spark interest in it.  When I think about how far I am from even a figment of someone's imagination of the traditional publishing life, I sometimes regret that.  But getting to write exactly what I want ain't so bad, either.  It led to Leviathan, which could conceivably change all this.  Who knows?  Stranger things have happened.

EDIT: Wrote the "Man in the Box" thing, in comic book script format.  You can read it here.  

So I cooked up TWO new novel(ish)-length projects…

After finishing up In the Leviathan, I certainly didn’t expect I would quickly come up with new projects that weren’t Collider. But I did anyway.

The Children’s Crusade is something I sketched out pretty rapidly once I came up with the idea, tracking a cast of twelve characters across ten sections (two are linked pairs). Using much the track I’ve been riding since first tackling Kindle Vella, I’m pretty confident I can do this. Despite the title, this is not related to the Middle Ages (umm…not technically!), nor Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, but rather that old American chestnut the Fountain of Youth.

And then even more recently I conjured A Centaur Died., another vision of the modern world. These are both very much literary fiction, which I figured was probably a good thing to have in case anyone is interested in publishing Leviathan.

I envision about ten weeks writing Crusade, but I haven’t yet worked out the details in that regard with Centaur. It’ll keep me busy writing in 2023, anyway. Crusade will hit at least 50,000 words (we’ll see how many!), and draws from work experiences both past (as in a decade ago) and present, among other things. By this point I’m pretty clear on how I best approach my fiction, especially long-form. So I would be foolish to back off while the going (at least the writing!) is good. That’s why this is happening.

A Journal of the Pandemic #34

This month marks three years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, as it was widely experienced, that swept the entire globe and triggered a series of lockdowns and other measures that severely impacted normal life.  It's the first anniversary where those restrictions are all but completely over.  People still get sick.  People are no doubt still dying.  Some people are still wearing masks.

The mask thing really gets me.  It's become normal for some people, just an instinct they have when someone gets sick near them.  Or maybe it's when they've become aware of a specific, COVID-related infection.  I don't know.  I'm not really asking anymore.  Some people still drive in their cars, by themselves, with masks on.  Which never made sense in the first place, but that's humanity for you.

The state of the world's economy is still attempting to process all of this.  In the news recently are banking institutions running into considerable problems.  Are we seeing the end or only the very beginning of all that?  I would assume the latter.

I still consider the panic at the start of this to have been wildly misjudged.  But then, panic always is.  It's kind of the definition.  There will be the diehards who will never even consider reconsidering the initial response, the call for dire panic.  For three years I've watched this play out around me like everyone else.  No one in my immediate community of experience died from COVID-19.  That's three years.  Not one death.  No one from the workplace, not one direct family member.  There were a few very older members of the extended family.  

Of course it still infects people.  Because of the panic, there was an equally strong push, eventually, not to give in to the same measures.  The measures curtailed.  And then there were really no measures at all.  

Three years ago, things were disrupted that began a chain of events that cannot be undone.  In a little over a month, I'll see my niece in person for the first time since before the pandemic.  I'll meet her brother and sister for the first time, both born since the pandemic began.  Three years is a long time, even longer for a young child.  I've now basically missed half her life.  Phone conversations ended up not being nearly good enough.  I'm not a real part of her life.  There are other factors involved, sure, but for three years, I was not free to make decisions as I liked.  There were plenty of people who took to traveling as they pleased almost immediately.  As long as they said the right things, wore the right headgear, took the right medicine, no one batted an eye.  Tell me how that squares with the urgency, the panic that so many people pushed as the narrative we were supposed to accept three years ago?  

Some people are quick to pick up the thread left by others.  They're quick to condemn, to judge, to convict, and they call this justice.  They're perfectly happy to suffer the consequences, and the next minute they'll complain and say it's really the fault of the other guy, because they didn't do something, they didn't do enough.  Listen, the panic was a right and proper panic button.  It did what it was supposed to do.  Three years later we're really only beginning to pick up the pieces.  We still have no idea what this unprecedented event in human history hath wrought.  Never before has humanity united in such fashion.  Never before have we agreed to such measures.

Well, I'm sure there are people happy with all this.  And a very good day to them, too.

Finished writing In the Leviathan

Yesterday I finished writing In the Leviathan. It clocked in at 42,000 words or so, following the bulk of its narrative squarely on Canadian transplant Montague and then most of the rest on his grandson Tim and finally an epilogue on a woman named Kerry. That last chapter wasn’t in the notes, but as I was writing I found I needed/wanted to revise the outline. I started writing mid-January, and circumstances allowed me to finish in about two months, so that was nice, and I can say I’m done a story I planned writing for about the past five years, which is even nicer. The whole experience is another milestone of my recent writing career, and a good way to begin the year, carrying the momentum of what I’ve accomplished the last few years.

The question, of course is, what comes next? I want to make a push at traditional publication for this one, although it’s also such a personal story I’m not at all averages to putting it out myself and sharing it around the family, where it will resonate deepest. Of everything I’ve ever written, it has the greatest chance of eliciting notice and comment from loved ones, which is something most writers secretly crave.

Well, we’ll see.

Writing In the Leviathan

About five years in the making, I'm finally tackling In the Leviathan.

This is the book based on my grandfather's life.  I've been working on research for it, and if I were a different writer, that's exactly what I would still be doing now, but one of the things I've realized over the past twenty years is that I am not a different writer, and I've been developing a style and viewpoint that I've grown comfortable utilizing.  

Most of what I've written has fallen into sci-fi/space opera, or some other subgenre.  I've tackled literary fiction (notably the Americana Trilogy, otherwise known as the Miss Simon books, which will still be revisited once I have the courage to tackle an even more ambitious book I've been developing for the same twenty-year span, which has gone by a number of titles, but the one listed as a label on this blog is Miss Simon's Doom, which seems to still work for me), but never like this, never so personally.

I pushed past the first six of twenty-one chapters last month, and now we'll just have to see how the rest goes.  With any luck I will write another one (or two!) later today.  The holdup is that this is a crucial chapter, the crux on which the narrative pivots, in which a full understanding of the main character, Montague, stands revealed, which is particularly important since this is also why I wanted to write this in the first place.

No pressure!

Not-the-Tonys 2022

Ha! So obviously this isn't quite yet an annual tradition (the first and only previous edition was in 2020), but I figured it was worth revisiting, since everyone loves an end of the year wrap-up.

Favorite Writing Project:

Obviously this would be Event Fatigue, which I've chronicled here as extensively as anything else on the blog in the past decade (and hey! 2022 was also the decade anniversary of the blog!), tackled over at Kindle Vella throughout the year and eventually my final self-published book of the year (there were many!).  Basically it was my only project in the past year, but it was quite an interesting one, and as I've stated, the longest work I've written in about the same timespan as this blog's existence.

Favorite Family Memory:

This one actually has a few options.  My niece, the Burrito, although our conversations via FaceTime have dwindled in the past year (she's just so busy!!!), we had some good ones, including at the start of the year (the inspiration for key elements in Uncle Toby), and on her birthday (in which she confessed a vulnerability).  But I made a trip to Alabama to attend my oldest nephew's high school graduation, and that was not only my first trip since the start of the pandemic, but also a rare trip to that particular leg of the family.  Lots of good food was had, and a lot more interesting things happened than I am going to get into here (but not in any of the ways you're probably currently imagining!), so with apologies to the Burrito, it has to take the spot here.

Favorite Work Memory:

I finally got to switch room assignments (not really going to get into that, either), which led to a whole odyssey of my second real miracle at this job, the second time I have definitely helped a child in my care.  Nothing can possibly top that!  Also notable was the time off due to Hurricane Ian, and then the day off due to Hurricane Nicole!  Sometimes work memories don't necessarily involve work.  Everything worked out both times, at least in my neck of the woods, thankfully.

Favorite Book (New):

The Ink Black Heart, the latest Robert Galbraith mystery featuring Strike & Ellacott.  I know the author has become controversial, but any rational person wouldn't possibly let that get in the way of a great book.

Favorite Book (Old):

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, which I finally got around to reading, and thank goodness, because I obviously loved it.  Kya is the American Lisbeth Salander.  The movie adaptation is great, one of the best movies of the year, too.

Favorite Book (Comic):

Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King & Bilquis Evely, a combination of King explaining as no creator before him has what makes Supergirl great (and distinct from her cousin), and an original story that he weaves around her, the first time he's told an almost wholly original story since his debut novel, The Once Crowded Sky.

Favorite TV Show (New):

For a Star Trek fan, it's kind of impossible to go with any other answer than Strange New Worlds, which reimagines Pike's Enterprise, and in the brilliant season finale revisit the classic "Balance of Terror" (while simultaneously introducing the third-ever actor to play Kirk).

Favorite TV Show (Old): 

I'm enjoying Ghosts (the American version) more than ever as it plunges into its second season.  It's such a little miracle of a show, an ensemble with a rich cast it rotates through but is at its best when playing everyone off each other (as all the best shows do).  I've been trying to watch the original British version, too, and recently realized one of my favorite episodes was from it (there's only so much actual overlap between them).

Favorite Music:

I finally, finally got a copy of Brian Wilson's Smile, an album he originally set out to make with the Beach Boys, but a project that eventually led to his departure from the group and hibernation as a creator for some thirty years, until he completed and released it in 2004.  It's so good!  It's such a complete pop composition, the sessions "Good Vibrations" came from, so in the same creative vein, an extension of his vision for Pet Sounds (all of this pushing the Beatles to their own creative heights at the time).

Writing Projects 2023:

The big one, and what I intend to begin literally after wrapping this up, is tackling In the Leviathan, which I've been talking about here for a number of years at this point.  This will be purely literary fiction, an interpretation of my grandfather's life.  And should I succeed and in good time, I'll then finally tackle Collider, the second full-length Danab Cycle adventure.