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.

Updates on Current Doings (or, 2022 Begins to Take Shape)

I sketched up the major projects I'll be tackling this year, Event Fatigue (the third Kindle Vella; previously reported as Ex-Ray: Event Fatigue) and Death Is Wearing Me Out (the once-monthly project succeeding World Famous; a ghost story, since it's apparently the thing that attracts me at the moment).  Both should be very, very interesting, and more accessible than their predecessors (World Famous, being about wrestling, and Nine Panel Grid, which is probably quite impenetrable).

But let's talk about those a little more, shall we?  Technically I should've finished World Famous by the end of last year.  Didn't really turn out that way.  I have two chapters yet to write, but they'll be easy enough to finish, and would've been done this morning if the very computer I'm using at the moment had cooperated (clever companies think they improve everything when they sometimes make them needlessly complicated).  In hindsight I'm all the happier I chose to do this a year ago, and that I plugged away at it dutifully (sometimes with a little catching up).  

Even Nine Panel Grid, since it handles a story I intended to write nearly two decades earlier (alas, a comics contest I probably hilariously fell far short of even coming close to winning).  I'm now six chapters away from finishing, about a month and a half, since it's mostly a once-a-week project, having started at the beginning of October.

Event Fatigue will be forty-four chapters, the longest by far (double the length of Nine Panel) I've tackled for Kindle Vella.  I still need to flesh out the story, but it's going to be pretty straight-forward, and also involve superheroes.  I picked out a cover image that hopefully at least stands out a little better than my last two.  It also picks up characters originally derived from an older project, which only occurred to me when I finally sat down to begin an outline.  This one should be fun.

I'm still writing up material for Substack, in the meantime.  I have no idea if I have a chance at developing an actual following there, but it's worth an effort.  I plan to devote one installment to Nine Panel Grid, perhaps write an actual story (you'd understand if you had a look at Nine Panel exactly what I'm talking about) and the journey to working on it.  I did write a story in the Space Corps saga, and probably will do more in the future.

I know I was just talking about Space Colony Bactria, and obviously Collider, and I really need to get on Montague, but as a writer doing it on the side, I have to decide the projects that can work around the schedule.  

As always, we'll see.

Dead Butlers, In the Leviathan, Collider

A relative few minutes ago I finished up another comic script project, Dead Butlers, over at Sigild, an interlocking twenty-two page Batman pastiche that expanded past its original parameters (by ten script pages!). It was just one of those things that struck as an interesting idea and just sort of continued to blossom, and anyway was great fun to write along the way.

Yesterday I had a thunderbolt concerning In the Leviathan, a work in progress that suddenly came into vivid shape. Part of that is because I sent Nazi Crimes to one of my favorite cousins, and she almost immediately texted back incredibly enthusiastic initial thoughts, and we talked a little about the Montague story, and where I saw it heading, so somewhere in the back of my mind it must have been rattling waiting for that moment.

Concerning Collider, the project I really thought I was writing, finally, I had paused on after actually getting started on it, but it wasn’t feeling right and eventually I realized it was because I wasn’t telling it right. And so I hit the pause button and almost immediately knew what needed changing, and so that was pretty great.

I sent some poems to a literary journal tangentially related to my alma mater last weekend, so that was pretty interesting. No idea if they have a shot at acceptance, but it’s the first time in a long time I’ve submitted poetry anywhere. 

The words are starting to form...

I know when a story's getting close when the words start coming, the ideas start solidifying, and I can feel the shape of it.

Writing, at least for me, isn't just about having an idea and an interest in writing.  Writing is a complex art.  Everything has to come together.  Finding the voice of the story, which isn't always the voice of a main character, is like finding the story itself.  It's perhaps easiest to see what I mean in movies.  You know when a movie has a voice.  Usually it's a style, but sometimes it's the distinct shape of the story, or the given instincts of a director, or following an actor's lead (or letting the actor lead, which some critics don't seem to understand).  Stories are the same way.  What frustrates me most when reading budding writers is when they clearly don't grasp this, and resist all attempts to explain the absolute necessity of it.  I mean, there are given genres for a reason, to give even the common writer somewhere to hang their story.

Anyway, the story I'm working on now is Kiss Me Quick. At this point it's sort of what I wanted to do with Montague (Or, In the Leviathan) (as I've since stylized it; check label records for details), but in a more contemporary fashion.  What sort of spurred me on was coming across The Sun Is Also A Star in the employee breakroom.  This was one of those young adult novels that became a movie recently, although the trailer didn't make it look like a young adult story at all.  Anyway, I hadn't seen the movie, hadn't even considered reading the book, and then I had a look inside, and I started to read a little, and realized this was a style I could handle.  I mean, it's what I've been doing anyway.  All I needed was a story.

And I already had it.  So the impetus began, and percolated.

I already had an opening few lines I thought were good, but then today came up with some new ones.  Some of what's inspired me lately is a scholarly book about the writing of The Great Gatsby (Careless People by Sarah Churchwell), which has reminded me all over again of discovering the work of Hemingway for myself, which I've been doing in recent years, which was the result of Corey Stoll's brilliant portrayal in Midnight in Paris. 

And Churchwell brings up how Gatsby is roughly 50,000 words, which is a target goal I hit many times over the past decade or so, with ease, but have never really considered as a potential end point for a longer story.  Seems as good a time as any.

I'll keep you posted.

Updates, end of March 2019

A quick check-in:

• Doing the A-to-Z Challenge again this year, again at Sigild V.  This year will be poetry, riffing on a character from Crisis Weekly.  This has the effects of the proverbial birds with a stone, as I've been wanting to do some poetry again anyway, and I figured I owed the A-to-Z folks thanks for the recent book tour thing.
• Pretty sure I've nailed how I'm going to be writing George & Gracie, after transcribing what I'd written in a notebook at the end of the year and not initially knowing how to proceed from there.
• Submitted a story.  It's the Montague in the Leviathan proof-of-concept I wrote last year, where I finally buckled down and attempted some straight literary fiction, which I still hope can become a book later, if I can do the necessary research.
• It suddenly occurred to me that I can turn that Exemplar comic book script into something if I look into getting someone to draw it.  So that's something I'll be strongly considering.
• It's nice to have a number of prospects in the air.

Rejection blues...

Well, the short story I wrote as a kind of pilot for Montague in the Leviathan was rejected by a literary journal.  It was one of those rejections that tried to make it sound as positive as possible, leading off with "we loved it!" and finishing with "but it wasn't really right for us."  Which meant they didn't love it.  Who do they think they're kidding? 

So I once again have the rejection blues.  I'm really tired of being a miserable, pathetic failure.  What's the point?  They say to have goals and to have steps to reach them, and you'll do it!  But realistically, everyone can't succeed at everything.  Some of us really are just miserable, pathetic failures. 

And other people get to succeed.

Updates 5/21/18

• Submitted a kind of proof of concept for Montague in the Leviathan.  I'm proud of the story.  Hope it finds sympathetic readers. 
• Started writing A Theory of Balance over at Wattpad.  That was actually a few weeks ago, but it's nice to have a start.
• Also submitted to a contest over at Wattpad.  It's rare I come across an open contest there, so I jumped at the chance.
• My next projects I actively work on will probably be for Swoon Reads.  Actually, I might take Theory of Balance over there, besides Youths of a Nation.  Trying to find an audience remains a priority with these projects.
• Toying with a concept I'm working on under the umbrella Annex Edition. 
• Generated more ideas recently.  Nailed what could be pretty good stories for Superman and Batman, if I ever got a chance to write comics, much less for DC.  Besides those there's also what they call "creator-owned," Young Club.  Ironically or not, the characters in it are not young. 
• I Have an Abacus at Home, could be a short story.  Probably.  Haven't really written a ton of material for Sigild V lately.
• Will probably publish Monkey Flip soon.  I'd tell Pat not to read it, but he probably will anyway.
• He's probably more apt to stay away from Reading Biblically, which is a book version of a blog I did a few years back.  First bit of nonfiction I've self-published.

Juggling more projects???

Just in case you wondered if I'm working on anything...

In addition to everything I talked about last time, here're more ideas that're threestooging themselves through my creative doors:

• Montague in the Leviathan - Big book project, wrote a short story related to it a couple weeks ago.  Inspired by a number of real events...
• The Hired Gun - A sequel/prequel to The Whole Bloody Affair, something I've been working toward since that one...
• Bandit - An even older project!  A comic book I conceived way back in the '90s but began to refine in 2004...
• Youths of a Nation - Like The Whole Bloody Affair (but not necessarily Hired Gun), a young adult project...
• Exemplar - Another comic book project...
• A Theory of Balance - A sequel to Sapo Saga...Likely to end up serialized on Wattpad, where I'm currently resurrecting 101 Star Wars Variations...
• An Affirming Flame - A wizard story...