Warder in the works

One of the other things that's sidetracked work on new material has been Warder, which you might otherwise know as The Cloak of Shrouded Men.

Cloak was the first book I self-published, the product of three successive, and successful, NaNo experiences ('04-'06), the first physical copies of which I received in the mail the same day the last Harry Potter book was released in 2007 (a coincidence that has always amused me).  I began noticing further grammatical revision needs immediately.  I was supposed to have a new edition through an upstart publisher fairly soon after, but that fell apart, and the idea of releasing one never really left me.

Part of the problem was the title, not to mention the name of the main character, a superhero called Eidolon.  I loved both, and never considered changing the latter (pronounced "idol-on," as I later clarified; based on a line in a Hart Crane poem), but have had numerous ideas for the former.  Recently I settled on Warder.

I've tried shopping the book around to publishers for years.  I unlisted it from the original self-publisher a few years back.  I've done revisions, will probably do more, but I've really liked some of the ideas that've occurred to me, including a radical new ending that redefines an important element (or two).  Finding a cover image has been another long-term quest over the years, if I wanted to self-publish again, but just a few hours earlier, I think I finally solved that, too.

I intend, if I pull the trigger, to publish Warder in three volumes.  This is a story I never really intended to write in the first place, but I've never been able to leave it behind.  I like what I did with it (even if I know some readers, like Pat, will think there's too much philosophizing, too little action), and yeah, I even think, foolishly, if anything were to finally get me into comics, this story finally landing properly could do it.  Probably.  Maybe.

Well, we'll see.  (Heh.)

We'll See released

I mentioned an "avalanche of poetry" previously.  I was sidelined in my recent writerly interests by blood that hemorrhaged in my right eye about a month back and caused some panic until I found out what was happening and settled into the recovery process, and then got back to business.  I did the family Christmas chapbook thing I've been doing the past four years (intended for family, as noted, so I never advertise them here), and I finalized the manuscript for the above collection.

You can find We'll See on Amazon here.  There's a lot of crazy material in it, but also some good stuff.  That said, if poetry ain't your thing, don't go out of your way.  Even if it is, I probably have more accessible stuff.  Mostly, I love that it's got some bulk behind it, one of the largest I've had in the 5"x8" format I've been using in releases since 2016.

Quite the salesman, I know!  But as I've said, I've got an avalanche of material, and I'll keep you posted about its book-style availability.

Collider, Jupiter's Beard, the avalanche of poetry

The last time I checked in I quickly glossed on the avalanche of poetry I'm working on.  Well, I made some progress, further compiling and then just yesterday finding some additional collections, pushing the total number of volumes...quite high.  I don't often think of myself as a poet, but I've...written a lot of poems over the years, and every time quite passionately.  So it's weird that I don't think of myself as a poet.  I guess it's harder to be a poet without recognition than it is a novelist.

Speaking of that, Jupiter's Beard, in the title, is the retitled Kiss Me Quick, and it's something I'm still very much working toward. 

Collider, meanwhile, is another project I'm working on.  In fact, it's the oldest project I've worked on...ever, really, and the one I've never even come close to actually writing.  It's part of the Space Corps sequence, and as indicated, the first one I ever worked on, beginning plotting way back in 1995 (and probably earlier).  I've continuously revised outlines, streamlining and making it more sophisticated.  I've reached the point where I finally need to write the thing.

Part of the motivation is that it will be a more straightforward story than Seven Thunders.  You may or may not recall that Seven Thunders was the passion project for Space Corps, something I finally wrote about five years back and have been timidly submitting ever since ("timidly" here meaning sporadically), including on my birthday about a month ago.  Got a form rejection for it recently.  Decided that wasn't going to be the end of the story.  Seven Thunders is a heavily complex story.  Collider, as I've said, as I've worked away at it, is simpler, more naturally geared toward specific story beats that flow organically.  And this week, I began working on yet another plot revision, further streamlining it.  Some of that was made possible by Terrestrial Affairs, the novella that wasn't supposed to feature Collider material but did, which makes both stories better for it, hopefully.

And maybe I can get the damn thing accepted by a publisher.

More poetry collections coming...

It occurred to me this week that I stopped self-publishing my poetry even though I had a ton of material, so I'm going to be getting back on that.  I sort of made a vow to stop self-publishing, but mostly in terms of my fiction.  I may make an effort to be published more traditionally with poems, too, but the crazy amount of material, I seriously doubt any publisher would be like, "Sign me up for that." 

So I'll keep you posted about that, for all those just dying to see it happen...

Older Than Eddie...

Holy crap.  I'm now older than Eddie Guerrero.

This will take some explaining.  Eddie Guerrero was a professional wrestler.  He died in 2005, and I still remember him as my all-time favorite in the ring.  He had personality to spare, and was one of the most gifted athletes the business had ever seen, a pioneer of a more dynamic style that has come to dominate wrestling today.  He first stood out for me at Starrcade 1997.  Goldberg was on that card, by the way, a little before he truly broke out (stuck in a meaningless feud with another former football player, Steve "Mongo" McMichael, whose career never reached anywhere near Goldberg's heights, even at that point).  The main event was "the match of the century," between "Hollywood" Hulk Hogan and Sting, who was wrestling his first match since adopting his Crow persona and becoming WCW's champion against the nefarious New World Order.  But it was Eddie, in his match with Dean Malenko, who really stood out that night for me.

In his WCW years, Eddie was a heel, which is wrestling for bad guy.  He especially loved giving a hard time to his nephew (who, thanks to how things worked out in the family, was more or less the same age), Chavo, who looks a lot like a cousin of mine who had been killed in a bar in 1994.  When Eddie made the leap to WWE in 2000, he took a massive leap in charisma by adopting the "Latino Heat" gimmick, which was in theory another of those horrible stereotype roles wrestling frequently uses, but Eddie made it his own (didn't hurt that Jerry Lawler on commentary so excitedly repeated the nickname all the time).  Later, in 2003, Eddie was beginning to be recognized as an elder statesman, and his career reached its pinnacle in 2004 when he beat Brock Lesnar (yeah!) for the heavyweight championship.  In his final year, Eddie spent most of it in an extended showcase feud with Rey Mysterio, but his last program was with Batista, something that sort of instantly solidified the future Drax as another favorite.

Eddie died at 38.  It seems impossible, now, to think of everything he achieved in such an abbreviated life.  He struggled with sobriety at one point in his career, which led to a gap in his time with WWE, but rallied to enjoy arguably the best time he had as a wrestler.  He was about as inspiring as anyone I've encountered.

And as of today, I'm a year older than he ever got, and that seems wrong, not only because he achieved so much in his time here, but because I'm still working toward feeling even a tenth as accomplished.  I mean, I know I've done a lot.  It doesn't matter how many people see that, or what my goals are, what I envision in my future.  When I think of Eddie, I see someone who positively burst with enthusiasm for the opportunities presented him, and yes, even an ability to overcome challenges.  He's as big a source of inspiration for me as anyone who's told stories in other ways (because wrestling itself, at its best, is storytelling), in mediums that are more traditional for writers to be drawing on. 

I can only hope that if Eddie saw my life, he'd give one of those crooked grins of his and at least laugh appreciably.

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.

I swear I'm going to write something soon...

Earlier this year (you'll recall I yammered on and on about it) I completed a fairly lengthy writing project.  It always seems after I've finished something like that it takes a while to start another one.  I've got plenty of stuff I want to write, which is certainly not the issue.  I just haven't gotten around to start writing any of it.  The likeliest suspect is the annual family Christmas poem (which isn't really a long project), for when I finally start up again.  And hopefully I can bother to actually submit stuff, too, which is a horrible thing for a writer to admit. 

So that's sort of what's happening, when there isn't really...anything actually happening.

And maybe when I am writing something again, I'll start yammering about it here again.  Because that was kind of fun, and it certainly kept things lively.

Oh!  Here's something:  Last weekend I went to the Tampa Comic Con, for the second year in a row, with a satchel full of my books, in case I was brave enough to actually do something with them.  Last year: nothing.  This year?  I gave a book away!  Yeah!  I also met Peter David, who was a big element of my '90s reading life (even though I sort of hated him for the next decade or so), and bought a book from him.  But I gave a book away!  (Sapo Saga, for the record, which went over so well in the virtual book tour earlier this year.) 

I hope at some point to have a publisher who'll set me up at a table at things like this, in the future.  It'd be fun.  I would vow not to spend all my time staring at a phone while my assistant does all the work.  And I would probably succeed at that.  Maybe for the first few such appearances.  Maybe it's the best way to pass the time.  But Peter David was pretty lively, which is doubly good because he had a terrible healthscare a few years back.  So I resolve to be more like Peter David!