Nanowrimo Out

Last day of National Novel Writing Month. I think I posted a whopping 4600 words. Or some number like that. We'll pause for a moment while I make a sad face. But only a moment.

Now, onward. Other things await.

« « little fictions || 11.30.2003 @ 06:34 PM

Consolidation

My fortune cookie from dinner Saturday night: "Consolidate your interest while the lights are active." In the pre-dawn light of the Monday morning train ride, I'm taking stock.

Opi8 is going through a transitional period; the site is changing ownership as well as webmaster and the flow of fresh content has been not more than a trickle since late summer. I may put SYMBOLIC on hiatus until things over there get sorted out. eP is chugging along at its stolid pace and we seem to have a good amount of content lined up (my interview with Sasha from KMFDM drops next week). I just made contact with Udo at the HANDS label and we're talking about doing some interviews with bands on his roster which may happen early next year. Reviews are continuing to fill the odd moments of my day. I finished writing up the last batch of great records from Ad Noiseam over the weekend and those will show up in the next few weeks.

The BOOK OF LIES is progressing slowly. I realized I was treating the bad guys as TV villains and gave them a needed jolt of intelligence which changes things slightly. I still have a slight disconnect between the start of the action and the insertion of the main character into the plot which may just be a side-effect of my clinging to his history. I've started to do some reading on shortwave listening (SWL) and am trying to get the lingo down.

INSTRUMENT continues stares at me. It's a 17K novella that I wrote late last year for an anthology which seems to have vanished. It's an EMPIRE CITY story and instead of tightening it down so that it can find a home in the short fiction market, I may just turn it into a novel. It has the legs to go that length.

The CHRISTMAS CYCLE needs another rewrite of the first part and some tightening and polishing on the other two pieces and that can go in the mail. It's probably the thing that is closest to being ready, but editing on the train has been something that has been tough for me, so it may wait until I can work the red pen with one hand while bouncing Solomon in my other arm.

BUTCHER OF BLACK ROCK isn't more than a few ideas and scattered images, but remains in the back of my head. I may just be captivated by the title, but I think something is there and I'm going to continue to tease at it and see what develops. I've got a hankering to write something that is decadent and decrepit and based in a world that, as Stephen King puts it, "has moved on."

[I'm about halfway through The Wolves of the Calla and King is starting to annoy me. The book is suffering from the same thing that pulled down Wizard and Glass -- a huge section that is character backfill. Everything will come together in the end in a way that will tie all the little details together -- it's an act that he knows well -- but I'm going to feel the same way I did after Wizard and Glass and Bag of Bones. I'm going to feel tired and not really interested in repeating the journey. Which is too bad because I really like the characters and the world-building.]

HOLLOW PRINCE is the book I started for Nanowrimo 2002 and it needs to be reconfigured with Basden as the main character instead of the stuntman. All the pieces are there; I just need to rotate the puzzle 90 degrees and start putting them together again. Kind of a rainy day project, but still a viable one nonetheless.

And then there is the opera thing...

It's an overcast day -- stock and trade for the late fall months in Seattle -- and the light has become...well, it has come. There isn't any real source; it just seems to be that captive illumination which gets trapped between the cloud layer and the ground. You can see everything, but it's all sort of grey. That's sort of how I feel about all these projects: I can see them but they are just sort of grey, which is never the way you want to approach something. Readers can smell the decay of disinterest a mile away.

Solomon is coming in less than five weeks. We had our last ultrasound on Friday. He's in the 96th percentile for size. Already. So he may decide that there just isn't enough room for him in there and come early. And, yeah, things are going to change when he arrives.

"Consolidate your interest..." I may be taking some time off from the writing game. Just a few months. There are some family things I want to do well.

[np: b.fleischmann "guided by beats"]

« « little fictions || 11.24.2003 @ 07:43 AM

writing

BIBLIOGRAPHY
This is a reasonably comprehensive list of my published work, both virtual and physical.

THE MISFIT LIBRARY
I am Nine of Thirteen, one of the members of the Misfit Library, a writing collective which puts out a quarterly journal of our respective work. We are scattered across the globe and determined to change the face of the planet one story at a time. The link above will take you to Misfit Central where you can acquire copies of the journal as well as read exclusive online material.

SYMBOLIC
I wrote a column for OPi8.com's Transmit blogs: journals of the new dark underground. SYMBOLIC tracked the novel I was working on, referencing the process and the research materials which mad up the backbone of the work. In addition, SYMBOLIC busied itself with ruminations and considerations on the nature of language and communication. And a wee bit of mythology. The first 100 entries of SYMBOLIC can be found here on this site as well as at OPi8.com.

LITERARY REPRESENTATION
I am represented by Scribe Agency as my literary agents. Please contact these gentleman if you have any queries about my work.

Archive Links