So says Claire, at school today, to a bunch of other kids in her class.  While on her tricycle. 

I just got the phone call from my wife, via my mother-in-law who is the preschool director.  Oh, boy.  I wonder how long it will be before I get to go back to the margarita restaurant...

What I liked most about last night's episode was seeing so many familiar faces.  Richard Alpert, Matthew Abaddon, Mittelos Labs, and Christian Shepherd.  This episode had a different kind of pace to it -- and while it wasn't as action-packed as "The Shape of Things to Come" but the more I think about it, it was just as mind-bending as anything else we've seen on this show.  It had it's own pace, brought more things together (or pushed them further apart, in the case of time and the good late doctor), and really had quite a crescendo between the boat and the cabin. 


Really, the more I think about this one, the more it blows me away. 

If I hadn't seen the sick in a bucket, I would totally think Claire was just trying to get out of going to school today so she could play hooky.   What with all the dancing, playing, reading, etc. 

I stayed home today with her and finally just got her to take a nap.  Actually, I had to drive her around to get her to go to sleep.  I just didn't feel like arguing about naptime with my sick almost-three year-old.  I could see it in her eyes, that 100 mile stare, those long blinks.  But suggest to her that maybe we should take a nap, and her eyes pop open.  "No, Dada!  Let's dance!!!"  So the car it was, on the pretense of doing some mother's day shopping.  Once she fell asleep on the ride home, I somehow managed to get her out of the carseat, into the bed, and keep her asleep.  Not an easy feat, but like me, she's a hard sleeper, and once she's out, she doesn't want to wake up. 

The sleep will be good for her.  (And good for me.)  At least she hasn't been sick since early this morning.

One thing I really like as I'm rewriting the novel is finding smiley faces or check marks or a place where someone's handwritten/typed in the margin/notes "I really like this part." It's amazing how good something so tiny can make you feel.

I've added a word counter (as you can see), more to encourage me than anything else. That's about 10,000 words (rewritten) in a week's time. I don't feel like I'm rushing it, but I do feel like I'm picking up some momentum, which is a really good feeling. Finishing this sucker in May may be a bit ambitious, but the really important thing is that I need to push myself and finish the damn thing. 

55,000 / 100,000 (55.0%)

The gang's at Fallen Horizon now, and Krylyr's getting ready to meet up with Templar again, which will be a pleasant reunion.  I have not yet taken the "cornball" line out at the end of that chapter.  It is undecided.

Also, I'm exhausted. Not just from writing my ass off, which is a good kind of exhausted, but from work. I've been doing an audit for the last couple of weeks now, and I don't think I'll be finished with until the end of this week. Plus, I've got my regular work stuff. Ugh.

How will I be celebrating, you ask?  By going to my daughter's preschool's open house, where I'm sure there will be many pitchers of margaritas.  Okay, probably not.  Maybe I can make some at home...

Sunday, I got up early and got some more good writing done and found out that I'm going to need to write a brand new scene, which will be cool.  Usually, I don't write on the weekends because I like to sleep until Claire wakes me up and after that, but getting up Sunday was a treat.  I had close to 3 hours of time, instead of my usual block of 2 hours.  On the downside, I couldn't get up this morning.  Maybe I can only do the 4am thing every other day.  We'll see if I can do it again tomorrow. 

Last week's Lost episode, "Something Nice Back Home," was one of the creepiest I've seen in a long time.  Which I thought was a good thing.


That's all I have for right now on the episode.  I'm not sure if I'll do it this way again for the next episode or not.  It turns out we ended up watching the episode at 10pm anyway, just on Friday night instead of Thursday (on the plus side, I didn't have to get up at 6am the next day).  Anyway, this season continues to blow my mind.  I can't wait for the next episode.

If you're a SF/F author, there's a decent chance you've already read Richard K. Morgan telling the whole genre to stop bitching at each other and "get to work."  But just in case you haven't, you should.  He says some good things.

I wonder how some of the people he's clearly pointing fingers out will react to the article and if his piece will go down as well as the titular performer.  I hope not.  Why do SF/F writers bitch so much about other in-genre stuff that they don't want to read?  Wouldn't, "Meh, not my thing" suffice?  (I'm not talking about criticism, I'm talking about the out and out rants.)

Why, yes, I did get up at 4am this morning and write my ass off.  Why do you ask? 

Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to watch Lost last night.  10-11pm caught up with me.  I'm going to watch it tonight with Emma and I'll post something about it tomorrow morning.  (Not sure whether this is going to become a habit or not.)  However, I do have this thought about last week's episode.  We know that Ben can't kill Widmore.  Is it because the island won't let Widmore die?  I'm starting to wonder who Widmore is, why he thinks the island is his, and I keep coming back to a pirate ship stranded somehow in the middle of the island. 

But don't think about spoiling anything that happened last night for me.

Originally, I'd hoped to finish rewriting Fallen Horizon by May.  Now I'm just hoping to get it done sometime in May.  Looking back at my goals, I wanted to have a final rewrite of the thing done in August.  Heh.  I'm thinking September, at best.  (Ah, deja vu.)  I'm just under halfway through the book (44,000 words out of 92,000) -- currently Krylyr and Synyss are squaring off and trading information with Mr. Morgan, and the covenant is doing weird stuff it's never done before. 

I'm really hoping that this has been the difficult half.  A lot of the plot holes and connections some of my beta-readers had issues with have been filled in (hopefully).  Some of the characters -- Crash and Poe, mainly, feel like they've come a lot more into their own thus far.  But it's been hard work.  Also, I have  had a hell of a time getting up to write.  I have not been able to get up at all this week -- instead, I've had having to write only when there's a bundle of minutes tied together somewhere, which is also difficult.  I'm going to try to get up tomorrow, but with Lost on tonight at 10pm, it's going to be tough.  And I need to try and figure out a way I can be more disciplined about getting up on a more consistent basis. 

Despite the frustration, it has been fun.  Whenever I get a chance to slip into the world I want to keep going.  I just don't have as much time as I'd like.

So, goals updated: I'm now shooting to get this sucker done before May's over and possibly get it out to beta-readers by then.  That probably means I won't get to writing "Puritan Noir 2" or rewriting "God is My Programmer."  Which is not a big thing, it just makes my writing goals for June and July a little more crowded.  But, hey.  I do like crowds. 

"What restaurant are we going to tonight, Dada?"

Just to inject some simple humor into the recent posts.

In completely unrelated news, musicians Rafael Gazzi and Paul Sonnenberg asked if they could use youtube footage assembled by my good pal Ryan Cordell (aka rufusthered ) for their new music video. It's a nice mellow song "about the feelings of longing and hope experienced by an expatriate in a new country," which is something the good Mr. Cordell is well versed in. Check it out.

Emma told me that a couple of my previous posts (specifically the ones here and here) sound a bit arrogant.  They weren't meant to be arrogant, more just that I'm really really happy about how things turned out with those two stories and a bit proud  But if it came off that way, well, I'm sorry.

So, a writing/blogging question: how do you walk the line between arrogance and pride when you're blogging about your own stuff?  How do you blog about your own successes? 

(A couple of notes: 1) Said stuff could be writing, artwork, whatever accomplishments you're bragging about. And 2) hopefully this bit's obvious, but don't read this post as me vs. Emma, or anyone vs. anyone, because that's silliness. This is an honest question about conducting yourself.)

SPOILERS only if you haven't seen Lost 4x09: The Shape of Things to Come (Ben-centric)

Let's say that Ben was able to manipulate the smoke monster, but on the show everything is a binary system, everything is in balance, morally balanced or economically balanced, so for Ben to make a thing happen like that, there is also a price, I think, that he had to pay.  We don't know what Ben paid yet to make the smoke monster come.  We don't know what he..."Is he allowed to do that?" and everyone who has power also pays a price.  John Locke is going to pay a price.  Ben has paid a price...Nothing is for free in terms of power or morality on the island...

A couple of days ago, the one and only Mr. Matt Wallace made a case for the coolness that will be the Murky Depths and Variant Frequencies cross-over/release of "Saint Darwin's Spirituals."  I highly recommend you check out the post, for a couple of reasons.  1) It's the epitome of why I love this guy (which honestly has nothing to do with the nice things he said about my stories).  2) He tap-dances with the one and only Warren Ellis in the comments section, and comes out leading (which in my opinion, is worth reading just on its own merits).  3) Matt says the simultaneous distribution of podcast/print on the same day is a first.   4) Finally, he spills what I was pretty sure was some kind of mirage -- that Murky Depths #4 will have a cover by Vincent Chong inspired by "Saint Darwin's Spirituals."  Chong's done covers for John Scalzi and Richard K. Morgan and  I am absolutely flattered and humbled he dug my story.  So much so, when I first found out, I didn't post anything, because I was pretty sure Terry Martin, the editor of Murky Depths, and Vincent Chong would change their minds and come up with something else to illustrate.  So far, I'm still taking it on faith because I haven't actually seen the cover, because the editors are really big teases.  But you gotta have faith, right?  Even if you hated Eli Stone.

And although I haven't seen the cover yet, I *have* heard a preview of VF's production of "Saint Darwin's Spirituals" and it is awesome.  It's got a killer soundtrack by steampunk band Abney Park, which is cool in and of itself, but it also has some amazing voice talents that really make me geek-out, including Rick and Anne Stringer, Maia Whitaker, Dani Cutler, and Ali Groves.  All very cool people I've heard on VF, Escape Pod, and other places, and I'm thrilled that they took the time to  work on my little story.  (It's really interesting to note that pretty much all the characters in this story are female -- something I hadn't really noticed until hearing the preview.)  Rick Stringer and the rest of the VF team really put a ton of work into this production, and it shows.  I can't wait for you guys to hear it.

It was incredibly hot at the yesterday at the  Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.  Also, it was way more crowded than I remember it being from the last several times we've gone, especially in the children's area.  Triple-wide strollers are evil, especially when there's no kids in them.

We spent the morning watching the Doodlebops and Laughing Pizza (neither of whom I would inflict on someone who doesn't have a kid under the age 7. And even then, I'm not sure). 

The Festival of Books, for those who don't know, is a huge, massive, sprawling even that takes a good portion of the UCLA campus.  The closest thing I can measure it to is an outdoor ComicCon, except it focuses more on books than comics (although those are there, too).  And it's completely free, aside from parking.  It's a great event for reading.  Last year I saw John Scalzi and Cory Doctorow there.  This year I noticed Kelly Link, Joe Hill, Charlie Huston, and others were in attendance, all whom I missed.  I also missed a lot of people there that I would've liked to see, some because they were around Saturday and we weren't, or because it just takes so much longer for us to get moving with a soon-to-be 3 year-old.  But I did get to hook up with voidmonster in the afternoon.  We chose not to inflict poor Zak with Clifford the Dog theater, so he and I walked through the massive booth area in search of something cold to drink and had a really good talk about writing and other stuff.  Also, we saw a pretty good puppet show of The Story of Frog Belly Rat Bone, which we all approved. 

Now, I'm bone-tired, though, and slightly sun-burned despite applying sunblock.

Wow.  Lost went a couple places last night I really didn't expect it to go.  It was possibly the most action-packed episode of Lost since the season 3 finale, but this one had the smoke monster, too.

My short story "God-Shaped Box" is featured in this week's Hub Magazine!  Honestly, I didn't have any idea it'd be up that soon, so finding it in my inbox this afternoon was a neat little surprise. It's completely free, so go ahead and click the link, and download or read it online.

As I've said before, I'm really, really excited that this story's being published.  I don't think you're supposed to have favorites among your stories, but there are somethings about this one I'm really proud of. 

I wrote this story as a reaction to several things.  One, my friend bogwitch64 saying about the religious themes/overtones in my story: "I can't figure out if you are super religious, super skeptical or just intrigued by the strangeness that is Christianity as a whole, as a study rather than a way of life."  Which is one of the coolest pieces of feedback I've ever received, because I get very annoyed when I read so-called "Christian" fiction that sounds more like a sermon than a story, and I would be bummed if my fiction came off like that.  I like fiction that asks questions, and I wanted to write something personal about my belief system that wasn't preachy.  Also, as I've said here before, I wanted to prove (mostly to myself) that I could write a good SF story that centered around faith and religion.

Also, if you've ever wanted to read one of my stories that doesn't have any sex, violence, or profanity in it, this is the story for you.  (There are some serious drugs, though.)

So I've probably blathered on enough about the story.  I like it.  I hope you do, too.  Go check it out.  Leave some dinero in the Hub tip jar if you feel so compelled.  And of course, all feedback is greatly appreciated. 

When I found at my exercise at Viable Paradise for the fake Hats of War anthology had to contain vampire teeth, I was a bit frustrated. I'd written a few stories with vampires in them before, some of them absolute crap, and the novel I was working on even had space vampires in it. So I was hoping I'd pretty much worked vampires out of my system. Then, somehow, I got the idea to write a story about an aging vampire with dentures, and ended up writing this 3,500 word story.

"Last Respects" was originally published by Pseudopod and, in this author's humble opinion, is worth a listen just to hear Scott Sigler's reading. It was my first publication and later had the good fortune to be picked up by Apex Online (although it's now in limbo with their new site), and will be reprinted again this year in the Writer's for Relief anthology. I really liked having a place to send people to read the story in case they didn't want to listen to it, so I thought I'd put it up here for International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Wretch Day.  It's dedicated to Jim MacDonald, my writing instructor at VP, without whom I never would've written this story.

(If you weren't around the SF/F/H community last year, anne_stringer has a good post explaining the whole holiday.)

 

© 2007, Dave Thompson


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License

This is a bit early, but you'll have to forgive me as I am VERY excited.  On July 13th, my writer's club will be doing a reading at Vroman's bookstore in Pasadena, one of the largest independent bookstores in the LA area.  This place is amazing -- they've had people like Neil Gaiman, Chuck Palahniuk, and China Mieville read there.  Why our little writer's club got so lucky, I'm really not sure, but like I said -- I'm thrilled.  I'll hopefully be reading the God-Shaped Box/Superspiff and Toothpick Kid combo  (if time allows) and if you're anywhere close to the LA area on Sunday, July 13 and you want to come by, I would be humbled to see you there.  Seriously.  It will be a blast.  I'll bring free swag. 

Which brings me to an honest question.  Murky Depths is going to be coming out with the issue "Saint Darwin's Spirituals" is in well before the reading, so I was thinking about ordering some extra issues to hawk at the bookstore (it'd have to be a consignment deal).  But I have no idea how many issues I should order.  I was thinking maybe five.  If you were coming to a reading of mine, and you found out I was selling a relatively expensive but beautiful killer kahn-looking magazine with my story in it (and a Mur Lafferty comic), would you buy it? 

Keep in mind I'll also have CDs there that I'll be giving out for free (which will probably include the Variant Frequencies production of "Saint Darwin's Spirituals" -- which Rick Stringer just told me is coming along very well --, Pseudopod's "Last Respects," and the first chapter of Superspiff and the Toothpick Kid...at least).  So *if* you were coming, would you want to buy the magazine from me?  We've only had a modest turn-out at these type of things before, but we are going to be at a pretty big bookstore this time.   Would five be too few?  Too many?   What do you think?

Between attempting to put the toilet back in and attending a birthday party this weekend, I was able to upload some of my favorite pictures from our recent UK trip to flickr.  Here's a few:






I am terrible with flickr.  Apparently, since I'm freeloading off of them, I only get three sets, so I've given up trying to organize them any better than the order they're uploaded (for now, at least).

Anyway, hope you enjoy them!

For a brief time, we had another set of tickets to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band play in Anaheim. Then, we ended up going to England instead. I don't really regret that decision, but watching this video of Bruce and Tom Morello jam The Ghost of Tom Joad makes me wish I was a jumper.