Publish Me

I've been working quite hard this past year, and thought I'd post a bit about what I've been up to.  I began attending community college last Spring, and managed to make honor roll for the two terms I've been enrolled.  I'll be starting up again this Spring (Fall term was missed due to clerical errors in the school's financial aid office, just like last year).  School is interesting, and it was odd to begin attending in my thirties.  I'm not a kid anymore, and my take on things has an entirely different bent, these days.  Writing research papers was fun, and giving the occasional speech was a new endeavor for me.  In particular, giving a dramatic reading of the final chapter of Of Mice and Men was quite fun, and being able to go off about Dante, villanelles, and salinity, made the terms lively and enjoyable.  I'm using every chance I get to go into a more literary mode with my homework.   A history assignment wherein I have to research a book written between 1850 and 1890?  Song of Myself.  A research paper on a topic of my choosing?  Masaoka Shiki's haiku reformation near the turn of the 20th century, or the collapse of Rod Serling's career in his later years.  I've been lucky thus far in being able to use most of my homework for further literary study, which is good, because there isn't much of that in my small town community college and I'm trying to prepare for actual university schooling, which will start up in a year or so.  I'm hoping to get into Iowa.  Not for the Writer's Workshop, really, but because it's an excellent English program and I wouldn't mind living in that state for a bit.

I've had about a hundred poems picked up for publication through various mags over the Summer and Fall, several stories, and a handful of articles.  I have an on-air interview coming up with Jane Crown, and have been a regular guest on Elijah Brubaker's Whipping Post podcasts.  I've been revising much this year, while attending school and raising my little one.  Painter, my son, began kindergarten and we're all sorts of happy-family right now.  These are good days.

On to the bigger projects.  I finished Thank You and Good Night, a novel I began last year, which serves as a narrative and somewhat experimental biography of Rod Serling, best known for his writing and hosting of The Twilight Zone.  In general, I wrote a biography of Serling, but did so in narrative, so we get Serling as protagonist in his life, rather than a research study.  Oh, I did tons of research, yes, I just didn't want the book to feel like an overly long encyclopedia entry.  I wanted it to be accurate while feeling like a novel.  The book swivels into screenplay form from time to time, for setting scenes and shifts in time-period, different portions of his life, and I've even included commercial breaks.  The book takes place across five decades, so this is the first time I've had to write a book that takes place in different eras, and not my own, modern time.  It's a solid book, I think, comes in at just over 140k words, and is both informative and a bit of a rollicking, surreal adventure through this man's life.  Think biopic meets The Hudsucker Proxy, throw in a little Videodrome, and we're good.

I also wrote another novel, entitled Miel, which follows a mute, orphan-raised husband through some serious marriage struggles and incarceration.  The book's protagonist, Miguel, cannot speak, and hasn't been able to since the age of twelve, after having a botched thyroid surgery.  He has no real tether to any family, a people, a place... and he cannot express himself well.  He's the epitome of a life-long outsider, but one who has worked very hard to try and fit in with usual life.  The book follows him from his release from jail (an assault conviction, though a once-in-a-lifetime thing for someone like Miguel, who is quite gentle), through the crumbling of his marriage and career, and then into a strange, surreal spiral of his past and present, which takes us into the heart of the book, which is that Miguel is no longer able to feel much in the way of emotion.  He begins having explosive bouts of anger and depression, always short and leaving him in a bored state of numbness.  Miel is a narrative glimpse at a case study in narcissistic rage and unpredictable violence, as we follow along behind a man that will do nearly anything to feel again.

Started another book, Beyond the Great Gate, this one a private sort of project for my son and I.  He gave me a handful of details and a basic storyline (Painter, my son, is five-years-old now), and then I began turning these details into a book.  With the details he gave me, it seemed obvious I was going to be writing something in the fantasy genre, which is something I've never done.  A shorter book, I'm nearing the end now, having written 18 chapters, with a couple to go.  The idea was that I'd write Painter's book for him, and read it to him at night as I wrote it out.  In short, I've been writing my son's ongoing bedtime story for the past month.  Things are going well, and he very much enjoys the story (which features Painter and I, ourselves, as protagonists, and a rather distressing, mad king as antagonist).  It's called Beyond the Great Gate, and takes place in a terrible world in the throes of a five-thousand year long holocaust, set into motion by a patricidal, mad king and his thirst for stealing children from our world into his.  Painter and I get pulled into this alternate world, The Fog, and have some horrifying adventures trying to find one another.  The mad king is trying to catch Painter to make a sacrifice of him on a blood-anvil, and I can't let that happen.  Lots of magic and creatures and fun things going on.  I should have it finished in about a week or so.  No plans on trying to publish it.  For now, it's just for my little man.

I'm still trying to shop A Fine Young Day around, looking for a publisher.  For anyone new here, A Fine Young Day was my take on a horror novel.  It follows Tom, a man shot in the chest at the edge of a lake on his fiftieth birthday, as he sets out through nine miles of Camas Swale woods, trying to get home before he bleeds out.  As he travels, with a feral, pregnant pig as his companion, we descend deeper and deeper into a terrible, haunting nightmare of the woods, made of Tom's mind and his past, one that hunts him as he makes his way home.  The woods are populated with wooden people, carved by Eat, who seems to be a horrific usher to the nightmare in the swale.  The woods do not like Tom.  Once leaving the woods, he treks through an abandoned suburb, along the old highway, and finally makes it home.  When he arrives, he discovers that the final sheer of this nightmare is not solely a trouble with the woods, but has only just begun churning to life.  His home is a prison for his loved ones, and freeing each person from a room becomes all-consuming to him.  At times, he reverts to his childhood self, and at times, he is in his fifties again, always trying to solve the problems of his life before the horrific demons in his mind eat their way out and take him back into the woods forever.  It's currently in a seventh draft, and comes in at just under 70k words.  I designed it to be short and sweet, and wrote it line-intensively, as I would poetry.


That's about it.  There's more, but I need to get back to the book so I have a chapter to read Painter tonight.  I'll update soon, however.  Until then, if anyone is looking for something to read, take a look:

Poetry:  Tons of it in journals and magazines, and my book through Differentia Press, Other Cruel Things
Novels:  Two of 'em currently in print, Tatterdemalion and Amphisbaena

I Do Things. You Do Things. Let's Do More Things.

There have been few posts here the past year or so, which is good.  This means I've been busy.  I thought I'd give an update.

I've gone back to school, aiming for the MFA and teaching credentials.  I've gone through two terms this year.  I'm headed for English.  Literature.  Creative Writing.  Teaching them.  Any and all would be wondrous.  I put in two college years in my youth, and those still count, so I'm starting out in my third year, for the most part.  While I have always been somewhat of a D student, I'm surprised to note that I've made the honor roll this time around.  Two terms now.  I suppose I can officially start showing people my All Grown Up certificate.

My son has finished pre-school and will begin kindergarten in the fall.  He's amped, asks questions constantly, and I'm endlessly fascinated with the things he comes up with.

"Hey daddy, what's your job?"

"Me?  Well, I'm unemployed... I'm a student...  writer.  Heh, I'm a writer, son."

"How much money do you get?"

[jaw clenches tight] "It's fine.  Everything.  Is.  Fine.  People... people will read."

"I don't like books."

"Go to your room."

He is highly imaginative, makes up stories daily, loves to build things and is weirdly preoccupied with symmetry in everything he builds.  Even I'm sort of baffled by that one.  While I love his particular curse of creativity, I do know he's in for a rough time.  Creative kids mature late and don't quite fit the mold as well as they'd like.  Ever.  Ask me.

I wear a watch that doesn't work and a newsy cap to be different.

Things are going well.  My brother-on-law is staying with us, which has been fun, and Mary and I are enjoying Summer as best we can in Oregon's never-Summery weather.

On to the projects:  For those of you new here, Tatterdemalion, somewhat of a psychological thriller with some comedy here and there, and Amphisbaena, my experimental romance novel, (both novels through Cauliay), are still available and some more reviews have turned up, all very positive.  I'm happy about how these books are doing.  Give one a read; I can promise you I spent a lot of time writing them, revising through ten drafts each, working them over in a variety of ways, and getting them published.


A Fine Young Day, my take on a horror novel, is currently in its sixth draft and I've begun sending it around to publishers.  Another novel, Thank You and Good Night, a fictional biography modeled very closely on the life of Rod Serling, is also finished, and is currently in its third draft.  I'll put it through a few more revisions before sending it out, so don't expect this one  anytime soon.  It's a long book, as well, so the revisions take more time.    Differentia Press put out a collection of mine, online, titled Other Cruel Things.  This one isn't fiction, but poetry.  Those of you that know me are well aware that poetry is my mainstay, so this was a nice setup.  I don't have any plans for future chapbooks or collections of poetry at this time, mainly because I prefer to break up all the books of poetry I write and send the poems around to the great mags of the small press.  I've been doing this quite a bit with the Summer.  Submitting to publications I like.  At some point, I'll probably send a collection out to someone, but I have no actual plans for it right now.

I'm starting a new novel in a few weeks.  The idea I have in mind is quite ambitious and will be difficult to put into concept, much less write.  I like ambitious.  I like difficult.  You readers are ambitious and difficult.  I like you, too.

That's all for now.  I'll try to get back here within a month or so.  Until then, read a book, or write one.  Let's hang out.

'Other Cruel Things', 'A Fine Young Day', and 'Thank You and Good Night'

Hello electronic world, I greet you in the middle of December with the usual apologies for lack of update and other, thick behavior. For those three or four of you that read these posts, I give you much information regarding several projects either underway, completed, or outright published.

OTHER CRUEL THINGS, my first and fledgling book of poetry has just been released through Differentia Press as an ebook, free for all, and edited by the always great Felino Soriano. The book compiles what I feel to be some of my best work from the past 18 months or so, and can be read here: http://www.differentiapress.com/2009/11/other-cruel-things.html

I worked hard on this one, and I hope you enjoy it.

In other news, A FINE YOUNG DAY, my third novel, is currently in my publisher's hands, and I'll let you know the minute I've heard back. I'm nervous about this book for a variety of reasons, the first and foremost being that I think it's the best thing I've ever written, which always makes one nervous. The other reasons for my shaking knees involve the subject matter, the way the book unfolds, the more poetic and sound-oriented language I let myself use, for once, and the outright disturbing things that happen throughout the book. There's no whimsy in this one. It's my take on a horror novel, and it runs both pretty and repugnant at the same time. My thanks to Andrew David King for his artwork on the potential cover.

I'm about 28 chapters into a new novel, THANK YOU AND GOOD NIGHT, which has come along nicely thus far. I'm having a surreal round of experiments with the biography format, and this book has much going on, beyond it's large size. A fictionalized biography modeled on the life of Rod Serling, the novel snaps into teleplay format often, has commercial breaks, and generally follows the rise and fall of Rod Serling's career. There is some real tragedy in this book, and it doesn't let up much, as well as some moments of Rod's early achievement and success. It spans forty-five years. In short, I'm writing the life of Rod Serling in a fictional style, Serling as a protagonist, and doing so as if he were a fictional character on his own famed show.

That's about all for now. I did finish another book of poetry, but have no plans to seek out a publisher for it just yet. I'm going to send the poems around a bit, see if anyone likes them for the glorious mags of the small press.

Life is busy but good. My son will be turning five in February, and my wife and I are having a great end-of-the-year with present shopping and other, various shenanigans of festivity. Hurrah!

Happy holidays to all.