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

A Review

A great review of Amphisbaena has gone live over at Unlikely 2.0. Check it out:

http://unlikelystories.org/blog/content/?p=133

The release date for the book has been pushed back a few weeks, but should be out shortly.

Tatterdemalion and a New Book of Poetry

In an earlier post, I mentioned my novel 'Tatterdemalion' being picked up by Cauliay Publishing, and also promised to give a few updates from time to time. I've been sparse, dotting various Twitter posts in my revisions and other information, but thought it was time to post here and update the two people that read this on the happenings.

Tatterdemalion is nearly complete on the publisher's end. We've got the book finalized and ready to go out, save for a couple of incidentals that we're working on right now. I've spent a huge amount of my time (all of it, really) over the last few months putting together a supplemental material package to send out to reviewers. It's huge, autoruns, and I had to design every page in it both graphically and in regard to its content. Here's a list of some of the things on the disc (which is all nicely labeled with full-color inserts... the works (and I designed all of that, too).

1. Background information on the book, including specific reasons for writing it.

2. Author's Introduction

3. Publisher's Introduction

4. Character concept art of the heraldic characters in the book

5. Cover art for the book

6. Alternate/concept covers for the book that we didn't go with (7 of them)

7. Small Press tie-ins (the Main Character sends out to real mags, and often)

8. About the Author section (this is where a bio and all that is found)

9. Explanatory Notes (on the bizarre styling, characterizations, and trickery in the book)

10. The ebook version of Tatterdemalion

11. Contact, link, and order information

And a ton more. Each one of the above 'features' has a few pages within it, full of other related features. There's video, audio, images, effects, a lot of painful design that I've finally managed to make smooth, and it can interact with the internet cleanly. The entire thing is interactive, and runs as a stand-alone program. You can email me, surf the web for details on the book, and even read the book, all while in the bonus feature program, or outside of it. You can even set up your own music playlist in the bonus features, with your own music, to listen to while you read, if your the type who likes music on when you read. Every page is dotted in various graphic art I've made for it, even as background material. There are even easter eggs hidden in the depths of the features.

I've worked pretty hard on it. Here's a teaser screenshot:



I've also been working on a new book of poetry, with an incredibly long title. All my books have had shorter titles lately, so I thought I'd go out on a limb and use a long one. The title of my new book of poetry is:

I Won't Breathe for It-- The Dull Chatter of Ends, Humping Catastrophes and Lounging Where One Sets Aside the Mind.

So yes, long. Here's a couple of images of some poems in the book. I added effects to the pictures so you won't be completely bored.

That's about it for now. I was also recently invited into the World Poets Society, and had an interview recently in Tom's Voice. No Tell Motel will be featuring some of my work in April, and there are some new spoken word tracks up over at The Adroitly Placed Word, as well.

Lately (well, continually), I am entirely enamored with my little son's antics. Being a stay-at-home dad is wondrous (though at times, it can be extremely difficult to get things done... i.e. subsequent revisions of a novel for one's publisher...) Paint-paint is talking well now, and just last night sat me down to tell me a 'story'. I'm a writer so that was poignant as hell. His story was about a ghost playing with his toys. He struck the ghost on the ass with his fist and frightened it. The ghost then ran away and hid in one of my son's Hot Wheels cars, driving slowly away.

Funny, I never took him for the horror sort.

Wings of Icarus

For those interested, Andrew David King and Tony R. Rodriguez have a new ezine looking for good work, Wings of Icarus. Send your best.

http://www.freewebs.com/wingsoficarus

More information can be found in their guidelines.