To Write and Beyond

Been writing a book, no time for blog. Nah, that’s not really it, I’ve just had other stuff going on. Work things. It kind of irks me that work is the one area I can’t really talk about all that much here, but I don’t want to be one of those guys canned for writing something some pencil pusher upstairs thinks will bring the company down from the inside. Maybe I should just get a job with a company full of people who can’t read. This is America, it can’t be that hard, right?

I’m closing in on the halfway mark on the new book. The really cool thing is that the harder I’ve been working on the book, the more passages from SCARS I’ve been able to use to beef of the narrative. I’m back in the multi POV groove and it really helps shake things up if I get stuck on one plot thread. Last night I did something I’d never done before, I put a marker in one chapter so I could come back to it and then went and wrote the following chapter first. So today when I go back I’ll know exactly what I’ll be writing and where it fits.

Another thing helping my energy with this book is a couple of good books I’ve been reading. The latest is final Killer Year chick JT Ellison’s debut thriller ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS. I’ve got to be honest here, I’m not really a thriller fan, especially ones about serial killers, and if I didn’t know JT I probably never would have picked up the book. But I do, and I did, and I’m glad I did. You can really tell JT did her research with the police procedure. Probably the most authentic part of the story is that her MC, a Homicide Lt. works her cases with a team of detectives who each have their own individual personalities. So many Homicide Lt’s in modern crime fiction work as lone wolfs which just seems ridiculous.  So check it out and tell her I sent you. I want a commission.

Five and Two

Detroit Lions – 2

Defending NFC..cough…Champions…cough – 0

We’re half a game behind Green Bay in the division. Go Denver!

Man, I really feel like Dave with this post, but I guess that’s not all bad.

Under Review

I got my first review today ever. Over at the wonderful short story review site Nasty Brutish Short, Graham Powell says all sorts of neato things about my story BREAKFAST ANYTIME.

This story is certainly one of my favorites because it really was my entry into the current short fiction boon time I’ve been experience. Up until I wrote that story in 2005, I had only written one other crime story in almost ten years and none since 2001. All of my writing time had been taken up by writing and rewriting (and rewriting again) LUNCHBOX HERO. But by that time I was in grad school and starting to look at shorts again. Since that first story was picked up charitably by Sarah Weinman for SHOTS magazine, I’ve gone on to write and publish several others and even made it into a forthcoming print anthology. So yeah, I like that story and I’m glad someone else did as well.

Check it out.

**Update** Maybe I should have written this blog post after I did my writing for the day, I’m sure Guyot would have preferred that, but I just finished my 1k words for the day which brings the total for the manuscript to a little more than 30,000 words. I’m almost halfway there. Thanks for the ribbing Guyot, it keeps me honest.

A picture is worth about 291 words

You”ll notice some changes to the site today. I wanted something a little more geared toward me and my writing with a customizable phot. After searching forever online looking for good pics of Detroit I remembered I had this one I’d taken a couple of years ago in the greatly improved Campus Martius area downtown. These building are now gone and the area is getting even more gentrified, but I like the look and feel of it.

After bouncing around and started a few different projects in the last week or so, I’m finally back to the main project I was working on and got it over th 28k word mark. I read through a bunch of what I had and started getting some great ideas for where to take it. With as far along as it is, I decided it would be a waste not to use what I’ve already got. I can go back and change it and fix it or chuck it once it’s done, but it’s going to get done. My goal is to get the first draft done by the end of the year. That shouldn’t be a problem if I can keep myself in rough draft mode, just writing without thought to the future of it or whether or not it’s perfect the time out.

And can we all get a big Amen in Michigan for some true fall weather? It’s been so nice to crawl into bed with cold sheets and a nice warm blanket on top. Of course it makes getting out of bed in the morning nearly impossible. But ahhhhhh, now the season starts. First Halloween, the Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then New Years, then…well then I’m marrying some broad I met on the Internet.

Noodling

Imagine, if you will, a book. It’s a PI novel and sounds interesting enough to you. On the back there are blurbs from some well-known PI authors and maybe a couple authors you don’t recognize. The author has published a few stories in publications you recognize and even was nominated for an award or two. You scan the first few pages and it catches your interest but then you notice the publisher. It’s Tyndale, or Bethany House, or Zondervan, or any of the other Christian publishing houses. Would you still buy the book?

Monster Meh

Saturday night Becky and I went to the Guinness World Record largest haunted house and for my money, the only thing really scary was the admission charge. We dropped $20 to walk around an old warehouse in Pontiac for an hour being chased by foam monsters and disoriented by strobe lights. Granted, some of the special effects were pretty cool, but I think an actual warehouse downtown Pontiac (or Detroit for that matter) with no one else around might be a much scarier attraction. Becky truly enjoyed herself though and had fun with a running commentary of the monsters and exhibits.

As I was wandering through the place though, the really sick part of my mind started thinking of ways to make a haunted house that truly scared people, and let’s just say my mind went a few places I’m not comfortable admitting to (and this from the guy who wrote DONKEY SHOW). But haunted houses are like horror movies to me, meaning they
don’t scare me at all. At most, the make me jump or scream with gimmicks or cheap frights, but not genuine fear. This is sad because I really like to be scared but for my money, roller coasters are better at getting my fear juice going than some old warehouse decorated like a Halloween prop shop.

So what about you? Are you a fan of haunted houses or do you wish somebody would set up a mysterious house on the edge of town where they invited real ghosts and chain saw murderers and such to really scare you?

Is there an F in Epiphany?

“Gone Baby Gone” is not the kind of movie that you walk out of thinking how great it was or how entertaining it was. You walk out of it thinking. And I walked out of it absolutely convinced of what I’m supposed to be doing with my life. I’m supposed to be writing PI novels. There’s no hemming or hawing or calling them something different because they might sell better. And I’m going to keep writing PI novels until I write one as amazing as “Gone Baby Gone” that makes somebody else feel the way I do right now.

Can’t Hardly Wait

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809700023/video/3269848/

I’m like a giddy freaking school girl today. The 1:20pm show has my name written ALL over it.

Whether the weather can be wethered

I’ve just about had enough of this crappy, schitzo weather here in Michigan. It’s almost the end of October and we can’t shake this freaking humidity. I want frost and cold and maybe even some snow. I was at the mall the other day on my lunch break and for the first time in a while wished they would start decorating for Christmas sooner. Maybe it will make me feel colder. I don’t know if I’m quite ready for the one station to start their all Christmas music all the time campaign quite yet (if ever, but I wouldn’t mind a Santa Clause or reindeer in the mall instead of the Halloween decorations. The worst part of this weather is the toll it’s taking on my very out of shape body. I’ve got a sinus, pressure, cold thing I haven’t been able to kick and it’s making dealing with stupid customers at work a lot harder. I don’t exactly have an unlimited store of patience to begin with, but this only makes it worse. Yuck.

Take this job and mildy push it

I’ve been coming into work the last few weeks and absolutely hating it. This is not good for many reason, but mostly because I don’t want o be one of those bitter old guys who hates there job so much so today I need to remind myself why this job is pretty good and not
nearly as bad as most of the other jobs I’ve had in my storied professional life.

First and foremost, this is not fast food or manual labor and that alone makes it one of the better jobs ever. Really the only things I truly don’t like about this job are the hours (12:30-9:30pm with Friday and Sunday off) and that it’s been non-stop crazy busy for
almost the entire year with no signs of slowing down. I’m also not a big fan of the selling stats they force us to maintain or the other general office crap that goes on, but those aren’t day-to-day things like the hours and days off are.

So right there I think I’m talked myself into not being miserable for most of the day. One of the other things about this job that I like best is that I can get quite a bit of writing done if I want to. I haven’t been all that productive lately, averaging about 500 words
every few days, but that’s mostly been due to laziness and frustration with the writing itself, nothing to do with my actual job.

I get to wear jeans and t-shirts to work which is pretty cool, though sometimes I wish I was actually in a traditional office environment where I got to dress up a little more, but really, quibble quibble.

So tell me about yourself. I know most of you don’t have dream jobs and most of you don’t have horrible jobs, so how do you make it through day after day with a job that’s just, meh?