Category: Personal

career

Necessary Notes

Couple of things.  One, as noted in the previous post, I’m going to Bouchercon, here in St. Louis this year.  The other event coming up—well, Archon, of course, the first weekend of October, but I always try to be there—will be the local independent bookstores bus tour on October 22nd, via St. Louis Alliance.  I’ll be at the Book House on Manchester Road from 11:00 AM on and then with readers for lunch.  Check the Alliance web page for details.

Today I spent doing some catch-up stuff.  Company left this morning, so I cleaned up a bit, walked the dog, then got together with Scott Phillips in U City for coffee.  Scott’s a great guy and I owe him for hooking me up with my new agent.  He has a new novel out and I urge you all to find it, buy it, read it.  The Adjustment  is prime Scott, quirky, disturbing, funny, and utterly unclassifiable.  (And although I have provided the Amazon link, please buy it from a local, preferably independent bookstore.  If you don’t, I’ll know, or I know people who will know, and once they know, well…)

After that, heading back home, I took a detour to visit a friend I don’t see enough of.  Vicky was home and we spent an hour or so visiting, something I need to do more often.  I’ve known Vicky for mumbles%handovermouth*muffle muffle years and, as with others, time has sort of slipped away and too much has gone by without enough contact.  Yeah, I’ve been busy (and sometimes just in no kinda mood to be friendly with anyone) and so has she, but friends are friends and there’s no real excuse.  If you delay and accept the excuses, one day you go back and find the place overgrown, abandoned, the windows busted, and the door boarded up.

 

After The Sale

 

Anyway, I’m back home now (obviously) and doing some more cleaning up and getting a bit annoyed at myself for being disorganized.  There’s more fiction to write, some music to do, and—at the moment perhaps most importantly—a nap that needs taking.  I can see it, right there, lying out in the open, unguarded.  All I need to do is reach out when no one is looking and take it.

 

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Just Getting Up In The Morning

Really, I’ve been up since 5:20 already.  We have company coming into town, so most of the day so far has been taken up with cleaning the house and arranging the guest room—which is at all other times my office.

But I sometimes feel that just being able to get up in the morning and do anything constructive is a minor miracle.  Oh, nothing significant about that thought.  Usually it’s a matter of choosing among several options and then deciding whether I have either the imagination or the energy to tackle any of them.  I often have a period of enervation after completing a novel and the older I get the more intense they seem to be.

I didn’t go to the gym this morning as I normally would have because of the incoming company and other scheduling conflicts.  I’d decided that before I found out about the company, but now I wonder if I’ll manage it Wednesday.  It is too easy to get into a habit of blowing off certain tasks for later.  For instance, I keep meaning to write a new short story (started one yesterday, much to my dismay) or pull out the half dozen I have in rough draft and get them in shape.  As long as there is a novel in process, I can feel righteous about putting them off.  But I have no excuse now other than just not feeling like it.

Not to mention all the things around the house that need tending to.  I do a fair job of keeping up with the entropy, but some things slip by and when I get around to them they have grown in size to unmanageable proportions.  I have to work up to tackling them.  So far, I always do, but there may come a day…

I’m going to Bouchercon.  Since at least two of the projects I have under submission to my new agent (did I tell you about my new agent?  I’m sure I did) are mysteries—though in truth at least half my oeuvre to date has been a hybrid of SF and mystery (I mean, it even says so on the cover of Mirage, Chimera, and Aurora,  an Asimov Robot Mystery), and there are even some noirish aspects to Remains—it seemed sensible to bite the bullet and go to the mystery convention, especially since it’s going to be here, in St. Louis.  The plus also is I get to meet my new agent (did I tell you about my new agent?  Oh, yeah, I did) face to face.

It’s been feeling like this year a number of things are going to get fixed.  All this getting up in the morning has to count for something, right?  But one thing I’ve discovered for certain, and it’s something that had been bothering me—I still love to write.  Since March I have been working long days on two of my novels, both of which have received major revisions.  Hell, the first one was gutted like a fish and rebuilt almost from the bottom up.  But because it felt like it was going somewhere, that something was going to come of it, I dived in and had a ball.  This was important.  I needed to know this, thought I’d been putting off even asking the question.

So getting up in the morning, while still occasionally a pain, has renewed meaning for me.  There’s a point to all this effort and that makes a huge difference.  Good may yet come of all this.

I do need to make better use of my time.  But that’s always been true.  So for now, adieu.  I’m off to make time bleed a little and get some more done.

Personal

Textures and Other Ways

Marty Halpern has an anthology coming out, filled with alien contact stories.  I think it’s going to be a really cool book, not just because one of my stories will be in it, but because everyone else who is in it is a really good writer, and, well, Marty has been doing blog posts about each story.

Here’s the one for mine.  But check out the rest of them, too, and then plan on buying the anthology when it comes out.  It would make a great Christmas gift, a whole book full of bizarre, well-written, idea-rich alien contact stories.  Remember, too, you need to buy multiple copies—one for the office, one for your bedside, one for the bathroom, and one to carry with you, and one to give to a friend.

Oh, and the title of the anthology—ALIEN CONTACT—coming out from Nightshade Books.

Art

Playing Jazz, part three

Steel-trap smiles made room on the stage, a shuffle of seats, a place where chances die or lives are made, all the welcome of the seen-it-befores and the willingly-impressed, squeezed into a need for the new, hope for discovery, and fear of not-good-enough.

The room itself prepared for betrayal, but the ears plugged back into the main artery, on the off that something might open a vein or just shut out the silence.

The Kid opened his case and took out a pair of hands.  Everyone gasped at the tendons and callouses, the length of the reach and the curl of long use.  He attached them and flexed them and came up to the group and sat down with a comfort way past his years.

Staves crossed, he danced over a brief history of composition, plainsong to Bach and right over romance he played straight into cool.  I heard chords buried under atonal cadences, squeezed between whole-tone and free jazz, unplayed references to Jellyroll, stride, Lester Brown, syncopated against voices lofted on solid riffs, the gifts of Bird found one long, strung-out night, reforming on Miles, scampering with Chick and Herbie, and soaring to Bop.

 

He told us: sevenths took me out of thirds and they expelled me from the nursery.  On the street a big smiling wind showed me how to flatten my fifths and from there it was only a bus ride to the Village and the Vanguard and Birdland.  In the lower shoals, all eddied with mist and restless listening, the minor blues found release in an augmented major cool that fused with a life beat ignored by the timid, scorned by the comfortable, and recovered by archaeologists of ancient sighs.  It talked to me, whispered secrets, and taught me how to read the palimpsests of harmonies down to the bare rock surface of the first language.  I can tell you this much, what I’ve gleaned from all those notes passed sub rosa between classes, that it’s nothing alone and everything together.

It’s the conversation that counts, the contact that matters, so talk to me now and let’s play some jazz.

Art

Playing Jazz, part one

I hung out in a small spot of night on the fringes of No Smoking and Adults Only.

Thick air, eighty proof attitude, and shadows that kept your seat for you during intermissions.

The stage belonged to a round of changing keys, facile fingers, and moods found in forgotten closets, abandoned buildings, after hour garages, and overlooked streets, brought in by saxes, axes, horns, and skins wearing misery wrapped up in puzzles, suits that only glowed in moonlight, who spoke in tongues unheard by day.

One night they were handing out faces to the smiling, voiceless crowd, laying foundations for towers that never rose, sending messages in forgotten codes, when the Kid walked in, case under his arm, hat cocked, eyes clear behind opaque wisdom no one sought.  He stood at the foot of the stage, straight, respectful, patient, till the set was done and they noticed him.

They asked him who he was and what did he want.  He set his case down on the edge of the platform and he said:

“Who I am is a work in progress, a collection of possible outcomes, an arrow looking for a bow, a bullet for a barrel, a truth for a mouth to put it in.  What I do is whatever it takes to make all this congeal into reason and purpose.”

We heard echoes.  So what, they asked then, do you think you’re gonna do here?

And he answered: “I want to play jazz.”

Art

Down. To It and Otherwise

But not depressed. Just tired. Sort of a twilight feeling.

I’m working on the last chapter of The Spanish Bride, an action/historical mystery/thriller/etc set in the uncrowded days of 1780s St. Louis.  This is about the fifth draft now and I think it’s ready.  Just one more chapter.

 

 

This is always a dangerous point in the process.  I see that finish line and I get anxious, I want it to be done, but the last stretch of a novel is where all the promise is supposed to pay off, so you shouldn’t hurry it up.

It will be fine.  After I finish this draft, Donna gets to read it and then I must go back and fix the things she indicates need fixing.

But I am tired.  I’ve been constantly redrafting a novel—this one and Orleans—since March.  I need a break.  A couple weeks to catch up on some other things.  I have a guest blog to write, things around the house to tend to, more photographs to finish, friends to catch up with.

The image above was taken the night of the Fourth of July.  A pall of smoke filled the neighborhood as if some battle had been fought (which ritualistically it had).  I’ve manipulated it a bit to make it a little stranger.

I’m going to go feed the dog and watch some tv now.

Absurdity

Playing Around

I’m trying another new theme.  One of these days I may build something all my own…or, at least, watch while someone who knows how to do it builds something for me at my direction.

But I like this one, I think I’ll leave it alone for a while.  It’s more in tune with what I like to think myself all about—broad vistas, cosmic scenery, special effects.  Well, maybe not so much special effects, but, you know, skiffy.

From what I have seen so far, I’m very much liking the new WordPress.  Of course, that means I’m distracted.  This is not the sort of writing I need to be doing just now.

I particularly like this feature, inserting images and adding text alongside.  This may be old hat to a lot of seasoned bloggers, but till now I haven’t been able to do it.  It’s more the sort of thing I’ve been wanting to do.  I have a lot of images that will serve fine as accent, but I don’t want them as the main attraction.

It’s Saturday and once again Donna is at work.  Audit season, we don’t see much of one another.  For the time being, that’s okay since I do have a book to finish.  Once I get done telling you all this, I have to go back to the 1780s and get with it.

I finished the first rewrite for my new agent (in case I haven’t mentioned that previously).  The alternate history is out the door.  My door.  She still has to pass on it and tell me it’s brilliant.  Meanwhile, I’m working on the historical mystery, and this week I ran into the chapter from hell.  One of those miserable pieces of writing that has a good deal of parts I don’t want to love, but embedded in a marsh of motionless gunk.  I finally figured out how to fix it, but it requires throwing a lot of what’s already there in the can, and I am loathe to do it.  As this is Saturday and my love is nowhere near (hell, even the dog is out of the house, at the groomer’s), I have no excuse.

So enough.  I have a couple of more studied posts I want to do later—one in particular on the new Yes album, which after three weeks I still quite like—and maybe some more political kvetching, of which there is ample to kvetch about.  But I must end this playing around now and do some serious work.  Really.  Right now.  I’m going.

Later.

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New Website

I’m kind of pleased about this.  Anyone who has been keeping up with this blog for any time knows I was involved with an organization called The Missouri Center for the Book.  To recap for the benefit of those who are just joining us, the MCB is the state affiliate of the Library of Congress Center for the Book, which is an organization that promotes and advocates for what we call The Community of the Book.  That includes authors, sure, but also bookstores, libraries, publishers, bookbinders, even illustrators.

The Center for the Book is not a remedial reading program.

There are plenty others that do that.  No, MCB and the other state Centers—and every state has one, plus the Territories—are about the culture of reading.  Now, if that sounds snobbish, then forgive me, but it’s anything but.  The door is open.  Anyone can be a reader.  In fact, in this country I’d have to say anyone who can’t read—no, let me be more specific—anyone who doesn’t read and undervalues reading, it’s on them.  There’s no excuse.  Books are everywhere and while it may be easier to see the movie or go to the mall or whatever else you might do to fill up the time you might spend discovering a great book, to not be part of the Community of the Book is both sad and no one’s fault but your own.  At least, that’s my opinion.

I served on the board of directors for nine years.  For five of those nine years I was president of the organization.  In that time, a lot of work got done and some new things came into being, not least of which is the office of Missouri State Poet Laureate—which MCB advocated for, lobbied, worked, and finally achieved, a program which MCB runs.

I retired from the board this year—last March, to be precise—and there was one thing I wanted to see accomplished that was still hanging fire when I left, something I believed to be vital to the continued health of the organization.  Whether we like to admit it or not, the 21st Century is The Future in more ways than I could have anticipated as a 14-year-old science fiction addict reading Asimov and Heinlein and Anderson and Bradbury.  The digital age is here and books are changing form if not content.  It is not possible to function effectively without participating in that reality.

MCB had a website.  We’d had for years and it needed upgrading.  We also needed a higher web presence, so the social networking so common today beckoned.

I’m pleased to inform you all that MCB now has a new website.  Right here.  It just went up in the last week or so.  I’d really like to thank Jarek Steele at Left Bank Books for constructing this and agreeing to be admin.  He did a spectacular job and as time goes on there will be other goodies.  Two regular blogs are projected for it, one for the Poet Laureate, the other of more diverse provenance.  You will note there’s a FaceBook link.

(I must also give considerable credit to Diana Botsford, who did an enormous amount of prep work on the previous site making it ready for transfer, found us a new ISP, worked hard to get it up to a point where the project was viable—and then due to the vagaries that life throws at us from time to time had to move on.  Diana is a great person.  Visit her site, buy her books.)

It’s not often you get to say that you accomplished everything you wanted to in a project, and certainly there are some things I didn’t get to do with the MCB, but I can honestly say I took it as far as I could and did the important stuff I wanted to get done.  The new board is going to do some very cool things in the next few years, so I would like to encourage you all to check it out, give it your support, friend the FaceBook page, and bookmark the new site.  They’re good people, it’s a worthwhile organization, a vital cause, and a cool thing.

I am going to write some more books.

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Back

Sorry for the brief absence.  It seems my ISP (Earthlink) upgraded their webhosting.  One result was to knock my blog for topsy-turvy.  The oldest posts appeared first and any new posts ended up at the bottom of the queue.  After a few days and phone calls, this has now been resolved.  Earthlink upgraded my Word Press for me (an unexpected service) and now I am back.

In the chaos, I lost two posts, but I was able to reconstruct them and repost them, just below this one.  The dates are wrong, but the content is there.

The up side is I am now using the latest version of Word Press and it has all kinds of nifty features I didn’t have at my disposal before.  I intend to change the theme at some point, but that may take some doing as some odd things have happened to the photographs.  But for the time being, for anyone who may have missed me, I am once more up.

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Treason To The Future

No, I’m not going off on some political rant.  At least, I don’t think so.  (I was accused recently of using my blog as a soapbox…well, I thought, isn’t that what it’s for?  The question is, how good is the soap.)

At our recent Dante session I was reminded of a quote I’d forgotten all about.  One of the best philosophical thinkers of the 20th Century was Alfred North Whitehead.  I recommend him.  Even where I disagree with him, there is plenty to stir the imagination and encourage new thought.  One of his better books, quite short and to the point, is The Function of Reason.  In the chapter three or thereabouts, we find this little gem.

“To set limits on speculation is treason to the future.”

By that, I read him as meaning that we must be free to speculate about where we’re going, what we hope to do, how we’ll make it happen.  All ideas are welcome, even bad ones, as long as we’re only speculating.  But more than that, it’s kind of one of those notions that ought to go without saying—all thinking is speculation, even problem solving, and to arbitrarily set limits, to say “You can’t talk about that,” is to shut the door on possible solutions to problems we may not even know we have yet.

I’m using that quote in a talk I’m doing tomorrow night in Columbia on What Is Science Fiction.  I think it answers a century-worth of ridicule and criticism toward the form that ought not to have come up to begin with, but which was predictable.  People are uncomfortable with change.  (Here’s a little bit of politics coming up.  Sorry about that.)  When you look at the current wrestling match going in the country—indeed, around the globe—there seems to be one basic demand from people with regards to the problems we face:  fix it but don’t change anything.

Science fiction is all about change.

There are two ways to look at change—as an inevitable force impossible to avoid or as a fate we seek to hide from.  Change is coming regardless, so hiding does no good, but it does do harm, because in hiding we surrender any say we might have in how change happens.  And when you do that, then whatever happens will probably be something you won’t like.

Preparing this talk reminded me why I’ve always liked science fiction in the first place.  I’ve never been afraid of the future.  The future, to me, has always been a place where the best could happen.  It might not, things might go sour, but it’s not inevitable, and even if we do go through a bad time, the future is still there, with potential.  When I was a kid, Today was always pretty much dull.  Tomorrow—and by that I mean TOMORROW! —held all the really cool stuff I knew would make life better.  By and large, I haven’t been terribly disappointed.  In spite of things transpiring that rather annoy, irritate, and anger me, there is much more that I find generally wonderful.

The trick is to be open to that part instead of stockpiling a list of complaints.