This is my friend, Nicola. She’s published a wonderful novel and I could not be happier for her. I get to talk to her from to time and I love it. I sometimes feel like I could talk to her for days and never get tired of it. (Of course, she’d get tired of me, so…)
Anyway, here’s a half hour of her talking about her new book and I wanted to share it.
It’s winter. Officially. Stuff is falling from the sky, sticking to things, and it’s cold.
A couple of things of recent note. This past weekend, one of my coworkers at Left Bank Books got married. She held it in the bookstore, after closing on Sunday, and another coworker officiated. I shot photographs. It was wonderful.
That morning, I went to the gym and had a surprisingly good workout. Last year, I was aiming at doing a thousand pounds on the leg press. I reached 930 lbs before my little abominal abdominal incident put me right back down in the whimpy weights. Sunday I did 900 lbs. I don’t think I’ll make a thousand by years’ end, but I feel not at all bad about this.
I have a few more stories to edit for my short story collection, which now has a (tentative) release date—May 10th, 2014. I’ve seen the cover art already and it ranks with my favorite covers, done by a local artist named John Kaufman, who deserves a look. I am delighted that the collection will be sporting such a cool cover.
My friend Nicola Griffith‘s new novel, Hild, was release in November—11-12-13—and is doing very well. I myself have sold half a dozen copies already and it’s on my Christmas Season hand-picked list at the store. Go check it out, your brain will thank you.
I have been working for the last several weeks on the third volume of my alternate history trilogy, the Oxun Trilogy, and I have run headlong into a number of problems (one of which is that I’m trying to get a novel started during Christmas season when time is at a premium). I’ve written the first two or three chapters now four times. I am poring over my research, poking at it, trying to find a way in. Finally, I had a breakthrough and realized that I’ve been starting the damn thing in the wrong place. Note to aspiring writers: this is often the problem with stories that will not advance beyond a certain point. Not the only problem, but a big one.
Of course, this realization has necessitated acquiring a whole slew of new books specifically about—Napoleon in Egypt! If anyone out there reading this has a suggestion for a fairly detailed history of specifically the scientific mission, I would appreciate it.
Given the above, I’m doing something with this novel that I almost never do—outlining. I don’t think I have the time to wing it and correct it all later. I need to know very well where I’m going and when.
Earlier conceptions of the book required an outline of a different sort, and that is still there, but this is different.
Christmas at Left Bank Books is generally a time of insanity, madness, massive customer presence, and long hours. Which means I may not be making many posts till next year. I thought I’d let anyone interested know what’s going on.
If I don’t get to say it later, Have A Happy Holiday!
I saw a friend’s new avatar on FaceBook this morning, so I went to the app to see about doing it for myself. Nothing I came up with satisfied, so I decided it was time for a new AUTHOR PHOTO. Open Photoshop and…
Well, that came out kinda scary. I was going for a pencil drawing look, but it made me look like some kind of unpleasant, woke-up-on-the-wrong-side-of-humanity dude. Even the nice blue eyes didn’t soften it up much.
So I went for something more traditionally “authorial” and came up with this:
Which for now is probably the best photograph of me done since my friend Drea took a bunch of shots back in 1995, when I had delusions of massive authorhood. I still like those, but the truth is I just don’t look like this anymore:
Time. What are you gonna do? But I really like the new one, so for the foreseeable future I think I’ll use it for promotions and such.   Now I have to go write some fiction.
This happens every year. I participated last year at Left Bank Books and I’m going to do so this year.
Here is the relevant page.
Local authors, personally selling favorite titles to walk-in customers. Of course we’ll be selling our own, but we have all chosen a handful of personal favorites to suggest. And if you can’t take a writer’s opinion about what is good writing, then who can you trust?
This is an opportunity to come in and meet, in a less formal setting, some local authors, chat, one-on-one, and boost local business. Look at the line up we have this year. Ridley Pearson, Eric Lundgren, Curtis Sittenfeld, Antony John, Heather Brewer, Michael Kahn. (Me.) St. Louis has a wealth of auctorial talent.
I’m putting this out there because I would really appreciate a turn-out. Come in and get some early Christmas shopping done. Tell your friends you chose this title or that at the recommendation of an author of your acquaintance.
While you’re there, I can tell you about a couple of things coming up that I’m involved with. I’m starting up a reading group, hosted by the store. First meeting will be January 4th, a sort of let’s-get-together-and-meet before the book discussions start up. I’d like to tell you about that.
I’d also like to tell you about my forthcoming projects (and yes, I will be posting about them here, but a little face time would be good, don’t you think?) and of course I’d love to tell you about the books I’ll be promoting on the day.
So this is notice for my readers nearby, in the St. Louis area: The 30th of November, the Central West End location of Left Bank Books, between 1:00 PM and 5:00 PM. Come in, meet an author, buy some books. I’d love to see some of my friends, my casual readers, even—dare I suggest it?—some of my fans (if I have any). It will be fun and we can talk books.
Okay? We’re good? You’ll show up? Great.
I’ve been a bit dissatisfied with my blog of late. I keep finding themes I like, then when the updates come through and I click on them, the pages disappear. I’d have to go into the guts of things on my server and delete the old and re-install it, the damn thing won’t just update like it should.
But I get to try out new looks as a result. I’ll try this one for a while and see how I like it. My archive links have disappeared, which really annoys me, but I’ll figure it out.
I get a day off tomorrow. I’ll write something more meaningful then. Till, then…
It’s been a week of deadlines of various kinds. I got through the initial editing for the short story collection, at least of the stories I had notes on from my editor/publisher. I had three student stories to workshop and I finished those. I had new photographs to order for the upcoming Archon art show and those are in. This morning I have to go get supplies for that from Art Mart.
And, unusually, this past weekend was filled with parties. Friday night with Jim and Maia, who are terrific people, wine connoiseurs and excellent cooks, who live in a terrific old house. Neither of us have been up quite so late in a long time. Then Saturday night over at Lucy’s new house for a pleasant evening with old friends, not quite as late. Yesterday, I worked.
This morning I’m working here, and of course what I intended to do and what I’m ending up doing are two different things, but…
I am working on a new short story. I had a terrific idea a few weeks ago and wrote the first couple of pages before having to attend to the Other Stuff in need of doing. Isn’t that how it goes? And now the dryer isn’t working right. One more thing.
But this weekend is Archon and I have things pretty well prepared for that. The only thing lacking is a Big Announcement about a new novel coming out. I’ve become so accustomed to that state of affairs now that I don’t know how I’d react anymore if I did have news.
I’ll talk about the oddments and curios of Archon next week. Meantime, an image upon which to contemplate my return. Something…enigmatic….
I’m about to be a bit busy, so I thought I’d let folks know what’s going on.
I’m working on the edits for my VERY FIRST short story collection. Yes, indeed, I will have a new book coming out next spring from Walrus Publishing, a local publisher, and I’m going through edits now. I’m really excited about this because I’d been starting to think I’d never get one of these. There will be about 10 stories, a mix of previously published and never-before-published. For the moment, it’s called Gravity Box and Other Places. If all goes well, I’ll even get the cover artist I want, and I’ve already got commitments for blurbs from some terrific people.
The other thing, after that, will be the third alternate history novel in the series that is currently seeking a good home through the marvelous efforts of my agent, Jen Udden. So my winter is spoken for, as it were.
I also have every intention of publishing short fiction again. I started a new story a week ago that I think might have legs and I have a number in the hopper that need work, but dammit, I used to publish short fiction, I will do so again.
Finally, I’m beginning to formulate some ideas for exhibiting my photographs. I just finished putting together a set of new images for the upcoming Archon art show and in going through the work I’ve been doing since I went digital, I think it’s time I did something with all these besides just gaze upon them with self-satisfied pleasure.
So I have a busy fall and winter coming up. This on top of what has turned out to be a most pleasant day job at Left Bank Books.
I will post here, of course, it’s just that you may find some rather long gaps between one and the next, so I wanted to explain.
So…
Final phase of our trip involves two special people whose acquaintance with us is one of those improbables that make life so unpredictably fascinating.
I do not recall when I first met Peter Fuss. I am sure it was through the agency of my friend Tom, who was taking Peter’s philosophy class at UMSL, back in the late 70s or early 80s. Time has mushed together around certain things and I can’t pinpoint occurrence with the accuracy I’d like. I’ve never been able to keep a journal (with the exception of this blog) so I have no notation anywhere of when we first met, but it was not memorable.
Gradually, however, a circle of associates accrued of which I became first a peripheral part and then later a more central element around informal discussions of philosophy, semantics, literature, and other related subjects. Peter was always an anchor member of these groups. These I can say with some accuracy that we began to attend regularly from 1986 on and they took many forms. Membership shifted as much as interest, but always there was Peter and his colleague, John, with whom Peter had been working for years on a translation of the works of Hegel.
There were artists, lawyers, social workers, writers, and students. We broke off from attending for some years, then rejoined in the late 90s at the behest of another acquaintance. At that time, the group had settled into a long and deep reading of James Joyce’s Ulysses, which at first I thought would be drudgery, but turned out to be amazing. We stayed on to do Dante—the Commedia—which we finished a couple years ago.
Peter had by then long since divorced one woman and had remarried, to Nan, with whom he now lives atop a four thousand foot hummock northeast of Sacramento on 20 acres of forested land. Nan teaches tax law. Both of them are urbane, sophisticated people, the last sorts I would have expect to embrace a rural life, but they’re thriving on it.
They’re building a nice house, they have two terrific dogs—Billie and Rikki—and are surrounded by right wingers. This is a part of California much dedicated to a conservative view which we from the Midwest tend to think of as our own local, homegrown politics, but in some respects we’re amateurs. Peter and Nan, plus one or two others, seem to be the sole torchbearers for liberalism in the area.
Even so, they’re happy there, and it is difficult to argue. Where they live, you can see all the stars, and a drive to town takes you through great beauty. They welcomed us into this retreat and hosted us for four days. We took a drive with them down to Placerville where stands the Other Winery we loved (Boger) and spent a cool afternoon drinking good wine and eating a late lunch and discoursing. (I suspect I have never just “talked” with Peter, we have always discoursed.)
We met up with some of their neighbors for a short tour through part of the area, into more lovely scenery. 
Within this roughly fifty square miles we found a variety of landscapes and climates. Donna took walks with Billie and Rikki, Peter and I caught up on whatever we found worth catching up on, and the four of us discussed everything from local foods, the economy, international law, and esoteric spiritualism I burned through the balance of the chip in my camera and I now have enough images to keep me busy in Photoshop for months.
In some ways, this trip recapitulated our first major vacation together back in 1984. We attended our first Worldcon, L.A.Con II (Gordon R. Dickson was the guest of honor and the Star Wars trilogy had finally been released in its entirety) and afterward, in order to cleanse soul of all that we went to Estes Park in Colorado and wandered around the mountains for a few days.
On our last day, as we were getting ready to go out to dinner, the dogs ran off. Nothing that unusual, but their timing was terrible and we spent an hour or more trying to get them back. They finally came to the house, Nan fed them, and we went to dinner.
Upon our return, Rikki (to the left here), the smaller of the pair, didn’t seem to be doing so well. Nan nestled the dog in her lap, but something wasn’t right.
Nan called the vet, who instructed her to keep a watch and if Rikki worsened, bring her in. Hmm. That would entail a drive down the barely-graded road, upon which there were no lights, at night. It was a bumpy ride in daylight. Well.
So we put in the movie we’d all decided to watch—To Have and Have Not—and about an hour in, Nan decided Rikki was worse. The dog really was magnificently lethargic, barely responsive to what was going on around her. Nan bundled her up and took off.
We finished the movie.
At one in the morning Nan poked her head into the bedroom to tell us Rikki would be fine, evidently she’d gotten into a thicket of wild marijuana and eaten…too much.
Day came, time to leave. Peter took us to breakfast in town one last time, and then we headed for Sacramento.
This trip is too full. We’ll be able to sort through the memories for years without running out of the wonder and pleasure. All of which was prompted by the call to reunion at the beginning by our friends Nicola and Kelley, of whom I have written before and will no doubt write again. (Today is September 4th and we received a notice from them a few weeks back that they intend to get married today, because, where they live, they now can. They wanted us there, but it’s just not possible. We were there at their joining ceremony 20 years ago in Atlanta. So let me take a moment, as I write this, to wish them congratulations and as much joy and wonder in the next 20 as they had in the previous—more, in fact.) The reunion was tremendous and the journey after was one of our best.
Life is good.
It takes a long time to drive past a mountain. A long time…
