Of 365 Days and 1 in 56

I am a transplant that Texas has not rejected.

A year ago today, having made great time from Knoxville to Birmingham, I decided to call an audible, abandon a planned overnight in New Orleans, and drove straight through to Houston. I rolled to a stop in front of the little house on Walling Street, grabbed my laptop from the car, and met my girlfriend in the front yard with a "honey, I'm home!" And it's been a wonderful year under the same roof, building a home together, making new friends, exploring a Houston that's changed since my first rodeo, back in 1991 - 1993. Whereas that stretch was a debacle of colossal proportions, I wouldn't trade this past year for anything.

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The Machine of Death 2 lineup announcement is slated for tomorrow. I think my story was solid and my take different enough to distinguish itself, but the law of large numbers - 1,958 stories for a maximum of 35 slots (that's a 1 in 56 chance, higher if the # of stories in the final book is lower) - says I should brace for disappointment and be happily surprised if I'm selected.

Meanwhile, the novel progresses, albeit at a couple thousand words a sitting (though I'm coming into some high-word-count burn territory); I have revisions for one story ready to put on paper; a second draft of a story-in-progress is in my head; a new take on a third story that's been sitting fallow has begun to germinate - so not getting an MOD nod would sting, but there are pots on the stove, and I'm stirring as fast as I can.

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I may or may not be a candy resource tomorrow for Hallowe'en. Not having any candy to distribute is probably a a big hurdle at 9 PM the night before.  Then again, I don't recall a single trick-or-treater last year, so I don;t even know if we'll be missed. I do wonder if we're going to get that jack o'lantern carved...       

When a Stranger Tweets

I received a very nice and wholly unsolicited comment on my Machine of Death anthology story earlier today. I was at the MOD website to catch up on news (the lineup for the second volume will be announced at the end of October), and happened to note a tweet in their Twitter stream of MOD references:

""It pivoted toward hell with jackrabbit speed." Reading Machine of Death. Also, political commentary."

It's a curious thing to spot one's words in quotes being bandied about by a stranger.

Curiously cool!

So I tweeted my pleasure over spotting the initial tweet, and the woman who'd made the initial Twitter reference responded, "Awesome! It's been one of my favorites in the collection. Great characters. Realistic #MachineofDeath society." This more than makes up for the guy working on his graduate degree who admitted on his blog that he couldn't get into my MOD story. But then, he also made it sound like anything over five pages was a challenge to his attention. I'm sure that made Dickens sad, too.

In any event, now I'm waiting to see where the chips fall with MOD 2. With almost three times as many subs as the first anthology - and one for the second submission that neatly paralleled the title of mine (however improbably - I mean, when I tell you how close they were, you'll find you wouldn;t have put money on that parallel) - I have appropriate expectations. Read as 'somewhat lower than one might believe.'

I'm in a good way with short fiction right now - just had "One Man's Famine" in Bards and Sages Quarterly, the Kindle All-Stars picked up "Exhuming Harry Truman" and TOTU is still forthcoming with "Lorem Ipsum Donald" in their next issue. Couple that traction with some near-misses and validation from total strangers, and a case can be made for tightening and circulating the half-dozen or so tales that I have ready (and writing another half-dozen) and keeping the pot stirring.

So I wonder if this is the time to be climbing Longform Mountain after all.

I'm about 20,000 words into the first draft of a novel - The House of the Hours - which has come back front and center in the last few weeks. I like the premise. It has its roots in a number of things, but primarily in a series of nightmares I had sporadically across the first thirty or so years of my life. If not boiling over, it's got a good simmer. But the short stories are baby birds, and they're loud and hungry. In fact, one of them dictated a rewrite of an ending earlier today after three months of silence. But I wonder sometimes: if I don't drop everything to turn that sort of mental breakthrough into hard copy now now now am I'm inviting the magic and momentum of a piece to go away?

Hard to say without trying to strike the balance. I find I do better on the long form if I don't have distractions. Short stories qualify as such, with differing energies, voices and tones. And with X hours out of the day for writing, that can be a narrow pin head upon which to dance.

367 Days Later

"Lately it occurs to me / what a long, strange trip it's been."
-- The Grateful Dead

Where does a year go? You flip a few calendar pages, tear down the old one a week into the new year, hang the new one, flip a few more pages, and BAM - one year down. Would that time travel was so easy. (Actually, since time is a matter of arbitrary measure, time travel is as easy as deciding it's last Tuesday. You just need to get everyone else on board. Ergo, the true impediments to time travel are not science or physics, but perception and consensus-building.)

I could probably reconstruct the last year, from relocation to publication, but I'm not in an archeology place. Transitional, perhaps, but if you were around for bits of it, it's rehash for you. If you weren't, well, I suspect you'd care even less now. If you wanted to sift Facebook, I suppose you could see the highs and lows. And mayhap a few things eaten, a few movies seen, a few articles passed along.  I think the big problem is just how digitally fractured I've become.

So in an effort to take back the blog and create a more unified presence, there will be no looking back or reheating last month's lunch. We'll leave it at the Dead quote above. We're looking forward. Blowing away the dust. Blogging as means of relating news, views and IOUs, stepping stone to the personal website in the works (seeing as I've been camping on the URL for a decade), and finding an efficient direction for self-promotion, publication and other writerly pursuits - since the roads to traditional publishing are beginning to look like the southbound route through the El Yunque National Forest. Watch this space for further details.


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Item: I've been accepted as an author for the Kindle All-Stars project. It's the brainchild and labor of writer/editor Bernard J. Schaffer, and it promises to be a barn-burner. For me, it's the opportunity to appear between covers with mentor/inspirer/friend Harlan Ellison while also contributing to a good cause. I'll be posting much more about this project in the coming weeks, but for right now, click for an overview of the project.

Item: As I peck away at the novel and various short stories develop, finalize or set sail for consideration, I'm also mulling the possibility of a limited edition chapbook as part of a website launch. Since that would ideally be in the next few months I am, perhaps, short on time. There are certain things I may need: design the thing, find an artist, shop the print job, figure the price point,  etc, etc.  The alternative might be a broadside, but while I have one in mind for the flash bit "Shady Acres," I mull whether anyone will want to use wall space for my weirdness. In any event, tag that as "you heard it here first".

Item: Believe it or don't, but my first professional publication was five years ago this month, with the appearance of the Poe-centric tale "Mister Eddie" in the pages of Tales of the Unanticipated magazine (#27). Copies are still to be had from TOTU, easily ordered from their website - and at $7.75, a steal.