Random Connection Day

Today on my way back from lunch, I saw an older gentleman riding a unicycle through a construction area. They were doing some work on the sidewalk and this guy just glided through their midst, without hesitation.

I’ve joked with a number of people recently that when I was younger, my father was training my brother and I to join the circus. At various times, dad taught us (and learned himself) to unicycle, walk on stilts and juggle. We actually got pretty good at some of it. I was better at the unicycle, my brother could walk on stilts the best and my dad could do it all. I couldn’t juggle well, but could do a little of it while riding the unicycle.

Dad got good at juggling, eventually working his way up to rings, pins, bean bags and lacrosse balls. Couldn’t con him into trying to juggle chain saws or flaming torches, but that’s ok.

I don’t think he was trying to keep us off the streets or anything - did I mention that we lived in the country and had six houses on our street? I think he just thought it would be something fun to do and was about the only thing that all three of us could/would do together.

My application to clown college was eventually denied. I wasn't serious enough about my clowning around.

As a side note, I was looking for images to use with this and eventually decided on the one above, which I found on the net. Any guesses which site? The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s page. I kid you not.

Lucky or not?

I'm not sure what the superstition is with this one:

If you can't tell from my terrible picture, this is a fortune cookie that came with my Chinese food the other day. Only there isn't just one cookie inside, there are two fortune cookies within the plastic wrapper.

I'm afraid to open it.

Would two cookies mean double the luck, or would they cancel each other out?

Wouldn't it be interesting if I opened one and it said "See other cookie"?

D'oh!

Blood, Blade and Thruster, the magazine I blog for is closing up shop and Arkham Tales, the magazine that accepted my favorite zombie story, is doing likewise (before my story gets published). I find these things out within a couple of days of each other!

This news is truly harshing my mellow.

Arkham Tales cited the economic downturn. They posted each issue as a free pdf and took advertising to help compensate the editor for all his hard work. I think each issue turned out very well, but excellent artwork and a high production value. I'm sad the my piece won't appear there and even more unhappy that they couldn't make a go of it.

If you're a fan of horror or the weird tale, check them out and download the handful of issues they produced. You'll find something you like, I'm sure.

Almost a holiday poem

The first issue of Ghostlight Magazine is now available through LuLu. My poem "You will be Visited by Three Ghosts" appears in it. While the title comes from A Christmas Carol, the poem itself is really about growing up, getting a job and then looking back at what you wanted when you were young. Sort of. It's also about rock n roll. More or less. I think it's pretty funny, but I suppose that's for the readers to decide.

This is a magazine put out via the Great Lakes Horror Association, which I am a member of and write a column for. I felt I had to mention that, even though I still had to go through the same submission process as everyone else. No favoritism, I swear.

This piece marks the beginning of an interesting couple of months for my publications. I've had a number of acceptances that are due to be published right around the same time. As always, something can set these back, but here's some that are supposed to be coming up soon.

I'm the Spotlight Scribe at the horror site ChoateRoad.com for the month of November. My story "Before the Ink is Even Dry" will be up there all month (along with a bio and my 'Elvis' photo!)

Ghostlight - "You will be Visited by Three Ghosts" November

A Thousand Faces - "Everyone is the Hero of their own Movie" November

Star*Line - "Godzilla's Other Half" November

Ethereal Tales - "Dancing with the Scars" This piece appeared in their magazine a few months back, but the editor decided to produce an audiobook of the stories and had all the pieces recorded and put them out on cds, in pretty cool packaging. November

The Journal of Experimental Fiction - "Everything Must Go" Winter issue

Ruthless Peoples Magazine - "UFOs over Toledo Spell out Dirty Word" No firm date yet

Space Westerns - "Where it all went Bad" This is another one without a firm date, it was tentatively slated to be up earlier this year, but it sounds like it could happen soon. I just signed a new contract for it.

There are a few other things coming up in the Spring, but these are the stories and poems appearing in the next two months or so.

I kept thinking, when are these finally going to appear? When I put all the dates together, it turns out to be a pretty interesting Winter for me.

Is it possible to be overexposed and obscure at the same time?

To paraphrase from the movie Ghostbusters "You don't want me exposing myself"!

It's wonderful to see these things find print - it's a similar process as writing a novel. You work for months and years on a novel, then rewrite it a few times and then set about finding an agent or a publisher. If you find an agent, that agent then has to find a publisher, then there's about a year wait or more after a publisher signs on before it hits the stands. It's stop and go, hurry up and wait.

With short stories and poems you put a bunch of work into them, edit them and then start submitting. As those are out, you start writing something entirely new, while editing the other pieces fielding rejections, rewriting other work and making notes for new stuff. It's much like the novel process, only accellerated. If, like me, you send out several short stories and numerous poems to many different markets at once, you're constantly fielding rejections, sending things back out, watching for new markets, re-editing pieces based on feedback and waiting, waiting, waiting.

It's sort of like throwing a swarm of bees out the window and then trying to figure out how to keep them from coming back. It's annoying, it's crazy and I have no idea why we do it. But when the bees stop coming back, it's rewarding. Occasionally, people even pay you for the bees you've lobbed in their direction which seems a bit weird but some people like angry insects flying in through their mail slots. There is absolutely no accounting for taste.

I may have actually stopped talking about writing a moment ago, but I'm back on track now. Sorry.

When I started working on this new novel, I assumed my poetry and short story work would slow down, but they haven't. It's kind of nice to have it to fall back on when I'm stuck on the book or don't have enough time to really open the novel file and pick up the storyline.

Plus, it's nice to have those little ego boosts along the way. You know? There were times when I started questioning how I'm doing and whether I'm on the right track as a storyteller - to get an acceptance for a piece or just an email telling me something's coming out has made a big difference.

(steam) Punk'd

The theme of Windycon was the scifi genre of Steampunk. It was fun, though it was a lot heavier on the costuming aspect than I'd anticipated. I met a wonderful group from Columbus that do some spectacular work with costumes.

The writing panels were good and I enjoyed them, the just weren't as... I don't know... spectacular as I'd hoped.

I think one of the things that made me a little uncomfortable about the con is that this is the first con I've attended in a long time where I wasn't a panelist. I had the incredible urge to fill in the blanks for the panelists - to jump up and blurt out everything I knew about their topics. That, of course, would've made me THAT GUY. You know, the dude in the audience that won't shut up and spoils it for everyone else? It's not that I thought I knew all there was to know about the topics, there just seemed to be a lack of prep for some of them.

But here's my problem with some of the panels - not just at Windycon, but other cons as well - It's the big name writer who only seems to be on the panel because he's a big name writer and the conference people had to find somewhere to put him or her in order to justify bringing them in. I am incredibly nervous in preparing for panels. I write up notes, I develop questions to ask others, I occasionally email with other panelists beforehand to make sure we're all on the same page. I think these things are the least I can do for the attendees so that they get the most out of their con experience.

This weekend a panelist got out his program booklet and read the description aloud. Not in a "If this isn't the panel you were expecting, you're in the wrong place" kind of way. It was obviously meant to clarify what the panel was about - as if he wasn't certain.

I understand that some famous authors have been in the business for years and can talk about any subject off the top of their heads, but some really can't. The majority of the panelist with a few books under their belts had no notes or anything in front of them this past weekend and it showed that they really weren't prepared. They rambled. They drifted from one topic to another. Whenever a certain author didn't have a good answer, he told a "Let me tell you about the time Extremely Famous Author X did something vaguely related to our topic". It was annoying and a bit of a rip-off.

I say a rip-off because at the other end of that table was a young writer with very few credits to her name. She had several pages of notes, including relevant examples of what we were talking about. She got to talk twice, maybe. She got steamrolled by the babbling bestsellers and that was a shame. It would've been nice to hear more of her ideas.

All in all a fun time - I'm still regrouping, but I'll talk more about the annoyances and high notes soon.

On the way to Chicago

That, my friends, is a lot of coffee.

*Blushes and kicks at the ground*

Some shameless self - promotional news items...

First off - The horror site Choate Road has me up as their Spotlight Scribe for November. They've posted my story from the Triangulation anthology called "Before the Ink is Even Dry". There's also a little bio and a wonderful picture of me in my Elvis shades. Fun!

Also, Abyss & Apex Magazine did a review of another anthology I'm in: Cinema Spec, Tales of Hollywood and Fantasy. They actually take the time to do a mini review of each piece, including mine. And they like it. That's always nice to hear...

Matt Betts, "Something with Subtitles, Maybe," fiction/fantasy/movies as metaphor. Considering the downbeat nature of the described film arc, I found this fun and perhaps even lighthearted. The self-involved drama-queen (king?) planning out each step of his reaction to a breakup as if using storyboard. An adult (so to speak) version of “They’ll miss me when I’m gone!” I liked this a lot.

Finally, I want to thank Anton Cancre. He did a wrap up of the Context conference for the site HorrorNews.net and was kind enough to mention the poetry reading I was a part of on Saturday night...

As much as this will label me a dork among horror lit dorks; I dug the hell out of the poetry panel featuring Matt Betts and Catherine Callaghan. Betts was just plain hilarious (if you don’t think that poetry can be funny, just check out his See No Evil, Say No Evil) and Callaghan is one of those shining lights that never ceases to amaze me.

Always nice to hear when people enjoy my writing. It's not like we all write for praise (money would be nice) but when someone goes out of their way to mention something you worked hard on, it really feels like you've made some kind of connection and spurs you on to try even harder.

Speaking of connections - for no reason at all - here's an image of the car chase from the movie The French Connection. Enjoy!