Now my only "get-it-for-free" widgets are for The Lipless Gods. Amazed I discovered a way to put in a widget that goes to Lucid, soon only available via Amazon, but a steal for all of $.99 and at some point in time - for free! again! - if only for a handful of days.
Feel like a total schmuck that Lucid received a review.
In July.
Which I discovered only in late September.
Even better, since I've never purchased anything on Amazon under my account, I can't thank the reader for the review. I don't do promotion very well. Obviously.
I have to "unpublish" Lucid from Smashwords. Hoping I identified the correct masterfile so when I inevitably return Lucid to Smashwords I can upload with few or any problems.
Exit The Skin Palace is undergoing the slow bubble of the second draft. I inserted an entirely new villain character about 60% of the way through the story. Like the previous manipulation of a character's gender, slipping the new baddie into the text proved odd in how it didn't break the book. I think it's because the villain is a creepy, creepy little girl. Who doesn't like a creepy little girl?
Friday, September 30, 2016
Saturday, September 24, 2016
Exit The Skin Palace
Finally typed 'THE END'.
The problem is getting your ending(s) in the right row. I know I'll go back and tweak this and that and the other thing, but right now, I'm calling the first draft of Exit The Skin Palace done.
Having gone through the rigamarole before, at this point, 'done' is the equivalent of pencil layouts for a comic book. There's not even full pencils yet. Or inking. Or coloring. Or lettering. So, so distant from stapling the spine I can't even begin to make that part of the process out on the horizon.
Still, the hard part is done. Only the far harder parts are ahead.
Discovered I can read graphic novels again. Given the word-enthusiasm is tilted towards production, ingesting them seems only viable if they're contained in word balloons. I'll try and dilute the geek quotient with dipping a toe into books on refugees, Syria, and ISIS. Balance is all.
The problem is getting your ending(s) in the right row. I know I'll go back and tweak this and that and the other thing, but right now, I'm calling the first draft of Exit The Skin Palace done.
Having gone through the rigamarole before, at this point, 'done' is the equivalent of pencil layouts for a comic book. There's not even full pencils yet. Or inking. Or coloring. Or lettering. So, so distant from stapling the spine I can't even begin to make that part of the process out on the horizon.
Still, the hard part is done. Only the far harder parts are ahead.
Discovered I can read graphic novels again. Given the word-enthusiasm is tilted towards production, ingesting them seems only viable if they're contained in word balloons. I'll try and dilute the geek quotient with dipping a toe into books on refugees, Syria, and ISIS. Balance is all.
Saturday, September 17, 2016
WWSJD?
The worst part of writing is discovering how much rewriting awaits you. Right now, only the last few chapters of Exit The Skin Palace need writing. I know what happens. That's about 5% of the battle. Execution is the nitty gritty.
Strangely, over the course of typing madly, the second lead character in Exit has not only switched genders, but has undergone a youth injection - from 60 to late 30s to now late teens. Odder yet, this in no way causes substantial alteration of the plot or her-formerly-his relationship with the narrator.
Lucid remains free for the grabbing. At least until it gets de-listed from BiblioBoard. Then I put the screws to everyone. Charge a whole $.99 for it and help Moby get that space colony built.
Religiously, I check William Gibson's Twitter. Recently, the father of cyberspace was freaked over Brexit. That died down, so now, it's pretty much a stream of Retweets from James Gleick and Paul Krugman and anyone else shitting their pants over the looming election. Trump strikes me as the kind of potentially dangerous cretin Spider Jerusalem would dispatch at the end of a Transmetropolitan story arc. Since Mr. Jerusalem doesn't actually exist, the freak out persists. At least until November.
Strangely, over the course of typing madly, the second lead character in Exit has not only switched genders, but has undergone a youth injection - from 60 to late 30s to now late teens. Odder yet, this in no way causes substantial alteration of the plot or her-formerly-his relationship with the narrator.
Lucid remains free for the grabbing. At least until it gets de-listed from BiblioBoard. Then I put the screws to everyone. Charge a whole $.99 for it and help Moby get that space colony built.
Religiously, I check William Gibson's Twitter. Recently, the father of cyberspace was freaked over Brexit. That died down, so now, it's pretty much a stream of Retweets from James Gleick and Paul Krugman and anyone else shitting their pants over the looming election. Trump strikes me as the kind of potentially dangerous cretin Spider Jerusalem would dispatch at the end of a Transmetropolitan story arc. Since Mr. Jerusalem doesn't actually exist, the freak out persists. At least until November.
Monday, September 12, 2016
Sunday, September 11, 2016
The Quest For Peace
Drummed out 6000 words over the past two days. I told the wife how confused I am that the book I'm writing is what I ended up writing given all the other plots that I had under consideration. The muse makes decisions for you a good part of the time. You should just avoid eye contact and nod and stay on task.
I know I wrote the best line of dialogue today, for the current book, maybe for any of the books so far:
"The President of the United States wants to talk to you about your bowel movements, motherfucker."
Based on my love for the line, there's no way it will survive the second draft of the manuscript.
Trying to figure out ethical living - with furry little carnivores as companions - is stunning in the complexity it presents. As that Wilco song states: 'it just shouldn't ever have to be this hard'.
Tapping another pop culture item to relate to the seriousness of animal rights, as in trying to figure out ways that allow for living ethically in a modern environment, and so the cats don't go on a hunger strike, and so you can look at yourself in the mirror without feeling the urge to spit - my conclusion- or contention - is that owning pets and feeding them is like Superman in The Quest For Peace deciding to rid the world of all nuclear weapons without there really being a discussion beforehand.
Global politics and global relationships being such complex systems that any slight throwaway gesture might result in havoc, let alone a grand gesture like some dude in Underoos making off with your ICBMs.
I need a chalkboard and plenty of chalk and erasers in order to approach an equation which might not ever be solved.
I know I wrote the best line of dialogue today, for the current book, maybe for any of the books so far:
"The President of the United States wants to talk to you about your bowel movements, motherfucker."
Based on my love for the line, there's no way it will survive the second draft of the manuscript.
Trying to figure out ethical living - with furry little carnivores as companions - is stunning in the complexity it presents. As that Wilco song states: 'it just shouldn't ever have to be this hard'.
Tapping another pop culture item to relate to the seriousness of animal rights, as in trying to figure out ways that allow for living ethically in a modern environment, and so the cats don't go on a hunger strike, and so you can look at yourself in the mirror without feeling the urge to spit - my conclusion- or contention - is that owning pets and feeding them is like Superman in The Quest For Peace deciding to rid the world of all nuclear weapons without there really being a discussion beforehand.
Global politics and global relationships being such complex systems that any slight throwaway gesture might result in havoc, let alone a grand gesture like some dude in Underoos making off with your ICBMs.
I need a chalkboard and plenty of chalk and erasers in order to approach an equation which might not ever be solved.
The Quest For Peace
Drummed out 6000 words over the past two days. I told the wife how confused I am that the book I'm writing is what I ended up writing given all the other plots that I had under consideration. The muse makes decisions for you a good part of the time. You should just avoid eye contact and nod and stay on task.
I know I wrote the best line of dialogue today, for the current book, maybe for any of the books so far:
"The President of the United States wants to talk to you about your bowel movements, motherfucker."
Based on my love for the line, there's no way it will survive the manuscript second draft.
Trying to figure out ethical living - with furry little carnivores as companions - is stunning in the complexity it presents. As that Wilco song states: 'it just shouldn't ever have to be this hard'.
Tapping another pop culture item to relate to the seriousness of animal rights, as in trying to figure out ways that allow for living ethically in a modern environment, and so the cats don't go on a hunger strike, and so you can look at yourself in the mirror without feeling the urge to spit - my conclusion- or contention - is that owning pets and feeding them is like Superman in The Quest For Peace deciding to rid the world of all nuclear weapons without there really being a discussion beforehand.
Global politics and global relationships being such complex systems that any slight throwaway gesture might result in havoc, let alone a grand gesture like some dude in Underoos making off with your ICBMs.
I need a chalkboard and plenty of chalk and erasers in order to approach an equation which might not ever be solved.
I know I wrote the best line of dialogue today, for the current book, maybe for any of the books so far:
"The President of the United States wants to talk to you about your bowel movements, motherfucker."
Based on my love for the line, there's no way it will survive the manuscript second draft.
Trying to figure out ethical living - with furry little carnivores as companions - is stunning in the complexity it presents. As that Wilco song states: 'it just shouldn't ever have to be this hard'.
Tapping another pop culture item to relate to the seriousness of animal rights, as in trying to figure out ways that allow for living ethically in a modern environment, and so the cats don't go on a hunger strike, and so you can look at yourself in the mirror without feeling the urge to spit - my conclusion- or contention - is that owning pets and feeding them is like Superman in The Quest For Peace deciding to rid the world of all nuclear weapons without there really being a discussion beforehand.
Global politics and global relationships being such complex systems that any slight throwaway gesture might result in havoc, let alone a grand gesture like some dude in Underoos making off with your ICBMs.
I need a chalkboard and plenty of chalk and erasers in order to approach an equation which might not ever be solved.
Thursday, September 8, 2016
A Sticky Pot Of A Post
Barreling through a first-draft of Exit The Skin Palace. Merely mentioning that means I'll arrive at work at dark-thirty tomorrow and find the Muse has abandoned me. Still. Punching out 2500-words a day feels so good compared to the wasteland.
A return to writing has ignited a return to reading. Kind of.
Books I've set aside for one reason or another include:
The Second Chair - John Lescroart
Conversations With Nelson Algren
Blue City - Ross Macdonald
Americana - Don DeLillo
Bellow's People - David Mikics
Compare that to rushing through two Penelope Fitzgerald novels (Offshore; The Bookshop) and finishing the last 60% of one Naipaul novel (Half A Life) the same day I read his Miguel Street, too.
Fitzgerald is amazing. Truly. It's always those short novels that leave the biggest hole in your head (i.e., Winter In The Blood by James Welch might be as close to a perfectly written novel as anyone has or will ever get).
I mis-communicated with the nice people at Self-E. Of course they understand now that they're dealing with one more moron who thinks he's a writer yet apparently can't even write a proper e-mail. When the dust settles, Lucid will be Kindle-only, The Lipless Gods will still be free for everyone to download and then abandon.
Social / political front: Got a Bill and Opus 2016 shirt. Hope the Seahawks actually perform their respectful protest. And goddamn, but human beings eating critters - pig, dog, etc. - I just don't know where you rewire that particular bugaboo.
A return to writing has ignited a return to reading. Kind of.
Books I've set aside for one reason or another include:
The Second Chair - John Lescroart
Conversations With Nelson Algren
Blue City - Ross Macdonald
Americana - Don DeLillo
Bellow's People - David Mikics
Compare that to rushing through two Penelope Fitzgerald novels (Offshore; The Bookshop) and finishing the last 60% of one Naipaul novel (Half A Life) the same day I read his Miguel Street, too.
Fitzgerald is amazing. Truly. It's always those short novels that leave the biggest hole in your head (i.e., Winter In The Blood by James Welch might be as close to a perfectly written novel as anyone has or will ever get).
I mis-communicated with the nice people at Self-E. Of course they understand now that they're dealing with one more moron who thinks he's a writer yet apparently can't even write a proper e-mail. When the dust settles, Lucid will be Kindle-only, The Lipless Gods will still be free for everyone to download and then abandon.
Social / political front: Got a Bill and Opus 2016 shirt. Hope the Seahawks actually perform their respectful protest. And goddamn, but human beings eating critters - pig, dog, etc. - I just don't know where you rewire that particular bugaboo.
Thursday, September 1, 2016
A Title Is Chosen. Let's See If It Sinks Or Swims!
If no news is good news, no blog update is what exactly? I blog slightly more than I e-mail my family.
I'm a social media boob. Anyone visiting the Twitter account sees half-writing-related and half-oh-my-god-but-humans-mistreat-animals Tweets.
Facebook -- other than being almost all oh-my-god-humans-mistreat-animals-links on my end -- seems a big 'I don't know what to make of it'.
'Adults only' seems a spot-on analysis though not the 'adults only' that's exciting. More the adults only that means the hip kids abandoned the sinking ship eons ago. Probably at this point Zuckerberg's creation is about as relevant as LiveJournal right before the Russians assumed command and jammed that enterprise plum-full of advertising.
The current work-in-progress is titled Exit The Skin Palace. Once the novel is done, the title will be pregnant with meaning. Assuming we get the novel written. The way it stands, right now, creative juices bubbling on full-simmer, Enter The Skin Palace or even Re-Enter The Skin Palace make just about as much sense.
We'll see. Knock on wood.
I'm a social media boob. Anyone visiting the Twitter account sees half-writing-related and half-oh-my-god-but-humans-mistreat-animals Tweets.
Facebook -- other than being almost all oh-my-god-humans-mistreat-animals-links on my end -- seems a big 'I don't know what to make of it'.
'Adults only' seems a spot-on analysis though not the 'adults only' that's exciting. More the adults only that means the hip kids abandoned the sinking ship eons ago. Probably at this point Zuckerberg's creation is about as relevant as LiveJournal right before the Russians assumed command and jammed that enterprise plum-full of advertising.
The current work-in-progress is titled Exit The Skin Palace. Once the novel is done, the title will be pregnant with meaning. Assuming we get the novel written. The way it stands, right now, creative juices bubbling on full-simmer, Enter The Skin Palace or even Re-Enter The Skin Palace make just about as much sense.
We'll see. Knock on wood.
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