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Yesterday I gave a lot of thought to some things I would like to own. Today I am reversing engines and looking at things I most certainly do not want. The same rules apply, however:

* Nothing bigger or more complex than I could use myself and no vehicles. Though there are many, many vehicles I wouldn’t want (Kite-Man’s kites, say) this list would be all vehicle if I allowed myself even one. So I won’t.

* I can only list 5.

* I can only list items I can find pictures of. Why? Because I felt like making this a rule.

And then I came up with a list! So here it is in no particular order.

Lightsaber
A lot of people seem to want lightsabers in their life. I have never really understood why. Let’s think about this for a second. Here is a sword that can supposedly cut through anything (except most railing, floors and walls – except when it randomly CAN) and can deflect energy weapon fire. Sounds awesome, right? Well first of all, all that stuff it can cut through except when it can’t except when, I guess, it can? I don’t like that. I don’t like weapons where I am never sure if today the sword slices through the wall and brings the building down on me or if that’s tomorrow. Also, sure it can block laser fire – if you’re so fast you can block laser fire. If you had a mirror shield you could block it too. It isn’t the sword so much as the wielder. And that isn’t going to be anyone you know. No, we’d all be on the ground with a smoking hole in our face wondering why the shot wasn’t blocked. No thank you.

Robotic/A.I. Minion
Pictured are Ultron and Computo. Both illustrate my point. These things always go bad and try to kill everyone around you. Best case is Computo, where the thing kinda stomps around and lasers the hell out of the joint, kills a teammate and then goes down easy. Worst case is Ultron. Not only does he have a complex about thinking his creator is his father, but he has created a version of himself based on his “father’s” brain patterns, as “mother” who he then tried to mate with. Never mind it was a robot trying to mate with another robot (the sparks from the friction alone!) but come ON! Ultron has issues. Also he is up to like Ultron-9483739 by now, since he KEEPS coming back. He’s wiped out entire countries and then, for an encore, started and ran an intergalactic war. So sure, a robot A.I. assistant/helper may seem like a good weapon – they can protect you and fight for you, but really? Nothing but grief. Right, H.A.L.?

The Cosmic Cube
There are any number of things I could have put here. I chose the Cube because someone mentioned it yesterday. The Miracle Machine (see the other list) was fun. The Cosmic Cube was … like a lot of other reality warping, bends-the-universe-to-your-will type of things … really just the Monkey’s Paw. Shit always went wrong. Oh sure, Skull, you want the Nazis to win WWII and now they can! But the Nazis will also then betray and kill you. It’s never worth it. Also the Cosmic Cube specifically created the Beyonder (well maybe but let’s not go there) who then came back and incarnated as a human with a white-fro and white disco-type suit. No good can come of that. None.

Lasso of Truth
Wonder Woman has this lasso, right? And when it is wrapped around you, you are compelled to speak only the truth. Does that sound awesome to you? To me it sounds horrific. First of all, it is the opposite of subtle. “I really want to know the answer!” and then lassoing someone might give it all away. But what do you care, now you have the truth! Except, see, I don’t know … the truth is one of those things. If you’re fighting crime with it? “Where did you hide the bomb?” “Damn you, Lasso Wielder! I hid it in your mom!” “WHERE?!” “Her spleen, all right! In her SPLEEN!” and now you know where the bomb is. In your mom (that’s what she said). But in every day life? “Is this butter?” “What, why are you putting rope on me? what the hell? No! It isn’t butter!” “I can’t believe it!” It just isn’t practical and is fairly intrusive. Truth serum works better, quieter and it doesn’t force you to learn how to lasso someone just to find out the truth.

Star Trek Teleporter
Now I have nothing against teleportation, in general. It would be awesome. I am just against Star Trek’s methods. Why? Well look at it. You have to stand on the platform to beam down but they can beam you up from anywhere. Even if you have never been on the ship they can beam you up, so it isn’t like you have to start there. Why is it, then, in an emergency, the crew has to run all the way to the “transporter bay” instead of just having someone lock on to their position and yoink ‘em right from where they are on the bridge, or the hallway, and drop them off to the hotspot? It seems off, and it worries me. Also they have issues, sometimes, with things moving at speed, they need to get a lock on you. From a ship in orbit they can get a lock on a person on a planet but not if they are falling? Relative to that ship think about how fast that person on the ground is moving. Think of it like this. Earth rotates on its axis at roughly 1037 mph (at the equator) and then the planet also revolves around the sun at 66,660 mph. But let’s assume they’re matching solar orbit around the planet. Not stationary, they almost never are, so we can knock 66,660 mph off the list. Still, you see the ship there and a planet revolving under them. So they can lock on a signal moving at 1000+ mph but add, say, 80 mph to that and the system can’t cope? What? And sometimes they aren’t even close to the planet so add back another 66,660 mph. They can still do it, unless the person on the planet is falling or some shit. What what what?! No, the Star Trek teleporters bother me on a lot of levels. I’m with McCoy on this one, I’ll take a shuttle.

So I was thinking what absurd tech would I want, if I could have it? I tried to impost a few limits on my list. Here are the limits, totally self-imposed:

* Nothing bigger or more complex than I could use myself and no vehicles. No Death Star, for example, or gun that took two men to fire. No vehicles because then I end up with a TARDIS / Batmobile type list and I bore myself.

* I can only list 5.

* I can only list items I can find pictures of. Why? Because I felt like making this a rule.

And then I came up with a list! So here it is in no particular order.

Sonic Screwdriver
It can do almost anything! It has been used for opening doors, interrupting teleportation, fixing barbed wire, burning things, cutting things, augmenting sound, intercepting signals, and well – turning screws. I mean, really, it may be used as a Gailfray ex Machina on occasion, but the sonic screwdriver is still just all sorts of fancy. Invented by the Doctor to be a multi-use tool that couldn’t be a weapon, the sonic screwdriver is presented as the ultimate device for adventurers. Jack Harkness may have asked “Who looks at a screwdriver and thinks, ‘Ooh, this could be a little more sonic’?” but the answer is obvious – all of us. It is the ultimate widget device and I need me one.

Doctor Doom’s Time Platform
Most times I come across time machines they are built into boxes, Police or otherwise, and seem to have a stodgy air to them. Maybe it’s me. But Doctor Doom found a way around that problem. He built a time machine that was a big yellow square. you stood on it and it moved you through time. That was it. A glowing bit of floor. So he called it a time platform and used it to banish the Fantastic Four to the past. Like that stuck. Still, the time platform comes back again and again, as you would expect a time travel device to do. It isn’t my favorite time travel device (that’s be a time bubble, ‘natch) but I did say no ships.

Iron Man’s Extremis armor
By now most of you are familiar with Iron Man and his many, many suits of armor. Well, for a while he had one which was known as the Extremis suit. So-called because to operate it, Stark infected himself with a nanotech virus called Extermis. The suit is controlled directly by his brain and functions as an extension of Stark, instead of as a thing he wears. There were other benefits as well, generally surrounding control of other machines and satellite feeds and so on. Extremis made the other Iron Man suits look like they were made by Tonka, really.

Zorg ZF-1
An adjustable handle for easy carry and a simple four part breakdown that also renders it uncatchable by x-ray would both make this a good contender for great weaponry. But then you look at what it can do: it has a titanium recharger, a 3000 round clip with bursts of three to 300 (with a Replay Button so the operator can fire one shot and, by pushing a simple button, send every following shot to the same location, regardless of where the gun points), rocket launcher, arrow launcher with exploding or poisonous gas heads, a net launcher, a flamethrower, and a freeze gun. Just don’t push the glowing red button on the side. That makes it blow up and take you with it.

Miracle Machine
This one, I admit, feels like a cheat. Back in the late 60’s, in the Legion of Super-Heroes, they introduced the Miracle Machine. It has the power to convert thought to reality. Seriously. It is a reality altering wish machine. So dangerous it has been destroyed more than once (eaten the first time, no lie!) but somehow seems to pop back up. Once you have a Miracle Machine what else do you need, really?

I remember the day me and Peoke got in his car and decided to for a drive to … somewhere. That was how we said it, each time. …Somewhere. That pause inherent in the destination, as if the travel itself imposed on the phrasing. We relished it, telling each other how much fun we would have.

Peoke was a slim motherfucker, too, fitting in behind the wheel while the seat was pulled all the way forward, like he was some 90 year old grandmother. His spindly arms stuck out all angles as he gripped the wheel and played at being a kid. “Vroom!” he muttered over and over, twisting the wheel back and forth and motor-boating his lips.

Thankfully he also had keys.

We started off toward Arizona, not sure where it was, really, but determined to find out. The country was only so big and if we drove in circles long enough someone was sure to have a sign up that said Arizona. It was, we decided, that simple.

We thought we were ready for anything. We told ourselves to expect the unexpected. Peoke held firm. I tried to.

Though we both gave up when we accidentally stopped to give Quetzalcoatl a ride. That’s about when things got really odd.

(To be continued? I dunno. Do you want it to be?)

I often tell people the hardest part about the job (writing, ‘natch) is staring down the blank page. That moment when nothing is fully created and you have to give birth to it and commit. It can feel like the wrong word, the wrong image plucked from your head, can ruin everything that comes after it. I’ve spent a lot of time staring down blank pages. Plot in hand, knowing what I have to do, no questions in my mind – still that first page is blank and I stop and consider it from every angle all over again.

The blank page is a constant struggle. And there is nothing to do for it. Not really. But, when I was younger, that paled even to a bigger problem: editing as I went.

I would write a bit and then stop for the day. So far no problem. Except then the next day I would go to start up again and re-read what I did the day before. Which is when I would start editing it. Then I would spend hours editing, adjusting, tweaking, and not get any writing done. Eventually I would grow weary of the project since it seemed to never get anywhere, it would be stuck in this one place and I should move on.

See the problem there?

The piece wasn’t stuck. I was. Critical difference, frankly. Editing and writing are two different jobs. Don’t whistle while you piss. This applies to plotting and writing as well, for the record. Do one job at a time and do it well. When you’re writing – write.

It’s hard to let go and move forward with that, though. Well, at first. Because you don’t want to keep writing a scene when the front half of it could be improved. Then, if the back half is so much better it won’t flow right and then how can you hope to have a good finished project and what do you do if … stop. Shut up. That is what editing is for and you’ll get there.

The importance of a first draft is not to be ultra mega super robo-clean. The purpose of a first draft is to take the skeleton of your plot and hang a body on it. Then, after you have a body, you can edit it. Editing is sculpting.

Remember that!

Plotting is building a skeleton. Writing is putting meat on dem bones. Editing is sculpting the flesh until it fits on the bones the way you want.

Once you get that down in your head you can see why you don’t do any two of those jobs at once. You can’t put meat on bones you haven’t finished. You can’t sculpt when you don’t have all the flesh in place to sculpt with.

Plotting before writing, quick digression, is one of those things every forgets. It’s so easy to say “I’ll figure it out when I get there” and suddenly you’re hip deep in a scene with no idea where to go next and you have to stop writing to work it out and … flying by the seat of your pants can be fun and I’m not saying plot everything out in gross detail before you start, but prepare yourself each day before you sit down. Anyway!

So you do one job at a time and suddenly we’re back to staring at a blank page. See how I did that? Because staring at a blank page, even when you have a plot, happens. But most of the stoppage is one of wanting to edit while you write, hell before you write even. So let go and just write. Don’t fret about it. Let yourself go and write and you can deal with it later.

Write. Finish the story / comic / song / script. Then go back and fix that fucker until it is the right shape and works ass to elbow. Then move on to the next project. That’s the job. Do your job.

But a closing note to explain exactly how I do not follow my own advice, and when I think you really shouldn’t either. See openings are the key. I will write an entire novel and not look back – so long as the opening is right. I don’t edit it, really, but I will wipe it all out and start again, or put in major changes. It’s the only time I let myself do that. Because the opening has to set tone, so that when I go to edit I have a good point to look at and start from.

I even have a metric for it. I allow myself the first 5000 words of a novel/novella, the first 1 or 2000 words of a short story (depending on how long it has to be) and first 2 pages of a comic script. Those are my margins for wiping and restarting and changing and setting tone. Once I pass that point I am set and will continue working until a project is done before going back and making major structural changes and editing.

But within that opening frame I allow myself the freedom to obsess a bit. Not critically, not for days on end, but for long enough to make sure I get something workable down. How you know, even when you’re letting yourself, that you’ve gone too far and need to just work – well shit that you have to find your own scale for. You’ll know it when you see it, generally. Just listen closely and don’t beat yourself up and do your work.

I’ve rewritten openings to stories upwards of twenty times (inside a few hours mind you) until they were close enough to right I could keep going. And sometimes I get it close enough I don’t need to.

Once I’m past that though – one job at a time, do it well, and keep moving. Blank pages and editing fears will only hold you back as long as you let them. So stop worrying and create. There are an infinite number of stories to tell in a limitless number of ways across so many mediums – why stall yourself instead of exploring?

So yeah, I should be telling you to buy a book, and you can pre-order Stays Crunchy in Milk and I wish you would. But my brain is sluggish so I can’t think enough to type or compose thoughts in order. Which is, I find, a bad place to go “pay me for my writing,” really.

Anyway. Right now I am trying to plot out a novel. Maybe. See I have a novel I have been working on and another novel I might switch to. But the fate of which one I will write first will be decided by plotting. If I can finish plotting #1 then I will write it. If not I write #2. This “finish plotting” bit translates to “by Friday morning,” by the way. So you understand the time frame here. We will see what happens. The nice things is I won’t be sad or disappointed, regardless of which one I end up working on first. So hooray!

But right now my brain just isn’t firing on all … any … cylinders.

——–

Last night at the bar, a small selection:

“Where’s the lock?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well it isn’t where it should be.”
“Maybe it got lost. Or moved.”

——–

“No, you’re supposed to be fun.”
“I’m not any fun. Suck it, bitches!”

——–

“They never stop, do they?”
(from outside: Oh MY God!)
“No. And I lived through the 90s once already.”
(from outside: And then I was all…)

——–

And then M had to take the middle of her piece of bread and break it up into tiny bits and reshape it into cubes, each one getting slightly bigger. That is how she eats the inside of bread. Until I suggested pyramids. I waited until she was down to one cube. She had to stop and try it and, of course, did. Declaring “Bread pyramid!” to the world.

Bread pyramid. Suck it, bitches.

“How’s that working out for you?”
“What?”
“Being clever.”

One of the most damaging things I see writers do is try to be clever. Now, being funny is a great and good thing and I think all writers have a duty to learn how to leverage humor for themselves. But humor and clever are not the same thing. Not at all.

Clever is terms or phrases that a writer will make up to show the audience exactly how witty the author is. Phrases like “Hollyweird” for example, are ones that exist to show you that the user is theoretically smart. Here’s the thing though – it doesn’t work. Here’s the why: It slows the reader down. Clever is designed to do that, consciously or not. When you use clever language like that (”Single Serving Friends” to go back to the point where we came in with the quote) the point is to explain it, or have the person you say the phrase in question to stop and work it out quickly and smile. This way they know how smart you are. They get it. You’re good. Slick.

Except, no, not really.

It’s needy and desperate and almost never works.

You know, most readers can feel what sits behind words on a page. It’s funny and not a science or anything but when a writer truly loves what they’re working on that feeling is somehow captured in the words. Maybe it’s a bit more speed to the style, energy in word choice, I don’t know but you can feel it (the true pros, of course, know how to fake that, bless them) and readers are shrewd. Desperation is picked up on, too. You can imagine where that slide lands you.

Yeah.

Now, some people will defend clever word use as a thing-like-slang. Slang, of course, is a set of words in general use by a decent sized group. Clever phrases aren’t. Now if you use slang, unironically and straight, you can run into the same problem that you can when writing dialect. Both are extremely hard to do well. That doesn’t mean you don’t do it, it means that you generally try to do it as little as possible.

Again, not an absolute. Some people can totally make it work. Some = Nothing like all = Probably not you or me.

And hey, I’m honest here. I write a webcomic, Things Wrong With Me ( thingswrongwithme.com – updates every Tues/Thurs – endplug!) where one of the characters speaks in a fake dialect on occasion. My rule of thumb is as little as possible. The big one, with that one character, is the phrase “dearling” instead of “darling.” It’s clever and I’m never sure it isn’t a huge mistake but I figure if I keep it that closed down I can get away with it.

I may be wrong.

There are, of course, other ways to be clever besides odd word choices and intentional misspellings that force people to slow down and get your meaning – even if only for a second – to try and be cute, funny or smart.

Generally, though, all of the ways you can be clever boil down to the same problem: trying to show people who smart, in touch, hip or funny you are. This is will almost ALWAYS backfire on you.

If you want to show people how smart you are then you write something smart. I’m not saying turn out a physics paper, though you could certainly, I’m saying make the characters smart, the plot and their choices intelligent. Show that you have brains and are using them, on the page.

If you want to be in touch and hip, that’s cool too! Show, not tell. Always show and not tell. For the love of everything you hold dear – show and not tell.

Funny. Funny is a big problem of one. I am bad at writing outright comedy. I write things that are humorous, but I tend to do it by taking something that isn’t funny and then twisting it the right way. What is the right way? I don’t know until I’m there and then it feels obvious to me. I wish I could explain that better. But outright, hands down, funny stuff? Not really. At least not consciously. There are metrics involved that I can’t always make sense out of. But I do know that you can’t get there from being clever.

It’s that … you know when you can feel someone trying too hard? That horrible feeling when you wish they would just get on it with and calm down and trust in themselves for a second? I hate that feeling, because it makes me sad. It really does. Generally the people doing it are folks who are funny when they aren’t trying so damn hard. But people have moments of doubt and want to make sure they’re being funny and smart and that you know it so they reach into the bag and try too hard and end up clever and it makes you feel like you just bit the lime after licking the salt but somehow forgot the Tequila.

I also, to be blunt and honest, don’t just mean this about writing prose. Oh sure, I certainly do mean it that way but we live in a different world now. If you write a blog, write some columns, live online at all chances are your audience will have access to other things you write. That doesn’t mean that everything you write is under a spotlight by default, but it does mean that it is in the public eye. And your reputation, what people think of you and your skills, is often determined way before they read your work. It can determine if they read your work.

And while I am not suggest, again, that everything you write everywhere be … no, you know what – I am suggesting this:

Everything you write that ever shows up in public anywhere should be coherent, spell-checked, something you don’t mind being in public and done with some skill. Sorry, that kinda sucks but it’s reality. Don’t be clever just because it’s not your professional work and “that stuff you are straight with,” because how is a prospective buyer supposed to know that? Telling them doesn’t help, they wonder why you aren’t doing the same. And what answer can you reasonably give? I’d love to hear it: make sure it doesn’t sound defensive, now.

I don’t mean you can’t be you in your personal space. Of course you can. They’re buying you after all, and in this future we live in that means you for you as well as you for your work. So be yourself. Just don’t be clever. Relax and take it easy and be charming instead. Charming is much better.

They make princes out of charming.

See that line up there? It was clever. You hated it as much as I did, I bet. That’s what I’m saying.

This was going to be an eventual column for WORDFISTS! but as the other columnist there just did one along the same lines as this  I figured I’d just write this entry here instead.

I have had a few people ask me about how you become a writer or start working in comics ands all that jazz so I thought I would address the issue.

If you want to be a writer – write. Now you may have zero talent for it. I won’t lie, it is possible. Maybe you have some talent but not enough for whatever goal you have. Who knows. what I do know is that if you don’t exercise that muscle them it won’t get any stronger. If you don’t learn discipline and work yourself, you won’t have a shot.

But it is more than just writing, these days. A writer has to also be a businessperson. No one will sell you as hard as you sell yourself. No one will make your reputation, pimp your stuff and get your words out to folk more than you yourself will. So if you aren’t willing to do all that work on top of writing all the time – go home now and save yourself the frustration. Because having the best book in the world doesn’t help if no one reads it. Not career-wise. Sorry.

And sure, that sucks and who wants that and we all want to just create and hide in our caves and not have to worry about PR and ad targeting and how we can get more copies out there and … sure. It just isn’t reality. You can hate it all you want but reality has a way of demanding your attention. Sorry about that.

As for comics, well this holds true no matter what really but it is extra-true somehow in comics. If you want to get into comics you must create comics. This is simple. It is like “If you want to write, you have to write.” But business-wise I will give you the big secret, if such a thing exists, about how to break in. Joe Keatinge mentions this one all the time, too. Do any work you can. Color flats, if you can learn how, and you can. Offer to work at a company during a convention. Help out on your own time at the office, intern-like. Whatever shit and scut work you can find, you do it. You do it well. You do it professionally and with a smile.

The world of comics, in America, is tiny. Everyone knows everyone else. And showing that you are willing, capable and able to get things done is golden. Let me give you a real example of this. I ended up working for Popgun as the assistant editor because I knew the guy who had the job before. How? Because I hustle all the time and years back when I was working on Too Much Coffee Magazine I met this guy and we ended up friends. How did that happen? A site I ran interviewed Shannon Wheeler and I kept in touch and offered, once a month, politely, that if he had any work or needed a gap closed I was his guy. Eventually he did. See how that works?

So anyway, I was working for Popgun. Which is how I met Joe. Joe works for Image. NYCC was coming up and I asked Joe, since I live in NY, if he needed help running the booth at all. He said sure and put me in rotation. I was Image’s intern for a weekend, selling books, helping run the table, generally being a guy who was there to help and do whatever he could.

Along the way I met a lot of people. A lot of them. Some big names, some not at all. But I shook all their hands (I didn’t realize I had the con flu by then, so to any of you who ended up half-dead because of me, I meant it in a good way, not as an Outbreak Monkey!) and I helped them when they needed it and I worked my ass off for three days.

I made friends. I busted ass. I left it at that. Because that was my entire goal. It wasn’t “go to this show and do this work and magically get handed stuff,” no, I was laying bricks. I was also having a great time, but I was laying bricks. And those bricks have been useful.

Some of the people I met I have gotten to work with since. Some are just good names to have. I can check in with them, brush up on the “Hey, we met at, how’s your new dog doing?” conversations and actually connect with people.

Suddenly it is easier to find an artist for a project. Suddenly I don’t feel as if the industry is over there and I am over here. Now we’re both here and though I am way down on the totem pole I am still there and climbing. Realistically.

Meanwhile I am doing all the work I can. I am saying yes and stretching myself and working harder and harder all the time, because I want to build a reputation as someone who can turn in damned good work on a decent time frame and who doesn’t miss deadlines and can take care of that problem for you. It isn’t something you prove sometimes. It is something you prove every day.

Same with your ability to write, or draw, or edit or whatever. You don’t get to do one story and say “See! That!” you have to repeat it the next time, and the time after that. You prove yourself every day, and work on your connections, and think like it’s a business and dear lord it can be exhausting.

But that’s what you want. The scary part isn’t when you are so busy your eyeballs hurt. The scary part is silence. Silence means no calls, no emails, no new gigs on the horizon. It means that you aren’t getting work.

It honestly is that simple, and that hard. And doing it doesn’t mean KA-BLAMMO! you will be swimming in high-paying work. No this is years of commitment and driving yourself as hard as possible. And then it might pay off. Might not, too. Sadly it is a risk. But if you want to do it, if you need to, then do it. And take your shot. Worst case you will make some great friends. Best case you’ll also make yourself a career.

So that’s about it:

• Do the work.
  • Write every day, even just a bit.
  • Deconstruct stories you love and learn from them.
  • Read every type of book, comic and non-fiction you can, see movies and listen to music. Don’t ignore any source of story.
• Act like a professional.
  • Don’t demand things.
  • Be prompt.
  • Hit deadlines.
  • Don’t start fights for no reason.
• Think like a businessperson.
  • Advertise yourself.
  • Take chances.
  • Don’t push without thinking, push with aim and timing.
• Help everyone as you would like to be helped.
  • Be kind.
  • Offer your help, with no catches.
  • Follow through.
• Do whatever work you can.
  • There is no work beneath you.
  • Do whatever it is you are doing to the best of your ability.
  • Use every job as a way to show your strength.
  • And to work on a weakness.

Welcome to fun. I am so enormously pleased and excited to announce that pre-orders for my first full-length novel, Stays Crunchy in Milk are now open. This is the big one, for me. I have never been as proud of a work that I have written as I am of this book. Which is not to say that I don’t love Crazy Little Things and Strange Angel. I love them both and wish you would consider buying more of them. No, Stays Crunchy in Milk is just something else.

First of all – it isn’t horror. At all. It is … if you like the way I write here on this blog, the pop culture entries, bits of my life, all of that stuff? This is the book for you. It is a story with action, adventure, humor … all the good stuff stories should have. It was a joy to write, and I tell you honestly having had to reread it last week for more proofing, it is still a joy to read, even though I wrote it.

After the jump I am going to reveal, for the first time anywhere, the cover and I am going to talk way more about the book and what it means and where it came from and what it is. I will also tell you about the contest for pre-orders, the special gifts, the special editions of the book itself and I will also let you pre-order the book right from this post itself. So, if you have ever enjoyed anything I’ve written, anywhere, I ask that you come along for this ride.

Read the rest of this entry »

In part one I talked about how the how concept kicked off.

Part two saw me discuss the start of the novella series.

This will wrap everything up.

So yeah Book One was out and getting decent word and I was working on Book Two. Except something in it didn’t click for me. I couldn’t make the plot work quite right anymore and I had also written myself into a corner, to boot. It was a bad week or two there. I spent a lot of time on the phone to friends, bitching about how I just needed to solve these few little problems and everything would be all right.

Except the solution didn’t happen for a while. And then something else did. You see I found a solution to my plot issue, not the corner I wrote myself into. Fixing that plot problem though … well, I had an idea for how to end the series and it needed a pretty big plot left right near the end. I won’t spoil any story here for people who haven’t read the thing yet but it was a biggish left.

And it didn’t work where I had it. It would have, in fact, blown up the book and sunk it pretty badly. Right at the end. So I found a way to shift things around and move the left further up. Which had some ripples. Suddenly my plot for Book Two was half-gone and all my notes for Book Three became mostly unusable. I had to go back to the drawing board.

Now remember how these books came out every 6 months? Well there is a bunch of time there for production. The book had to be laid out, proofed and printed and … everything else. But that ate up a large part of the 6 month break. We were already close to the wire.

If I replotted everything I would lose a chunk of time I didn’t have. If I didn’t replot everything I would sink the entire series by being bad at my job. I replotted. I called Vince and warned him and got to work.

I then took a week off my day job and wrote all of Book Two in a single week. Well, except for the first little opening bits. The crushing deadline forced me to just stop thinking and get some work done. Insane, sure, but doable every now and then.

So anyway! The rest of the series came out, pretty much as planned, and we sat and judged it all a worthwhile experiment. Except it felt like a good idea to collect it and release the whole story at once. We decided to wait a while, then had to fit it into his schedule for publication and then deal with a delay or three.

Along the way I decided that beside getting the original short story back into place I would do something for the end. I wanted to give people a reason to consider rebuying this stuff. I thought of a few different stories I could do and tried a bunch of them on for size, but only one actually fit. So I worked it up and slid it into place.

It’s utterly different from the rest of the series, on purpose. Just as, to me, the series is utterly different from the short that it started as.

Still, I spent years working in, thinking about and dealing with Strange Angel and now with this new book out it is done. I’ll miss it, partly, and partly I’ll be glad it’s over. But either way it is a testament to trying new concepts in my storytelling, to having some fun and building characters that you may or may not like but you’ll enjoy.

And it’s almost out, as of this writing. Like – I hear a delay but also hear any day now. Maddening. As soon as it is out I will link it here and so on.

Anyway. I hope you enjoy it.

THERE IS A NEW COLLECTION OF UNPUBLISHED MARK TWAIN ESSAYS.

Called Who is Mark Twain? (from one of the essays: In “Frank Fuller and My First New York Lecture” Twain plasters the city with ads to promote his talk at the Cooper Union (he is terrified no one will attend). Later that day, Twain encounters two men gazing at one of his ads. One man says to the other: “Who is Mark Twain?” The other responds: “God knows—I don’t.”) the book is twenty-four new and unpublished bits picked by Hirst (the guy what runs the Mark Twain Project at UC Berkeley)

I haven’t been this hot for a book since… wow. New Twain? Yeah that got ordered with next day shipping. You should order Who Is Mark Twain?, too, you know.