man bites world

New morning, new year

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This past year saw a lot of changes for me. Child of Fire (Amazon.com | Indiebound.org) came out, obviously, which is a goal I’ve been working toward for a long, long time.

But I also went through a round of major revisions on Game of Cages (Amazon.com | Indiebound.org) which was extremely challenging and made me question myself and my actual writing/career plans. I went to San Diego Comic Con and endured the press of a hundred thousand people. I did face-to-face interviews. I did a signing.

Basically, I came out of my shell (a little). I can’t say I liked it much, but I’m willing to do what I have to. Let’s call it a year of personal growth opportunities (translation: I was pushed into a lot of uncomfortable situations).

One thing I didn’t do, which I’d planned to do, was steal time from my schedule for exercise. I’m not any bigger than I was at the start of the year, but I’m holding steady at a point I don’t want to be in. More on that later.

One thing I learned that I didn’t expect was that I don’t read fast enough to be a writer. It’s not just that I take forever to do my research, I take forever to do my revisions, too. I only read 15 books a year.

It’s untenable and has to change. I’ve already started working on this, but I’ll have to put more effort into it this year.

And, since so many others are doing it: Ten years ago, I was working for Children’s Hospital in Seattle (temping, actually), while they stocked up on medical supplies in anticipation of Y2K. In the years since, I tried to move to Los Angeles to pursue screenwriting, ditched that idea. I tried my hand at low-budget filmmaking but found I wasn’t suited for it. I started writing novels and found success. My family came damn close to bankruptcy because of health care issues, but we came through it, stronger than ever.

And of course my son was born. I don’t talk about him too much here for his privacy’s sake, but he changed my whole life; I remember the time before he was born as though it had been lived by a different person.

New morning, new year. I’m going to start working on book 3 now.

I’ve been avoiding substantive posts lately

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Mainly because of I’ve been damn busy. Also because I’m slow to comment; often, by the time I have my thoughts together well enough to weigh in on a topic, someone else has done it better. It’s the curse of the slow writer.

Also because I’m still feeling disjointed and spacey.

Anyway, tomorrow is Christmas Eve. There’s a Borders down the street from my day job and they finally had the December issue of Locus in stock, one of which is lying next to me. I might have mentioned this before, the Child of Fire was reviewed in there for a second time (it’s complimentary, and I’ll note it in a reviews post) and I wanted a copy. Plus, Christmas.

As a bit of additional good news, they ordered another seven copies of my book for the shelves. I didn’t offer to sign them because, you know, Christmas, but I’ll swing by next week.

But this isn’t going to be yet another post about CoF. In fact, I’m not sure what it’s going to be a post about. I watched WATCHMEN yesterday, finally, and thought it was pretty dreadful, all told. The parts that were fun didn’t fit together, and the parts that were lame were all of a piece. I’m revising Man Bites World, along with inching toward a real title, and playing around with the goof on New Project.

And jeez, how sweet it is to play with a new project. Just the act of sitting down and typing the ideas I’ve been noodling over prompts a surge of new concepts and character ideas. It really is amazing how easily a story will acrete if I sit at a computer and type out any old idea that comes to me.

The only concern is that the ideas aren’t always what you’d call “stellar.” I have to be careful not to become too attached to a decent idea when I ought to push for a much better one.

Actually, that’s not the only concern: a bigger concern is that the shiny fun of brainstorming a new idea will take away from desperately-needed polishing of MBW. I’d much rather be hashing out a new setting than squinting at my lap top screen, muttering “Who put all these fucked-up sentences in here?”

But there you go. I’ll be taking Christmas day off from writing, spending it with my wife and son. It’ll be a quiet day, with lots of time for reading and cooking, and if I’m lucky we’ll light a fire.

More later, I guess.

Another interview with me

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Actually, this will probably be the last one, and it’s text rather than an audio file. It’s at Write On Online, and it was done by Debra Eckerling.

It’s a writing site, so there’s writing advice on there, for those who are interested in that sort of thing.

God, it’s been a weird day for me. Is it weird for you? I’m doing the preliminary work on Next Project and polishing Man Bites World, and I canceled our cable TV. It’s been a decent enough day, but I feel all disjointed.

Huh. I just realized that it’s 9:45. I woke at 4:20 this morning after an horrifying nightmare, and I forgot to eat. I’m going to make a bit of food, and then we’re going out. Keep the internet interesting while I’m gone, please.

Passing the time

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While I sit here, discussing what is and isn’t “fair” or “no fair” with my son, I thought I’d mention that I’ve added links to the sidebar of my webpage for you good folks to pre-order Game of Cages (or put it on your wish list or whatever).

Now, back to the “no fair”s.

Some catching up

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This will be a quick rundown, because it’s late and I want to sleep, but I also want to cover some things:

Yesterday, I got two flu shots, seasonal and H1N1. That evening I was coughing and by bedtime I was feverish and shivering. The fever broke around 4:30, and I went back to sleep. Right now I feel mostly okay, but damn, why didn’t I go to bed earlier.

My son had his eighth birthday party today. It went well.

I mailed Man Bites World to my agent. Only 15 minutes in line at the post office! I promised it to her by Giftmas, and she’ll have it. I just wish I’d had time to polish the prose more.

Tomorrow, I’m going to celebrate the mailing by spending a sizable portion of the day reading.

But, while so many of you poor folks were out killing brain cells watching AVATAR, I stayed home with the family to watch HOGFATHER. It’s a flawed show but it’s wonderful, and the end always puts tears in my eyes. My wife absolutely loves it. Go Christmas!

And now I collapse.

Avatar = Battle for Terra

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As I suspected, Avatar is crazy similar to Battle For Terra, not to mention a few other films.

Skipping it. I’d rather watch BfT again.

Busy today. My son’s birthday party starts as soon as the first kid arrives, and I have to sneak out later to mail off the completed agent-draft of Man Bites World (Yay!).

Oh, crap!

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Me am forgetful.

Chapter one of Man Bites World starts on page one, as expected.

Chapter two starts on page 163. Three: 181. Four: 209

At which point I forgot what number I was on and started labeling them “Chapter Next”: 215 (! Four pages?) 231, 249, and so on until the end, every 15-25 pages, the way they should be.

Ummm, maybe I should standardize those before I send it.

De-stressing

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After a touch day, you know what makes things better? Riding a carousel with my wife and son, visiting the Pacific Place mall shopping center to watch their indoor “snow” fall–really just a bunch of bubbles, but it looked great and the boy loved it, checking out this year’s gingerbread house displays at the Sheraton (very nice!) and dinner at the boy’s new favorite restaurant. Pictures will be forthcoming.

I also discovered that Barnes & Noble has sold six of the nine copies of Child of Fire they stocked. That’s nice, too.

That said, there’s one more note to be dealt with in my book. I’ll reproduce it here in full:

[these empty lines suggest I meant to expand this scene, but after a month and a half I can’t remember what it was supposed to be. Note to self: make notes to self.]

It’s been longer than a month and a half now, but for the life of me I can’t remember what I was supposed to put there. Must have been important, huh? I’ll just delete the note and call it done. Tonight I’ll prep it and send it to my agent; I’ll polish while she reads, and thank Pikachu that this think is nearly done.

Latest state of the self report:

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I was late to the day job this morning (second day in a row) because I got sucked into the revisions of Man Bites World again. Luckily, my supervisor was late, too. We rode up on the elevator together.

Yesterday at dinner, my wife started talking about our plans for this evening–we’ll be checking out the gingerbread house displays downtown, as well as having a nice dinner and maybe ride the Westlake holiday carrousel. I’d completely forgotten about those plans. This morning, when I called her from my desk to catch up with whatever, I’d completely forgotten about them again. Note to self: don’t take the usual bus home tonight.

Anyway, Newtonmas is next week. The boy’s birthday party is this weekend. Shopping is not finished. MBW is still not finished, although I expect to have a draft I can send to my agent very, very soon. Unfortunately, I can’t work on it this Saturday because of the party.

Did I mention my trip to the dentist? I had a cavity that needed filling, and while it was the best visit I’ve had in a long, long while (a new guy took over this practice and I think he’s great) it was still a lot of added stress and pain.

I’m also criminally behind on my sleep. What this all adds up to is that I’m stressed, exhausted, forgetful, and negligent of my own needs. I can’t keep more than three things in my head at once (and the health care reform bills insist on being one of them no matter how annoying the news gets), and I spend most of my time feeling slightly sick.

So you can imagine my state of mind this morning when I received an invitation to Norwescon. Actually, you don’t have to imagine it. It was Oh, hell no.

For those who don’t know, I’ve never been to a sf convention. I’ve been avoiding them partly because of cost and partly because they seem to be large social events full of people who already know each other. I don’t do well in crowds and I’m not comfortable with big groups of strangers.

Also, just yesterday I was reading Booklife by Jeff Vandermeer (btw: I’m reading Booklife and it’s interesting. More on that later) and he said it was best for authors to skip the types of promotion that make them uncomfortable.

“Perfect!” I didn’t say out loud on the bus. “I guess I don’t have to mingle with large crowds of strangers now!”

But then this email came today, and I’m currently over-fucking-whelmed with crap and you know what? I’m going to go anyway.

What the hell. It’s not until April, and considering my crazy schedule I will only be able to attend on Saturday, but the truth is that it scares me and makes me uncomfortable, and that’s reason enough to give it a go. The real downside is going to be the loss of my most productive writing day. Whatever. Once I do it, I can say I did it and never do it again.

They’re asking me to be on programming, which is a big huh? but okay. They’re also asking me to list people I don’t want to be on a panel with. I’m tempted to make up a name to two as a joke, but maybe they don’t have time for that. How am I supposed to know who to avoid?

Anyway, as grim as this post sounds, everything will be fine. I just have to buckle down a bit more and make sure I stick with sensible choices (for instance, going to bed when I’m stressed out instead of wandering my apartment like a ghost). But all this is doable and my wife has been very understanding. I just have to get through it.

Sorry this post is so long.

On the perils of being well-rested

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Saturday, I worked on Man Bites World. I had a good day, but I didn’t finish. Afterward, I met my family for dinner at a little Greek place and we caught two buses to Green Lake. Well, after three long, draining days of story revisions, I was a little too befuddled to appreciate the evening lights along the path around the lake, and the musicians (including a very large ukulele band playing “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree”). It was a long trip across town and there was, as usual, pain.

I returned home exhausted and slumped off to bed at 9pm. I woke up on Sunday at 7 am. Great, right?

Except I’m a night person. I keep an early schedule because of near-continual exhaustion, and without that exhaustion I can’t sleep. I was up until 3:30 last night. (What I should have done is more revision, but I knew if I started that I would never ever go to bed.)

Yay for a screwed up day! I strongly suspect I’ll be back on my old schedule tonight.