I don’t have any one subject I want to focus on here at the moment, but a few things are going on.

My wife is out of town this week, and I’m not with her. This situation is common for lots of married folk, but we almost never travel separately, so it feels weird, and I don’t like it!

Here in Portland we finally broke free of over a month of rotten, lousy un-summer-like weather and for a few weeks now it’s actually been sunny and warm. This would not normally be considered “news,” but this summer at least, the sun coming out has allowed some fun stuff like hiking and trail running and even just lying out in the back yard with a book.

This coming weekend I’ll be traveling to the “Writers Weekend” event in Moclips Washington, which I believe I mentioned here around the time I signed up. (Edit: original post on this event is here) I’ve been reading the stories of other participants and making notes, getting ready. It’s something I’m looking forward to, but this week has been such a strange one (see above story of wife-lessness) that it doesn’t seem quite real. Still, I’ll have more to say about that just before, or during, or after, or maybe some combination thereof.

My own writing has been going well, too. I’ve tried some new things recently, including another effort at a story that can only be called horror. The biggest thing here is that I find the one thing I miss now that I write SF almost exclusively is writing about this world. Not that I’m considering a big shift of emphasis, more like something I’ll dip into a few times per year as a change of pace. I can write all kinds of horror-like or at least horrific stuff within SF, so the only real reason to break off and write a “real world, present day” story is that it’s fun to write about a people and places, for a change, closer to the people and places I see day to day.

Other than that, I’ve pulled back two of my short stories that I had previously been sending around, having decided they weren’t quite up to the standard of my more recent stories. Very often I find that if I’m not careful, my stories default to a sort of introspective, low-energy grasping at poetics and philosophy, short on plot and conflict. I’ve been working to address that in my more recent stories, but sometimes I crack open one of these earlier ones and say “gosh, the first scene doesn’t accomplish anything, the story doesn’t really start until page two or three, and the ending just trails off.” So back to the drawing board with these two (one of them is almost completely reworked with a much more compelling and satisfying turn of events at the end, not a twist, but certainly a kick to the protagonist’s groin, figuratively).

At the moment my “now reading” and “now listening” are Forever War by Joe Haldeman and Dreamcatcher by Stephen King, respectively. I went through a month-long stretch of listening to book-related podcasts rather than actual audiobooks (really enjoyed Jonathan Strahan’s podcasts particularly) but I felt like listening to a good, old-fashioned “grabber” of a story.

Stephen King is great for listening while driving. His voice is so informal and conversational (talking about writer’s voice here, not the speaking voice of the guy reading the audiobook) that it’s like having friends in the car telling me the story.

Forever War is just fantastic as well, though it’s taking me longer than usual as my reading time has been short recently. Technically, I suppose, this is considered Military SF, but it just doesn’t have that feel. It’s much more restrained and literary in feel, like a quiet, regretful cousin of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. Really a very fine book, and it makes me want to read more Haldeman though it doesn’t seem people really talk about any of his books other than this and Forever Peace. I’ll have to do some research on this guy. I do know he just won a Grand Master award at the last Nebulas, so he’s got that going for him, which is nice. Of course, Gene Wolfe doesn’t have a Grand Master award, so what the hell?

I’m also starting to re-read Again, Dangerous Visions in little bits. I had forgotten just how much I love Ellison’s introductions and little lead-in essays for each story. Is it just me, or are there more people in this book whose careers never really went anywhere, than there are established writers with significant careers?

It’s fun sometimes to just blog about a few random little tidbits. I suppose I could Twitter this stuff, but for some reason I’m still using Twitter more to quickly check up on a number of people I’m interested in, than for something to broadcast my own particular brand of whatever. In other words, consuming rather than producing, Twitter-wise. At least I’m blogging relatively consistently. Yeah, I know you’re thrilled! More soon.