Crazy, random, all-encompassing blog entries are fun once in a while!

First off, these next three days Lena and I will be attending the H P Lovecraft Film Festival here in Portland. Lots of fun is anticipated — film screenings, author readings, panel discussions, and a vendor room full of Cthulhu-y merchandise goodness.

I’ve been dividing my time between work on Hypnos stuff (readying the next CD releases) and writing, revising and submitting stories. In September I sent 16 story submissions, and my previous monthly high was 11. Obviously having more stories out there is part of the deal, but also I happened to hit several quick-turn markets. If you’re going to get a rejection, a faster rejection is preferable, I think, in that it allows you to move the story along to the next market a bit sooner.

I haven’t completed (meaning finalized and sent off) a new story in over a month, but I have several churning and likely to be completed in October. I regularly start new pieces, at roughly the same pace I complete older ones, so I have a pipeline of a half-dozen or so in various stages of completion. Sometimes this balance swings toward a half-dozen rougher pieces, and other times, like now, I end up with several that are closer to complete.

One of the stories I’m about to start is a sort of dark, second-world fantasy about a paranoid, delusional monarch who lives in a nearly inaccessible dome atop a mountain. This place can only be reached by a tremendously dangerous climb on narrow ledges beside great chasms. I’m naturally scared of heights, though I also love the mountains and hiking. This story incorporates much about altitude, danger of falling, the discomfort of being at a cliff’s edge. Here’s a link to a video that gives a sense of that “teetering on the edge of death” thing I’m talking about. Coincidentally, the name of this real-life path is Camino del Rey, which means Path of the King.

Otherwise, we’re enjoying a great spell of late-summer weather and looking forward to a long weekend of Cthulhu cult insanity.