Somehow I wandered off and forgot to come back

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That seems to be how things go here, with me. I blog a lot for a while, then one day I forget, and a month goes by with no posts. OK, then.

What have I been up to? Lots of time off work, after saving most of my vacation for the end of the year. Dividing time between recreation (beach trips, mountain trips for snowshoeing, video games), a little bit of effort designing CD covers, lots of writing time, and a fair amount of reading.

I’ve been reading Elizabeth Hand’s collection Saffron and Brimstone, which is completely fantastic so far — poetic, moving and yet fanciful. At the same time, I’m reading Joseph S. Pulver’s Blood Will Have Its Season, a completely singular story collection, stylistically wild, with as much energy and “juice” as anything I’ve read in a long time. Reading Pulver’s story is like biting down on a live electric line… zzzzt!

Both these collections are inspiring, and both have things to teach, though in completely different ways. It’s great to discover new (to me) writers like this, who do what they do so well, whose styles are so personal, even idiosyncratic at times.

For some reason, I’ve never read story collections the way you’d read a novel — straight through to the end. My preferred way to read them is one story at a time, preferable in a single sitting, and moving between books as the mood suits me, the way you  might sit down to listen to music and play Metallica when I’m in that mood, then transition to Lustmord, then Brian Eno or Robert Rich, taking in a whole series of moods or flavors. Reading someone like Pulver in particular can be such a strong jolt, I’m not sure I could read this thing all the way through without a break. Sort of like living on nothing but tequila and jalapeno poppers for a week… yikes! In short bursts, though it’s tremendously inspiring to read this kind of feverish, all-out, slightly deranged writing. Even reading a few pages of this makes me want to jump up and write something. Pulver just released a new story collection this month, and I’ll have to order that soon. 

Hand’s book, on the other… erm… hand, is made up of much longer pieces (50+ pages, some of them), so it reads a bit more like a novel. Still, I enjoy taking this in piece by piece, with breaks in between. I love the realistic, literary quality of her storytelling. When fantastic elements arise, their impact is that much stronger because they seem to be intruding upon a life something like our own. Almost a polar opposite to Pulver’s work, Hand’s is restrained, delicately understated. I discovered her work in the “Poe’s Children” anthology edited by Peter Straub, which includes the story “Cleopatra Brimstone” which is also in Saffron and Brimstone. That piece is one of the most impressive pieces of literary dark fantasy (Straub calls it “horror” but I’m not quite sure) I’ve read recently, and she’s another writer I’ll definitely want to investigate. Her novel Generation Loss just arrived here, and that sounds fantastic.

I’ll try not to wander too far off, or forget again about this place.
 

I’m always doing this. Another inspirational running-related quote.

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OK, so how many “re-posted Runner’s World quote of the day” blog postings can I possibly make? Here’s another. I find it hard to resist this quote, though. It’s instructional for just about anybody with aspirations, goals or dreams. It’s not just about running, or even limited to athletics.

“Champions do not become champions when they win the event, but in the hours, weeks, months and years they spend preparing for it. The victorious performance itself is merely the demonstration of their championship character.”
–T. Alan Armstrong, author

When we see a person succeed, it’s tempting to feel they’ve done something at the crucial, final moment of judgment that determined their success. In truth, if you’re winning an award for your book, or setting a record for your running event, that success it an accumulation. How many years of work and preparation went into building the foundation to make possible that later success? Remember, that person was working very hard without any reward or guarantee of success. If you’re struggling now, remember that the people you see succeeding now went through a period, just like you, of grinding away without approval, without awards, without any outward recognition.

Hard work wouldn’t really be hard if it came with a guarantee of immediate positive feedback, or certain near-term success.

A book worth a look: Occultation by Laird Barron

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Usually when I finish a new book, I mention it in this blog and give a quick statement about it. If it’s a big classic of SF I might write a full reaction and review for my “SF Academy” series.

Just recently I finished a collection I enjoyed more than anything I’ve read in some time, and as it’s a work by a relatively new writer (or let’s say “emerging” rather than new, as he’s been at it a while), I wanted to make a point of highlighting it.

Occultation is the second collection by Laird Barron, a native of Alaska who now lives near Olympia, Washington, and who can also be found here on Livejournal. You might’ve noticed I said “collection” and not “short story collection,” and that’s because many of the pieces here are well into novella territory. Six of the nine stories are over 10,000 words and one, the masterful “Mysterium Tremendum,” is nearly 25,000 words. That’s about half a Great Gatsby worth!

The longer format gives Barron plenty of room to develop his characters and settings in detail, and give us a sense of real individuals and actual relationships being affected by the onset of weird and macabre events. In “Mysterium Tremendum,” mentioned above, a group of four men explore wild, vacant land in Washington with the help of a dark guidebook they encounter. Events turn increasingly strange as they come to understand some of the warnings they ignored.

In “–30–,” which may be my favorite thing in the book, two researchers observe wild animals in a remote wildland, again set somewhere near the vicinity of the author’s own territory. The two researchers are influenced by their isolation, as well as by things they find in their surroundings.

In stories like these, Barron so gradually shifts the reality of these characters that we barely notice the change in their circumstances, from a reality like that which we inhabit, to something very different, and truly dark.

The shorter pieces in the collection are worthwhile too. The title story, which observes a young married couple drinking, drugging and sexing their way through a desert vacation, packs quite a punch despite its brevity.

I have a hard time remembering the last time I read a single-author story collection (not counting career-summations or “best-of” books by established greats) that was so solid all the way through. I have just as hard a time naming more than a handful of currently-active writers whose new work I anticipate with more eagerness than Laird Barron’s.

Keeping Busy

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I’ve been keeping busy here with lots of writing-related projects.

I entered a short fiction contest last week and used the deadline to push myself to work a bit faster than usual. One of my long-in-progress stories went through significant transformation and ended up much weirder and creepier than before. We’ll see how it does in this contest. I don’t know much about the people doing the voting, but I know the other entrants are extremely varied.

Just before the contest, I received a note from one editor that my submission had been “short listed” and would be passed along to the next threshold of editorial consideration. These here fingers are crossed.

A different editor at a different periodical liked my first submission enough to offer me a chance to rewrite it, which I did over the weekend. That editor’s suggested changes shifted the story’s focus away from a repeated series of flashbacks that were, I agree, somewhat extraneous. Whether or not that editor ends up taking the resubmission, I feel the story was made better by his suggestions so I’ll be happy either way. Of course, I’ll be happier if he takes the story!

Finally received a rejection for Q3 of Writers of the Future (June ending quarter). I was kind of worried about that submission for WOTF. That story has a significant sexual element, probably too much for that market. It’s not too intimately detailed (no genital talk, basically) so I thought it might get through. And of course, it could have been rejected for other reasons than the sex stuff. Who knows with this stuff. You don’t often get an editor saying “we’d take this story if you toned down the naked fun.” That manuscript has been stuck at WOTF for five months now… long enough that my writing has progressed since that was submitted, so I’ll probably take another look at it before sending it back out.

Otherwise my policy continues to be: resubmit all rejections by the next weekday at the latest.

Oh, another exception: I received a personal rejection note from the main fiction editor at one of the major markets, with specific comments about what he thought was wrong with another one of my stories. This kind of thing happens so rarely, as any fiction writer knows. Those of you reading this who are not writers… suffice to say 99% of rejections are form letters with no hint of an explanation). For this reason, and because the suggestions feel perceptive and accurate to me, I really do feel inclined to utilize the suggestions and do a minor re-write. Not to resubmit to the same market (the comments were not offered in that way), but just so it’ll be better for the next market. Anyway, it was only the second rejection that story had received, so there’s still hope to sharpen it up a bit and hook it up with one of the top markets.

That’s all for now. I’m getting ready for a long weekend, and enjoying summer-like weather completely uncharacteristic of November in Portland.

The New Scrivener(s)

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I’ve raved about Scrivener many times in this blog. It’s my most important writing (and outlining and organizing and revising and editing) tool. It’s always been a Mac-only piece of software, but the developer has partnered with a Windows software developer to create a Windows version. So far, the Scrivener Windows Beta is similar but not exactly the same. Close enough that the differences aren’t a problem, let’s say.

At the same time, Scrivener has released a NaNoWriMo preview edition of Scrivener 2.0 for Mac, so I’ve downloaded that too and given it a spin.

Anybody (any writer-type, I mean) who hasn’t given this application a spin now has no excuse. Check it out: Literature and Latte (Scrivener developer).

I’m mostly a Mac user but there are many times I find myself in Windows land, so I fully intend to buy a Windows license as soon as they’re offered. This is great stuff and I really believe it’s better than the similar alternatives (StoryMill and Ulysses). I bought a StoryMill license but I never use it any more.

The Techie and the Fountain Pen

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I love my computers, and my fancy “cloud computing” magic. I love Scrivener, especially. Love my iPad too.

But I’m trying something different. First drafts created with a fountain pen, longhand, on good paper. This is how I used to always do it, up until a year or so ago. It’s just so fast and convenient to draft right in Scrivener. But maybe fast and convenient aren’t best, at least not right now.

Scribbled handwriting, and ink on my fingertips. The words feel different this way.

Still scrambling

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I’d like to get back to posting more planned, focused blog entries soon but my life has been all about scrambling lately, so another scrambled blog post will have to do.

Been rethinking my approach to style and voice in my fiction. Trying out a less formal, more natural voice for the “lake” story I’m finishing up, and also for the next one I’m about to draft. Switching up another WIP from a more detached 3rd person POV to a more internalized 1st person.

Oregon Ducks are ranked #1 for the first time in history, which seems bewilderingly impossible. When I was in college, I never thought the football team would go to a Rose Bowl, and now it’s happened twice. Even after raising the level of success I never expected to see them atop the rankings, even early in the season like this. Tonight, they’ll play their first game as a top-ranked team.

Had some fun last weekend hanging around with Dave T, one of my oldest friends, partner in Viridian Sun (ambient music duo for those blog readers unfamiliar with that my musical activities). Made a great bbq dinner. Listened to Dave’s new solo album, which is very accomplished, and which he’d like to release on Hypnos. We’ll have to hammer out some details to decide if that’ll happen. Watched an unauthorized Depeche Mode documentary which included interviews with Thomas Dolby, Gary Numan, and one of the Spandau Ballet guys. Drank more beer and Fireball cinnamon whiskey than we meant to.

The next day Lena and I went up to Government Camp for a hike. This summer-like weather can’t last much longer, right? Hiked a good dozen miles in the thin air.

Speaking of Hypnos, the new CD release by Italian trio Herion is back from the manufacturer. I need to write up an announcement and start sending out promo copies, plus mail out copies to the artists, and set it up so people can start buying it.

This work week has been a living hell of trying to resurrect computers overrun with malware, and inexplicable network crashes. Lots of the fix-it work has been off-site so I’ve been away from my desk most of the week. Plus, working conditions are cold and dirty out there! Made me miss my desk. Now it’s Thursday morning and I feel like I finally have a chance to look around and figure out what needs to be done.

Last night on the way home, Air Force One zoomed right overhead as I drove down Marine Drive. Those few hundred feet were probably the closest I’ve ever been to a US President. Hundreds of people were lined up all along Marine Drive, with cameras and binoculars, gazing off to the West.

What I really Meant to Say

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I fired up ScribeFire and posted those two quick entries just to test it out, but I forgot I actually had something I meant to blog about.

I’m about halfway through Singularity Sky by Charles Stross, and though it started off fairly well, I’m finding it increasingly dull. None of the characters matter to me at all, and I feel I only barely know the two main characters. The rest are just a series of names, often without a single defining characteristic (aside from the senile old coot who thinks his legs have turned to glass for some reason). There are long stretches of political back-and-forth without apparent consequence. The scenes of military maneuvering and battle have a few nifty tech tidbits mixed in, but otherwise fairly flat, as if the outcome is always a foregone conclusion.

Am I nuts here? This fucking book was nominated for a Hugo award, but I don’t get it. Not a terrible book, but sort of a C-plus so far, as far as I can tell. Anybody out there who’s read Singularity Sky and can point out some angle I’m missing?

ScribeFire

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In my ongoing quest to find the most excellent workflow for posting the same stuff to WordPress and LiveJournal, I am experimenting with a Google Chrome plugin called ScribeFire. It appears to do what I want, especially now that I am running Chrome on all my Macs and PCs.

Let’s say this is a test post.