If you've reason
for the season, and the means
to realize it,
for you, the gift of family and
the moment to know it.

If your season
is blue, don't worry, we've been
there, for you
when you're ready, tomorrow or
the day after, whenever,
a hand ready to grab yours
when you need it
most.

For all, the stars and
the moon above, a
quiet space to digest
one more meal, a good
story to read or listen
to, a few minutes
to reflect and
find the good
around us.

Support it, carry
it, call it forth,
in good times and
bad, there'll be
plenty of both, know it.
These are the times that
fill against the bitter.
Build firm support around our
hearts.

She danced,
she sang,
she chased moonlight.
Her other half, her
sister by choice
tolled along behind,
wondered at the choices.
The ones that she hadn't
yet made.

No no no, she said.
This is the way it might be.

She chased him away,
she ran as far as
feet could tell.
Her other soul watched,
pulled her own sled.
Worked on her own paths,
didn't listen to the
voices that called
for something more.
Said, "Don't just take."

No no no, she said,
this is the way it may be.

She laughed at the freedom,
cried at the next wave,
the worlds born anew.
Her sister-love followed
behind, dancing now and
ignoring the oncoming
end of things. It would
be and come when it
wanted. No use to hurry.

No.
This is the way it will be.

I chanced to meet an old sailor,
just the day before next
he lives down the row, the little
yellow house. The one with the
pear tree out front.

He congratulated me, as usual
on being unemployable. A noble goal,
he allows, as there are precious
few noble employers.

The sea bashed us, in boats old before
I was young.
Cold and windy, hot and still. Humidity
always, though you'd not notice it
after a front pushed through.

Nets and lines, cast for days
follow the birds; they may
not always know for sure, but
they are always hungry enough to
find out.

He's younger now than last I saw
him. Stout as the little fireplug
that guards his place.
Less arthritis, easier back,
knees flex without as much
of the popping.

I wonder how the catch is? It's
been so long. I've been worried
about chasing the scales of
distance, time, force, entropy.
Ideas rather than the fish you
grasp, wind that tears, birds
and beer and cigarrettes snuck
under the moonlight.

Not dead dreams these, just
unacknowledged, there's birthdays
and holidays and school coming
up (it's always there, the turn
of the semesters for me, the new
school year for the little terror,
I hope her teachers forgive me my
sins and trespasses).

He'll not be there next I look.
Too many waves to catch. And
there's duck season, geese
coming in. After that, well,
there's a pig in the barn getting
nice and fat.

Then it all starts over.
As it didn't do tomorrow. I think
I'll watch a fishing show
and think about, dream over,
forget yesterday the
memories I have forever.

A rambling update of sorts, as I stumble through the end of my day.

Writing, yes, that came first. I've fumbled a bit ramping up after a busy fall. I got less writing than I'd hoped, more than I'd feared, I'll call it a win. My schedule scrambled and now I'm free, I've been ambivalent. When I sit down, the words are there, the characters and the story, stories await.

What gets in the way is the hesitation. What if I do this, that, the other thing? Always other things, most days not an issue, it's all just part of ramping back up again. The mind has its ways.

I had a wind-up this evening. Started thinking about marching ants, army ants, swarming insects of all sorts and the differences between them, some get riled up, some just are. Wasps, bees, even their far distant cousins jelly fish.

And then, the mind clicked, and a story frame came into being. I'll have to note it away for later, tuck it into the memory banks. There are moments in the future where I'll meet the characters, he and she and oh there are definite connotations here, I wonder who they are? Will they know when it's time? When it's their time? Or will they find themselves on the stage counting the marks and looking for the joker in the cheap seats, the one with a notebook and a smile on his face?

O storm of waters,
placid today, but only for a few minutes, I think. What have you in store for us,
later
this early morning pass is gearing up I see. Will the dogs be asleep?
One can only hope.

I see many other things out there, as I listen to singin' Simon, an old concert PBS has thrown up of an evening. When Carrie Fisher was doing her show, one of her great lines was something like "If you can get Paul Simon to write a song about you, I highly recommend it." The other thing I smile at, from Carrie, a story I heard several variations of, she loved so much the fans who thought of her, and told her they had her in mind as, a writer first and foremost.

The day gig versus the work of the heart; a reminder too of the power of That Story. The one that kicks out, finds its way to the hearts of the readers who've been waiting for it, That Story, maybe they've never known it and there it is, old friend just met.

Art slips away, grows beyond any fields, boundaries, we set. Becomes other. Fan-fic in all its glories. Does the Bard look on and giggle; revel in the forever high school productions, the re-skinnings, the re-tellings? Sure.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was my favorite. Then again, that might just have been Oldman and Roth hamming it up. So what, it's a wonderful thing. But then, I didn't write Hamlet. What would it have been to see instead Hamlet 2: Revenge of the Zombie Prince?

How many incomplete starts, do you think? Lost plays? Bits of poems, notes for a play from Chaucer's Tales? Would he have cared if someone came along and turned those into a new play, "Based on the works of William Shakespeare"? Sure, of course, the check cleared right? What some people will do for the money, and honey we've all been there. Bills to pay and the kids will go to college (please God let the kids go to college...)

Witness all the rock gods, and the commercials. When the adulation is done, and you've still gotta make the nut, pride ain't in it. And it's a lot easier on the hips and back and knees than getting up on stage and spending a few hours a night pretending to be eighteen again.

Old friends passing email between them
"You haven't..." "But I did, you never..."
like that.

Facebook and Instagram, who follows whom and the kids and their days.

Old friends have broken up and gone their separate ways, others, the ones
who settled in, keep pushing the oars. Pulling the chain. Digging in the mines
and trudging up the hill to tote the bale and haul the water.

Days wind down, winter in the wind, a bit brisk and aren't we supposed to
hibernate? Yet?

Airplanes warming up in the distance, a trip on the calendar, holidays coming
yesterday and tomorrow and gifts and food and and and...

silence. It wasn't it was. It ain't now. Pass it on pass it through the pass
of the yester-year was a moment that never existed not even a little bit itwasamirageidiot.Hatelovefear

deep breath. The work is here, where it's always been. The work and the love and the new and the old. The tangled tanked up
path
between
the here
the now the
tomorrow
yesterday. none of them more than figments, either. Yet all together? All together now all together now.Hmm.

Sometone someone that one. She will be fine, write.

Gather close, oh ye hesitant souls; I have a story to tell.

Once upon a time, long long ago, a dignitary came to visit.

In the place that dignitary came from, he was reckoned by some to have small power, by others a placeholder. There were even those who whispered behind their hands of old treacheries.

These were ignored, those few poor souls seen as chasing vapor trails. Whatever kernel of truth formed their conspiracy theories, however, to this story they are of no moment.

So the dignitary came to visit, there at a university in the middle of a city.

The university itself held small fame in certain scholarly corners. Mostly, it was a place where people who had to work for a living could manage to scrap together a degree, in between shifts.

It was the way of things at the university, at that time, that the centerpiece, in artistic terms, of the university campus was a fountain. A magnificent edifice, with one unfortunate flaw.

It didn't work. Not in living memory, which on a university means no undergraduate or graduate student yet walking those almost-hallowed halls, had water been pumped successfully, through arcs and sprays to reverberate across the almost two acre showpiece. The students rather enjoyed this.

Apparently, the university powers-that-be didn't share this ironic joy. The thought of the dignitary visiting, walking by an empty concrete pond, was too much. This couldn't stand.

One hundred thousand dollars was requisitioned. The fountain was repaired.

Temporarily. The fix wasn't permanent.

A fact known, publicly, as soon as the money was devoted. This slightly ridiculous state of affairs wasn't hidden. It wasn't pushed into the background.

It was the headline of the university paper in the very first article written on the subject.

Now, there are students for whom such a state of affairs wouldn't have merited anything more than a raised eyebrow.

There were very few of these dedicated scholars, these higher souls, at the university. Working-class kids all, they had a certain element among them.

There was no need to vocalize the discontent.

They didn't target the dignitary's trip. Not quite. They targeted the week before, while there was still time to fix what they had done.

Rumors abound. I'd imagine that, if one were so inclined as to go to a certain wholesale warehouse just down the freeway, pull out records, then a pallet of a certain well-known brand of powdered laundry soap would be quite readily found among the sales on that time and date.

Hard to say, though, since there were only acres of suds to be seen, that Monday morning when all the self-congratulatory administrators walked into their offices, opened their blinds.

And beheld what they had, ah, wrought.

Could be worse.

There's another rumor, you see. One that your humble correspondent hesitates to report. Since this rumor was one that circulated among the members of only one very small group of chemistry students.

That rumor, you see, suggested that, if one were to go into a certain lab, at a certain time of night, one could, without too much trouble, find a minor supply, merely grams... of cesium.

One likes to think that this particular dignitary would have gotten the joke, that this august personage would have recognized the ridiculousness of spending such an outrageous sum on a temporary fix, to be run for only a few hours and then shut down promptly after the visit.

Well, the suds, anyway. Even the progenitor of the cesium possibility had to admit, given sufficient time and space for meditation, that such a step might have been going just a bit too far.

Now here's a fun way to spend a few pleasant hours: Finished Clive Barker's Everville, and now I'm in the middle of Tim Powers' The Stress of Her Regard.

An accident of timing in the to-be-read pile, certainly, but an interesting one, nonetheless.

Everville was very fun; it wasn't one of the new editions, I found an older paperback at Half-Price on my last trip there. I haven't read Great And Secret Show, something I didn't know was even necessary until I cracked the binding and found "Second Book of the Art" listed.

Fortunately, I dug through it anyway, and Clive hooked me as he almost always does, and gave me the groundwork I needed as I went along.

I say almost always because I bounced off Imajica. A big part was me, at the time Imajica came out, I just wasn't much in a place for it to catch me.

Damnation Game, Coldheart Canyon, those I caught but somehow I missed Great and Secret Show and Everville. The Books of Blood, I think I'm on my third or fourth copy of the first collection, I got that one the first edition, and this may be the first time I've had them stay in my house for longer than a year. All my other copies I loaned out to spread the word, and they never came back. Not that I mind. Sort of like Tad Williams and my copies of his first three novels, there are some stories I share widely.

Stress of Her Regard, well; mostly I had a hard time finding a copy, but the newest trade paper edition came out and I jumped on it as soon as I noticed. Tim, I started with The Anubis Gates, and return to the various other novels as I find them. Last one I read was Three Days to Never, which is a fun discussion all by itself.

Farewell, Stan Lee. Excelsior!

X-Men, in case you were wondering. Spider-Man, early, but the ones that I bought with my own money were the X-Men. I moved on from there; my comics habit these days is fitful. When I'm in a shop I'm guaranteed to walk out with a fistful. But there are few that hold my interest so much as they did back then.

Dark Phoenix. Wolverine's history. There was a time where my afternoons, evenings, were the comic shop. A guy opened up a shop in the mall across the parking lot from the music store I worked at. The shop, and the owner, folded a group of misfits into the fold.

We went in, where we could smoke in the back room, hang out talking about comics, and these new card games coming into vogue. Play games, shoot the shit.

Read the comics. Always. Pour over the bins, hiding the good ones until the next pay check. Arguing over how much to price this and that.

Laughing at Stan. Laughing with Stan. None of us would have taken the other side of the bet that Stan did. That comics would have meaning to any besides ourselves.

Oh, sure, a good movie; Tim Burton showed it could be done.

I would never had dared hope we'd get more than a handful. Like Stan did. His imagination.

His longevity. Long after the others passed, or gave up and moved on, there was Stan, fighting the good fight. Holding onto the faith long after it might have turned to madness. That this little four-color art had, not just meaning, but something more than that. Appeal, for the normies and the geeks alike.

Who'd have thunk it? Onward. Upward. Write the stories I want to read, you want to read, always write the next story. And keep the faith.

(this is the post where my story Like I Ought To was originally published; look for it April 2020 in M. K. Dreysen - Collected Volume 2, coming soon to retailers near you.)

The past week has been the end of the marching season; our daughter has a few more committments yet that way, football season continues, but at least we are through the contests and extra rehearsals. The work beckons me; the voices that come from not writing and working as much as I'd hoped are building up. I've a backlog to work through, and I can't wait to get to it.

In minor celebration, here's a new story. About? Who knows, it jumped into my head and wouldn't let me go. Herein a story of a particular book, and the stories that go with it.

(this is the post where my story And The Walls Came Down was originally published; look for it April 2020 in M. K. Dreysen - Collected Volume 2, coming soon to retailers near you.)

And so it comes time for the clock to chime, and the turnover to begin. I'll close out my Halloween season treats with this one: And the Walls Came Down. A little ghost story, just for you and me, dear reader, here just before midnight on Halloween...

(this is the post where my story Something Something Something What? was originally published; look for it April 2020 in M. K. Dreysen - Collected Volume 2, coming soon to a retailer near you.)

Here on the night before, a tale for all my lovely Radishes...

(this is the post where my story Betcha Didn't Think was originally published; look for it April 2020 in M. K. Dreysen - Collected Volume 2, coming soon to a retailer near you.)

I told you that story, so I could tell you this one. Betcha Didn't Think, another tale of Gina's hunters.

As I mentioned, this one surprised me, in how soon I needed to learn a bit more of Gina, and the world she works in.

(this is the post where my story Doing the Necessary was first published; look for it April 2020 in M. K. Dreysen - Collected Volume 2, coming soon to a retailer near you.)

(this was the post where my story Shine On was first published; look for it April 2020 in M. K. Dreysen - Collected Volume 2, coming soon to a retailer near you.)

So, in order to tell one story, it seems I need to first tell another. This first one, Shine On, I finished a few weeks ago. It's a story of what happens when you kick over a rock.

As you'll see in a couple days, I revisited this time and place. A little sooner than I expected.

(this was the post where my story A Dusty Little Planet was first published; look for it April 2020 in M. K. Dreysen - Collected Volume 2, coming soon to retailers near you.)

This next story's another one that fits into the time of year, if you glance sideways. This one's called A Dusty Little Planet, and it's about what happens when you can't quite get out of your own way...

(this was the post where my story A Space To Be was originally published; look for it April 2020 in M. K. Dreysen - Collected Volume 2, coming soon to retailers near you.)

So this next story isn't much of a Halloween story.

Well, except in the spirit of certain kinds of the Twilight Zone, or Alfred Hitchcock Presents. There in that magic space where those who deserve it, and are patient, can be seen to occasionally get their proper revenge...

(this was originally where my story Truth Through the Viewfinder was posted; look for it to come out April 2020 in M. K. Dreysen - Collected Volume 2, along with several others.)

Another Halloween lead-in story coming right up. This one's short and, well, not sweet if I follow the implications...

So apparently I'm on stories leading up to Halloween, or something like that. This is another one hot off the presses.

It's called "Go For a Spin", finished this morning, presented for your reading pleasure.

No moon only sun. It's supposed to be harvest time, frost on the grass, and yet here we are. I can almost hear the grass growing out there. Weeks of rain, and now a break, two days of sun and the green lives reach one last time for the sky. One may hope. The lawn could use something resembling a bonus run at it, get set ahead of the winter and lay out a carpet of growth, a thicket to protect against the bad years yet to come.

The world spins only locally for us, me, and that's good. School year and marching band, homework too much of it and always something else to do at the band hall. Every weekend a game and then a competition. Get a few hours of nothing to do but veg, and then start it all over again. At this point my daughter's caught between enjoying the tension of it, she'd smack me for saying that, and then by this point in the week just ready to throw her hands up and crawl into her bedroom with a book and not look at anyone for a month.

I remember those days well. It's easy to sympathize, even as I'm working to make sure she's sticking to the homework. Her class load, oy, her teachers this year have apparently decided en masse that they are the ones to let the kids know, hey, this is the real thing, time to dig and find out what working for a living means.

One of her teachers in the long ago told her, "Work smart, not hard". Always a wonderful sentiment, right? Especially for a smart kid. Problem being, that can make that same smart kid careen off into a rut. The one where they decide that they never have to work hard.

I was like that, so's our daughter. Poor kid. She's hit the first indication that there are many, many things in this life where working hard is working smart. And oh buddy is this that year for her.

Mine own? Oh yeah I hit that wall. Took a year off to go to junior college and get my head on straight. Wandered around the country doing odd jobs for a while, came back and got a retail job, took a bus load of credits at the junior college that transferred back to the big school nicely, when I was back into the fold.

It sounds easy now. Maybe if I'm lucky my own experience can help my daughter's path be a little smoother. Not a lot, that's never how it works, just a little.

And then when she hits the really rough patches, maybe she'll be ready for them. One hopes.

Ok, next post up is a story, one I've finished first thing this morning.

I thought about where it might be best to send it. Then I turned it around in my head and asked who I wanted to have read it. And here I am posting it.

A little different process. The stories and poems I've posted here before were written step by step and published in the heat of the moment. This one is similar, except that rather than doing it piecewise, I'm putting it up complete in one go.

So, here's a little melancholy recall, one I hope is a Fall intro suitable for an evening fire and a cup of tea ahead of the first good cold front...

I wonder how those moments in any story come. Writers, you know the ones. The simple statement maybe, the paragraphs.

And then the tears. Or the wicked smile, chuckle. The grimace, those too, maybe it was a little too on the nose?

The little moment, the one that makes you wonder if you're writing the rest of the story to get to this place. Not ever that the rest of the story is about this place, or that this moment is the Theme, no. These aren't facades and set dressing we're talking about here.

Ninety percent of the time these moments maybe don't actually have anything to do with the rest of the story at all. Throwaway comments a reader (including the writer, always) might never even notice.

But for me at least there's always still that moment. The one that sticks out and trips me up, puts a smile on my face or sends me somewhere else.

And then I think, how many of those moments do I build, accidentally on purpose, for others?

And then I go back to the well. Because I know that other writers can yank me that way, so maybe I owe it to a reader or two, somewhere down the line, to pass them a little of that magic.

Ok, every long term coder has their own personal language, when they're at their computer.

libraries of code, it's how we talk to the computer. Bits and pieces of many (many, many...) different languages we've picked up over the years. Tools to do this and that. And a million different other tools that are a variation on a theme because it's awful easy to forget that you've already written it, or why that particular iteration doesn't work on this particular problem...

That said, when you start leaving yourself comments in StephenKing-DarkTower language (thankee sai) it's either been a really long day... or maybe I need to think some, ponder a bit, on Blaine the Mono and how he got built...

Yeah, that's better now. And I know that's an awfully personal note to leave the blog on.

Fortunately, I've had story on my mind. I had two options with my keyboard time, and fiction won out.

Certainly, for my personal peace of mind, I'm happy with that balance.

Now I just need to figure out what my schedule looks like over the next few weeks. I'm likely to be disrupted mightily, mid-October and the first part of November, just because of life events on the calendar. Weekends will be hit or miss, and weeknights too. I concentrate on the fiction progress, so I'm likely to be really hit or miss on any publishing activities over the next couple months.

No, let me re-phrase that. Getting to the publishing part of the work is necessary. Realistic assessment suggests that I'll be unlikely to schedule anything realistically, so stick to publishing activities that don't require hard time lines and can be done in nice small steps, as discrete elements.

Ok, I can handle that. Considering I've got a pile of stories that need to be put up, sent out, and everything between, I'm gonna have to...

Apparently, I'm halfway to my destiny as an old fart, and now I get lessons in how getting old ain't for the faint of heart.

Just when I can breathe safe again, the ribs healed up nice, sneezes don't terrify me any more and I can blow my nose safely again.... and I bruise my tailbone somehow.

It's been a pretty miserable couple days. And yes, I spend all day at the keyboard, fiction or the day gig. So I'm both sore as hell and tearing my hair out ready to get back to the work.

And we've got a marching performance that happens to have a football team warming up the crowd for us on Saturday. This ought to be a fun weekend...

For my friends on the East Coast of the U.S., good luck over the next week or so, Florence is about to make a mess of your lives for a while.

Similar, though milder on the front end, looks to be headed in on the Gulf Coast, though it's a lot more uncertain at the moment.

A good time to work on your weather eye, it's the height of hurricane season and it looks like an awful lot of energy's suddenly come together in interesting ways, for weather guru values of "interesting". Stay safe out there.

I'd peer out through the glass and take a good look around, except for the part where the lightning dances through the parking lot.

Ok, maybe not the parking lot. Maybe it's only a few miles off. Lingering. Shining. Just enough. Wanna come out and play?

Please. I cut my teeth on walking across miles of parking lots, with great metal spikes of lights sticking up and embracing the electrons.

I am not so readily tempted to come out into the field of fire...

Not today, anyhow. Perhaps next time, there may yet be a day of frustration that leads me astray.

"Maybe it was time for Gina to forget"

Last line of the story just finished. And not at all what I was expecting when I started at the top.

Not big twists. I throw up the lines, watch them scroll by under my fingers, and go through certain expectations. Weigh this, listen to that. Feel the course of the story and where it might go.

Push and pull and try this, did that work? Ok, work or not, what just happened?

Oh. That's what happened. And, if so, then what? Why, ok a little but not too much, why's a big question with breadcrumbs for the unwary, let's just focus on the what for now...

It's a hell of a way to run a railroad. But it's fun as all get out. Reading/writing a story simultaneously. Always the question of what has me caught up here?

The current story is going well. I thought yesterday that I was going to need to come back and change something significant about the main character.

Then, last night, I realized he was telling me I was missing details about what he was involved in. How he'd come to it.

What he was chasing.

Now I get to find out just why. And what he's going to do to the person who's stolen it from its current home.

Not rightful home. No, that's long gone, dust. He'll settle for current.

What's he ready to do to make sure it gets back to where it needs to go?

The Labor Day weekend got away from me, as far as keyboard time. We've got a busy time going on, getting the kids ready for the competition part of marching season, and the gang running things for the parents' side wanted to take advantage of the time off.

Problem being, the weather decided not to cooperate. Well, ok, let me say instead that the weather grudgingly allowed us just enough time between the rains to get a few things done, not enough to ever really finish anything.

Such is life, sometimes, now that we've entered the fall rains hereabouts.

huh.

It's funny what some story characters will do to get a room comped...

So she didn't get on the boat. Ok then, but what's she doing instead? Jumping into a case when she should have been digging her toes into the sand and trying to begin the forgetting, the letting go...

And now one of my characters wants to get on a boat?

Another day another day. Well, except for the part where the new story got underway. Those are good days, any day with writing in it is a good day. It's the rest of the things around it that, while always a little different, also have their chance to feel like a grind. The change in the day gig proceeds apace, assuming you allow me to define pace generously.

It goes well, just in a manner best described as piecewise continuous. Meaning, little steps. Which ain't half bad. I've had worse gigs, that's for sure. In this case, I'm hip deep in new systems new schedules new problems, the vast majority minor. Oh, and the travel, but for now I just have the notion that I'm swimming in place because there's a bit of overhead in learning the ropes.

This year, marching season has arrived a bit more comfortably. We're not carrying around any feelings of getting run over by a truck. Though that'll probably change when we load everyone up for the first game, which just happens to be an away gig. On a Friday. At rush hour. Oh, frabjous joy.

Could be worse, there's at least one stadium we have had occasion to visit where there's always a question of whether bits and pieces associated with the show will make it into the place, or whether we all get to stop and take everything apart. The entry was, shall we say, not designed to be accomodating for anyone or thing much taller than a hobbit. That's an adventure, hearing the game announcer behind you as everyone starts to wonder whether we're going to get the kids on the field for halftime or not...

It's that time of the year again, Marching Season!

The parents out there are nodding their heads; everyone else is wondering what on earth is going on. Basically, our daughter is in marching band, and pretty much all of our weekend energy and time is going to be committed to that endeavor for the next few months.

If you've ever been a busy teenager, or are or have been parent to a busy teenager, you've had the same sort of schedule.

Yesterday snuck up on me, it was outside work on some of the equipment the kids need for their roadshow. So I've chalked this weekend up to time served, I'm between stories anyway so I'm not going to beat myself up over it.

I am going to spend a little time thinking about where the next few months will go, though. There's a few publishing things, as well as words per day, that I need to remind myself of.

And To A Thief, my current story, is finished up today, at about 5500 words. It ended up being almost a straight mystery; there are some elements of it that would qualify as near-term scifi if I want to go that way, high-tech thriller if I got the other way. So when I get there I may have to consider a few things on the destinations, but otherwise I'm happy to finish.

No clue what tomorrow holds, if any, storywise. I'll know soon enough, no need to worry about it now.

The world puts planners to shame sometimes. Anywhere I fly, mostly I shut the window blind and fall asleep, unless I just can't get there. And except for landing and taking off. There're so many interesting things going on, so many things to look at.

Jackrabbits and roadrunners, chasing away through the scrub out in the badlands. Circular fields of green surrounded by brown, that's where the irrigation arms swing free and define what farming means. Octagonal fields, weird little things when I get a close look, I suspect there's a gps and programmable harvesters involved there.

The oil patch is so obvious as to need no explanation, pad after pad scattered beneath the wings, horseheads pumping pumping or just standing still. Tanks, ponds for the brine, cows probably wondering what the hell these iron beasts are doing, they never even move.

Closer in to the world, subdivision after subdivision, some ordered and neat little postage stamp worlds, most weird little curves and patches, the developers have to get in where they fit in.

Fields and lots and things doing who knows what. Ponds that are more than obviously some chemical ponds, but what? Carved out places hidden away from the world, well hidden but for the rail lines maybe.

Always intersting questions, trying to spot new ones and go "What's that for? Who lives/works there, and what do they do? What stories do they have down there in such an interesting place?"

Like yesterday. A fresh-harvested field of something, at this time of year, sticks out like a sore thumb. Especially when it looks like some farmer got stoned, lit up the harvester, and went for a joyride... that one leaves me all kinds of questions. I've been there, August haying season is brutal. We'd keep gallon jugs of ice in the freezer, and one of the jobs of whoever wasn't on the tractor (gather round children and hear a story of the beyond, when air-conditioning on a tractor was but a dream...) was to bring those ice jugs up to the driver every hour or so, because sitting behind a diesel engine in the middle of August down here is about as close to the mouth of Hell as humans get.

End of the day, when the sun was no longer deadly and the time for getting off the red beast was close, the last pass or three, instead of ice it was an ice cold beer or three.

No more than that, because hay is a deadly serious business, for those who need it. First time you scatter a few dry rows to the winds because you had a few too many, and we'll find you some other job to get done, one that doesn't need a little more sober hand at the wheel.

And I tell you reader, even at our worst, whether heat-struck or drunker than Cooter Brown with a pocketfull of gold dust, I never quite managed what this farmer whose field I flew over yesterday did. His/her field was positively psychedelic in execution. Like the Fool resurrected. And beautiful. These were purpose cut curves, gentle swirls and curves never quite forming or overlapping, always suggesting a purpose unseen. I salute you, random farmer, for putting a smile on my face. I just hope it was on purpose and that you had a ball doing it, because it suggested someone having fun, but not interested in the silly business of crop circles. Someone out there to bring in the harvest, just in a way that let the inner kindergardner break out and reign oe'r the fifty acres for a while...

I've reached a point with storytelling that's sort of like the best part of being a jazz improvisor. It's not just listening/hearing the last line, and saying "hey, where do I go now?"

That's the first part, the instinctual madness beneath that drives everything else. Trusting the words, loving the words the phrases and the way they knit together.

The second part is where I say, usually when I sit down to yesterday's work, and go "Hey, I'm not sure that's what I wanted to happen."

I've seen DWSmith say that he'd happily toss a few thousand words, whatever, and go back and start writing from the cut point. The urge is the same, the recognition of the way the mind sort of wandered off into space and the fingers followed along after.

I'm only occasionally up to that. I can see the path not taken; I'm enjoying saying to myself, "Ok, fine, the thing twisted. What are you going to do about it?" In other words, ok now it's a challenge. How do I take where the story went, regardless of what I might have thought about it, and take off from there. A writer's prompt, in other words, writ large and in charge. Here's the current, boyo, jump in and swim.

That's the other part of jazz, not just what's you've played that's led you here, but what the band is playing, the currents, the chords hidden away and driving you to... Where? The choice is always there, can you wrest it free and play along? It's always the conversation.

Random observation in an airport. Depending on timing, there's always a few people hanging around the Starbucks in any given airport terminal. The number of good places to eat has really jumped up, though. It's a good bet that there'll be something to find on the crawl to the next gate. But even with a good selection, there's always one or more other places with a line, no matter the time of day.

In the airport I'm hanging in today, it's the Whataburger. Every time I've passed them recently, they're the ones with a good line. It's different in other parts of the country, local variations in taste and so on. In the northeast, the deli counters are a good bet.

I don't know yet whether that falls into the category of "follow the locals". It's an airport, we're all just trying to cadge a last snack or whatever before getting on the next ride, so the rules are subtly different. Still, it is a good way to sort of gauge the way the river runs in any give part of the world.

a disappearing weekend, look how it flies away like a raven with a lizard. I.e., how to lose time and get away with doing a whole hell of a lot of nothing.

Not really nothing. We did this, and that, and the other thing. In bits and drabs. It's the last free time the daughter unit has before the Trump of Doom, aka the first day of the fall semester. So her Monday is spoken for, and I've a bit of traveling for the day gig tomorrow. So our brains weigh heavy on us in these parts, there is fate awaiting and the heart says Nay!

Or is that Nee? I occasionally get these things mixed up, i confess. Does anyone need a shrubbery? Asking for a friend...

Started another story today. Caught a Leon Russell tune on the way home yesterday, caught a line in my head, then sat down this afternoon, typed it in, and now I find myself returning to a world I've brushed against a couple times before.

It's a tomorrow world, a might-be place and time. And I didn't expect at all that I'd be setting foot there on this story. It's called To A Thief. I can't wait to see what it has to tell me.

And Lady Soul departs us. Goodbye, Aretha, and know that your music touched me, will do so always, in more ways than I can ever say.

And Soldiering On, my latest story, is complete at about 5800 words. As all of them are, I had a ball writing it.

This twisty little thing, though. I'm not sure yet what my publication schedule will look like over the next few months, so I can't say when/where it'll end up in the wider world, but I'm looking forward to when you get the opportunity to read it.

It's science fiction, darker, not quite a horror tale; yet it is a horror tale. Very much so, if you're of a mind that inclines in the right direction. Quiet.

Whispers in the Dark sort of thing, rather than screams of terror. The kind where I hope, when you get a chance to read it, that you'll think on it, two or three nights later, when you're staring at the ceiling wondering why you're awake inthe wee small hours...

Yesterday I had an interesting accidental writing exercise. I've done something similar before; basically, we had an extra hour to kill between dropping our daughter off for marching band practice, and then the volunteer shift where the parents come in to hand out the bits and pieces of gear necessary to the marching band's season. The way it worked out, we sat in the parking lot listening to them warm up and go through their initial setup.

And I dug out the laptop to get in another few words on the current story. It's a pleasant way to wile away an hour. I didn't have a book handy, I could have called up a few on my phone but digging back into the story sounded more immediate to the needs of the day. So I dove in and gave it a whirl.

It's a lot of fun, especially if you can get the angle of the sun right, compared to the screen. Though it is still August...

Midway? through the pass of fiction for the day; I'm playing with my schedule, something I'll be dealing with for a while yet. I'm back and forth with settling into the new position, and the schedules are roughed in so far, unfinished but broadly set out. Next week's a travel week, as well, so I'll be learning how to work that in.

There's a time in life where you reach the point that listening to That Voice is ill advised. You know That Voice. It's the one that urges for "One more beer" or "One more run down the mountain" or...

In ye olden days, I'd listen to That Voice as a matter of course. Perhaps not to the point of diving off bluffs into muddy dark water, or some of the other particularly ludicrous ideas that would bubble up. But certainly plenty of other ideas that led me to, on the occasion of my thirtieth birthday, complete surprise that I'd made it whole and sane. And, most of all, alive.

Now, I find myself in the curious position of being, if not olde, well able to see it from here.

The occasion of the moment was a momentary lapse of reason on the end of a water ski rope yesterday. The particulars aren't relevant; the result is. That's the part where, on listening to That Voice, the end of it was a face plant Of Epic Proportions.

My pride was happy to take into account the fact that, on probably the best water surface day we'd had in lo' these many years, I'd gone for it.

My ribs, on the other hand, have a different opinion on the matter. And they're happy to complain about it. No cracks, no breaks, likely no separation, but a for damned sure bone bruise, at the least. I'm fine once I've been up for a while and moving. Except for the occasional sneeze or cough.

(Those Who Know are wincing in sympathy at the moment)

The real painful part of the experience is that the dogs, and one of the cats, insist on sleeping in, around, or on top of me. And in order to accomodate them, plus my lovely bride, I am required to lay on the side with the sore ribs.

Sleeping, that's ok. It's the movement part, when I try and shift, or when I get up from the bed. And then spend an hour or two trying to remember not to move that way, or stretch that way, or for God's sake don't try and do that!

Such is life. I'm just glad, the same way I know when I've broken my nose yet again, that I've enough basic experience with these minor wounds to know when I need to go for x-rays or not. At the moment, I'm ok on that end. I just get to spend the next couple weeks running my fingers over the sore spot, and complaining (ok, cringing) every time I cough. Oy. 1

The weather's unsure of itself. A boundary layer has formed, a three way argument between weather systems, and the space between disturbed, moody. Lightning over the water, clouds on the horizon, and it has, as of yet, not built up the energy to storm down around me. The center of tonight's festivities lies just a bit too far away for us to get any of it.

That's bound to change, though. Tomorrow, the energy and the layers will conspire. Mayhem will spread farther, away and aside and bring in the moisture and the winds and, hopefully, some rain. Every drop a blessing, as my sad little dogwood, this year's planting project, can attest. It's more than a bit tired of all the current heat.

I began a new story today, the start of it was a delightful dive into something new. Which is the best part, except for all the other parts of writing.

Another day where I'm hip deep in new computer setups. Now, I'll be the first to say, setting up computers these days is a hell of a lot better than it used to be. So many many things just work. Rather than spend days getting all your drivers (and drivers and drivers...) set out, now you spend days and days and days remembering what software settings/passwords/....

And still it's so much better. Finding passwords, software you didn't remember using, and so on, is more like what happens when you move offices. Though there's still the occasional nasty little surprise waiting. I've yet to dig into the "compile-> Oh, crap, I forgot about that library" cycle. That's tomorrow!

It's hell when I can't really talk about how my day's going.

I'm still caught up in the brain jarring that occured with the day gig switches over the past few weeks. It's enough of a difference that it's thrown me off on my reading, my energy levels, and even what I can think up to write down here.

The fiction writing, that shifted just fine. There's a let go and follow the flow thing there, entertainment and the pure joy of the chase. But then I sit down here, and I type half a dozen false starts. It's a lot easier, at the moment, when I'm actually in the middle of a story.

Then, the blog entry feels more like a natural extension of what I'm doing on the fiction side.

Cold press, though, and I have to make the effort to get going. Today was a break from the fiction writing, tomorrow I'll be diving into whatever the next story is, and then we'll see where things go from there.

And First Glimpse is finished at about 17000 words. I was wondering for the past five thousand or so of those words what the thing's structure was shaping up to be. There were hints here and there that the story wanted to be longer.

Then the ending snuck up on me this morning.

Right before I realized that what it means is there's probably another novella waiting to follow it up. Or, that the story deliberately wants to leave me hanging, that's always a fun thing, like your undermind has reached out and thumped you on the back of the head.

Then again, now that I dig into it, A Wolf in Taos Valley ended up in that novella range, as well, and also had the same kind of propulsive ending.

I'm starting to think that my subconscious has a method behind these types of stories. Hmm....

With a few variations, this is the first week where I'll get an idea of what my schedule will play like under my new regime. Go into the office parts of the week, do my thing for the day, come back to the house. Then the other parts of the week devoted to work from home or travel, depending.

The time at home is my modeling time, my quiet space that's meant to allow me to not be in the midst of the day to day stuff that goes on in the office. Small protections, but a big part of my job in the current day gig setup is to look out and forward and consider what might happen. Plan ahead, pull streams of data together and map out the space between.

And then on my travel weeks, it's the time to recover and put what I learned in traveling into data form.

As you might also notice, yes there's space for fiction writing there. It's like things were for me in my previous schedule, but a bit less regimented. That schedule was much more one resembling 8 to 5, though the daily commute ate up a larger part of my time. The commute when I'm in the office will be about the same, with more overall flexibility.

The long and the short of it is that I feel comfortable committing to my word goals for the rest of the year. Assuming nothing else comes up, but that applies to any schedule.

It's a Saturday afternoon with a bit of rain chasing down outside. The dogs have wandered off to nap with my sleeping wife, and here I am putting in a thousand or so words in on a story.

I've been at about two thousand per day over the past week, this was supposed to be a rest day, but the "put in even a few, every day" when you're in the middle of the story thing kicked in, and here I am.

That two thousand per day has been my horizon goal this year. Roughly, I knew there'd be some ups and downs given my day gig stuff. I didn't know at the start of the year that things would work out there quite the way they did, but I knew that one way or another there'd be a fundamental shift in how I did things on that front.

But I also knew, from the fiction side of things, what I wanted, in terms of the daily sitdown. From last year, which was sort of a return to a thousand words per day, in a way that didn't put my wrists into meltdown mode, I knew that if I tried to just jump up and go for it, I'd have to give up on it after a month or so. That's the curse of the day gig, in practical terms there are only so many hours of keyboard time available.

I'll have to rest and recover, monitor myself a bit, over the next few months, pushing my word count up to this next level. But I'm about on the schedule of where I thought I'd be, the way the words catch me up and the way the stories demand more of me. I can't wait to find out what stories are out there waiting for me over the next few months.

There's a million stories... on the dirty streets, right? If you remember your noir.

I hear the "Just So" stories a lot. The explanation after the fact. That's the part where we are rationalizing, not rational. Meaning, we can explain what happened, but planning it ahead of time, now there's the rub.

Engineers know the feeling. Difference between operational, day to day engineering, and planning for what may come, or doing new things.

Writers have the just write part of our job, the one where it's sit down and do. I lump in all the various methods, whether you try and plot in advance, or dive in every day and follow your nose. Either way, there's the magic of the moment, of the just shut and write portion of your day.

Doing something in cold-blooded fashion requires a different... what does it require then? Depends on what it is you're tackling.

Engineers don't tella pipefitters or mechanics how to do their bit, though. They design, they map out, they estimate. But they don't detail schedule (depends on the situation, that's typically where the contractors get involved) and order and do the nuts and bolts part of getting the thing built.

Meaning? The cold blooded necessity of the business side of things has a different place and time than the immediate hot rush of writing. And there's likely to be less of that "Do A, then B, then C and D and" linear chaining than you might think. Sitting down to draw out a process, the design part?

Isn't cold-blooded either. That's the creation part. In fact, even the schedulers and the orderers and the other organization people have to fall in love with their job, have to get (if not the blood pounding, then) the little bit of head rush that accompanies the drawing forth, the calling, the summoning of something new into this world.

The trick then is to keep the steps finite, countable. Write-format-publish, and then the next level up, the promo and the... the other levels of the ladder. Here's where not only do we get to create ourselves, our careers. Here's where, just like the lust that drives paragraph and quick quip and the bleeding comma and the run-on sentence and the poetry of the thing, here's where we get to take our time and find the passion of the publish side of the thing. One bit at a time, one night at a time.

What does it for you? What keeps you coming back, to the blank page, to the blank cover, to the empty forms on the upload pages... what makes it so that this is fun? What you do when there's nothing else to do? Or in preference to anything else that might come along?

I'm showing both my age and my sense of humor. Every time I hear the name of the newest little royal across the pond, little Louis, my mind throws up the "Death... To King Louis" bit from Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part One.

Not really fair to the little prince, let's face it, if he's ever king something has gone tragically wrong. But the bit's too good, and I'm far too much of an anti-royalist to let the joke go by.

But at least I keep it to myself, I'm not a barbarian.

Well, except for the part where I just shared it with you, dear reader. And if you're of a mind such that your face grinned as soon as I told you, well. Welcome to the club!

Mentioning the day gig seems astonishingly repetitive. Of course, that's the daily routine for the vast majority of us, isn't it? That day to day stuff, piled up like it is, is almost always interesting in the moment. Even if all it does is pay the bills, it's always gotta be enough to get us through the day.

One way or another.

It's just that reading about it can be awful boring. I'm not in a position where I can reliably report what I do, either. If I'd gone the route of full-bore consultant, independent and at large in the world, maybe. But even then, I'd have owed my clients the benefits of silence in detail. That goes along with the prices, that confidentiality. And the best way to protect professionalism is never mention nothin'.

Same thing applies now I've walked the other path (the left hand path?) of working for someone else full time. Take their nickel, respect their boundaries. And this setup is golden, compared to what some confreres in the world have to say. My business away from the job, with the implication that I need to be professional. Which, see above comment about just keeping my mouth shut.

Not that I would tell any stories if I had any. It's technical work, in an interesting sub-field, and it tame. Necessary but tame. It's background.

In other words, there's no point in my trying to make it interesting enough, and obscure enough, to write up here. I don't have the interesting sorts of days that some other writers might; that's why I write fiction, it fills the imagination.

Careful. I find myself wondering if I'm working up to a story somewhere. Maybe when the current one's done.

The rain's been moving in on us since yesterday. This might be two years in a row that we've gotten a cold front that actually passes over us in late July, early August, rather than just stalling out on top of us when it hits the Gulf air. That's a novelty, let me tell you.

I'm not sure but I'd rather have the rain. That's the benefit, when they stall out like that, depending on the boundary layer, we get daily thunderstorms out of it, and every drop a blessing. We're getting that effect now, but if the weather crews are correct, we're getting the short version of the story as the front passes to the south. It's a signal that the high pressure zone helping turn California's fire season into a mass of trouble has moved off west, and given the jet stream more room to maneuver, earlier in the year, than it's been used to for a few months.

Ok, the day gig stuff has officially moved into its next phase; basically, I've taken a new position, one with a different set of responsibilities than my previous one, including the extra travel. Different offices, a tear-down and rebuild of benefits and all that other things.

Essentially a new job, though it's more complicated than that.

None of this matters much for the fiction I work on here. Not in the long run. It's just the ups and downs of the immediate. Schedule's fluctuating as I get through the transition, but by next week the rhythms of daily life will have reasserted themselves.

I figure by the end of the month, I'll have forgotten the transition completely. At least, that's what I look at now and feel the most likely thing to be.

Of course, that's also the point where marching band season kicks into full gear, and I'm off to help my daughter's band get through it...

Sunday, carnitas simmering away on the stove, wondering if I was going to get any fiction in today, and then the part of my brain kicks in, the one that says "you've got a few minutes with nothing to do, there aren't many better ways to spend your time than a couple hundred new words..."

and there, look at my thousand, but now I've got dinner to finish up. Good weekend all round, to all of you reading this.

It's a Friday, ain't it? And I've finished my time with my story for today, I've some free time ahead of me before the return to the daily gig grind, all in all a good day.

Not grind, though it'll have its moments. I'm going through some changes in the day gig; the big change is big enough to turn what had been a grind into a new challenge. I'll be traveling more for that, but it's really only a dozen or so times a year, roughly, so even that isn't much of a travel schedule. I'm looking forward to the challenge of the new position.

Not least because those travel periods, combined with the way I'll working, will still give me my story writing time. The way I figure it, if Dean Smith and Kris Rusch can run a retail store and publishing company (i.e., they've got day gigs) and still put out good copy every day, then I can handle my day gig, as well.

And keep working on my words per day. I've got my goal there, for increasing the number by the end of the year. The new schedule should make it accessible, once I get through the transition period. Another benefit of the change, I'll still be in front of the computer every day, but the number of reports I'll need to write should drop.

So, words of nonfiction go down, words of fiction go up. That's the hope and the goal, doable if I do my part, and this is in addition to the personal time and increase in words. And the day hours are still for something I love doing.

I'm pretty excited about the way this opens up new vistas for me, in both sides of my life, here in the twilight world of storyland and the daytime world of the day gig.

That was yesterday's post, sent up today because I came home and fell into bed. Nothing major except timing, got off the plane after some relatively tame travel issues, an extra day in travel I didn't expect, had to run off and do some day gig stuff I didn't expect, and that took more time, and then I got home and visited with family and dogs and cats and... put my head down and went to sleep. And it was a good sleep, the kind of dog tired snore through the night sleep a weary mind and body need after time in strange surroundings.

The machinery stuttered, and here I am putting up today's and yesterday's in the same time.

Finished up another round of day gig stuff today, just finished on today's round of fiction writing, and here I am looking for what the rest of the day's events might hold. Quiet time, I think. I'm actually in the middle of a couple weeks vacation from the day gig stuff. In one sense, the travel and the past couple days intruded, but otherwise we've been able to rest and relax and recuperate.

And write. My fine time each day. This story, First Time (actually it's untitled, the file has a name but the story itself may yet await a realization to go along with it? Who knows, it's asking me for a different set of priorities; it's asking me to listen.) is humming along. I'm discovering a new thing aborning. I'm having a blast.

Thought I wasn't going to be writing on the plane trip home. The seat width turns me into a hunt and peck typist, and that's annoying enough that I thought I wouldn't be up to it. And of course there's the weather tossing us around now.

Nope, I got my words in, and this story is doing something. A very pleasant surprise. Now to close this down and finish the roller coaster ride.

Ok, writers, here's an excuse for writing: if you're stuck in a hotel room because your flight home got cancelled, then as a writer you're never short of stuff to do.

It was the same thing for me on the plane getting here last night. Most times, I'm asleep on the plane, but I figured I might as well start a new story. Experiment a little, since for day gig purposes I'm going to be a road dog more often than I've been accustomed to. If it works, I can at least count on a few other words a day that would have otherwise been lost to the disruption.

And now that I'm here in my room, rather than just killing time flipping channels, or not giving the current novel I'm in the middle of reading the chance it deserves because I'm too brain dead to read at the moment, hey let's drop into the story.

A thousand words later, I'm looking at the result going, you know what? That's a mighty fine way to spend an hour, writing. Fun, and it beats the alternatives six ways to Sunday.

Things I need to remember: yes, it really is fun, writing. It's relaxing, it's a quiet place to be while I watch and listen and think about the wild things unfolding in front of me. And there's nothing else like it in this old world.

So that's the sitch in this here writer's life.

And A Dagger's Width is done. Technically, it came out at novelette length, by the Hugo category definitions. A little over 9000 words at the moment. It turned out that there were things I needed to learn in the Open Wounds series.

A bit about how Megan found her own path through the world, after she and Tony D'ags had their first pass at working together. How the Brotherhood actually deals with renegades wizards; practically, as it turns out, at least at this particular time in history, not dogmatically.

More immediately, Megan discovered that there are monsters in this world. And that the self-created ones, the monsters that come crawling out of our own desires, consume us piecewise, tearing us apart to get to the outside world.

So apparently today's Friday is a Saturday for me. And I complain not even a little bit.

The short story here is that I've taken a week's official vacation, though I've been working on the day gig stuff; in either case, it's a vacation from home. I took a couple days off the calendar for strict day gig stuff, the others have been some time for my fiction writing of the day, some other stuff here and there, and then off for trips around town for vacation type stuff.

Today was load everyone up, including the dogs, and head off to the beach. Or at least this morning. Afternoon at the beach at this time of the year are no picnic, especially not with the dogs.

So we got everyone back here, cleaned up a little, and then crashed out for a nap. We've got some other running around to do this evening, DCI's in town for their annual visit, and we'll be heading over that way in a while.

And I'll not get any fiction words in there. That's ok, it's sort of baked into the schedule this week. And tomorrow I'll be back to it; today I'll take the break.

I forgot to mention this yesterday. One of the things I've taken from Dean Smith's writing is the idea of going back through each day's work, cycling, getting up to speed while making the little typo fixes. At the moment, it's basically a way to get the story inside my head each day, while cleaning the copy and making sure I didn't drop anything that I might want to use later.

The story I'm working on, I'd walked away after a couple days' work, thinking "ah, now I see what the ending should be", and then yesterday cycling up, working up to that last thousand, maybe two thousand words at most...

I realized that that wasn't in the cards.

Not that it turned into a novel. Perhaps double the original length? I hesitate still to guess what the total is going to be; it's already twisted on me once, there's no need to call the muse's attention too closely. We'll let it ride then, and see where it goes.

The Tour de France is a good thing to have on in the background; sort of the same thing with the World Cup, or The (British) Open tomorrow. Baseball, hockey, basketball, sports generally have a soothing background noise that makes for a nice environment to write in (or whatever I'm working on). Music does it for me, as well, but I'm on a bit of a different schedule at the moment, so I'm camping on the living room couch while I get my daily computer work done.

And they've hit the Alps over the past couple days at the Tour. The ultimate struggle. I'm sure there's a metaphor there, for any writers in the need of it. No matter how much work you do on any given day, there's another climb waiting for you tomorrow. Even rest days, you need to get out and put your miles in...

Having the pleasant noise in the background reminds me of having the transistor radio on while working in the garage. You know, when grandpa or whoever was tinkering around in the garage, building, sharpening, cleaning up, with the game on in the background to keep them company. All this way we've come, and that's sort of what phones have turned into, haven't they?

My daughter walks around all the time with headphones on, and give her just a few seconds to herself and she'll be reading on the phone as well. And there's nothing it reminds me of so much as the white cord hanging down from one ear with the game on...

It's the dog days of summer here, and that's a true statement. We're creeping up on the 'unnert mark; whether we make it there or not today is probably irrelevant, given the forecast for the rest of the week. Everything to this point has been the warmup, time for the main event.

One of the odd parts of the way the sunlight passes over, I think. Once you know about the summer solstice, it's natural, to me at least, to wonder how it can keep getting hotter. The days have been getting shorter, after all. Or, at least, they're supposed to. Yes, I understand the hangover effect that drives it, but that's an intellectual understanding, I'm afraid.

When contemplating the high heat, high humidity, all hot weather ahead o'er the next few weeks, you'll forgive me if I occasionally hope for a little magic; well, ok, maybe a little rain would do.

But if there's anything more maddening than the heat, it's the maddness of asking for rain. Down here where, if the Gulf relents for a second, we go from zero to more than we can handle in about five minutes.

In other words, it's more time to just shut up and soldier on. And make sure the dogs have plenty of water and don't spend more time outside at this time of the day than they really need to.

We're back from the trip, and perhaps getting ready to head out for the day. Maybe a museum trip, if I remember correctly. I'm deliberately ignoring the calendar at the moment, and thoughts of "must do's". That'll come again in a week or two, for now I'm happy to continue my bit of summer off.

Still writing of course. That's not must do, no schedule hanging over me, that's just the quiet time where I catch up to myself line by line, and discover what I'm thinking about underneath the noise.

It's another trip weekend for us. This time off to my dad's place for a weekend visit and torturing my daughter (her grandmother and aunts are taking her out for pictures; for our daughter at least, there are perhaps a few other ways to spend time with her family that could be described as more horrific. But if so, I can't really think of them at the mo'.).

Got a few words into the next story done this morning, maybe a few more this afternoon all things depending, who knows. But either way, a little push forward and that's a good thing.

And next week, a few publishing tasks; I've a paperback version of The Boyar's Curse to finish, and a couple stories more queued up and waiting to enter the cycle. Plus the ones I need to submit to various markets. Busy times ahead for me, and good ones. I had my own echo of DWS's comments about violating Rule 4, I've a trunkful of stories that need to be published or sent for submission, they're doing no one any good just sitting there on my hard drive.

huh. It's one of those months where the Friday 13th snuck up on us. Me. Ok, so I don't pay attention to this kind of thing and it's always fun when the calendary plays serendipity.

One of the little joys in the way back when was how the movie studio/producers for the Friday the 13th movie series would target these dates for their latest release. Of course the gag's more than run its course; one wonders how long it'll be before they drag it all back out again for a run at the new generations.

Just another day of fiction, not as many words as I'd like in an ideal world, not so few that I feel like I messed up. So, not too shabby then.

Day gig stuff, again, running here and there and yon and then sitting in on a meeting. The little things, I guess, and just another day, really.

After watching Croatia defeat England to move on to the Finals at the World Cup. Even with the extra time, it never really seemed like England was playing up to the level Croatia played at. And in the extra time, they really looked like they were trying for the tie and move on to penalty kicks, where Croatia were pressing all the way to the end.

I had to throttle back a little today on fiction writing, but I did get at least some way more into the current story. I had quite a bit of nonfiction writing for the day gig, so it was one of those days where self-defense of my wrists comes into play.

The day gig's in a bit of flux at the moment. I suspect that, though my keyboard time will remain roughly the same, the number of full-length reports I need to put out over a given month will drop a bit. I'm not certain of it yet, given the juggling that'll go on over the next couple weeks, but if it works out that way I should have a window where these sorts of short days will be less of an issue.

Then again, I don't want to promise myself anything like that without the dust having settled. All in all, a wait and see if it rolls to my favor the way I hope, and otherwise just keep up the pace as I've got it set at the moment.

I was all set to pontificate today. Say something about how yesterday I needed to choose between that which was important and that which I could do something about.

Truth is, I just forgot to blog. It's likely a hazard of my current writing schedule, which is sandwiched in between other things. I got my fiction words in, and then wandered off to do something else and never made it back to the computer.

The working life, on occasion. Got my fiction words in today, and then reminded myself to sit back down at the computer and write this instead of finding something else to dive into.

I'm about 2k words into another Open Wounds story at the moment. It was supposed to be a short story, but has all the shapings of working out a bit longer than that. I'll just dive into it and see where it goes, I suspect that I'm going to learn a few things I didn't know before this one came along. About Megan, and how she grew up away from Tony D'ags and crew, and about how the Brotherhood played a part in that.

This weekend was the first water-ski trip of the year... So, obviously, my plans went out the window for any weekend work.

And it was a blast. The storms were threatening, so it wasn't quite an all day, all weekend kind of thing. Out early yesterday, shore lunch and let's haul ass to get the boat back on the trailer ahead of the lightning headed our way.

But it was good to get out there. That's for sure.

I just finished the current story, it's called Degrees of Shade. It's the one I started last weekend on the trip.

It's a lesson to myself on how things can change when the story gets rolling. First few hundred words, and I just knew that the main character was going to bite it. It was all right there, the setup and the foreshadowing and all that.

As it turned out... well, let's just say he was a little more resourceful than I'd expected.

The people who tried to affect that death?

They're the ones who really underestimated him. And they'll learn how. He'll make sure of it.

(names aren't much relevant in his business, which is another thing he taught me along the way; another thing I learned is that I'm going to be wondering what he's up to down the road. He ain't nice, but he is very interesting and fun to write about/get to know)

I like today (4th of July) to celebrate the wild and ridiculous, half-baked ideas. And the dedication to realize them. So what if it's the work of years, decades, centuries? It's all gotta start somewhere.

And if "Those Who Know", or you yourself, think you're no perfect vessel, no Philosopher King?

So much the better. Do it anyway. There are no perfect humans this side of the Veil. Far better to hold the light and be burned than to sit in the back seat kvetching and getting nothing done.

(line from a story being told:)

If his mistake had been drinking on the job, hers had been to think the drug would do most of the work. Complacency'd set in; time to hang it up. Good thing he only had one more job to do.

And one more personal task. But that could wait. She wasn't going anywhere.

Back at home and into the grind. The workaday world relieved by the current story, which took a turn or two I didn't expect.

Basically, bright-lit noir, but not of the type that I expected. I sat down with my couple hundred words here, couple hundred there that I could get while away visiting with my grandmother, and then today I sat down here to dig into the next chunk of the story.

It stayed sun-bright and noir grim, but not the desert southwest sun pouring over your head like the weight of creation that I'd found myself in in the opening.

Silly bugger decided to treat me to a different view. Funny how that happens.

And fun. I can't wait to find out just how the tables are going to turn again.

last day of our trip weekend, and we'll be packing up. As soon as we get through my grandmother's breakfast.

I made the mistake of jumping on her bathroom scale. Ugh. Not that any of that has to do with this weekend trip. My lovely bride bought me a new pair of shorts this week, and that was my first warning that I've been letting my plate get away from me a little too much lately.

Sitting here in my grandmother's house, letting her overfeed us with a ridiculous amount of absolutely delicious food, and it just makes the whole belt-busting thing more acute. I'd already make my mental switch over to the lighter plate settings, so just like getting home will be a relief after a long drive, getting home to a slimmer diet for a while will be a nice switch.

After a pancake or two, of course ;) It's my grandmother's house, I'm no barbarian...

So I did get the intro to a story this morning. Don't know yet where it's going, and I was a bit surprised about the appearance and setting, and of course it feels clumsy after a couple weeks off. But it's fun, looking at it and wondering what puzzle my mind's set for me.

We're on a personal travel day, today, headed up to about as close as you can get to that Ol' Red River without falling over into it. I haven't been up to visit my relatives in that part of the state for, oh... well it's been a lot longer than I like to admit.

Mostly, because my grandfather moved away, down to his/our part of the country, and then my grandmother only moved back a few years ago. So for the longest time, there wasn't any personal reason to go back. Now that she's back kicking around in "South Oklahoma" (couldn't resist), the timing's right for us to take a weekend trip.

Well, except for the part where it'll be a 105 degrees in the shade. Such is life in Hell's foyer.

I'm planning on doing some writing along the way, how much or how little remains to be seen, but after finishing up the last novel a couple weeks ago, this is the start of my next practice cycle. Even if it's just a few hundred words tomorrow morning while everyone else is asleep, a start's a start and I'll take it how I find it.

RIP, Harlan Ellison. And thank you. If Ray Bradbury taught me what language coule be... you taught me what passion could do to take that language and story to whatever end awaited. How to be brave, how to be foolish, how to rage and thrash and no matter where and how and what to take the story where it needed to go.

Harlan's words, stories were just always there. Like Zelazny, Moorcock, that generation of merry fools tackling the walls that others might have already climbed, but now faster and farther.

And in Harlan's case, perhaps with the occasional can of spray paint in hand, just to remind everyone that what we do here can often be taken a little too seriously.

Go thou, man, and find us someplace new to imagine, some other world beyond this one that has yet to know the sound of your voice. 

In one sense, this is horribly dated, but I just found the book: Clive Barker, may I say thank you for Mister B. Gone? I ran into it by complete accident, browsing a bookstore for a couple reads for myself on top of my daughter's pile.

And it was an absolute blast of a read. I smiled from page one all the way to the end, in simple joy at a story well told. I hope it was as much fun for you to write as it was for me to read. Thank you, sir.

For my fellow newbie writers a bornin', when I looked up the publication date for Mister B. Gone (2007), the finding of it made me smile too. It doesn't matter really when a reader stumbles over it (and this was a new bookstore, not used), that a book's out there and waiting for its reader, that's the simplest of magic we're after. The only request we can make to the book gods as we send our stories on their way is that it be there under the reader's hand when they need it.

I went round and round with myself about how I wanted to talk about this, the movie called Bohemian Rhapsody, aka a Freddie Mercury and Queen biopic.

I saw the trailer for it this weekend, it was the first time I remember hearing that the movie had actually been made. I was cautiously optimistic. At first.

Then I made the mistake of reading the wikipedia entry on the movie. And I lost my optimism.

Look: Freddie is protected.

First, because Brian and Roger were never going to allow the suits to turn Freddie into the "Hollywood Biopic" freakshow extravaganza.

Second, because let's face it, first gen Queen fans are all doing what I have, i.e. pretending this doesn't exist.

Meaning: without Brian and Roger, there's no Queen music. Which sort of blows anything else about making a picture about Freddie out of the water. And, Queen fans aren't going to be impressed by an extended music video.

So I get it. This was a thankless task.

But really, Hollywood suits? You tried it anyway? First, attaching Sasha Baron Cohen to this for any reason at all. Then Bryan Singer, right up to the point where he walked off the job with a couple months to go.

Warning signs much? I wonder how many times Brian May had to say "No" before everyone realized he meant it. And that he had the money and power to make it stick no matter the stage of the project.

Ah, well. Just remember, everyone involved with these sorts of projects. There are worse, just waiting for you to entangle yourselves in.

Graham Chapman. John Lennon.

My suggestion would be to wait a couple generations. The Pythons are considerably less forgiving than Brian May. And God help you if you ever cross Yoko and Paul, because no one else will.

Assuming you've learned to watch for the warning signs.

The summer sun is creeping back into our picture, here, and the heat along with it. We were given that most merciful of breaks, a rain wave pushing through for a few days.

But it never lasts long enough. Our grass is cheering the rain, every drop a blessing.

I'm glad the tropical wave wasn't more than rain, and I know the people living down south of us were happy even more than we were to have it come through. Water being always at a premium. I remember the first time someone from the Valley (i.e. South Texas if that's unfamiliar to you) who told me they were praying for a tropical storm to come through. And they weren't kidding. The reservoirs are always low and getting lower.

It took me a while to get used to that. I've lived in Texas essentially my whole life, but my family and my summers as a kid are in Louisiana, where a tropical storm or hurricane is always a threat, a killer waiting to drop in unwanted. Over there, there is always rain.

Here, not so much. It's one of the little differences that tell you so much about how people think different just a few miles away from their neighbors.

I realized this summer one of the ways that difference shows up. In south Louisiana, if I see a twenty, thirty percent chance of rain in the forecast, I know there's a reasonably good chance I'm gonna get wet at least once during the day.

Here, this summer at least, and in South Texas every year, a twenty percent chance of rain is something closer to a laughing curse from the weather gods. Because you know you'll be looking at the sky, watching a few clouds roll over, begging them to drop something.

And knowing they're just going to breeze on by.

And corollary to a trip out of town, as soon as I got back we ran off to see my dad for Father's Day. So, a busy week away from the keyboard.

I am glad I finished Peace Offer, the timing ended up being perfect to have a nice break and rest my wrists etc. Plus clearing the mind a bit for things away from the world being built.

That one's going to be interesting. I'm not sure it's a classic series open, but it is a view on a world that I had not yet visisted. That's another way of saying that the ending surprised me, leaving the story in a good place but with a clear path forward when I'm ready to catch up to the characters again.

I've a few short stories ahead of me in the next couple of weeks. I tripped over a voice or two on the road home, the radio singing in my ears.

There's this John Prine song calling to me for some reason. I don't have a clue what for, but the siren's wail is there and I've learned to trust she'll have something interesting to show me if I follow the whispers.

I had to run away for a couple days for the day gig. Connectivity and time were both at short supply, so I haven't been able to put electrons to their dance for a bit.

I did think about the formatting of that last puzzle; what I wonder about now is whether I wanted it to come out more comparable to the way it appeared in my editor or not. In which case, rather than relying on html, I'd probably be better off posting it as an image.

It's a conundrum. There's a certain element of "hey, it sort of fits in the what if" but at the same time, given the diversity of tablets, computers, phones, etc. that get used to read the web, if I want something like that to work the same way for everyone, I need to try a different formatting route.

A bit about the What If? behind yesterday's bit:

What would natural-language communication (if AI is thought of as a natural language compiler, for example) look like between Earth and a far-flung probe? (here: non-linear superposition )

and

What would an un-looked for stellar perturbation look like from the perspective of a probe in the Oort cloud? Meaning, what would happen some centuries hence, if we've got a pretty good set of probes way out past Pluto, and one of the probes sees something completely unexpected?

You know, like still happens on a regular basis in astronomy, but up close and personal?

             (Visual Report #A-281H, Oort Cloud Subsystems Nearest Approach)


degrees. by rotated obscura, mechanism A meaning hides in the veil.
                                             diaphonous
                     beneath. topography rough pink cloud, locally smooth
                                         backlit
                                         by
    type. and numbers catalogue assigned suns yet to be named.
                                           unknown to me,
                                         settles
        thunder? low turbulence, barest on along the barest skin depth
                                         mountain
                              at hinted valleys with peaks intimate range rising and falling
                                         in the
                                         distance.
                                         Scouting
                           brief. my of out is this will be a long walk.
    eyes. my over cascade visual drifting system calls wail.
          touch last the of memory the for the hint of the new
                                           new vistas,
                                         I am yet
                                         to find
                                         just the
             follow will who those for space right moment to let go
                                         place.


(Dear Reader: I just hope the formatting works well enough to make this puzzle-poem clear...)

I was catching up on some reading for the day gig, and I just finished an article that I'd imagine should be pretty interesting for a variety of readers, whether you're interested in the history of science, a fan of the "Hidden Figures" movie or book, a fan of Kris Rusch's Women of Futures Past, or of Tor.com's similar Women SF writers of the 1970's ongoing articles.

Ok, so the article is in the May, 2018 issue of Physics Today, it's entitled "Domesticating Physics", written by Joanna Behrman.

The setup here is one that I wasn't aware of in a conscious sense, but once Joanna linked it into her article, the light bulb went off. Which is always a delight, a writer that can turn on the light bulb for me in just a couple paragraphs.

What Joanna points out so well is that there was this magic moment in the early 20th century, when electricification of the household was taking place, where physics (at this point almost entirely classical physics) training wasn't the abstraction that it can so often appear to be. People, in large part women since at that time they were the dominant market for household goods, found it essential to have a good idea of just how these new electric appliances worked.

For safety, for use, for maintenance, among others. That's the main point of the article.

However, Joanna weaves another thread throughout: this was the part of the physics field where women physicists, practical applied women physicists in particular, found an application area they could work in productively. One example that Joanna illuminates is that of Madalyn Avery, a physics teacher at what eventually became Kansas State University.

Highly recommended as a window into a historical era that may otherwise have disappeared simply because it appears so mundane.

Hmm, one last thought: Steampunk, historical fic, romance, western, any writers interested in the early 20th, late 19th century, I'd imagine there're quite a few jumping off points hiding in this one...

I continued thinking last night about how this sort of math might apply to publishers. The problem I ran into was the usual one with this kind of thing: overthinking it.

First blush, and I say to myself "can't do this directly, there are too many hands involved in a publishing imprint".

But then I returned to the basics. The editor.

Let's keep it simple and stick with the editor's time.

And again: we're going to talk about a very good editor, salt of the earth, does everything fairly and professionally. It's the constraints of the job we're after seeing, that's all.

Editor Mona is the development editor at a major publishing house. She's very good at her job, and prides herself on developing new and burgeoning talent. She pays a little better than base, she reads the books coming in, buys them from the agent, babysits them through revisions and copyedits and art/covers/galleys and press and shipping them off to the printers and the stores.

And, she works fair deals: half to the writer, half to the publishing house.

To keep the math reasonable, let's say she pays 4K dollars for an advance. A little lower than Agent Bob typically gets, but he's worked with Mona often so he can trust she'll treat Yvonne's second book with a fair eye. Then the other 4K (the publisher's half) is divided evenly as 2K to Mona's salary, 2K to the publisher/house, 2K to art/covers, and 2K to copy/line edits.

Again, let's assume we're in a transparent and fair house.

2K per book for Mona's gross salary. 50 books per year gets her a nice 100K gross salary per year, which ain't bad if you're in Sheboygan, but is kind of tight for the rare air of Manhattan. So Mona's early in her career if the house is located there, maybe a little farther along if the house is outside the big city lights.

Either way, Mona's spending about 1 week per book. That's to read it, negotiate the sale, revise, ride herd on the copy/line edits, shepherd the cover art and book design, the press, the galleys, the printing, and the shipping off to the stores.

Meaning: a new book had best be ready to go with Mona spending at most one day getting the author's draft revised and ready to copyedit. Maybe two, if she's got a spare moment or two. And, the new writer's agent/negotiations can't take more than a cup of coffee to settle. Maybe lunch if Agent Bob's in town that day.

How about an old pro writer's submission? Zach worked with Mona early in his path, and he's written something that's just right for her house. So Agent Alice sends his latest modest opus off to Mona. Mona reads it and sends a good 40K offer to Alice.

Mona's salary didn't go up. That's fixed. What did Mona buy? An expected 10K profit for the house, and 4 whole weeks of her time.

Because Zach's a well-practiced pro, she doesn't expect to spend more than that same 1 week of her time on Zach's book. He's good, she's good, they'll get it out in exactly the same amount of work that she'd spend on Yvonne's first novel. Probably less.

No, what she's done is buy 4 weeks to work on the problem children. Every house has a set of those. The million dollar screwup, the celebrity collaboration, the flakeout who left for Nepal (nice quiet Nepal) to get her head on straight.

The ones who need significant re-writes, or if it gets really bad, a ghostwriter, to come in rescue the smoking hole in the ground.

Now, it's not all bad for Zach. So long as he's hitting his marks on the manuscripts, that 1 week editor's time should be all that's needed, and he'll still get the 40K checks so long as he delivers. Why not, he's delivering Mona that most precious of things, time to breathe. So she most likely enjoys a couple days with Agent Alice, meets Zach for lunch on occasion, has time to listen to their contract requests and maybe get the house lawyers to negotiate a little.

Why not, Zach and Alice give Mona those 4 weeks in her schedule, she's got time for a little lagniappe in return.

No book-doctoring, though. Zach's a pro, he shouldn't need it, and when he does, Yvonne should be ready to step in and fill that slot in Mona's rotation. And then Zach will move over to the problem-child slot.

Just to follow up on the math below, I guess the only conclusion I can offer is the following, hoping it can help writers, if nothing else, understand just why it is so difficult to break into, or sustain, standard traditional model publishing via an agent:

With the best will in the world, the best agent in the world seeing an average first time novelist's baby hit their desk can only afford to spend 8 hours or so packaging, shopping, and closing the sale on that first novel. That is, unless you are destined for glory, in order to break into the business via this route your first novel has to be readable and sellable by your prospective agent in a single day's work.

And for the working pros, not the biggest of the big but the reliable sellers who can hit that 40K advance book after book, the best agent in the world can afford a week for each book, instead of a day. So, assuming that level of agent and writer and editor are a good working team, sell on emails and clean manuscripts, basically I'd estimate that that week's time is devoted to your basic promo, booking tours, etc.

Again, averages, all things cannot ever be equal in this sort of thing, your mileage may vary, no warrantees admitted to or implied, buckle your seatbelts, etc.

Now, onto the part where I do some math. This is for the hardnosed, business inclined. There are plenty of assumptions involved here, so it's mostly a ballpark sort of estimate I'm working on. But the orders of magnitude that result should be enlightening, even if the details are off.

Ok. One more warning: for any agents that stumble across this, I'm doing outside business estimation based on broadly available information. Your own business will of course vary in the details, so don't take this as anything other than an estimate, which might be significantly different than how you operate.

Right, that out of the way, let's talk about Alice and Bob. Both of them are star agents. Very good at what they do. Alice works in one end of the pool (let's call it high-midlist) and Bob works in another (let's call it beginners).

Alice averages 40K dollars per advance on each novel she sells. She sells one novel per week, and she makes 15 percent for the life of each contract.

So Alice makes 6K dollars per week from advances on new novels sold. 50 weeks per years, so she grosses 300K dollars per year. She's a one-woman shop, with a full-time secretary and a very good lawyer on speed dial, and she lives in or around Manhattan, close to the action. That's a detailed way of saying she nets out about 120-150K per year, after expenses. Which, let's face it, isn't exactly a lot for living in New York City.

But let's get back to the important part, from a writer's perspective: For every novel writer Zach sends to Alice that gets sold, he's paid her 6K dollars for exactly one week of her time.

What about Bob? Bob works with new writers, he's proud of that, and he's very good at his job. Bob gets 5K dollars per advance for a new writer, and he sells one new writer novel per day. He too gets 15 percent for contract life of each sell, so Bob grosses from advances on new sales on average 188K dollars per year. Bob's frugal, so he lives in New Jersey or out on Long Island, his rent and so on are a little cheaper, so let's say Bob, kind soul and devoted agent searching for new talent, nets about 100K dollars per year just from advances on novel sales.

Note the rabbit in the hat? Let's say Yvonne sells Bob her new novel. In exchange for 750 dollars of the advance, Yvonne has just bought one day of Bob's time.

Let's go further. Let's assume that, Bob and Alice both being very good at their jobs, each and every novel they sell earns out in the first year and continues earning royalties every year after, at 1/2 of each of the previous year's total.

That is, for Alice's case, she expects Zach's novel to gross: year 1 is 40K for the advance, year 2 is 20K for royalties, year 3 is 10K, and so on until the stream of royalties dies off sometime around year 10.

I won't put the exact math in (it's an integral over an exponential function) but this works out to Alice expecting about (15 percent of Zach's gross totals of) 2.5 times 40K dollars lifetime for each of the novels she sells. So, Zach grosses about 97K dollars total over ten+ years of the good selling lifetime of each novel, and Alice gets about 15K dollars in return.

That 2.5 factor is important. What it means for Zach is that he's paid Alice 15 percent, lifetime, of each of his novels that he sends her that sell, for 2.5 weeks of her time. Total. Ever.

Same thing for Bob. The dollar totals are different, but if every one of his new talent first novels breaks out and sells at the same rate (5K advance, 2.5K year 1 royalties, etc) then lifetime, he expects Yvonne's novel to gross about 2.5 times 5K or just over 12K total, lifetime, for each novel sold,
and his cut to be about 1200 dollars lifetime.

And Yvonne, for her first novel, can in turn expect to receive about 2.5 days of Bob's time, total. Ever. For that novel.

(edited to add a few clarifications in Bob and Alice's lifetime cuts)