Old intel report lingo. Nothing significant to report. NSTR.

I got a sentence down tonight. Wow.

But more importantly I moved several planned scenes around (Scrivener rocks) based on lengthy ponders earlier today while getting weekend chores accomplished. 

There’s a rule that says you shouldn’t introduce something until the reader absolutely needs to know it, and I realized the scene was coming too early. Actually, it’s an entire chapter, and I was presenting it too soon. I think I’ve got it in a better spot now where it will respond to a dramatic point.

So we’ll see.

Anyway. Have to sleep. Still have a day job.

Went to Springfield, Ohio’s Wittenberg University today with a couple of writer colleagues for an event, and as we wrapped things up a review of the calendar shows we have twenty (20) weeks until our next event: Gem City Comic Con in Dayton, Ohio.

And you think to yourself: Self. Twenty weeks is a great deal of time. It is six weeks shy of half of one year. That is so much time. Worry not your pretty little head.

But then your practical side slaps you in the head: Do you realize how much needs to be accomplished in that twenty weeks, you dumbass? 

So, without further adieu I return to the list of things that must be done. There is writing of new things, and editing of old things. There is a game (yes, a game!) to be finished so that I can put it on the table. There’s another game (and bigger game) that needs to be worked on for the future. There’s updated business cards. Updated promotional materials. 

It’s like, wow. Far out. I just dig it all, you know. It’s so great to be alive and have the opportunity to do all of this cool stuff. 

Far out. Winter Solstice, my trippy, 70’s novel pitting NAZIs against spies against corporate robots against college students is five years old. Really, it’s forty years old when you think about it. That first draft was finished in 1979.

I have a friend who insists I must have been on drugs writing it, but I swear. No drugs, man. Oh sure, it has arena rock, six foot two inch men, national security, psychedelic drugs, police brutality, social ostracism, and an ex-German scientist time-traveler bent on curing mankind of its sickness. But I wasn’t taking drugs. 

Re-reading some bits of WS, and it still has that certain voice. Still unapologetically lets it be. Maybe I was on drugs.

Flaws? Sure. Course it has flaws. But it ain’t too bad, you know? After all these years, I’m not ashamed in any way. Still a crazy book. Make a great Christmas gift I’m sure. Or Solstice gift.

There is, I think, something amazing, yet also sad, about us. How alone we really are. How we gather things around us to create the impression that is otherwise.

Recently we observed the Thanksgiving holiday. It was good, you know. Sorta. I have a great deal of loss in my life that rears itself at me during this time of year. Some of this loss is too painful to share with you, dear reader. 

My brother, Gregg, is painful, but I can share a little. Seven years now. Hard to imagine. Seven entire real actual years. The loss of him is especially acute during the “holiday” times, because, well, that’s when we were assuredly going to reconnect. 

We’d gather in the kitchen, whichever kitchen of of whicheve sibling was hosting, with our mugs of coffee and sagely comment on the state of the world. 

How this world seems smaller and less worthy of commentary in his absence. 

I’m sure others have felt likewise. 

There is other loss in my own life which amplifies these feelings, of course. As stated previously, some of this is too painful to discuss. 

The absence of them in our discussions is a hole. How can we pretend they are not there? How can we pretend the hole is not there? And soon enough I shall be part of that hole myself. And I’m sure I will be ignored. Part of that yawning gap.

When will we ever be whole?

I’m reminded of a lyric from the band “Keane”:

Down to the country Where I will be well again

It’s from the song “To the end of the earth”. It is written I think with a certain irony. We’ll send you to the country. You’ll get better there. As if fresh air is all that you need. 

As if I have any idea what it is that I need to be well. 

I walk around with this massive wound each day, but no one comments. No one sees it. Or if they see it, then they do not mention it. They wait for me to die of my wounds, because it is easier to let me die this way, than to address them.

And really what can we do for the wounded? 

We can hold their hand. 

There. There.

There. There.

I almost sent a text message to a friend. It’s a friend whose name I heard in a snippet. Overheard really. And the snippet suggested maybe they aren’t doing so well. The snippet suggested in that smug — oh I would never have a problem, oh no, never me, but let me tell you about someone who has a problem — that they had had an event. An embarassing event. A career-ending event as we used to say when we were allowed to say it. But maybe not career-ending, but career-shortening. An event. An event that was noticed.

and so I almost sent them a message. Are you okay? Is there. You know. Any way that I can help?

But our silos. Our damn silos. And our damn isolation.

I fast forward — dramatically, oh the poet — to the funeral.

Oh, no, I had no idea she was having a problem.

Standing next to one another at the bar. Clink glasses. “Here’s to one alcoholic from another.” “I’m not an alcoholic.” And I smiled a liquored smile in response. “No, of course not.”

But I knew the look. 

So, I almost sent her a message just now. 

I mean, as if….

Wrapped in denial. Who listens? Screaming for help, but then rejecting it? It’s silly to think that I can save anyone. 

I cannot even save myself.

But I’ll ponder the message I might have sent, and pray that it’s all my fertile, writer’s imagination.

A few quick thoughts before sleep takes me. As much as I would like to put Novel #2 in the can, it has resisted this. I and my stable of developmental gurus seem to agree that we are close, but we continue to discuss edits. Adjust this. Add some of this. etc.

While shaving this morning I came upon another angle of adjustment that I hadn’t previously considered. It would change the MC’s relationship to the setting. This would also have a cascading effect on a number of relationships. I was jotting down points in the manuscript that either require a modification or offer the chance for modification if I go down this route. It’s not a huge thing, but I think it would give the MC something he’s lacked so far, and that is a very personal connection to the locale and to the protagonist.

So, I’m kinda leaning in this direction, but I’m doing my homework prior to leaping off the ledge. More work tomorrow.

What’s this? Reviewing middle grade literature? Let me explain. One of the great benefits of being in a writing community is the opportunity to make friends with other writers and expand one’s universe by reading genres that you would not normally. Such is the case with Panda Girl by Jeri Maynard. A month ago at the end of Cincinnati Comic Expo we exchanged books so that each of us could talk intelligently to folks about everyone’s writing when they approach our group tables. 

I finished yesterday. Really an engaging story about a young girl transitioning from pre-teen to teen in upstate New York at a new school far away from her former home in NYC. Her first day things go badly. She ends up not only in the Nurse’s Office, but with a nickname that sticks.

It’s amusing stuff, but it’s a world we all remember from when we went through it ourselves, and so it resonates. Maynard doesn’t talk down to the reader at all. The story is straight up, which means there are some tough subjects, which is also thought-provoking. 

So how does this make a speculative fiction writer a better writer? How does this make one’s science fiction better? Or one’s Army combat fiction better? I think if nothing else, and I’m fairly confident there’s quite a bit more, then it takes one out of a literary comfort zone. It puts you in a story world you haven’t been in for a while in the case of Panda Girl. Other books? Maybe a genre you’ve never seen. This makes me look at the world through different lenses. This reinforces that the universe is not a known thing, but a barely known thing, and that I would be rash and arrogant to presume knowledge that can’t be had. It’s helps me to be humble and grateful for the opportunity to learn and experience new things, and especially grateful for the chance to share a remarkably nice book written by my friend and colleague.

https://www.amazon.com/review/R1S8B7LO2K1TWD/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

This past week my last living uncle died. Uncle Ted was really old; nearly 100. With his passing I now have no living grandparents, parents, or parent siblings in my life. All dead. 

Kinda weird, you know. I mean, I don’t know, it’s not like I had talked to Uncle Ted in the last… 30 years? It just hadn’t really occurred to me that he was the last. Not sure that it mattered.

I’m hardly the first to marvel at the passage of time. With that said I still marvel at it. When I was a wee lad, this poem/riddle blew me away when I read it:

This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.

I read it in The Hobbit when I was… fourteen? Mid 1970’s. It’s from Bilbo’s riddle game with Gollum. And I paused at the answer: Time.

Time…. My gosh. Yes.

Time as a force. Time as a merciless and undefeatable foe. And it was something I hadn’t considered really until that moment. Oh sure, one of my grandmothers had died already at that point, but you know I’m not sure what it had meant to me, but this articulated it in a way for some reason that did mean something.

And I saw, I think, for the first time, that the world, my world certainly, was finite. 

I can’t speak for that fourteen year old anymore. God knows what he was thinking. But myself? I am conscious of the clock’s ticking. My writing is aware. It is both informed and terrified by it. Such that one can be stricken with paralysis by the knowledge of one’s looming mortality, and the precious nature of each moment. Like the bird in Kipling’s Rikki Tikki Tavi which feigned it, I am mesmerized at times by it all. 

So maybe #CrazyTomLives (coded title for Novel #2) is not quite finished after all. After lengthy discussion #amwriting some major POV shifts. Not talking about rewriting the whole thing, but several key scenes would be experienced from different eyes. It’s an interesting idea. We’re gonna see what happens. Forward march!

Well…. At this point I think the site is at least functional at a very basic level. And let me reiterate that point: very basic.

It’s been years since I’ve messed with this kind of thing and technology has not stood still, has it? With that said, as impressive as all this is, it hasn’t been a very user friendly experience. 

Anyway. I’ll get used to it, I’m sure.

In other news, day three of Cincinnati Comic Expo was fun, but kinda sad, because I had to say goodbye to my con friends. People I generally only see twice a year right now. Maybe I need to go to more of these so I can hang out more with them. It’s a great thing to spend time with like-minded folks.

The other takeaway was to renew efforts to get the #CrazyTom project published. Had some long talks with my writing guru, Wendy, about strategy, and putting these things into motion. More later.

Also had some talks about #FelixLovesAgatha (these are code words since I don’t wish to reveal the titles) and making some real progress ironing out plot holes and stuff.