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I was already having trouble sleeping. Which is a bitch, since as mentioned earlier, I was already wiped out and feeling crummy.
So after getting up and doing some rewriting on the fantasy novel – some good comes of this! – I try going back to bed. No joy. Can’t get comfortable.
Happens sometimes. Been happening way too much of late.
I decide to try sleeping in the recliner in the living room for a while. For some reason, after I do that, I can usually go right to sleep in my bed.
And when I get up to move, what do I find but a dead mouse.
In my bed.
Right where I was lying.
*Urk*
So the bed’s been changed, the bedclothes are soaking forever in Clorox 2 and laundry detergent, I’ve had a weird-o’clock in the morning shower, my restful night’s sleep is completely shot in the ass, and the cats are in unprecedented disgrace.
I’m thinking of replacing them with Horrid Japanese Robot Pets.
Now I’m doing the only sensible thing: playing exceedingly violent video games and watching SportsCenter until I recover enough equanimity to get some damn sleep.
Tomorrow is going to be … trying. Stay tuned.
      
Not the con, thank goodness. Bubonicon has successfully begun.
 Bubonicon 42, 1st Panel. L to R: Steve Gould, some pensive guy, Walter Jon Williams, Ben Bova, John Maddox Roberts. Photo credit: ajhansen33 Everything seems to be going well.
Continue reading Bubonicon update: system crash
Bubonicon impends.
That’s good news. (Relax. There is no bad news. I told you not to panic.)
I’m really looking forward to the con this year. Don’t know why. I mean, I always enjoy it. But this year I expect it to be especially fun.
Maybe, given recent events, I just really need a con.
It starts tomorrow - Friday, August 27th, running through Sunday the 29th. The Author Guest of Honor this year is Peter David. Artist GoH is Sarah Clemens. Mario Acevedo is Toastmaster. The theme is Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. You probably worked that out for yourself.
It’s all happening at the Zoo at the Albuquerque Grand (Sheraton) Airport Hotel, 2910 Yale Blvd SE, Albuquerque, NM 87106. Guests include a wide range of out-of-state pros and fans, plus an array of the Usual NM Suspects. There’re too many to list here so I’ll list none; hit the link the con page to see who’s attending. We always get a boatload of cool people, and this year looks like no exception.
Continue reading Don’t panic!
Way too long ago I was awakened in the middle of the night by my then-partner. She’d just been roused by hearing me say, in the most sepulchral tones, “Death. Death. Yooouur death.”
 Not pictured: anything my dream-self fears, apparently I explained that in my dream I had merely been threatening a vampire that was ill-advised enough to menace me. No biggie.
For some reason she seemed little reassured.
But hey. My dream-self obviously takes no shit. Off nobody.
Continue reading Sweet dreams are made of … this?
So we know Emma’s my bodyguard. And we know she takes the job seriously. Which pleases me, on the whole. Still, I’m happy she’s calmed down over a few things. Such as at last beginning to accept that adorable little girls can’t possibly pose physical threats to a grown man.
Then I let her watch -
 Hit Girl ... does. So does KICK-ASS. - Kick-Ass. What was I thinking?
Continue reading Emma concerns
You may remember how right about a year ago I wrote here about my love for Classics Illustrated Comics, and in particular their version of H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds. Most of all I loved their take on the Martian war machines:
 Bloody tourists. Yes, it looks a little different from the original. (If you open the earlier blog post in a separate tab, line the images up the same, and then switch back and forth between tabs, you can really see the difference. Also, it’s kind of creepy.)
There’s a reason for that: the image above was done using models and Photoshop by somebody named Frank Daniel.
Continue reading World War M
Seriously.
When I was in my early twenties and just getting started out trying to write a “real” novel – as opposed to the rather short porn novels I’d been writing – I found I had no idea what it felt like to write a full-length novel.
Forget the awful challenge of a blank page. This was the awful challenge of a whole blank book.
That may strike you as strange or funny. Unless you’ve actually seriously sat down and tried to write a whole freakin’ book.
Am I right? You quickly find yourself asking, “Holy cow! How will I know where I am, writing this damned thing? How will I know when I’m done/finished? What am I doing here?”
Anybody? Just me? All right. Moving on…
The novel I was bent on writing was a Western, set in New Mexico Territory in the 1880s. Its hero was a Virginia-born veteran of the French Foreign Legion who went by the name of Random.
Now, I’d come to love the Western novels of a writer who went by the name Will Henry. They were exquisitely researched and beautifully written. They feature well-drawn characters in crisply-written action against well-described backdrops.
Which is what I’d devoted my professional life to writing. They also quite well captured the feel of the American Southwest. Something I know a certain amount about, having lived in it since I was seven. And yeah, I used to be an actual cowboy.
So I found a solution to get a feel of what it was like to write a full novel. And what it felt like to write a good novel – a Western, to boot (so to speak.)
I simply picked my favorite Will Henry novel, Chiricahua, and sat down to retype it. Every one of about 85,000 words, if I remember aright.
On my handy little portable manual typewriter.
And I did.
Continue reading How Tex Avery’s gag man taught me how to write a novel
Yes, it’s official: my head is shrunk!
At least to an appropriate size.
As I may’ve mentioned, I’ve been seeing a psychiatrist. While I was in the hospital I was diagnosed as suffering from severe clinical depression. What with one thing or another, I couldn’t argue with that.
So today I had my last session. Why’s that? Because my shrink, his mentor, and I all agreed I didn’t need them anymore.
Continue reading Okay. I’m shrunk.
Yes, I did it. I finally joined Facebook.
Yeah, I’ll link to my page (Wall?) when I figure out how.
I’d resisted. For a long time I was reluctant on account of a little revision of their Terms of Use last year that appeared to assert Facebook’s perpetual ownership of everything you posted there, including your name and likeness. Which was so not happening.
My likeness may not be much. But it is, well, mine.
So one friend asked, a trifle tartly, why I used the unacceptability of the Terms of Use when I declined that person’s invitation to join Facebook, but joined now. “Because they changed them to my satisfaction,” I said. And it appears they have.
So anyway. I’ve, naturally enough, frittered away a bunch of time in the day or so since I joined. What’s more, I broke down and signed up for my own YouTube Channel. I’m going all the way, here.
(I would’ve said “the Full Monty,” but I’ve already given one friend nightmares tonight…)
I’m doing these things for professional reasons. No, really. I’m getting frighteningly near the point I’m going to have something to sell, and I need to sell it hard. It’s time to take steps … though not to distract myself from finishing the book.
Too much.
So, if you’re on Facebook, please hit me up. I’ll be getting links up here once I figure out what’s what.
And yes, I will be giving VictorMilan01′s YouTube Channel a workout soon, thank you very much.
Next thing you know, I’ll be dating musicians.
Although, okay, the siege was across the street at the hotel. Still. It was the coffee shop. We were stuck inside. Because of, you know, the siege.
As we frequently do of a Saturday morn my BFF Joe and I met for breakfast at our favorite Village Inn on Menaul east of University. As we ate and talked some people came in talking excitedly about all the police and emergency vehicles across the street at the hotel. I glanced out the window – we were in a booth on the east side of the building, near the front – but saw nothing interesting.
But people kept peering out and getting more and more interested in what was going on. I looked around a while later and saw a whole fleet of police vehicles on the east side of the hotel and in the parking lot across the side street. I also commented on the presence of the Hazmat truck.
Then the big white evidence van turned into the side street.
I went to the bathroom. When I returned Joe told me about fifteen guys in body armor and camouflage, toting assault rifles, had just trotted into the building. There were some other dudes in battledress hanging around a white SUV, which I took for their equipment truck. They were there the whole time.
Continue reading Besieged at the coffee shop!
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Credits: Contents copyright 2009 by the creators. Header dinosaur art courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Thanks!
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