I wonder what there is about a Friday afternoon that makes me feel like I should update my LiveJournal. Though I may post from time to time on other days, there’s something about the wind-down of a Friday that bring my thoughts to journaling.
[shrug]
So, what has this week wrought? My agent has Missing Persons in his hands, so it’s out of mine for the next month or so, and I can turn my attention to other things. In the short term: I wrote a review of Mike Arnzen’s upcoming Play Dead for Cemetery Dance, and was very happy to do so. I’ve never read anything of Mike’s that was longer than about three pages, so this leap to the novel was a huge change from my point of view. It’s fast past and an accomplished book with all sorts of card-playing and joker jargon, Tarot lore and violence. I went through it in about two days.
On Monday, I have to turn in my Cemetery Dance column for issue #53. I’m mostly done with it, but I need to go through it obsessively to write and rewrite, vise and revise, until the very last minute…as per usual.
I wrote a flash fiction story of 600 words for the Commonwealth Short Story Competition. It’s called Life Support, an intensely personal story that will probably get lost in a sea of literary and poetic submissions, but I felt like it was too good of a chance to miss. And hey, if by some absolute stroke of a miracle I win, the first prize is UK 2000. That works out to over $6 a word. The stories had to be short enough to be read in 4′ 30″ My story for the Flash Fiction contest at World Horror was 750 words and I read that in less than 4 minutes. Of course, I was reading like a mother f***ker, to quote Bill Breedlove.
I have a stack of submission guidelines on the pull-out board on my rolltop desk awaiting my attention, so maybe I’ll noodle around with some ideas for those markets over the weekend between compulsive editing sessions on the CD column. I also have the kernel of another novel developing. What’s interesting to me about the major subplot I see developing is that this would make the book a prequel to something I haven’t written yet. Yeah, that sounds nuts, but I wrote about 100 pages of a novel before I got sidetracked by The Road to the Dark Tower. After finishing Road, I had to choose between going back to that novel or a new idea, and the new idea won. However, that old story is still fresh in my mind, which is a sign that it still wants to be told. But then along comes this new idea and I see it as the establishing story that sets up the previous book…errr, the next book…if you’re still with me.
My wife and I just signed up for Operation Graduation. Our daughter graduates from high school in late May, and after the graduation ceremonies they hold a lockin that lasts all night long. It has a casino with black jack, poker, craps, and roulette, trivia games, karaoke, movies, music. The only catch is–the students have to stay in all night. If you leave, you can’t come back. That cuts down on the chance that people will duck out to the parking lot for a drink and come back in to cause a ruckus. I’m signed up for the 10pm – 2am shift. It’s on a Thursday night, and I have to work the next day. Should be fun!
Currently reading: Creepers by David Morrell
