There’s never any doubt around here when spring has officially arrived. All of a sudden everything is coated in yellow-green pollen. When I leave work in the afternoon, it streams up my windshield like tiny hailstones. I can see my tire tracks in the driveway, and my tires lay down green prints in the garage. For people with allergies, it hellacious. For everyone else, it’s just messy. We’ve already had a couple of days over 80°. The heavy rain we’re expecting over the next couple of days should wash some of the pollen away, but I have no doubt there will be more.
My short story “Groundwood” gets the audio treatment by Nelson W. Pyles at The Wicked Library today. This is the second time they’ve adapted one of my stories to audio. Check it out when you have a spare half hour or so. The story is set in the groundwood division of a paper mill, something with which I was very familiar back in the late 70s and early 80s. In those days, students could work in the mill during summer vacation and get the same wage as the regular employees, so it was a great way to earn money for university. Of course, the work was grueling at times, and groundwood was one of my least favorite places. We were generally on call. If a regular didn’t feel like showing up for work, he’d call in sick, and then one of us would get the phone call. Often it was the 12 – 8 overnight shift. I used to lie in bed, dreading the sound of the telephone until 11:30 or midnight had passed, especially on a Friday night. Even then, there was a chance that you’d get a call if a worker just didn’t show up. I’d have to put on my work clothes and drive the 10 miles to the mill. If you were called in late, the hoppers or magazines would be near empty so you had to work twice as hard to get caught up. If you got into the rhythm, you could fill them up and then take a 30 minute break, so a good shift was 45 minutes of hard labor, a 30 minute break, then another 45 minutes of work and so on throughout the shift. The magazines were one floor above the grinders, which used steam to soften the wood, so it was a hot, dank place. We usually found someplace else to be during the 30 minute break. One time, my coworker on our line climbed onto the roof and went to sleep. Didn’t come back. I had to find a foreman to take over, by which time the magazines were pretty much running on empty. Worst shift ever.
“Groundwood” is a zombie story that doesn’t have any zombies in it. Well, it does, but they aren’t lurching around.
I received my copy of the signed and numbered edition of 25 Years in the Word Mines by Graham Joyce yesterday. A somewhat poignant arrival. This version has a “chapbook” of extra stories—the slim hardcover companion volume is signed by Owen King (foreword), Kelly Braffet (afterword) and Graham’s daughter Ella. Both volumes fit snugly into a slipcase. I look forward to having the chance to read these stories.
Saturday was an unexpectedly nice day. We had a 9 a.m. meeting at the town center and afterward decided to go see The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel at a matinee. The old folks are still denizens of this outsourced elder-care hotel in Jaipur, India and life goes on. The owner is getting married and is looking to expand, so he and Maggie Smith go to L.A. to get investors, which means an undercover agent is going to stay with them to evaluate the existing property. These are quaint films that probably grossly underplay what it must really be like to live in India, but charming all the same. The subplots were all pretty good, except for one that was rather silly. It’s always good to see Judi Densch and Maggie Smith and Bill Nighy chewing up the screen with a batch of other good actors, including Doctor Who’s Penelope Wilton and some Bollywood stars who put on some energetic and entertaining dance routines. Richard Gere is along for the ride this time, too. Afterward, it was nice enough to sit on the patio at our favorite local pub for a late lunch. I think the pub was taken by surprise by the weather, though, because they were severely understaffed. We didn’t mind waiting for our food and drinks, but several groups either left or complained about the slow service.
My interview with Maurizio Ragusa went live 
This is how crazy it can be in Texas. At the moment it is flirting with 80°. When I get up for my writing session tomorrow it will be on the way to the predicted low of 25° and it won’t get above 35° until noon on Friday. Yikes.
As we get older, death becomes a more familiar companion. Certainly not a welcome one, but familiar all the same.
You get a rejection letter where you were thisclose to cracking the table of contents. You have to withdraw another story from a longstanding project because it was starting to circle the drain. These things are part of a writer’s life.
Seven or eight years ago, Brian Keene and I first bandied about the idea of collaborating on a project. Our motivation was a shared habit of listening to music while we write and writing about listening to music while we write. I once wrote an entire novel (unpublished) listening only to Supertramp albums.
I finished the first draft of my novella last weekend. It came in at just over 38,000 words. I also dictated the remaining section into Word, so now it’s all digitized. I made one quick pass through to fix up the artifacts from voice-to-speech. Now it’s time for a good hard edit before I pass it off to someone else to read while I catch up on other things that have been pushed to the side while I concentrated on this work. I’m quite happy with how it turned out, but now it’s up to other people to let me know if it’s any good. Fingers crossed.
I’ve reached the 2/3 point of the novella and something odd happened. One of the two main characters, whose name was Jessie, suddenly insisted that his name was Frank. I have no idea how or why this happened. Now, I know that Jessie isn’t the traditional male spelling, but there are enough examples to support its use. However, half the time when I put the pen-tip to paper to have him do or say something, my first inclination was to write Frank. I can’t explain it. So, from this point forward, Frank it is. I’ve also finally come up with a name for my fictional town. Until now it was ____port, which, when I was dictating the text into Word became blank-port. I can now fill in the blank.
I usually try to watch the Grammy Awards, if for no other reason than to catch up on new artists I’m not familiar with, but also to see some of the Great Old Ones show that they still have it. AC/DC got things off to a rip-roaring start. It’s always great to see Jeff Lynne and his current incarnation of ELO, and Ed Sheeran teamed up with him well. Annie Lennox showed everyone how it’s done. That Hozier dude was pretty good, too; I’d never even heard of him before. My wife says he sounds like Elton John, and I can see that. Miranda Lambert’s performance was kind of bland, but Pharrell Williams was lively and entertaining.