Bev Vincent

AT&T repair dude was supposed to come sometime between noon and 4 p.m. yesterday. When I got home at 5 p.m. he hadn’t arrived yet, and no call to say when, either. I spent the usual 15 minutes trying to get through to tech support and was assured he would be there by 6 p.m. Which he was. Unfortunately, he didn’t leave until after 8:30, which really put a crimp in the evening. Turns out our phone number hadn’t been correctly ported to the new service so it expired. It was a wonder it worked at all, I guess. Repair dude finally got us set up with a temporary number so we could make and receive calls on that line. Apparently porting numbers is such an arduous task that it takes 5 business days, which means our regular number won’t be back in service until next Thursday. Poor service tech—I don’t think I’ve ever heard any one sigh as much as he did. Even he was on hold for long periods waiting for backup.

Today is Canada day. Time to drink beer, cook bacon, dig out the flannel shirts and watch Red Green. Perhaps read some Margaret Atwood and listen to the Arrogant Worms. Put maple syrup on everything. Challenge a moose to a game of chicken. Just an ordinary day, in other words.

Free Fiction Sampler has an excerpt up from Evolve Two: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead, coming out this August. The table of contents is there too. If you want a sneak-peak, go to the link and click on Evolve 2.

Made it halfway through the new short story with pen and paper. Made a ton of changes. Lots of deletions but some significant additions, too. Satisfying work.

The Gulf has its first tropical storm of 2011, Arlene. Alas, she’s too far south to do us any good on the rainfall front.

Spent most of the evening last night on the phone (or on hold) with AT&T customer service. We discovered that our phone wasn’t ringing, and that calls were never going to voice mail. Not quite sure how long that has been going on. The last time we could remember hearing the phone ring was two days earlier. By the end of my session with customer service, not only did the phone not ring any more, but we no longer had a dial tone and couldn’t make outgoing calls. Not exactly progress. Service tech scheduled to show up tomorrow. Not a good omen for our brand spanking new U-Verse service.

When I was chauffeuring Joe Hill around at World Horror, one of the things we talked about was “to be read” lists. He had a unique approach: The Shelf of 10, he called it. A shelf containing 10 books, 10 DVDs and 10 graphic novels. The on-deck circle, so to speak. Frustrated at having certain books perpetually in the #7 spot, he came up with this rule: once a book (or DVD or graphic novel) made it to the Shelf of 10, that was its spot in the reading lineup. No jumping the queue. I don’t have that much restraint. I often get books that jump to the head of the line, and I have ones that have fallen so far back in the order as to be relegated to when I retire. Or for my next lifetime, even.

I received one of those queue-jumping books yesterday. I’m even putting aside the book I’m reading at the moment, that’s how far it goes to the head of the list.

When I turned out the light last night, I tried to get my mind working on the ending of the short story in progress. I didn’t have a resolution at all. I knew the two main characters were heading for some sort of a fracas, but I had no idea what form that would take. I’m not much of a lucid dreamer, I guess, because that was the last I thought of the story…until I woke up, about twenty minutes before the alarm was supposed to go off. (My alarm rarely goes off: I’ve programmed myself to wake up no later than 4:55 a.m., I guess.) Then, without even consciously putting my mind to work on the task, I came up with the ending. When I got up, I went straight to the computer and wrote the final 1400 words, bringing the story to a conclusion with a three-day total of 4100 words. I’m quite happy about that.

The Biography Channel is airing their Peter Falk biography this week in tribute. I watched it last night. He led an interesting life, that’s for sure. He was so popular that people recognized him as Columbo in a tiny market in Ecuador. His wife suggested he wear a sign around his neck when they went out to eat in restaurants: Do Not Disturb.

Been thinking about music more than usual, lately. The story I finished last weekend was written mostly to the music of Steely Dan. I have no idea why—there’s no real association to the story. I just found this block of albums on my iTunes and realized I hadn’t listened to them in a while so I played them through as I wrote. Can’t say whether that influenced the story or not. Maybe.

For the new story, I’ve been listening to The Buggles, mostly, with a little Mike Oldfield Ommadawn thrown in for good measure. I wrote another 1200 words this morning. It’s just cruising along. I have a vague idea of how it’s going to wrap up, but I’m trusting my subconscious to not leave me hanging out here, 2700 words along. This is a completely unplanned story. When I saw the guidelines, I knew my spin, but everything that’s happened since then has been “discovered.” I began the story without any preparation and it’s just coming to me in scenes. I thought I was done at 800 words this morning, but then I got the next scene and wrote it, too.

I was introduced to the music of Andreas Vollenweider when I was living in Zurich back in the late 1980s. He’s a native of that city, and his father played the organ in one of the city’s churches. I was visiting a coworker and his partner before we went out to dinner, and they were playing classical music. His partner suggested playing Vollenweider, but my coworker told her he didn’t want to until the very last thing. “It will ruin everything else,” he said. To this day I’m not sure I understand what he meant by that, but the scene remains in my head for some reason. I suspect he thought the music was overproduced and slick compared to his Mahler and Beethoven, but I’m not sure. I like it, and have bought most of his albums ever since. I think he has a near-lock on the electronic harp market.

For some reason I can’t muster up the gumption to watch Falling Skies. I’ve recorded all the episodes thus far, but I haven’t heard anyone raving about it. In fact, I haven’t heard anyone talking about it at all. I’m a finger’s twitch away from deleting it from the DVR.

I won a couple of books from my NECON buddy Chris Golden. His second suspense novel under the pseudonym Jack Rogan, The Collective, comes out today. I didn’t know the pseudonym, but a little research turned up a likely candidate and I guessed right.

I had one of those great hour-long lunch breaks where I completed several errands. Normally I spend the hour at the gym, but every now and then the tasks pile up and I have to handle ’em all. One thing struck me funny. I went to the mall to get my watch battery replaced. I think that’s the only time I go to the mall, because there’s a kiosk that specializes in watch repairs. I turned in my watch and the woman working there said, “Come back in 10 minutes.” It occurred to me to ask her how I was supposed to know when that was, seeing as how she was now in temporary custody of my watch. Of course, my cell phone has a clock on it, but how was she to know that I had one?

Down to 3150 words on the short story. The goal is within sight. If I had one of those word-count meters for the week’s work, everything after Monday would be in the negative territory. That’s not a bad thing. Zero would be bad, but negative word counts represent real work, perhaps the hardest work in writing: Editing.

So, who’s that handsome devil, you might ask? The immediate thought that comes to mind is Columbo, Peter Falk’s iconic TV character. However, that image is of his character Lou Peckinpaugh from the satirical noir film The Cheap Detective. Peter Falk died today at the age of 83. I think I’ve seen every Columbo episode five times, at least, and I could watch them all again at the drop of a hat. Maybe now that we have the Sleuth channel again they will pop up in the near future. I read his autobiography several years ago and thought that he’d be a delightful person to have a long evening dinner with.

Back to the threatening kind of rain today without actually producing much. Yesterday gave us nearly 2″, which is the most we’ve had in one day since last October, but it didn’t solve the drought problem and they’re still debating whether to shoot fireworks for July 4th. It’s done over a substantial lake, but the remote chance that an ember might get caught in  a breeze and end up in the dry grass or trees is causing some worries.

Finished the first editing pass through the short story and got a good start on a second pass. Down to 3200 words (from 3800) and within spitting distance of my target. Hope to get finished a solid second draft by tomorrow so I can go at it in hardcopy before making the final online passes this weekend.

Received a contract in the mail yesterday. Three copies of a 17-page document, legal sized paper, probably a 10 pt font. My agent has already vetted it, so I just need to make sure I understand it all before I sign (not in blood) and ship off to the publisher. No announcement yet about what this is for, so I’m remaining mum on the subject.

I finally decided to attend NECON this year. I registered last year, but I’d been thinking I probably wouldn’t go. However, I had a change of heart and am now fully booked, including flight and rental car. Fewer than 30 days to go!

We completely upgraded our home cable and wireless services today. Only took a couple of hours and that included drilling a hole through our living room wall. Many fewer wires and cables lying on the floor of my office in the aftermath. And I can now program the DVR with my iPhone, which is cool.

Last night was Deadwood prequel night. The first episode we watched (about the Jewish guy who died from autoerotic asphyxiation) featured “Alma Garrett” as the rabbi, and the next one (about the motorcycle Santa Claus) featured “Dan Dority” as one of the bikers.  Not entirely sold on Brenda’s sexual experimentation. Wish she’d give that a rest. We got a kick out of the biker funeral, though in the real world there probably would have been fights and stabbings. Some interesting parallels are developing. Nate and David are sort of like Sarah and Ruth.

We might have had a sprinkle or two yesterday (30% chance of rain) but we’ve had the first serious rainfall in months today. I don’t know exactly when it started, but I heard it coming down heavily at around 6:30 a.m. accompanied by thunder and lightning. I heard chirping outside the kitchen window an hour later and looked out to see some mockingbirds frolicking in the puddles that had formed there.

The rain has been more or less steady since then. We’ve received over an inch and in some parts of the county there’s been as much as two inches. That sounds like a lot, but it’s pretty routine for around here…except for this year. We’re still over a dozen inches behind on annual rainfall and it looks like the hot dry weather will return by the weekend. One of the other benefits of the overcast, rainy weather: it’s only 71° this afternoon instead of 101.

Didn’t get all the way through the new short story this morning. Only made it to page eight out of thirteen. However, by then I’d already lost 250 words to the trashcan and I suspect I’ll be able to trim nearly as many again in the final four or five pages. That will get me down to within a couple of hundred words of the maximum. Another pass after that and I should be there.

Watched another episode of Six Feet Under last night. I think we’re near the halfway point of Season Two. Brenda and Nate make one of the weirdest couples. She’s doing wacky stuff with her massage clients and he has a possibly fatal condition that he hasn’t told her about yet. Patricia Clarkson stole the episode as Ruth’s flaky sister. Loved her brief, dramatic speech at the end when she disabused Ruth of the notion that her life has been all fun.

Burn Notice starts up again this week. Slowly, bit by bit, there’s starting to be things worth while watching on TV again this summer. I watched the latest dumped episode of Law & Order: Los Angeles last night. Not one of their best efforts.

They keep threatening us with rain.

I’d say “promising,” except it rarely comes to pass. Today it looks like most of the showers are going east of us. That’s okay for them—they need it as badly as we do. There are some bad fires up in East Texas. Three million acres have burned or are burning across the state. That’s a little less than the total area of Connecticut.

40% chance today, 60% tomorrow, which looks promising, then back down to 40% on Thursday. Maybe summer will make up for this torrid, dry spring we’ve had.

I finished the first draft of the new short story this morning. It came in at 3800 words, which is 800 words over the limit. Should have no trouble paring it down, though. This was one of those first drafts where I was telling myself the story first and foremost. At least 400 of those words should go through the usual tightening and editing process and then it will be time to look at the story overall to see what is in there that doesn’t belong. I don’t anticipate any trouble getting back to 3000 words (he says confidently).

We had a strange experience watching Six Feet Under last night. Partway through an episode, my wife said, “I wonder who that actress is.” That in and of itself was unusual, as she doesn’t often care about that sort of thing. I’m the guy who’s always saying things like, “Hey, there’s the guy who was the doctor in Deadwood.” The actress didn’t look even vaguely familiar to me, so I looked her up. Turns out she was the daughter of one of my wife’s colleagues, an actress who appeared in a lot of supporting TV roles about a decade ago. Alas, she died about a year or so after that episode aired. My wife had seen pictures of the young woman in her colleague’s office, which is why she looked familiar. Weirdness.