Scarlet Letters from the Literary Underworld

Little Snippets

2012-01-24T12:20:00.000-06:00

While working on dueling laptops.... Facebook chat. ME: Get off Facebook! HIM: You too. ME: I was just checking on you. WRITE! HIM: in a minute ME: *taps fingers* HIM: *taps back* HIM: How do you spell laborious? ME: D-i-c-t-i-o-n-a-r-y. HIM: *sticks out tongue* HIM: *glances over his shoulder* ME: *ducks behind refrigerator door, milk jug in hand* HIM: Hon! ME: *jedi handwave* You saw nothing.

Wal-mart at Christmastime

2011-12-16T19:23:00.000-06:00

Generally, there's no deeper pit of hell than Wal-mart. The awful fluorescent lighting, the cart that undoubtedly has one bad wheel, the inability to find what you're looking for ever since they changed things, the sure knowledge that you have sold your soul to Sam Walton because there's simply no way to meet the monthly budget without him. Not while the boy drinks three gallons of milk a week.

Geek Points

2011-12-09T23:53:00.000-06:00

Setting: The Daily Show is on. Boy flops onto the couch. ME: It's bedtime. BOY: Just a few minutes? I love Daily Show. ME: Hmmm. Look, you're still here and not in bed. BOY: I'm not here. ME: I see you. You are here. BOY: *handwave* These are not the droids you're looking for. ME: *bwahahaha* You get to stay up a few minutes more just for the geek points.

Communing With the Cosmos: A Conversation with Neil deGrasse Tyson

2011-12-08T16:17:00.000-06:00

I had the good fortune to meet Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson yesterday at a ribbon-cutting for the new observatory in Edwardsville. In addition to the story I wrote for the News-Democrat, I had him cornered at the top of the stairwell next to the telescope, so I asked him a few more questions. Here is the long version of our interview, for those who are interested in such wonderfully nerdy things

A $16,000 Cup

2011-12-05T23:27:00.000-06:00

We're in the middle of a battle right now. Not my partner against his illness - no, that battle is fought and nearly won. The real battle is Us vs. the Insurance Company. A union man, J has never had to battle his insurance. I know a few other people who must have mega-insurance, because when I tell them about the incessant fights I've had on behalf of my son and (occasionally) myself, they said

Home on the Range

2011-11-30T17:32:00.000-06:00

I am unreasonably excited about this. I'm getting a new stove! New as in new from the store, not new as in transferred from one of the vacant apartments! And only seven years after I first reported trouble with my stove! Hey, this is the life of a renter. On the up side, someone else pays for your new appliance. On the down side, you're at the mercy of someone else's decisions about your

Tradition!

2011-11-29T00:26:00.000-06:00

I'm watching Fiddler on the Roof tonight as I do mindless tasks online and off. I love the music, the humor, the culture, the fiddling. And the serious undertones of the plight of the Jewish people give it a touch of gravitas often missing in the musicals of the '60s. Watching Topol sing "If I Were a Rich Man" reminds me of my first Dragoncon. No, not because I'm so broke at Dragoncon every year

Mr. Utterson was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile

2011-11-22T18:43:00.000-06:00

I love these things even though they make no sense at all. I fed this segment of the new book into the analyzer: I write like James JoyceI Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing! Uh...

a moment of silence

2010-07-12T10:08:00.001-05:00

I would like a moment of silence for Linda. None of you who read this know Linda, except maybe Kit Tunstall and Starr Rathburn, but I think both of them were gone from the Writers' Circle before Linda came. Linda went by the moniker TheCritic on Writing.com, which is where I lived before LiveJournal, Facebook and Twitter. And when Kit and Starr left, Linda took over the WC. The Writers' Circle

Julnawrimo

2010-06-28T18:08:00.000-05:00

Briefly: While I like the concept of Nanowrimo, I think we can all agree that November is a terrible month to write a novel. Thanksgiving, holiday shopping, family visits.. not to mention it's sweeps month on TV. Therefore I created Julnawrimo: Because There's Nothing Good on TV in July. The live-and-in-person kickoff is 6-10 p.m. July 1 at the Denny's in Glen Carbon, Ill. An online component

Scenes from Grandkids Week

2010-06-24T08:36:00.000-05:00

I stuck my head in the room two of my nieces are sharing. ME: Good night. L: Good night, dork. A: *giggles* ME: Did you just call MOI a dork? L: Yup! ME: Did you just call the person who may or may not buy you ice cream tomorrow a dork? L: Touche! ME: Uh huh. I'm just saying. L: You're my favoritest aunt ever! ME: That's more like it. A: Are you my aunt? ME: Yes! Um, lemme think. *counts* Yes, I

Things I Forget to Blog About: Tuckerizing Edition

2010-06-12T21:55:00.000-05:00

• Sara Harvey and I are rarely at the same conventions these days. Hypericon was the first one since THE COLD ONES came out. As you know, I named the kickass ex-Marine major in that book after her: Sara Harvey, zombie-hunter extraordinaire. Sara Harvey the author and Sara Harvey the character could not be more different. Author Sara is a generous, sweet, bohemian lady partial to soft flowing

Hey Rocky, Watch Me Pull a Rabbit Out of This Hat!

2010-06-12T01:17:00.001-05:00

As Memorial Day rolled around, I had a problem. I'm captain of a Relay for Life team, raising money each year for the American Cancer Society. My friends know this is a very personal issue for me, as cancer seems to strike so often. I am lucky that it has not struck my immediate family. But just in this last year, I've seen several close friends undergo treatment for cancer. Just last week, a

Warning: Bored Authors

2010-06-11T12:50:00.000-05:00

This is what authors do when they're bored. Stephen Zimmer posted about a book signing, and someone replied that he wished he could raise the money for his own book signing. For the purposes of this post, you should know what Shane Moore looks like. SHANE MOORE: Why do you need money? They should pay to bring you in. ME: Ditto. Book signings are one of the very few author promotions that cost

LOCALS! Important!

2010-06-10T16:07:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, June 15 is my team's RELAY FOR LIFE DAY at the Edwardsville Dairy Queen! The local DQ has kindly agreed to donate 20 percent of their receipts on Tuesday to my Relay for Life team, and I am so grateful for their support. The only catch is: you have to have a coupon for us to get credit for your order! Whether it's a Blizzard or a full-out meal, you have to give them the coupon in order

Hypericon

2010-06-08T21:42:00.000-05:00

Last week I sojourned to Nashville for a little reading, a little signing, a lot of selling and plenty of catching up with old friends. I love Nashville, even with half of it metaphorically still bailing out from the flood. Remember, that OTHER natural disaster that's been pretty much ignored by the rest of the country? THURSDAY We first spent a couple of days staying with Stephen, a friend

THE COLD ONES scores another big bite

2010-06-07T18:12:00.000-05:00

Warning: I wouldn't wait much longer to get THE COLD ONES if you haven't yet, folks. Good things are happening for my Things That Go Chomp in the Night. I read from it, of course, and as usual they voted to hear it from the beginning. I never get to read the aswang sequence, dangit. At this point I'm considering Garage-Banding a reading and putting it on my web site just so I can get to read

Literary Underworld

2010-05-31T09:50:00.000-05:00

The story of my crazed consortium is today's guest blog on Apex.

Relay for LIfe

2010-05-28T00:08:00.000-05:00

Today a friend of mine got some bad news. She's been fighting her third bout with breast cancer for years now, and the latest scans came back not so good. It's on the bone again, and there's small growth in the existing tumors. It's back to radiation for her. She's just one of my friends battling cancer. You know who else? The kind and funny man who sings next to me in choir. Macie's partner,

Less Than A-Muse-ing

2010-05-18T23:09:00.000-05:00

ME: Stupid characters! ISABEL: I really think that's the wrong attitude. If you say mean things about your characters on Twitter, they'll never do what you want them to do. ME: They won't do what I want them to do anyway. They don't talk to me. ISABEL: I'm doing the best I can. ME: It's not your fault. You just aren't a guns-and-smartass type. ISABEL: See, if you would just let those two fall in

Censors in Utah... not against us this time.

2010-05-07T11:04:00.000-05:00

Utah strikes again. Some journalism seniors hid words for male and female genitalia in their final issue of the Daily Chronicle at the University of Utah. Now the university is threatening to withhold their diplomas. I'm torn. They finished their degree work, they earned their diplomas, they have a right to graduate and the university should not try to censor them. However, this is the sort of

I resemble that remark.

2010-05-05T20:33:00.002-05:00

Do not.

Zombie Awareness Month!

2010-05-05T08:28:00.000-05:00

In the lovely month of May, a woman's fancy turns to thoughts of ravenous rotting reanimated corpses. What? It's really and truly Zombie Awareness Month, not something I just made up to amuse myself. This link is from last year, but the gray ribbon amuses me. Sponsored by the Zombie Research Society (slogan: What You Don't Know Can Eat You), they explain here. Celebrate by buying THE COLD ONES

LitUnd Spotlight: GLBT Fiction

2010-05-03T17:46:00.000-05:00

Because we can. Thank you, First Amendment. Because GLBT doesn't just mean sex scenes; but the inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender characters in genre fiction. Because the definition of pornography in Miller vs. California states that the work as a whole must be offensive under the community's standards AND of no redeeming cultural value, which has never fit anything we sell, so

"You Shoulda Met Me Before I Was Famous"

2010-04-30T12:12:00.000-05:00

Or so Mother Bennett said when we were in the middle of that bishop thing. Associated Content ran a piece on Propay vs. the Literary Underworld, quoting my previous blog post extensively. Unfortunately I guess Propay didn't comment, and there's already trolls! Apparently I'm just "bitter" about "being declined" and must've been rejected by Paypal too. Hee. For the record, in case anyone cares

Propay: the Internet's Chastity Belt

2010-04-28T20:13:00.002-05:00

I cannot recall a recent time when I have been so angry. As you probably know, I started doing the speculative-fiction convention circuit about six years ago, upon the sale of my first novel. After a few years, I saw how silly it was for each of the authors to get a separate table in the dealer's room just to hawk our own books. It was a waste of space in the convention hall, a waste of time and

Miracle Girl

2010-04-25T20:48:00.000-05:00

They say if you fold a thousand cranes, you can make a miracle happen. And we called her Miracle Girl. Jennie Sutton had cystic fibrosis. Her lungs destroyed themselves from the inside out, and by the time I met her and her mother, Selena Rochlis, she was already on the transplant list. The disease had robbed Jennie of an adult body, so petite and whisper-thin that at first I thought she was

one for the memory banks

2010-04-20T22:13:00.000-05:00

You never realize the perfect times when they're happening. Only once in a while, you get a little glimpse, a hint that this is one for the memory banks. Kiddo's violin teacher canceled his lesson, which gave me time to run by the store on the way home. No big. The boy went gallivanting about the neighborhood for an hour with his friends, so they can talk about boogers and superheroes, I will

Anatomy of how a scene sucks

2010-04-18T23:14:00.000-05:00

I spent this evening's writing time working on a critter attack on a diner. I needed expositional backstory on the two characters I'm introducing without having a visit from the Exposition Fairy - you know, the moment when the recruiting sergeant reads the soldier's personnel file to him so they can talk about shit both of them already know. Very exciting. But I'm also limited to my main

This Is the Game That Never Ends....

2010-04-18T09:07:00.000-05:00

...It just goes on and on my friend. The longest game in baseball history was Chicago vs. Milwaukee in 1984 at eight hours and 6 minutes. The longest game by innings was Brooklyn vs. Boston in 1920 at 26 innings, but there's an asterisk because they called it a tie when it got dark. 1920, you know. After that it's a tie: the Chicago/Milwaukee game above was 25 innings, as was St. Louis and THE

Steamposium Report

2010-04-16T21:31:00.000-05:00

Yeah, it's a week late. You want punctuality? I'm a writer, dangit. FRIDAY I decided in advance that I wasn't going to care about making a profit this time. This one was for the boy, and for Jenny.* We hadn't gotten into the dealers room, so I was dependent on the kindness of non-strangers anyway. The boy was excited beyond measure to stay in a hotel, go to the City Museum and have adventures

The Keyboard Prayer

2010-04-16T21:12:00.000-05:00

Our program who art in memory HELLO be thy name. Thy operating system come, thy commands be done, at the printer as it is on the screen. Give us this day our daily data, and forgive us our I/O errors as we forgive those whose logic circuits are faulty. Lead us not into frustration and deliver us from power surges. For thine is the algorithm, the application, and the solution, looping forever

Steampunk Week!

2010-04-05T22:35:00.002-05:00

It's STEAMPUNK WEEK at the Literary Underworld!Our featured title this week is the new addition THOMAS RILEY, a wild steampunk adventure by new LitUnd author Nick Valentino.Amidst a twenty-year war, weapons designer Thomas Riley is thrust onto the front lines when a risky alchemic experiment goes wrong, embedding a foreign soul into his wily assistant Cynthia Basset. Thomas and Cynthia are forced

iPad saving us all? Maybe, but not yet.

2010-03-21T00:10:00.002-05:00

Jon Gibbs has an interesting poll/discussion comparing self-publishing to a demo tape. As in, it's a perfectly legitimate way to put yourself out there.I think I side with the folks who say the real "demo tape" of a novel is the ms that goes to the agent or editor, not something released to the general public. I've had my ear tugged about six times by now from people swearing that I need to

book tours

2010-03-19T19:26:00.002-05:00

The L.A. Times has discovered that the multi-city luxury-hotel book tour is pretty much gone.Okay, if you're King, Patterson, Rowling or Grisham, they'll pick up your hotel tab. But then, if you're one of those guys, you're a) not reading this blog, and b) you actually don't need the tour to sell four bazillion copies.For the rest of us groundlings, "tour" is a fairly malleable term. Brian Keene

MSC followup

2010-03-18T08:34:00.000-05:00

to Joseph: I never did find the actual Center for Southern Folklore. But in my wanderings I found several historical markers and boards from them, and they were all about Memphis' rich music history. This is, of course, really great stuff and the primary reason normal people come to Memphis. I, however, was hoping for traditional folklore, for myths and legends, ghosts and river spectres… you

Midsouthcon Merriment, Pt. 4

2010-03-16T23:56:00.003-05:00

SundayThis is turning into the Magna Carta. I didn't really intend that.Sunday was pretty exhausting. We had to hustle out the door because the hotel absolutely refused to do extended checkout for anyone - have I mentioned I don't mind that we're leaving them next year? So I had six people to shove out the door or I got stuck with another ninety-dollar night.We packed out without too much trouble

Midsouthcon Merriment, Pt. 3

2010-03-16T23:18:00.002-05:00

SaturdaySeriously, I was going to be on a panel or seven. For some reason, none of them were on Friday. You know how I always say I'd like to go to panels I'm not on and I never get the chance? I broke my streak at MSC. Angel took the first shift on Saturday, which enabled me to be a lump. Not much of a lump, though, since I had to get the boy going. I then took over the booth for a while, and

Midsouthcon Merriment, Pt. 2

2010-03-16T22:54:00.002-05:00

FridayDavid Tyler joined me on Friday morning to lead me out to Whispering Woods, the northern-Mississippi conference center where the show has been held the last two years. Nothing against the place, but it was really too small - particularly in terms of parking - and the amenities just weren't that great. I won't miss it next year, even though its funky layout was designed by Escher.Jimmy

Midsouthcon Merriment, Pt. 1

2010-03-16T22:34:00.004-05:00

ThursdayWe arrived late Wednesday night to sad news: Jesse's father had just died. Mr. Morris Sr. had struggled with cancer and other illnesses for several years, but there is no way to be prepared for such a thing. My heart goes out to Jesse and his mother, as they continue to deal with their loss.Thursday was Research Day. Being an author, research is a variable term. In the morning, the boy

Group dinner! Midsouthcon! Reader chat!

2010-03-05T15:40:00.003-06:00

We'll be gathering at Memphis Pizza Cafe 7-9ish p.m. Thursday, March 11! Join us.Sigma Alphas, spice, friends and kids all welcome! Tip back a few and tell tall tales of college, as long as no one brings the yearbook photos this time. The more the merrier!I will have books in the trunk in case anyone wants them but doesn't plan to come to Midsouthcon. Should be a blast! Oh, and if you're in the

Blackfire, Day Two

2010-02-26T22:12:00.003-06:00

I got in a few hours of work and finished the opening sequence. Then I had a cigarette.Okay, I don't smoke. But if I did, I would totally have busted out a cigarette after finishing that chapter. Of course, then the smoking police would have hauled me away for lighting up in a coffeehouse - we don't allow such things here in sunny Illinois. But I'm getting away from the point.The point is that

What's in a Name?

2010-02-25T08:03:00.002-06:00

It took a long time to come up with BLACKFIRE, and right away someone pointed out that there is a 1987 Star Trek tie-in titled BLACK FIRE. That teaches me not to Google.Sure, but it's two words, not one. And there's also an anthology of African-American writing titled BLACK FIRE and novels by James Kidman, Steve Brown and Maggie Bonilla-Thompson. All two words, which makes it a different Amazon

Blackfire, Day One

2010-02-24T21:20:00.003-06:00

There's a method to my madness. I didn't stop SANCTUARY just because it's an endless behemoth with no hope of publication or being, y'know, good. I stopped because I had a new book to write. Temporary title: BLACKFIRE.And we had a good start.Not bad for a first day, though we're nearly 2,000 words in and we're just getting to the first monster. But I think I'm doing okay at capturing a place I've