I've been ramping up the writing again. Which is why I haven't been posting here after a flurry of entries a couple of weeks ago. See, I started ramping up the writing, and then began writing some projects that I hope to sell soon. Part of that ol' "professional writer" scene is actually getting paid for one's writing. (Not that I don't love writing for y'all for free, mind you.)

One of my new short stories has already been bounced in the best possible way (and I will likely develop it into a novel); another is likely to be sold (although one doesn't count one's chickens until they've come home to roost) -- I was asked for a minor revision, which I've done, so now I just have to wait and see if it passes muster -- and I just completed a third story which I feel pretty good about and I've submitted it to its intended market.

As is always the case with selling short fiction, it is likely to be weeks before I know anything about the disposition of the two that are still in play, but I feel good just getting stuff out there. Oh, and the piece that has already been rejected for its intended market is going to go back out to other markets shortly, even though I still plan to write its novel companion.

In the meantime, some light humor that I collaborated on with a friend of mine back in our *high school* days is about to be included in an anthology that will be published this coming April 1st. It's not my best stuff -- for that matter, it's not the best work that I produced in collaboration with this particular writing partner -- nor is it the material I would have chosen for the "Best Of" that it's going to appear in, but it's a book with a print run of 5,000 or greater, so it's still a publication credit.

And as a recent writing workshop reminded me, we are often not the best judges of our own work.

I'm glad to have finally gotten that third story finished this morning. I'm pretty sure that means my output for this year has already surpassed my fiction writing for all of 2007. Now let's see if there are some folks out there who would like (to pay) to read it.

As regular readers of my little missives here are aware (both of you), I occasionally suffer from bouts of insomnia. There are other occasions, however, when I enjoy them, instead.

The insomnia that's been plaguing me since the beginning of the year has been more severe than usual, and I've given up trying to fight it. As is typical, I find it difficult to do productive work during these bouts, so in the wee hours of the morning I'm now catching up on my backlog of DVDs. These include the first couple of seasons of the new "Battlestar Galactica" television series.

The new incarnation of this series is clearly an effort of my generation to reinterpret the television sci-fi of our parents' generation. And allow me to say that when it comes to sci-fi dramas (like BSG, or Firefly, or Babylon 5, or Heroes) or, for that matter, even mainstream dramas or crime shows (such as Law & Order, or anything by David Kelley or Joss Whedon, and a few seasons of ER), my generation is *so* good when it comes to writing. The dialog, the pacing, the story, the character arcs -- the best of the current and recent crop of shows more than holds its own against the best of the past. The original Star Trek? The Fugitive? The Prisoner? Amateurs. The original Battlestar Galactica was hokey. The new version is a masterpiece.

(At least, so far. The finale of the first season is still fresh on my mind, and it was amazing. I'm almost halfway through season two, and the standards keep improving. Wow.)

Even shoot-em-up serials like "24" have a punch that at the very least matches the best of its predecessors. The tagline for "24" should be: "We've upped our stakes. Up yours."

And yet, as much as my generation has learned about telling a good tale and setting up a good crime scene, we apparently don't know shit about sit-coms. "Frasier" was the last sit-com to have any kind of even half-way decent writing and innovation, but when you get right down to it, the Bill Cosby Show and Cheers (both of which were modeled after previous sit-coms and neither of which were particularly innovative) were the last of the "great" traditional sit-coms.

Why is that? Why can't my generation write a compelling situation comedy? Or, perhaps, why can't my generation produce/finance one that's well written?

My thought for the day: if one wants to make a name as a television writer, re-visit the sit-com. Study up on the classics, like the Dick Van Dyke Show or Bob Newhart or Mary Tyler-Moore, and then open up a can of Generation X Whoop Ass on it. Snark fests are not comedy, and back-talking children are not interesting. Bring on the intelligent, thoughtful, poignant humor like the greats once did, and aim those guns at the twenty-first century.

I'm told that "Arrested Development" started to go down that path (I haven't seen it, yet, but I plan to -- and I worry that it may be a bit on the snarky side), and I'll point out that the writing on Bab5 is what paved the way for the even better writing of Firefly or the new BSG. I'm inclined to think that we're almost there; that my generation is ready for laughter that doesn't come from a can.

What do you think? Am I missing any truly great situation comedy that's being produced today?

WARNING: THIS ENTRY CONTAINS "SPOILERS" REGARDING THE MOVIES "SOMEWHERE IN TIME" AND "THE LAKE HOUSE". And "Sliding Doors". And "Romeo & Juliet". And a few others. If you have any interest in seeing these movies but haven't done so, then you are advised to rent and see them now and return immediately to read my timely comments.

Heh, heh. I said "timely."

I've been thinking a great deal about fiction and the defense of the status quo, lately. To wit: most (but not all) commercially successful popular fiction, be it in print or film, ultimately embraces accepted social norms. This is important to me right now, because of the novel that is brewing in my head and threatening to spill onto the electronic page before too long.

Stephen King wrote an excellent essay in his non-fiction book, Danse Macabre, in which he points out that the horror genre is particularly conservative (that's "conservative" as in: defending tradition and demonizing -- literally, in this case -- any departure from the status quo). His point is very well made, and I highly recommend you seek out his comments. In short: the horror genre is all about doling out punishments for breaking the rules.

Most other genres are about doling out rewards for following the rules, which is what makes horror the flip-side of the mainstream coin: it's a focus on the negative, but it's still supporting the status quo.

Consider navel-gazer movies like "The Family Man" or "Me, Myself, I", where the protagonist gets a chance to compare "what if?" lives of having pursued career versus having pursued love and family. In all such movies, the protagonist ultimately realizes that even though their life in which they pursued the career was fabulously successful -- bringing them fame and money and a fantastic quality of life -- still, it's better to have the life of mired suburbian mediocrity with the noble-yet-imperfect mate and the infants who pee on you and all the similar joys of middle-class conformity because, hey, it's more emotionally fulfilling than driving fancy cars and eating at the best restaurants and wearing tailored clothes.

In short, these movies are pandering to their Western Civ, middle-class audience. "Hey, you there! In the middle-class! You made the right choice! Don't you feel affirmed?"

Occasionally, you'll see an excellent and commercially successful story that doesn't pander. The movie "Sliding Doors" has a similar "what if?" opportunity to see a life go in two different directions at a decision point, and the ending of the story is quite satisfying while, at the same time, it doesn't hand the audience a pat judgement on how love always triumphs and all that rot. Actually, it had quite a different premise: that, when all is said and done, we will be who we will be... that single decision points do not a life make.

Since there is such a thing as excellent, commercially successful fiction that also manages to not pander to the audience and endorse the status quo, I need to come to terms with how that works. I want the novel that I'm working on to be such a story; to challenge certain societal norms and still be compelling and satisfying.

I was hoping to find such a story in the movie, "The Lake House." This is a recent flick that falls into the "time-travel romance" sub-genre. The previews implied that it might have a subversive take on the status quo.

Of course, in the romance genre, the rules are: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back. If the story is a comedy, the successful conclusion of the formula is kisses and happiness ever after. If the story is a tragedy, then the last piece of the formula (boy wins girl back) is thwarted, and everyone dies as punishment. See "Romeo & Juliet".

Both the comedic and the tragic variation are satisfactory endorsements of the status quo, since successful completion of the formula means life and goodness, and failure to live up to the terms of the formula means death and sadness. If only Juliet dies and Romeo goes on to live a happy life of debauchery, then the status quo is not supported, and the audience gets mighty cheesed.

When a story is successful even though it doesn't pander, it is because the story still resonates with Truth. To bring up "Sliding Doors" again as an example, it is satisfying because it acknowledges that the consequences of our choices are more complicated -- and more interesting -- than simply "good" and "bad". The movie endorses hope, even while it denies the "happily ever after" myth.

Which brings me to "The Lake House", which I had picked up for a few bucks at the local DVD store's sidewalk sale. I was hoping to see some interesting choices in the storytelling, because the premise is kinda neat. Boy doesn't meet girl, because boy and girl are living in two different time zones. As in: two years apart. They correspond via a magic mailbox, fall in love, and get really, really frustrated with their timing woes. Surely, this must resonate with middle America. Isn't the middle-class all about frustration?

[As a side note, I'd like to recommend that the designers of the back cover of the DVD case be arrested and sent to a Turkish prison. The blurbs on the back cover keep saying, "Can the two ever meet?" while half of the photos show the two main actors together in the same scenes. I mean, what the intercourse is up with that? It's like putting on the back of "The Empire Strikes Back" the question, "Is Darth Vader really Luke Skywalker's father?" with a picture of Vader holding up a baby photo of little Luke nestled serenely in young Darth Vader's arms.]

The problem with the Lake House is not simply that it violates all concepts of time-travel causality. This wasn't supposed to be a science fiction flick, strictly speaking. Rather, its fatal flaw is that it tries so hard to pander to the audience ("Love rulz! Woo-hoo!") that it violates its own sense of Truth. It tries to give us the Happily Ever After ending, even after it very clearly set up the tragic death ending. The movie held open the possibility, right up until the final scene, that there could be an interesting, sophisticated Truth that would allow one character to live on while the other one dies. Instead, we get this pandering message: because he "waited", everybody lives happily ever after, after all.

Oh, by the way, that was the spoiler I warned you about.

Pander, pander, pander.

When I was a young'un, there was a movie called "Somewhere In Time" that also had the ill-fated time-travel romance kink going on. It starred Superman and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, and the story was, as in "The Lake House," cleverly laid out right up until the last scene. "Somewhere in Time", however, managed to pull off an emotionally satisfying resolution without pandering *too* much. It managed to have both its tragic cake and happily eat it, too, by allowing the boy to die *and* get the girl. Oh sure, it was a sappy reunited-in-death kind of thing, but dude... the guy's death was *so* satisfying that it made the whole thing work. I don't think it would have worked as well if it had only the tragedy, nor only the happily-ever-after. What it did was offer us a third alternative: rather than "love is good" versus "losing love is bad", we got "love can make you lose your mind as well as your appetite. And then you die." Now *there's* a Truth that resonates.

Now that I think about it, "Sliding Doors" also managed to have both the tragic ending and the (nominally) hopeful ending all rolled up together. And the guy died in "Ghost", too, and that was popular. And same for "Titanic". Hmmm.

But not "The Lake House." It sets up for both possibilities, but then instead of choosing a third alternative, or even the more plausible tragic ending, it short circuits itself and makes a break for the happy ending. It doesn't work.

As an extrovert, I'm inclined to throw my ideas out there and see what shape they take. While my original intention of writing this little missive was to rail against the maddening ending of "The Lake House" -- I mean, really, all that wasted set-up! -- I realize now that this is really about the novel I'm constructing. How do I make it commercially viable and still not pander?

The answer is simple. It's not enough that I'm going to kill two of my main characters. I'm also going to have to add a romantic element. And pathos. [sigh.] Writing is such hard work.

One of the many rules of thumb when it comes to being a writer is this:

NEVER READ YOUR REVIEWS.

There are three likely scenarios in reviews of your work:

1. The review makes an unflattering remark about your work, and so you break down, feel worthless, and stop writing.
2. The review makes a flattering remark about your work, and so you get greedy, go looking for more, and then encounter an unflattering remark, and you break down, feel worthless, and stop writing. That, or the reviews will get something wrong about your work, and that will send you into a tailspin of despair, and you'll stop writing.
3. The review makes a bland reference to your work that is non-evaluative -- or, even worse, makes no reference to your contribution at all -- which leaves you feeling empty and hollow and overlooked, and you stop writing.

What you are supposed to do is NEVER READ YOUR REVIEWS and, instead, let trusted others cull them for you, passing along only the praise and leaving out the rest.

Alas, while I wholeheartedly subscribe to this philosophy, I nonetheless fail miserably at practicing it.

My pro fiction publications thus far appear in two anthologies (Hags, Sirens, and Other Bad Girls of Fantasy and Cosmic Cocktails). The first antho, which was published this past summer, received many reviews, most of which either neglected to mention my contribution in particular, or mentioned it by way of a general list that gave a quick description of all or most of the stories. Of course, that stands to reason: out of twenty pieces, only a few will stand out; mine was a lighthearted take on the subject, and nothing more. There were far more compelling contributions than mine in the book.

There was *one* review that called my story as one of the highlights of the anthology. But, unfortunately, the review in question is in Swedish. Do any of you faithful readers know Swedish? Here's how an online translation engine interprets the passage into English:

"Band of Sisters", of Allan Rousselle, am acting in short gott if they four sirenerna. This story each both almighty funny and almighty shrewd. For that nots mention cruel. And then am meaning self cruel of the heartless battle.

Woo-hoo! Thanks! I think.

But all along, I had felt that my story in Cosmic Cocktails was a better piece, so I was waiting for that one to come out before I started nudging my friends to read my stuff. It turns out that some reviewers liked that one as well. SFRevu.com reviewer Ernest Lilley, for example, was kind enough to say:

... On the other hand, "Everybody stops at Boston's" does both right. It doesn't have to take place on Copernicus Station, orbiting Saturn after the Earth turns to nano-goo, or even in a bar where everybody on the station winds up...though it doesn't hurt. The intersection of time travel conundrum and human response is exactly what SF should be and this story at least hits the spot.

Amazon.com quotes Publisher's Weekly as saying:

... Others recall the mind-bending neo-noir of Philip K. Dick, as in Allan Rousselle's intoxicating story about a hired killer traveling back in time to terminate the inventor of a time machine.

For those of you who are not familiar with science fiction writers, being compared to Philip K. Dick like this is a happy thing. Having such a mention from Publisher's Weekly is even happier.

I also enjoyed a favorable mention in The Davis Enterprise, where book critic Kristin L. Gray said:

Allan Rousselle’s “Everybody Stops at Boston’s” also stands out. This is a time travel story with a chaser of assassination and a twist at the end. It asks a very simple question: Are certain inventions so inevitable that, no matter what happens, they’ll be created?

Are you intrigued? Then buy the book! Cosmic Cocktails is edited by Denise Little and available at fine bookstores everywhere. (Heck, special order it if they don't already have it on the shelves!)

As for me, well... I'm so happy with the reviews, I've stopped writing.

Now available in bookstores, both brick & mortar and online:

Cosmic Cocktails
Edited by Denise Little

Also available from Amazon.com and BN.com.

My story is a rather dark one, blurbed on the back as being about a 'time-traveling assasin', entitled "Everybody Stops at Boston's." I hope you like it!

You a writer, or an avid reader of fiction? You dig story? You dig movies?

Stranger That Fiction is a writer's movie, and a pretty good one, at that. If you writes much, or reads much, I think you'll dig it.

Don't ask why. Don't ask what it's about. Just check it out, and get back to me later.

I'd originally written the following artlce for Clarion West's alumni newsletter, The Seventh Week. After I put it together, the editor and I decided it was more a review of the kind of information disseminated during the six week program than it was a presentation of information new to CW grads, so we agreed to cut it from the newsletter. Nonetheless, this is information that writers who are new to the field might find useful, so I present herewith:

Clarion West and other writers workshops are dedicated to improving the craft of writing speculative fiction, but for the person who wants to sell his or her stories, there's also the matter of learning the business. Just as software engineers, plumbers, and law enforcement officials have trade shows where they can network and learn the business side of their trade, so too writers have conventions.

The mere mention of science fiction conventions conjures up images of men and women dressing up as Klingons and Jedi and -- these days -- students from Hogwarts going to masquerades, playing board games, and arguing over plot points from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But while these conventions (typically referred to as "cons") can have their fan side, they also often have their professional track, as well.

Cons provide a number of ways to ground the writer in the professional community. For newcomers to the field, panel discussions by established authors on subjects like "Things I Wish Some Pro Had Told Me When I Was Starting Out" or established agents on "Electronic Rights and the Future of Book Contracts" are a great way to not only learn something of interest, but also to get to know who the experts, up-and-comers, and old-reliables are in our field. And while not all panelists fit into those categories, the newcomer who pays attention will quickly get a sense of who is in-the-know and who leans to pretending.

While panels are a great way to sample some of the trends in the industry, most writers who attend cons emphasize a more important career building exercise: networking.

"I go to network with other writers," says Irene Radford, the Con Liaison for SFWA, "often from different locations I would not normally get to meet. I get to network with agents and editors."

Jay Lake, winner of the John W. Campbell Award in 2005, agrees. "You're not there to sell or do business, you're there to network -- with your peers, with better established writers, and with editors, agents and reviewers."

While much of this networking takes place at the hotel bars and the pro parties, there is also a unique opportunity offered by many cons known as the kaffeclatch. Many cons will set aside a room with several tables that each feature a prominent professional for fifty-minute (or hour or hour-and-a-half) conversations. Because seating is limited at each table, and because the idea is to allow actual interaction to take place, there are typically sign-up sheets for each scheduled kaffeclatch. One can learn a great deal by sitting down to conversation with a favorite author or editor and ten or so other interested individuals.

Here is an excerpt from a document written on July 2nd, 1776 by Thomas Jefferson and then slightly revised and endorsed by a collection of radical Americans at a clandestine meeting two days later. Mr. Jefferson was far from a perfect man or even a perfect leader, but the guy sure knew how to write:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence indeed, will dictate, that Governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.

Still resonates, does it not?

Now available in bookstores... in fact, it's already on the shelves in the major chains:

Hags, Sirens, and Other Bad Girls of Fantasy
Edited by Denise Little

Also available from Amazon.com and BN.com.

My story is the one about the Sirens ("Band of Sisters"). It isn't high art, by any means, but I nonetheless hope you find it entertaining.

Subtitle: Do People Change? Part I

It's that time of year again. The time of year often referred to as "Dads and Grads" -- when Father's Day and Graduation Day collide. What better time of year for me to trot out the Worst Valedictorian Speech Ever?

There are a number of reasons that this should come up right now; several different conversations between and among colleagues of mine, past and present, converged upon my recent discovery of a copy of the Bennett High School (Buffalo, NY) valedictorian speech for 1986. It is a crude document, and I don't even know if this copy is a first draft or the piece as it was delivered. I do know that starting the following year, Bennett's valedictorians had to run their speeches by the principal before they were to be delivered.

By way of background, I'll tell you how my thinking led up to this particular speech. [I'd considered posting this speech anonymously, but I'll cop to it. I wrote it. I'm embarrassed by it now, but I wrote it.]

Valedictorian addresses tend to be 1) long, 2) boring, 3) filled with homilies about how "we are the future" and all that nonsense, and 4) otherwise devoid of a point. I therefore set out to write a speech that was: 1) short, 2) not boring, and 3) offered no pat epigraphs nor advice for the future and 4) made a point.

That said, I could have gone the comedy/humor route and accomplished those goals, but I since the point I wanted to make was not funny, I ended up going down the crabby route instead.

Also by way of background: the teachers and the administration were actively and openly fighting each other during my last two years at the school, which had some very direct and very personal consequences for a few of my classmates.

I am not proud at all of this speech or my choices in making it. But it is what it is, and I was who I was at the time. I can be every bit as crabby these days as I was back then (although, to be fair, I'm not *always* crabby), but I'd like to think that I have a more delicate touch these days, when I choose to use it.

Allow me to set the scene: it's 1986. Summer in Buffalo. Hot. Sticky. The graduating class of 300 or so adolescents is rowdy. Each grad having been allowed up to four guests (and many finding a way to sneak in more than that), the auditorium is packed. I took the stage. I waited for everyone to quiet down. After I stood there for a few moments, they did quiet down. Silence. Then I read a short note that went something like this:

So ends four years of high school.

What can I say? There are many things I'd like to say, but I don't know where to begin. Some people have said they think my speech should be positive while others think I should talk about the negative side of Bennett. The fact is that there are both positive and negative aspects that we should consider . . . about Bennett, and about leaving Bennett.

When I decided to come to Bennett, I though that high school would be a place where administrators and teachers worked together to raise the level of education of the students . . . an institution where creative thought was fostered and intellectual and athletic pursuits were encouraged. Well, I didn't find quite that here at Bennett, but I did find several experiences which will serve me well in my future endeavors. None of us are leaving Bennett without an education, although much of that education was received outside the classroom. In fact, most of the knowledge we have gained here is based upon our experiences with the politics of a high school culture. It has become clear to me that the students who pursued knowledge were able to find it. Keep in mind that even though we are graduating, we should still pursue an education.

To my fellow graduating students, I wish you farewell. There is no warning I can give you that you haven't already heard; no advice that hasn't already been offered; no profound thought that would make a difference at this time. I have come to know some of you and found friendship with a few of you.

And so, here I am, with a great opportunity to say all of the things I've been wanting to say, but I'm leaving most of it unsaid. I am concerned about too many things. If I told you everything that bothered me, nothing positive would be accomplished and it would give you an inaccurate view of my opinions of Bennett. If I talked about Peace, Love, and Kindness, it would no doubt make you throw up in those silly little hats they make us wear at these ceremonies. Yes, I'm leaving a lot of things unsaid.

So ends four years of high school.

When I finished, you could hear a pin drop in the auditorium. I don't recall there being any applause. A teacher later mentioned to me that after I left the stage, she leaned over to a colleague and said, "If I ever hold a parade, remind me to invite Allan over to rain on it." Or words to that effect.

Did I really say "throw up in those silly little hats they make us wear?" I shudder to think that I may have.

But if I was bitter at the time, I will note that history vindicated my displeasure. At the time I entered BHS, it had only recently been the spawning grounds of the City Honors school. After a few years under the reign of Principal W., it became one of the worst rated schools academically in the state of New York -- a dubious distinction that it continues to maintain, despite the departure of the aforementioned principal a couple of years ago.

BTW, I like Ms. W. as a person. She was kind and supportive of me, and certainly presented a laudable attitude toward the school. I just thought at the time (and still think) that her priorities for running the school were contrary to providing a sound education.

As another side-note, I will also mention that my dearest friend and academic rival from my high school class has offered a credible claim that a math error in calculating our class standings falsely reversed her (salutatorian) and my positions within the ranks. In other words, she has a compelling case that she deserved the valedictorian position and I the salutatorian. [Our respective GPAs, adjusted for giving honors classes a stronger weight, were a statistical tie, with naught but a sliver of a sliver of a percentage point separating us. It could easily have gone either way. The official results gave me the edge. My friend's contention is that the official results are based upon an ever-so-slight math error in the calculation of her adjusted GPA.]

If her argument is true (and I suspect that it is), it throws my acceptance into Cornell (and later, UPenn for grad school) into doubt, not to mention any subsequent edge I may have enjoyed in employment opportunities because of my degree(s), cascading into a domino effect that could mean that I *should* be a very different person today than I am. [How do you like that lead-in to my "Do people change?" subtitle?]

I am certain that my high school rival's speech, had she the opportunity to have written one, would have been far more eloquent than mine. BUT... would she have had the guts to rain quite so hard on our graduation parade?

Look for more thoughts on these and other questions in an upcoming post...

My rejection letters continue to get nicer and more encouraging. I have a few editors now who have asked me in their own handwriting to keep sending them stuff, including two editors who have done so for the first time in the past few weeks.

Of course, I'd rather receive a check and a contract than a handwritten rejection, but the handwritten rejection is yet another step in the right direction for my budding career as a published fictioneer.

Earlier on these electronic pages, I'd noted that my second pro sale (also a short story) would probably see the light of day during the second half of 2007. Well, things are moving faster than that. According to Amazon.com, Cosmic Cocktails by Denise Little (editor) from DAW Books will go on sale December 5th of this year. I've read several of the stories that will appear therein, and they were all excellent. My contribution is entitled "Everybody Stops at Boston's."

Yee-ha.

I'm happy to report that my first "professional" short fiction sale (as defined by SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America; five cents per word or more, from "qualifying" publishers) is going to the presses. My short story "Band of Sisters" will appear in the anthology Hags, Sirens and Other Bad Girls of Fantasy edited by Denise Little and published by DAW Books. My story is the one about the Sirens.

Quoth Amazon.com: "This title will be released July 5, 2006." But naturally, you can buy it in advance now.

Sometime in July, several of the authors and I hope to be at a signing event to celebrate the release of the book. More news as it develops...

In the meantime, I have just recently learned that I've sold another short story at pro rates. I'll post the details once the publication info is finalized (it's for an anthology that is likely to be published in the second half of 2007, but titles, release dates, and other details can change quite a bit in that amount of time).

Now, if only I could find more time to write....

I'm on a listserv where someone sent out a link to a list of "best first lines" of novels. A few of us on the listserv noted that in some cases, lines were included because they were from great novels, not because they were great lines. (I might even take issue with the idea that some of those novels were great, but they certainly are all respected for one reason or another.)

As much as I thought several "best lines" were missing from the list, it was a great conversation starter. So, let's play! Before I go into a long list of best lines that should have been included from *my* favorite novels, let's start with just one author in particular. I've already played a similar game with Robert A. Heinlein. In fact, that had started with another essay I'd written about first lines in general (when a fellow writer posed the question of what a first line should accomplish).

Let's play "Best First Lines" with today's guest author, Stephen King. I've culled the list down to what I arbitrarily consider to be the "top twenty":

From Rage:

The morning I got it on was nice; a nice May morning.

From 'Salem's Lot:

Almost everyone thought the man and the boy were father and son.

From The Shining:

Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick.

From "Night Surf":

After the guy was dead and the smell of his burning flesh was on the air, we all went back down to the beach.

From "The Mangler":

Officer Hunton got to the laundry just as the ambulance was leaving -- slowly, with no sirens or flashing lights.

From "Trucks":

The guy's name was Snodgrass and I could see him getting ready to do something crazy.

From "The Ledge":

"Go on," Cressner said again. "Look in the bag."

From "The Lawnmower Man":

In previous years, Harold Parkette had always taken pride in his lawn.

From Cujo:

Once upon a time, not so long ago, a monster came to the small town of Castle Rock, Maine.

From "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption":

There's a guy like me in every state and federal prison in America, I guess -- I'm the guy who can get it for you.

From Christine:

This is the story of a lover's triangle, I suppose you'd say -- Arnie Cunningham, Leigh Cabot, and, of course, Christine.

From "The Mist":

This is what happened.

From It:

The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years -- if it ever did end -- began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.

From The Dark Tower:

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

From "Secret Window, Secret Garden":

"You stole my story," the man on the doorstep said.

From "The Library Police":

Everything, Sam Peebles decided later, was the fault of the goddamned acrobat.

From "Dolan's Cadillac":

I waited and watched for seven years.

From "The Doctor's Case":

I believe there was only one occasion upon which I actually solved a crime before my slightly fabulous friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

From "Why We're in Vietnam":

When someone dies, you think about the past.

From "L.T.'s Theory of Pets":

My friend L.T. hardly ever talks about how his wife disappeared, or how she's probably dead, just another victim of the axe man, but he likes to tell the story of how she walked out on him.

I love these lines because they do what a first line should do: make you want to read the second line.

Funny thing. We finally got around to sending out year-end letters to friends and family, and for many of the news items we noted that the reader could find more details by visiting my website.

At around the time as we started preparing the letters, I stopped posting to the website. Which means that if anyone has been visiting my site of late, they've found nothing new except lame wishes for a pleasant end of the year.

It hasn't been for a lack of things on my mind. There's been more than enough subjects I've been wanting to comment on. The current bribe scandals unfolding in both houses of Congress, the continuing nonsense being referred to as "Teach the Debate", the idea that I should make up some New Years Resolutions, parallels between the war in Iraq and the Spanish-American War, the status of the Patriot Act, and possibly the most profound recent event, Jessica Simpson's pending divorce*.

No, it's been fear. All writers occasionally bump into a block of some sort. Some find themselves daunted by the blank page. Others find themselves bereft of ideas. Still others are thwarted by the internal censor. "No, don't write that. You could get into trouble for writing that." Therein lies my own block. The internal censor has been my bugaboo.

The internal censor has been warning me lately not to dive too far into the issues that touch upon religiosity. Don't want to offend any of my family or friends who feel passionately about their beliefs (or disbeliefs).

Likewise, because I find myself simply overcommitted with work and family commitments, I am not taking the time to be as well informed on contemporary political issues as I would like to be. So my internal censor cautions me against political punditry lest I make a fool of myself.

The problem has not been confined to my blog -- although, certainly there are many topics I'd like to present to you that discretion dictates I make just a wee bit less public than this House of Cards. But private and semi-private means of communication are also proving to be a challenge for me these days.

Having occasionally been chastised for being too informal in my dealings with clients and coworkers, I often find myself writing e-mail messages complete with very direct communication about how I feel regarding a certain course of action, only to delete that message and write something a little less forthright. (This kind of self-censorship might be referred to as "maturity".) This is probably as it should be, but it fits as part of a larger pattern: it has created a habit that has extended to my online journal entries. I've got about five posts I've written that currently reside in my content management system in "draft (unpublished)" mode because, after writing them, I thought better of making them public.

I'm on several listservs where participants have practically begged to be slapped upside the head, but after writing my little rejoinders... I delete them and simply let it go. Better to let someone else do the e-slapping, and take the resulting heat that follows.

What the hell is that all about? Who am I, and what did "they" do with the real me?

Someone on a listserv I'm on checked out this website after I'd mentioned that photos of Alexander and Nolan appear here, and they were kind enough to say that I'm "interesting." How messed up is this -- I've been afraid, ever since, that I might post something that is not interesting. The internal censor again:

"Dude. Don't talk about your 'Solipsist Manifesto'. It won't be interesting enough. No more baby pictures! They're not interesting enough!"

So, yeah. My writers block has been fear -- the Internal Censor that kills with a thousand paper cuts.

Okay. Now that I've admitted my insecurities, let's move on. At least I've posted something. I'll leave the task of posting something *interesting* for another day.

As part of my high-tech whirlwind database life, I occasionally travel to locales far and wide to teach accountants and IT professionals at law firms how to use a database language called SQL (structured query language). Sounds exciting, doesn't it? This is excitement personified.

When a law firm hosts one of these classes -- which is to say, when they provide the training facilities and allow others to attend -- they are accorded a couple of "free" seats in the class. Typically, the employees of the host law firm who attend the class run the risk of getting less out of the class than their counterparts who travel from nearby towns to attend.

Why? Because when a person attends training within their own firm's offices, he or she is often called away for a quick-emergency-meeting or to put out this-one-little-fire or something along those lines. Their training time is not respected by their colleagues because -- Hey! -- they are there at the office anyway, so what harm could it be to pull them out of the class for one teensie-weensie-moment.

Attendees who pay full fare and come in from another firm are not at their office mate's (or boss's) beck and call, and therefore can't be pulled aside to attend to a quick little problem.

For lack of a better term, I'll call this the "locals' lament". It's convenient geographically and economically, at least, for you to be the host but the distractions of being on your home turf keep pulling you away.

So it is for me and this year's North American Science Fiction Convention. My wife and I attempt every year to attend the annual World Science Fiction Convention (typically held during the days leading into the Labor Day weekend) because it features a strong track for professional writers in the field. When "WorldCon" is held outside of North America (this year's was held in Scotland), there is a smaller version held on our home continent, the aforementioned "NASFiC". This year's NASFiC is being held in our home town.

Should be convenient, no? Should make our lives easier, because we don't have so much to arrange in terms of travel and taking care of the kids and all that stuff, right?

Nope. Just as we missed the World Horror Convention when it was held here a couple of years ago, we find our attendance at this year's NASFiC very, very challenging. Difficulties and distractions at the office and at home have led me to miss all of the ceremonies, panels, and parties thus far. Yesterday, I left work in time to make dinner with some friends in town for the Con, but that's the most I've managed so far. Instead of our annual week-long participation, it looks like Paulette and I will be able to get two days this weekend at the most.

Next year's WorldCon will be held in LA. We look forward to having it away from home again (as usual), so that we can once more take full advantage of it.

I'm currently working on a novel (well, if I could make time to write, I'd be working on a novel) which takes a highly unlikely proposition that many people nonetheless believe and examines it along the lines of: what if it were actually true? What would that mean to our society, to the world, and how would it shape the way we look at our past and our future?

A friend of mine recently completed a novel that will appear very soon in print that works along similar lines. His novel asks: what if Sasquatch existed? What would that mean to our society? Who would be affected, and how? Because he brings such vivid scientific and forensic detail to his novel, the story is very compelling. If Sasquatch did exist today, then what does that imply about our past? About our future? What kind of evidence would be necessary to establish the existence as fact, and who would believe it even if it were available?

The medical, anthropological, historical, and zoological detail of the novel is fascinating. The author's understanding of the battles within academia are beyond reproach. And the inner workings of the government as depicted in the novel ring true, but who am I to say? And yet, the story doesn't get bogged down in detail. It sings along at a very fast pace.

So there. Your reading assignment is to pick up Cryptid when it comes out. Be sure to visit my friend's website at ericpenz.com. Tell him that his friend and critiquer Allan sent you.

One of the most influential American authors of the twentieth century, Robert A. Heinlein, was born on this day (that would be July 7th, for those of you not too sure of today's date) in 1907.

Insofar as my previous post was on the subject of first lines in fiction, I thought I'd celebrate in part by listing a few first lines from Heinlein short stories and novels. Not all of these may be of the "grab you by the lapels and shake vigorously" variety, but I think you'll agree that they at least suggest enough to make you want to see the line or two that follow. Favorites include:

from Beyond This Horizon, his first published novel:

Their problems were solved: the poor they no longer had with them; the sick, the lame, the halt, and the blind were historic memories; the ancient casues of war no longer obtained; they had more freedom than Man has ever enjoyed. All of them should have been happy --

from The Day After Tomorrow:

"What the hell goes on here?"

from "Waldo":

The act was billed as ballet tap -- which does not describe it.

from "Magic, Inc.":

"Whose spells are you using, buddy?"

from "The Roads Must Roll":

"Who makes the roads roll?"

from "Requiem":

On a high hill in Samoa there is a grave.

from "The Long Watch":

Johnny Dahlquist blew smoke at the Geiger counter.

from "The Green Hills of Earth":

This is the story of Rhysling, the blind singer of the Spaceways -- but not the official version.

from The Puppet Masters:

Were they truly intelligent?

from "Jerry Was a Man":

Don't blame the Martians.

from The Door Into Summer:

One winter shortly before the Six Weeks War my tomcat, Petronius the Arbiter, and I lived in an old farmhouse in Connecticut.

from Have Space Suit -- Will Travel:

You see, I had this space suit.

from "The Year of the Jackpot":

At first Potiphar Breen did not notice the girl who was undressing.

from "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag":

"Is it blood, doctor?"

from Stranger in a Strange Land:

Once upon a time there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith.

from Time Enough for Love:

History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion -- ie, none to speak of.

from The Number of the Beast:

"He's a Mad Scientist and I'm his Beautiful Daughter."

from The Cat Who Walks Through Walls:

"We need you to kill a man."

from To Sail Beyond the Sunset:

I woke up in bed with a man and a cat. The man was a stranger; the cat was not.

And lastly, a first line that certainly makes *me* want to read more, from "It's Great to be Back!":

"Hurry up, Allan!"

A fellow writer is teaching a section on first lines for a creative writing class, and asked her colleagues for their thoughts on the role of first lines in fiction. I am not as well-published as the other folks in the group (yet), but I nonetheless have an opinion (doesn't everybody?).

It seems to me that the purpose of a first line is to get the reader (be he/she/it a consumer, an acquisitions editor, an agent, a student, a bookstore manager, or whatever) to want to read the next few sentences. That's it. Hook the reader enough to keep reading a few more sentences.

Whether the author accomplishes this by introducing and/or developing sympathy for a character, a setting, or a plot point is immaterial. The point is to get the reader to keep reading.

The purpose of the next few sentences, naturally, is to compel the reader to read the next few paragraphs. And those few paragraphs, in turn, should establish the kind of relationship with the reader such that the reader naturally wants to take in the rest of the book.

Now, the first few paragraphs typically must contain specific elements in order to accomplish the desired goal. But the first line, it seems to me, has an incredibly simple job and can accomplish it in a wide variety of ways. (That, of course, is why writing the first line is so hard.)

Typically, though, the successful first line compels readers to keep reading because they pose a question in the readers mind:

"He died."

Who did? How? Why?

"Call me Ishmael."

Why?

"It was a pleasure to burn."

It was? For whom? What's being burned? Why?

"Once upon a time, there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith."

Oh? How'd that happen?

Some of my favorite first lines can be found in William Gibson's Burning Chrome. Pick any story from that collection and read the first line. Lots of action, lots of drama packed into quick, compelling sentences that all beg the question: Why? They all establish a need in the reader to know more.

Most people think that the purpose of a resume is to get you the job. It isn't. The purpose of the resume is to get you the interview.

Likewise, the first sentence doesn't need to sell the story. It's entire purpose is to get you to read just a little bit more. Let the next few sentences establish a setting or a character or a problem (or all three). The compelling first line simply establishes one need in the reader: you want to know more.

Now, if I can only convert these pearls of wisdom into professional sales, I'll be all set....

One particular bright spot this week came on Monday, in the form of a check in the mail for my writing.

My first professional fiction sale.

My short story "Band of Sisters" will appear in an anthology from DAW Books, although the publication details are still pending. Naturally, I'll post the title and release date once we get word on when, in fact, it's going to be published.

Other submissions to other editors appear to be getting more favorable notice, as well, even if they haven't yet generated more checks. I've finally made it off the slush pile for two pro markets I've been trying to crack for years (ie, I'm being personally rejected by the editor with a thoughtful note, rather than with a form rejection note or an assistant editor's bounce), and I'm pleased to note that it's taking longer, in some cases, for certain periodicals to bounce me than they used to. Yes, it's a funny sort of progress, but progress, nonetheless.

It's taken a while to get to this point. Do you know what happens next? Now, I need to work on my second sale. It's a long process, but this is how one builds a writing career.

Joseph Haines put on his website an invitation to post made-up memories, taking the lead of a similar request on another website (Jed Hartman's). Joseph is a fellow writer, and was previously a police officer in Los Angeles.

He asked that the imagined memories be posted to his site in the comments section. I may have taken some liberties with the assignment. Here's what I posted:

I'll always remember the time Joseph and I got to know each other during that trial in LA. The FBI had me under witness protection because I was the star witness in a big money laundering scheme, and Joseph was one of the cops assigned to take care of me while I was hidden away at some flea-bag motel.

I remember the way we used to play cards until the wee hours of the morning. Joseph said he felt a little awkward, "playing" while on the payroll, but that kind of duty still takes away your time, does it not? As for me, I was playing with counterfeit money, so what did I care?

I remember Joseph's big hearty laugh as we would swap stories about life on both sides of the thin blue line. The raw intensity of his compassion for the people he worked so hard to help; his no-nonsense attitude toward the scum who would dare to harm them.

And I'll always remember the way he listened -- really listened -- whenever I told a story of my own. About the joys and perils of the outlaw life. About the outrageous things you'd get away with, and the small things that would trip you up. About the goofy things that crooks do, or the small but clever ways big crimes could be hidden in plain view; like the way we hid that large sack of money in a department store window for all to see.

And, of course, I'll never forget the time he was late for his shift that last Friday, and how someone had tipped off my former partners-in-crime, and how they tracked me down, and that big shoot-out in front of the hotel.

I'll always remember how I heard -- later, while I was recovering from multiple gunshot and stab wounds over at County -- that Joseph had retired from the force and just up and moved away to somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, never to be heard from by his fellow law enforcement officers again.

And I'll never forget how once I had finally healed enough to walk and talk again, and the trial finally concluded and I could once again walk the streets as a free man, how almost all of the places I'd stashed the money I'd been skimming off the top had turned up empty. Joseph had expressed his doubts about the wisdom of the hiding places I'd told him about, and I guess he was right. Funny that the one I'd forgotten to mention to him hadn't been touched. Maybe if he'd known about that one, he wouldn't have been so skeptical.

But mostly, I guess what I remember best about Joseph was the look on his face when I turned up at his doorstep three years later, and the way his face turned red with rage and the veins seemed to pop from his taut skin as he knocked me to the ground and stepped on my neck and told me to never, NEVER darken his door again.

That, and his exquisite taste in carpeting.

We've all heard how Blahbity Blah famous novel was rejected eighty bazillion times before it was published, so you just have to hang in there as a writer and brave through those rejection letters, blah, blah, blah, and eventually, you, too, may find success.

Well.

Here's one such rejection letter of one such famous novel, posted on Ursula K. Le Guin's site. The novel in question, for those of you who might not be familiar with it, is considered a classic in science fiction -- one of the "must reads". You might agree with the editor, or you might disagree, but the novel nonetheless has survived the test of time.

So, you out there! If you're a writer . . . you gotta just keep on sending it out! All you gotta do is find that one editor who sees the genius in your work (or at least someone willing to give you a nice advance), even if the others don't. . . . :)

"So, what are *you* doing up so late?" I typed.

"I am writing a really boring short story."

She continued: "I'm trying to get to 2750 words tonight to make it an even 500 words for today"

She doesn't like to use periods at the end of her sentences. At least, when we are instant messaging.

I tried to imagine how a boring short story would begin:

A Boring Short Story

by Author Withheld

It was the first paragraph, and very little was going on. The passive voice was used to kick off the first sentence, and then the obvious was stated in the follow-up.

The second paragraph, though shorter, was also bereft of action or punch.

She thinks I can extrapolate this into a full-length story. I'm not so sure....

So I spent the first two weeks of October at the Oregon Coast Writers Workshop in Lincoln City, OR. OCWW offers a few different programs throughout the year, and I attended the two-week intensive "Master Class," which is targeted at people who want to pursue writing as their full-time career.

I had a great time.

The workshop features two main tracks: the business of writing, and the craft of writing. The typical day included lectures/discussions in the morning, homework assignments of vary degrees of complexity and effort, and an evening session called "The Game" where the participants play the simulated roles of professional writers trying to avoid having to go back to a day job. The evening sessions tend to focus mostly on the business and living aspects of being a professional writer, while the morning sessions spend time both on the business and the craft of writing.

The thing I appreciated most about the master class was the experiential nature of the training. I don't want to give too many examples -- well, actually, I *do* want to give too many examples, but doing so might spoil the effect for any of you who might be interested in taking the master class yourselves, so I will give away as little as I can.

But I will allude to one example of how and why I found this such a successful use of my time.

I've been told in many, many writing courses that when writing, one should learn to tune out "the critical voice". That's great advice. But how do you do it? Several of the assignments (plus the ability to talk about such issues directly with the instructors) helped me to figure out exactly how my critical voice was interfering, and *that* was what helped to figure out how to deal with the problem.

You can talk about theory all you want, but some things can't be figured out just by talking about them or taking notes on the subject. You have to stare a hard deadline in the face, sweat and strain with a problem, resist it, give in to it, and kick your own ass a few times before you finally get the point.

This particular issue (the critical voice) has been a stumbling block for me. The block hadn't been destroyed, but now that I recognize it, I have started to break through it. And this is only one of several examples where I gained valuable insight into how to improve my writing.

Anyone else taking this two week will probably find other issues that they are able to work on that I completely missed. This is, for me, the value of experiential "learning by doing." You learn what you most need to work on because you are working on specific targets against specific deadlines. The stuff you have no trouble with doesn't get your attention because the pressure naturally exposes those areas where you *are* having problems.

The exercises were all eye openers, but I particularly enjoyed the way they all came together toward the end. One exercise, in which we learned (note: not "we were told", but actually *learned*) part of the job of an editor made it much more clear to me what I need to do with my story openers to make them "pop."

This is not the kind of thing that I can get with lectures about how "your first page must grab the readers attention by setting the scene and the character and the conflict and juxtaposing and blah blahbity blah blah . . . ." No. Now that I've had a taste of the experience, I finally get it. (I think. :-)

One thing I should stress is that I resisted some of the lessons I most needed to learn. But once I got past them, I removed an incredible restraint in my writing. Woooooo-hooooooo!

If a writer is intent upon becoming a professional writer and is interested in learning new tools (or perfecting their existing tools) to get them there, I highly recommend this class.

But enough about the class. Let's get back to talking about me.

About two days into the class, I discovered that a pain in my right ear had gotten so bad that I could no longer ignore it. I took some time away on day three to go to the local emergency room where the doctor told me I had an ear infection *in both ears*. It was just so bad in my right ear that I didn't even notice the problem with my left.

So, I was given ear drop antibiotics (that would take ten days for the entire prescription) as well as prescription painkillers (which I was hoping I wouldn't have to use, but eventually found out that I very much need them . . . ear infections HURT). By some great grace of luck and timing, I managed not to miss any class time on that particular day.

Oh, and I called home to chat with Paulette almost every day (I think I missed only one or two days total), and we would talk for a half an hour to an hour.

I mention these two facts together because I wanted to note that even though going away to this workshop was supposed to, in part, get me away from the time constraints of my daily life, life still managed to intrude. I had to take time out of my day three to four times (for roughly twenty minutes to a half hour each time) to take care of the ear drops, another half hour to hour to talk with Paulette once a day, and then there was dealing with the pain of the earache for several days (almost a week) . . .

. . . and yet I still managed to do the homework. Dammit, I was going to grab this opportunity that the master class offered me and squeeze every last ounce from it that I could.

Yes, I did cut corners in the sleep department on a couple of occasions. But the point (for anyone entertaining the idea of taking the course) is that the course did not demand anything of us that couldn't be done even with unanticipated time-outs and distractions.

Oh, wait. That's not about me. That's about the master class again. :-)

I may post more about the master class in the future; if you have any questions in particular, please feel free to post them in the comments section of this site. In the meantime, I'll conclude by noting that I wrote well over 20,000 words in two weeks, read well over ten times that amount, took an entire legal pad's worth of notes, and made some great, great friends -- we are now all egging each other on to advance in our writing careers.

It was great to learn that I'm capable of pushing myself up to a higher level of both quality and quantity of output. Now that I've proven I *can* do it, the trick is going to be to sit the Germanic-slang-word down and Germanic-slang-word-ing do it.

Sorry I haven't written much lately. It's because I'm going off to write.

As many of you know, a couple of years ago I attended a six-week intensive writing workshop called Clarion West. I am now going to attend a two-week even-more-intensive writing workshop. As I mentioned in an earlier post, there was a bit of homework associated with preparing for this workshop, and I've spent the bulk of the last two weeks just getting ready to go.

Unlike my days at Clarion West, I won't be keeping a live journal of the workshop as it happens (although I may or may not keep a journal that I can post later) because I won't be accessing the Internet during the workshop. No e-mail, no web, no nothin'. This will be a bit of a test for me, insofar as it's hard for me to go so much as a couple *days* without Internet access. We'll see how it goes.

The things I do for my art.

There will be much to talk about upon my return to the Internet, so be sure to check back soon.

When I was writing the novel formerly known as The Do Over, I frequently recalled an idea that a friend of mine had asserted, that modern day America is a science fiction premise.

The friend in question was a grad school colleague, and he was referring specifically to the idea that any political scientist in 1959 who would have speculated upon the political ramifications of sending manned space flights to the moon would be laughed out of the Academe. Such fanciful notions were relegated to pulp science fiction because they could never be considered as a possibility in the real world. But once Kennedy gave his speech enjoining the nation to land a man on the moon and bring him back safely within the decade, the science fiction premise became, well, real.

While I was working on my novel about a man who travels to his own past -- his teen years in the mid 1980's -- I had fun exploring some of the anachronisms created by his memory of history and the reality of 1980's America. In one scene, he tries to confide in an old, dear friend about his plight, but his descriptions of the future do little to convince her. They have one such conversation while attending a hockey game, and the protagonist is asked by his friend if their team (the story takes place in Buffalo, so we're talking about the Sabres) will ever again be contenders for the Stanley Cup.

Imagine explaining to someone in the mid-1980's that your hometown hockey team will eventually make it to the playoff finals because they will have an amazing Czech goal tender named Dominic Hasek, who had also led the Czech team to take the Gold Medal that same year in the 1998 Olympic Games, but that Hasek and the Sabres ultimately lose the Cup to the Dallas Stars.

Your 1980's friend might point out that: a professional hockey player wouldn't be eligible to play in the Olympics, because only amateurs can play in the Olympics. Come to think of it, how could a Czech have enough time to win the Olympics, defect to the United States, go pro, join the NHL and then go to the playoffs? Oh, and why would anyone ever put a hockey team in Texas, given the recent collapse of professional hockey in Atlanta (remember, we're talking about the Atlanta Flames in the 1980's, not the Thrashers that play there now).

The whole idea is a science fiction premise.

But wait, you say. The player doesn't have to defect from Czechoslovakia to the US because there is no Czechoslovakia by the time all this happens (only fifteen years in the future), and the US by then will have had a long standing tradition of allowing players from former Iron Curtain countries to play in the US without having to change their citizenship. You explain that the Olympics will allow professional athletes to compete by then.

Your friend in the 1980's interrupts. The Olympics can't be held in 1998. Olympics are held during election years (as in, US Presidential elections). That would mean 1996 or 2000.

So you explain that the Olympics are now staggered, with winter games and summer games alternating every two years. And then you try to explain that the Dallas Stars came down from Minnesota, but before you can get into that, your friend realizes what you said about the Iron Curtain falling and that there's no longer a Czechoslovakia, and she asks you if there's going to be a war.

Well, yes, you say, but not between the US and Russia. The Cold War ends without bloodshed, you explain, and the Soviet Union just disappears.

And this is all just to explain about the Czech goalie who leads your team to the Stanley Cup finals in about fifteen years in the future. This story is the kind that any self-respecting science fiction writer would have a hard time coming up with: that in order to explain why one hockey team makes it to the playoff finals against an other team that doesn't yet exist, you would involve the radical redefinition of the Olympics, the bizarrely non-violent fall of the Iron Curtain and the peaceful end of the Cold War, the ensuing changes to US immigration law, and the inexplicable rise of hockey as a popular sport in hot-climate cities. And that all of that would happen within fifteen years.

Well, I just heard about something yesterday that sets a new standard for science fiction premises. It's a fundamental change to a cherished institution that would certainly have defied prediction by any prognosticator even as recently as a couple of years ago. You think the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union came out of nowhere? Try this on for size:

The libraries in King County, Washington (ie, Seattle, Redmond, et al) now feature coffee bars in the book section.

Yes. You can buy a coffee and drink it *IN THE LIBRARY*.

What's next for the libraries? Live jazz bands on Thursdays? Open mic poetry?

Although, in retrospect, I can see how this kind of change to our local libraries makes sense in the context of our evolving society, I'd have had a hard time predicting it could happen. The idea of Crystal Pepsi becoming popular was more likely than libraries opening cafes in the book section.

It's a crazy, crazy world in which we live, no?

As part of a homework assignment for an upcoming writing workshop I'll be attending, I have a list of eleven books to read by the end of September. I received the homework assignment a few weeks ago, when there was still roughly ten weeks to go before the workshop. If I managed to read at least a book a week, I'd keep a steady pace and get the homework done on time.

There is another component to the homework assignment, which is to *not* talk about these books with our fellow workshop attendees, with whom we are all in contact via e-mail. This is a mild form of Chinese Water Torture for those of us in the group who love to talk about books after we've read them.

...Especially when we are all reading these books, and they all end up striking a nerve of one kind or another. There are so many things to talk about; a subplot about writing here, a theme about how people sell out their own best interests there, writing style, standout scenes. The instructors assure us that there is a good reason to wait until the workshop begins before we talk about these books with each other. Since I'm putting my faith in the instructors to help me improve my writing, I'd be foolish not to do the homework.

We're allowed to talk about books, just not with each other. There are many points I've thought about that I've wanted to post up here on my website, but now that my fellow workshoppers know about this house o' cards, I'm worried that if I post something and they read it, I'll be spoiling the purpose of the exercise we've been assigned.

So I guess my book reviews will have to wait. However, I want to share two things with you, in the meantime.

First, reading a book a week has proven to be absolutely exhilarating. I'm a very slow reader. I scrutinize fiction the way I *should* have read text books when I was in college. I know people who can read Stephen King's It in one day and answer questions (correctly) about it later. This is not a skill I have. For me, a book a week is an awful lot of work, not so much because it takes so much effort to read, as it takes so much *time*. Finding the hours has been very difficult, and that means I've had to sacrifice something else in my schedule.

Sleep.

And yet, this intense (for me) period of reading has boosted my energy level and enabled me to get by with less sleep quite easily. I am, in fact, rather an insomniac these days, but that doesn't bother me at all. More time to read. My head is filling up with all sorts of ideas, even when (perhaps especially when) the writing or the story isn't terribly great.

The second thing I want to share with you is a funny (not funny ha-ha) coincidence. In one of the books that I just read, a fictional serial killer had chopped up one of his fictional victims and stashed the fellow's remains in a dumpster right outside the very real building where a former girlfriend of mine used to live. It is bizarre to be reading a book that takes place in a large city you don't know all that well and have one of the few streets you *do* know well described rather specifically as part of a (fictional) crime scene.

Read enough stories that take place in a city you've spent time in, and I suppose something will eventually happen on a street with which you're familiar. In fact, that's already happened for me several times: I've lived all over New England, and I read a lot of Stephen King. But this one resonated a little bit more. It was about a crime that took place outside the building where someone whom I cared about used to live. (Last I heard, she didn't live there anymore, so I'm sure she's safe from the fictional "Curry Hill Carpenter".)

My advice to any of you who would like to avoid such serendipity in your own lives: don't date anyone who lives in New York City. The place is simply too ubiquitous. Date people from Buffalo or Cleveland. Nobody writes novels that take place in Buffalo or Cleveland.

But enough about that scene in NYC. I've finished that novel and it's time to move on to an ironclad at the close of the Civil War....

A friend of mine forwarded a link to me, and my mind reels with the quality of writing. The verve! The simplicity of lines! My heart breaks to read such beautiful prose.

How can I hope to compete? How could I even conceive of attaining such mastery? I may as well give up all hope of becoming a well known (and well liked) author. I have met my match.

"Roy Orbison in clingfilm," indeed.

In connection with one of my new writing projects, I have decided to dissect the structure of a couple of Stephen King novels. The project I'm working on is not horror, but my goal is to approach the structure of this new novel differently from the way I pursued the novel-formerly-known-as-The-Do-Over.

In the course of re-reading The Shining, I decided to rent the television mini-series version that King scripted a few years ago. While watching it, I was struck by how similar it was to Rose Red, that nasty mini-series (also scripted by King) in which I was a backgrounder.

Similarities:
* Well, they're haunted houses. Duh.
* The ghostly inhabitants desire the psychic powers of a young (alive) prodigy who is a guest there.
* The ghostly inhabitants pursue the young prodigy by attempting to get one of the other living occupants to go crazy and kill same.
* The living inhabitants all know that staying there is a bad idea, but are convinced by the crazy one that they should stay.
* When Glenn Miller is played, Very Bad Things happen.

There were many, many other similarities. But there were some key differences, too. For example, the third act in the Shining miniseries was actually well made and surprisingly scary. The horror arose from the brutality committed by a person, not the building or its ghostly inhabitants. It was scary because the director finally stopped showing parlor tricks (oooh, the chandelier moved, spooooky) and started showing real terror (Wendy finds that Jack is no longer locked in the pantry). The Shining also worked because, in the end, you can see that Jack is struggling to try to redeem himself. Rose Red had no such personal stakes. It's brutality was based in nothing real. It was all parlor tricks, from beginning to end.

For what it's worth, I still prefer the Stanley Kubrick version of The Shining to King's own interpretation of his novel, but let's leave that for another day. Suffice it to say that as bad as the first two acts were, the third installment of the mini-series was profoundly good.

After having viewed this remake of King's story, I chatted with Paulette about Rose Red and The Shining. She pointed out that one was a hotel, and the other a house. "But," I noted, "Rose Red was a very big house."

"Of course," she said. "Nobody's going to be scared by a haunted cottage."

This led us to talk about the diminishing returns on haunted log cabins. And haunted outhouses. ("Well, that one might keep you on the edge of your seat, I suppose.")

Hmmm. Maybe there's a short story in that. Couldn't sustain a novel, of course, because there's only one act in an outhouse. Well, two. But I digress.

In summary: horror may be most effective when the personal stakes are high. Horror can also result from really, really bad puns.

Friends, Ropersons*, and Countrypersons*:

I have recently been declared a rat. A Webrat. The Webrats are a loose affiliation of speculative fiction writers who keep online journals. That, or they are an affiliation of loose speculative fiction writers. Or, they keep loose online journals. Or something.

To learn more about the order of the Webrats, click here. If you read it, you'll know at least as much as I do. About Webrats, that is. :-)

I think I was originally recommended to the rats by two of my Clarion West classmates about a year and a half ago. Wacky.

More soon,

--me

* I'm told that the politically correct replacement for "Romans" and "Countrymen" is "Roperchildren" and "Countryperchildren" because the word "person" has "son" in it, and must be replaced with "child", but I think that's going overboard, don't you? Wait a minute. Have I used this joke on my blog before? Hmmm.

I love to sing solo, but I also love to harmonize. Singing with a group or with accompaniment offers a different kind of enjoyment from performing on your own. You have to be attentive to different things, more in tune with your fellows, which in some ways can limit where you can go but in other ways expands the reach of your performance.

Writing solo and writing collaboratively is much the same. I find writing alone to offer unlimited possibilities, but the discipline of writing with someone else helps me to hone skills that might otherwise go undeveloped. I've been fortunate to enjoy several strong writing partnerships in the past, so when a friend of mine who writes screenplays asked if I'd like to collaborate on a project, I said, "Yes."

Jamie and I mapped out a show "bible" and pilot episode for a proposed television series based upon some concepts he'd been wanting to explore. The work we did on the screenplay was a fantastic learning experience. Jamie and I squashed each others' weak points (mine is a tendency toward exposition, in case you couldn't guess) and played off each others' strengths. We were both happy with the results, as were a number of readers whose judgement we trust.

We had such a good time that now we're exploring the possibility of working together on a novel. We're also working on some humor projects together. While working on the television script, Jamie also pulled me into a project he was developing that pokes fun at the high-tech stock bubble and the current state of mutual funds.

We posted the finished product on a web site: The Mattress Fund. We're in the process of putting together a smaller version that will stream faster, but if you have a good connection and a few minutes to kill, please check it out and let me know what you think. Oh, and if you have any problems downloading, please let me know that, too.

Been busy tonight. Spent much of the evening into the wee hours typing. I've been revising and otherwise cleaning up a short story of mine called "Suspicious Activity" that I'd first put to paper during my time at the Clarion West workshop two summers ago. (catching breath after such a long sentence.) I'm optimistic that this one might finally, uh, get me off the slush pile.

I'm beginning to see that the key to success in writing is to lower your expectations while you raise your standards. :-P

It's been months since I've mentioned anything here about my various writing projects, but that doesn't mean nothing's happening.

Regarding the novel, it alternates between two different working titles as I send it out to different prospects. After the television series that recently began airing with the same title as the original working title of my novel, I'm a little hesitant to post the title until the book finds some traction with either an editor or an agent. Hmmm. I wonder if I could have worked the word "title" in that sentence a few more times. Anyway, I've sent it (the novel, not just the title) out to three agents so far, none of whom are interested in representing the project. I must send it out again, and will do so within the next two weeks. When I send it out, it'll go to at least an agent and an editor at the same time. Industry norms frown upon submitting to multiple agents or multiple editors at the same time, but the long lead time in getting a response seems unreasonable to perform the search for representation or publication serially.

I've had a few short stories out for consideration in 2002, and while none of them were picked up, the responses have generally been encouraging. I haven't sent anything out in the past month or so, and yesterday I just received the last story that was "in play" back with a rejection letter. The next week or two will involve me sending out each of the stories that have been in play back out for consideration, plus one more story that's almost ready.

It's frustrating to keep sending out stories and getting back rejection letters. I know many other writers who are more talented and prolific than I am who have been at this for decades with few, if any, publications to show for it, and that does little to take the sting out of my own lack of success (so far), even after only a year or so at it.

The most recent two projects I've completed were collaborations with a friend of mine who I met during my days at Amazon.com. As with all of the good collaborations I've enjoyed in the past, my work with James Osborne has helped to bring out the best of my abilities while downplaying those areas where I'm not so strong.

One of these projects is a television series "bible," outline, and pilot script. We completed the project just in time to submit it to a Hollywood scriptwriting contest, and we should hear back from that one in February. Initial feedback from James' friends in LA is favorable, and we'll be seeking representation for our scriptwriting talents soon.

I'm excited by the idea for the television series not only because it has been a fun collaborative effort, but also because it's given me a chance to explore possibilities with story telling that are not available in novel or short story writing. In many ways, it's a more compressed method of story telling that allows, to some extent, greater sweep.

The other project is a one minute parody commercial that Jamie came up with. While I contributed a few lines here and there to the script, the real collaboration was in the production of the commercial. James was the director, while I had a chance to perform on screen. In many ways, working on this project was like working on a number of collaborative parodies I did for radio back at WVBR in that it was synergistic and fun. Jamie has finished the post-production work on it; now we're preparing a corresponding web site around the concept. I'll be posting a link to the finished product here within a couple of weeks.

Hmmm. I keep saying "in a couple of weeks." Maybe I should check some of this stuff off of my list of "things to do" this weekend....

It's been over two weeks since I sent out my writing to anyone. I have three or four short stories out there -- not much, by any means -- and my novel, and I haven't heard anything back from anyone regarding them.

Which means they haven't been rejected yet. Yee-ha!

Usually, the way it works is: I send out a story in the morning, and receive the rejection letter by that afternoon.

In the meantime, I have a short story to polish that I'd written at Clarion West and then I'll send it out, I have a pre-Clarion story to finish, and I also have an idea for a new story. I may have mentioned this... it's a horror story about stress, sleep deprivation, and a baby who starts talking long before he should be able to do so....

Sweet dreams!

No baby, yet.

But I did make some spicy jamalaya tonight, just in case that might help. :-)

In writing news: everything that I have that is ready to go out there is currently out there. The novel and several short stories are making the rounds. When they come back, I send them back out. I have another short story I hope to send out by the end of this week. It's probably the only pre-Clarion West story that I'll end up sending out any time soon.

Stories being out there means I'm opening my writing up for more rejection. Stories kept safely at home means I'm not going to get published. So, out they go!

The baby is past due.

The "due date" for the baby was July 4th, but "Dependence Day" came and went and there's been no change in status. Paulette is still pregnant.

In other news...

* My stories keep coming back rejected. Haven't written anything new in a couple weeks.

* My Passat is still broken, and is likely to take about a month before it can get back on the road again.

* I've been doing a lot of research lately on certain aspects of philosophy and religion in general, the Bible and Judeo-Christianity in particular, rhetoric, and history. Much of this research is for my next novel, and much of it is simple intellectual curiosity. Alas, research shouldn't take the place of actual writing. However, I've been enjoying the thinking that goes with the research....

* A friend from Clarion West had an excellent story recently published in Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine. Another friend, from Cornell, had a novella recently published in Analog. Yet another friend, from my high school days (although she didn't go to my high school), was also published in Analog a few months ago. I think this is all great. And/but I'm ready to join their ranks, durnit!

The weather is beautiful. Wish you were here.

My first agent of choice sent me a very nice letter regarding the first three chapters of my novel I'd sent to him. He tells me that I've got some smooth prose in my manuscript, that he likes the way the novel opens without set up or a lot of back story. Alas, he would nonetheless prefer to see more of the central conflict right up front, and he is therefore passing on representing this novel.

This is probably the most professional and, at that, helpful kind of rejection letter one could hope to receive. Of course, I wasn't hoping to receive a rejection letter, but I'm nonetheless glad that he told me *why* he is choosing not to help me sell my novel. It gives me the opportunity to decide whether it's worth re-writing before I go to the streets with it again.

My current plan is to try, try again. I'll query another agent or two or fifty. Not all at once, of course. That's considered bad form. Fortunately, though, the response was quick from my first agent of choice. Given the two upcoming television shows that have a remarkably similar premise to my novel, I need to move as quickly as I can in order to still be "timely."

In the meantime, a number of short stories that I've started to circulate are coming back to me with "Good writing, but I'm going to pass" letters, as well. Nonetheless, I keep sending them out, and writing new ones to send out. My goal is to get another new one out into circulation tomorrow.

Writing is hard work. Getting published is proving to be at least as hard as writing.

For those of you following the saga of getting my novel to market, I'll also mention that the title "The Do Over" is now officially retired. I won't be pos