Poems, Posts and Prostrations

In the last half of November, I did manage to get some writing done.  It comes after my full-time job and two side gigs ... at the end of all that, I do get some time to try to be creative.

I wrote a few pages of poems in a tiny notebook at the E.R. while Anne was passed out from what turned out to b electrolyte issues (??).  

I think I added 8 more entries to my Gaming blog, 4 more to my WordFixx blog, and 8 to my Stamps blog.

Today we went down to Ocean Beach to hang out at the coffee shop with a collaborator and work on our upcoming collections some more.  We swapped a new story in, and I found a photo of the two of us from a poetry reading 18 years ago, which fit just fine.

We started on a new piece, where we start with a sentence and each add a few lines, trying to leave the other writer with a difficult hook to work out.  Those are fun.  The story took some really odd turns.  When I got home, I gave it a tune-up so it sounds like we meant to end up where we did.  And I had to do some research into the actual layouts of morgues and mortuaries, so we could make the setting feel more real than some generic thing we saw on a TV show.

We would like to get that collection done and submitted by the end of the year.  We hit the 30,000 word mark, chock full of fiction, flash fiction and poems, with about 15 of my own weird illustrations.  

I have not had time to send out any submissions in a while.  If it's not one thing, it's another.

This all came out to about 35-40 pages of new material.

I threw "prostrations" in the title, because that word has been coming up as we watch the last season of Stargate SG-1 (where they are fighting the obnoxious Ori), and several times Anne said it sounds like such a strange word.  While it can be a religious expression (giving completely in to a higher power), I can now point out that when she was in the E.R. she was prostrated (rendered helpless with exhaustion or a similar condition).  We have both been exhausted, but every weekend when we try to relax we end up running errands, doing chores, working the side gigs and just not resting.

Posted on DriveThruFiction

I must have purchased over 100 items from DriveThruRPG over the years.  They're one of the largest markets of PDF and print and print-on-demand gaming books.  More and more works have become available from the 80s and 90s from classic game systems.  So I have whole folders of RPG reference material from them, and recently bought a huge bundle that ended up being about 50 PDF books for Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition.  Wow.  It's never-ending.

They always seemed like a very active market, with a lot of free preview editions and Pay What You Want items.  I have known for years that they had a sister site for fiction: DriveThruFiction.  I'm just not sure why I never thought to list any of my own items there.

This weekend I set up three of my existing poetry chapbooks.  They were already in PDF format, so there wasn't much work to do.  Their forms were fairly simple.  There was an interesting part where (if your documents is a PDF) you can choose a page range to make an automatic preview document.  So if I wanted to showcase page 6 to 9 as my free preview, just enter 6 and 9.  You could upload a cover and some other graphics, then upload the main document and click "Make Public."  You get a message saying to allow up to 3 days for the submission to be approved.  That's reasonable.  I like that content is approved by someone before appearing on the marketplace.

It turns out, all three were approved by noon the next day, and that was a sunday.  So here they are:

I will be adding more documents, probably newer editions of past books and chapbooks.  My author page is here.

I don't know if this will be worth the time.  For most sites with tons of content, you always feel like just another fish in the ocean.  If a site has a half million items and only 10 of them are yours, you are just a tiny percentage.  And these are just Pay What You Want with recommended $2 each. They are just 27-30 page booklets -- old poetry chaps won't be popular, but I thought their poetry collection could use a little more weird.  ;-).  Still, most of my creative output has been for pizza money, so maybe this can earn a salad somewhere down the line.

I tried doing some research, and you can always find videos and blogs talking about how every attempt to promote work is always a waste of time.  Or similar content saying how wonderful it is, and how this one person makes thousands of $$ a month.  What's real and what isn't?

You never know unless you try, and it's another platform where I am now visible in some form.  I will try to report in future posts about how it works out. 

I realize that most of the content on these sites was submitted by publishers, or at least very small companies.  I can't see going through the trouble of establishing yet another business name.  I'm just an author offering my own works.  All of the rights reverted back to me at some point, and I should be able to use them as I see fit.

The 2024 Novel Writing Tools Bundle

I am a sucker for online bundle deals.  They are such a modern, fun way to get a lot of content at a good price -- some of them are even "pay what you want".  Some of they send a percent to a charity: in this case you have the option to donate to the Neil Peart Brain Cancer Research Fund.  Here is a bundle that I heard about from Kevin J. Anderson, and he would know, since he is the curator.

This is The 2024 Novel Writing Tools Bundle, and you can find it here until Nov 30.  My little screen grab does not show all the book included, but I wanted to highlight the one by KJA called "On Being a Dictator."

I have always admired his ability to be out hiking at some amazing location and dictate chapters of his books into some device.  I have tried it a few times, but hearing my own voice makes me self-conscious around people, or immediately knocks me out of story mode.  Or both.  I just can't get enough separation to make it work, so that's the book I wanted most, and I hope some of the others can help me feel relevant or productive again.

I just wanted to pass this along.  A good little library put together by a good guy for a good cause.  Worth sharing.

Another Sale or Two, new Poems and new Blanks

I sold another poem to Dreams & Nightmares last week and have a flash fiction coming out in Flash Digest (Jan 2025).  I really need to get more submissions out there.

I brought some scrap paper to a winery in Escondido about 3 weeks back, where Astra Kelly was playing.  Look her up.  When there is live music playing, it helps disconnect me from day-to-day worries, and I can fill a few pages with poems and fragments.  So I got some new pieces done, none of them especially "genre", so I don't have any idea where to send them.  I don't know what's up with the vast percent of "literary" zines paying copies only.  I am not expecting a ton of $$, but zero is too low for me.

I have posted plenty of articles on my various blogs, so those are rolling along nicely.

Today we drove up to Ramona and did some thrifting before seeing Astra again at a different winery.  This time, the pages stayed blank.

I have ideas in my head.  Some new story settings.  Some old tales to dredge up and overhaul after 20-30 years of dust.  

I also want to get a few mini-collections into PDFs for DriveThruFiction.com.  I must have gathered over 200 titles from DriveThruRPG over the years, and you would think that the fiction cousin of that site would be a good match for me.  But you know how creative minds sabotage themselves -- I have had works on many sites over decades and failed to get a single actual sale, so when you get onto a site with hundreds of thousands of competing items, you expect to be just a drop in a bucket.  I can see myself spending hours getting this set up, only to get nothing out of it.

But it's still a bug in my ear this week.  Meant to do it, got hung up on other things.

That is the writing news for this week, such as it is...

Astra, Dresden, Big John, Elric and Other Old Friends

We were sick most of the last two weeks, but got back on our feet and went a few places this weekend.  

On Saturday we went to the Mia Marie Winery on Highland Valley Road, only three exits and four miles up the winding road from Anne's place.  Astra Kelly was playing, which was a treat since she had just moved to Arizona and I wasn't expecting to see her in town again.  Then again, I hadn't seen her play since before COVID, you know, before so many things broke down and don't feel as real anymore.

Some things I wanted to point out: she let's you know where she's going to be appearing and brings swag to her shows.  So many creative people have completely forgotten to send out newsletters.  I would get to more shows if to performers would give any kind of advance notice.  Half the time, I only know a show happened when someone posts about it on Facebook it after it's over.  And most musicians have given up on bringing actual items -- CDs, anything you can buy -- to help them out.  Honestly, a tip jar and a blurb about how you can find their stuff somewhere online (sometimes followed by mumbling about how the downloads don't pay shit) doesn't really cut it.  Astra brought her new release on vinyl, several past CDs at a reasonable price, some of her aromatherapy items, and other bits of projects I never knew about.  Apparently she is now the voice of a cat on Instagram.  That is how you do it.

One thing she had that I had never seen before was a "download card".  That was a little plastic card like the ones you get Google Play points on, except it has a URL and a code, and if you enter the code at the URL then poof, you get the download as promised.  As a pleasant bonus, she included both MP3 files and high-fi WAV files.  You can find her here.

(Nov 3 note: we saw her again today, this time in Ramona, and she had her whole shop with her again.  It was nice seeing people walk over and check out her things, and Kim at the wine counter was talking about how "crafty" she was.  If we don't let people know what we do, how will they ever know?)

That was inspiring for whenever I have an upcoming event.  I would rather bring too much than not have anything to show.

Now on Sunday, we went down to Balboa Ave to check out Book-Off, a big jam-packed bookstore where I found the first Dresden Files novel a few weeks back.  I didn't really plan on spending any money, but there was a gorgeous, like-new four volume set of all the Elric stories.  Michael Moorcock had always been inspiring to me, from his writing style and imagination to his works on Blue Oyster Cult albums.  I enjoy when someone can be creative across art forms and genres.  I root for underdogs and far-out creativity. This set was not cheap, but once in a while I see a definitive set of something, and feel like a collector again.  I had to have it.  Throw in a nice trade paperback Game of Thrones for $5.

Meanwhile, I got the new Jeff Vandermeer book "Absolution" from Barnes & Noble, and it dives right back into the crazy creepy Southern Reach world that started with "Annihilation".  I expect to ramble about that in the future.  Jeff and Ann Vandermeer have edited many magazines and projects, and I even submitted a story or two and I was never accepted, and they wouldn't know me from a bump on a log, but I can enjoy being a fan sometimes.  Anyway, I believe today was the official release date, so poof: mentioned.

As for the Dresden Files, I read book one (Storm Front) again, and it's such a quirky world, a real gem.  It is hard to make a supernatural setting that's even 10% different from all the rest, and these books have character to spare.  He does get beaten to a pulp more than he should be able to recover from, but that mix of crime noir and White Council shenanigans is classic.

We watched the whole series, and I have no complaint about it: I thought the cast did a fine job, and don't care that they had to shuffle the episodes or make monsters easier to film.  Paul Blackstone was top notch although blah blah he doesn't fit the exact description in the book.  He gets points for personality and holding together the mix of humanity and madness.  I've read pages and pages of gripes and production issues, but I enjoyed it back then, and just as much this time around.  My only complaint was that it ended after only 12 episodes. 

One of the monsters in the Storm Front episode, loosely built on that first book I had just read, replaced an ugly toad demon with ... big John DeSantis from Master and Commander.  Hey, I knew that guy.

John was an all-around nice guy every time I saw him on or off the set.  After M & C, it was always a treat to see him guest star in my favorite shows, from Supernatural (a golem) to Stargate (Jafaa warrior) to all the other places he showed up, and in 13 Ghosts, OMG he was terrifying.  It must be weird to only get the meanest, most evil roles when he just wanted to kick back and chat -- he definitely knows how to use his looks and voice.  I always wish him the best out there in show biz.

Here is a shot of John DeSantis and I from the Master & Commander wrap party 20-odd years ago.

Memory lane ...

So this has been an indirect tribute to the people we meet in this mad creative life.  They feel like friends when we see them at shows, or at conventions, or on the page or on the screen.  Maybe we never actually sat down over dinner, or went on road trips together, but "acquaintance" never felt sufficient.  As for the fictional characters, they fill niches in my mind in other ways.

BTW, all or most of the Dresden Files books are available as audiobooks read by James Marsters, who has a great voice to these.  I enjoy listening to them with Anne after hours.

I wrote 8 or 10 poems while Astra was singing, and I hope some of these things help to rip more works out of the depths and onto paper.

A Week On My Own again (again?)

My girlfriend was down in Puerto Vallarta this week, so I had so much free time to do my own thing.  Theoretically.  Aside from the days that were completely ruined by full-time job and commute.  So that left two hours on weeknights and then the weekend.

I was able to put together a new draft of the collaborative collection I have been working on, and get it emailed out.  This meant pulling out stories and poems that were not as well liked as the others, then putting in some new pieces of mine and splitting the whole thing into three logical (roughly genre delimited) sections to make it a bit more interesting.

The regular Thursday zoom call was a real treat.  Some of the new (to me) folks were there (JJ and others), but also two writer/publishers I have known for 20-30 years.  Between the host and those two, and I, we must have appeared together in 200 or more publications since the 80s.  We've all published each other's work when we working editorial roles.  So I'm afraid we took over, talking like old times, and the others slowly wandered off.

Yesterday, I drove down to Ocean Beach to work some more on that collection in person.  There was one piece that was a haibun in two sections -- each section a paragraph & ku, but we found that there was a time slip in there, and new in-between scenes were needed to tie it together in a tighter package.  So that was fun.  I was hoping to write several new pieces together, but a chunk of the limited time was taken up by computer issues and me having to loop 15 blocks back to my car because I forgot my darn reading glasses.  I could just barely read without them, but knew it would bring on a headache.  

So, it was a nice foggy day on the coast with some chill in the air.

Driving home, I had a head full of words.  And with certain instrumental pieces playing, I had half-formed poems where the words fit the rhythm of the song exactly.  But is that even a thing?

Back at Anne's place (totally quiet sanctuary, no cats or dog), I had to do my usual 2-3 hours each weekend of writing up descriptions for the stamps we sell online.  Anne does the scans, and there was a huge backlog to get to.  But since I am trying to keep my brain in writing mode, I ended up researching a few of those stamp issues, and adding four non-trivial blog posts about them:

Wendy Fitzwilliam (Miss Universe 1998)

Angola Classic Animals

An Industrial Nightmare from Saar

and

Selvage markings: Registration marks 

I have to admit that I work in bursts and after a big gap I will back-date the new stuff to make it look more natural.

And today, back in Escondido, it was mid-90s and sunny.  I got back to my place (2 cats but the dog is still in day care) and wrote up 4 blog entries for my games blog and started on this update to my Writer's Life blog.

I have no new sales to report.  No new submissions, really.  But I am still getting things done.  Collaboration work, a zoom call with other writers, and 9 blog posts, with other drafts in progress. 

The image is from our trip to OBCoffee: my pumpkin spice chai with a very Buddhist tree-of-life motif in the foam.

"I knew if I looked back there would be nothing there"

I got a day of PTO, so we took a 3-day weekend at a hotel a few blocks from Old Town, San Diego.  I did not check ahead and had no idea it was Comic-Con weekend until after I booked the room.  As for getting out and doing things, it was a stressful part of town for driving and there was no parking at any of the spots we thought we wanted to walk around.

But the goal of the weekend was to relax.  Good luck there.  My brain is always a waterfall of words and imagery, but I did find enough quiet that I could hear the flow and tap into it.  Like old times, but this time everything came out in top form.  I ended up writing four poems of 3-4 pages each.  Two were for illustrations that a fellow poet sent me as writing prompts -- those works just poured out with the world lore snapping into place as needed.

One was a flash fiction in disguise, about a thing we almost saw under a bridge at the I-5/I-8 interchange.  I was surprised that I choked up at the end when reading it to Anne, but it was a sensitive topic and things went dark quickly.  Then tonight, when I got home and typed it up as a proper flash piece, I had a writing moment that I was quite proud of.  You see, the hand-written piece ended with, "I knew if I looked back there would be nothing there."  Baloney.  I hate that kind of non-ending.  So when I sat at the laptop, I typed, "I looked anyway," and wondered if something had been hiding there all along.  What happened in just four lines was a real vision of horror: nothing commonplace or expected, a strange mix of light and dark, a glimpse beyond the veil that I hope will grip readers if it ever sees print.  The final piece was 480 words.

I have always loved flash fiction.  Sometimes, so much can be packed into a page or two, if your words throw out subtle feelers into the real world and the things we think we already know, and then the story goes off the rails in a different way.

My other piece was about a woman whose life was ruined by tornadoes.  Yes, we saw Twisters on opening weekend, but it wasn't about that at all.  Ever since then, I had a kind of sing-song nonsense in my head which was roughly, "Blah blah blah blah, a twister in her head."  Repeating, with dumb variations.  But I pulled it in, tamed it, gave it form, and again choked up at the end when I tried reading it to Anne.

Good.  If it doesn't affect me emotionally, what are the odds that anyone else will care?

We did get out on Sunday to meetup with a writer friend I had known for 25 years but have not seen much since the divorce (10 years past).  That was the highlight of the weekend. 

On the way home today, we stopped at Balboa Park and walked over to the Japanese Friendship Garden to relax in the restful environment.  More about that later.  But I did write two short poems, and right after Anne got a call that one of her neighbors/friends had died, a haiku about it.  And we made our way home.  Fine weekend, boosted by new writing but tainted by news.