Successful Failure - a Year in Review

(Note: It's pretty damn late right now. I've got an early morning ahead of me tomorrow, but I've been putting off this post for WAY too long. I guess tonight's the night...)

So as 2011 wound down, I was looking back on my resolutions from last year, thinking about resolutions for the new year and generally checking my progress against my goals.

Basically, I was beating myself up. :)

Y'see, I didn't get a single damn thing I resolved done last year. To be honest, I can't remember half of my goals, and I can't be bothered going back and looking them up. There was some stuff about getting my back catalog in print, finishing new work, hell, I don't know. The important thing is, I'm one of those people sets goals and makes them happen. And in 2011... I didn't.

So there I sat, Brooding in my Vast and Forbidding Mansion (I'd had the parapets cleaned for just that purpose), when my brain had the nerve to actually wander back over the last year:

*One of my books spent a little time on an AmazonUK bestseller list. It didn't last, but I'll never forget the feeling of seeing my name sandwiched between titles by Kathy Reichs and Patricia Cornwall. Freakin' awesome!

*An earthquake destroyed my city. I mean, loss-of-life, no-more-heritage-buildings, downtown-is-rubble, drinking-bottled-water-and-pooing-in-a-trench-in-the-yard, seriously destroyed.

*That earthquake destroyed my business. The foundation cracked, water and sewage and silt came up, the building sits vacant to this day.

*I opened a new shop, painting and decorating and hauling furniture, helping dig my friends and neighbors out of their own flooding problems, writing at night and tattooing from home to help fund the reopening. And I did it all with a broken right hand.

*I spoke at schools who had to share campuses because their own buildings had been destroyed, and in churches where the rec center was the only thing that survived.

*Through 9500 aftershocks, repeated loss of basic services and the constant presence of liquifaction, a noxious mud that dries on sunny days and becomes a noxious windblown grit, I built my business back better than it ever had been.

*I got to go back to New Orleans, where among other things, I met some of the best friends a blogger can have. :)

*And this year I had somewhere to go for Christmas. No doubt a relief to everyone who received one of my drunken insane texts last year...

Well, I don't have to tell you, freshly cleaned parapet or not, looking at it that way sure put a dent in my Brooding. Which was just as well: I was having guests around for Mai Tais, Margaritas and naked Twister. It's been like this ever since I hung a disco ball in the Vast and Forbidding Mansion. It's hard to get a decent Brood on when someone's always trying to paint mustaches on the gargoyles...

So, yeah, I failed at my goals. But I'm not unhappy with my progress. The year was horrible, absolutely horrible. And it was also great.

It was a successful failure! :)

PS. I guess my resolutions weren't total failures: I did in fact finish a rough draft called Mayhem. It's marinating a bit before I start editing...

Fleeting and Fickle

Delay not; swift the flight of fortune's greatest favours.

-Seneca

So a month ago, February 21st, I had this life. I was the reasonably proud owner of one the biggest tattoo studios in Christchurch. I was booked out for a month and struggling to find time to keep up with my other commitments.

I had stopped smoking. Spent four nights a week swinging fists and sticks at the gym. My waistline thanked me.

My book Poison Door had somehow climbed to #23 on Amazon.UK's bestseller chart for 'Female Sleuths'. I still have no idea how that happened. Just, overnight, the Brits started buying the hell out of my book.

The next day, everything changed.

Ten minutes to one, I was waiting for the mobile espresso van to bring me my midday shot of Brain Enhancer before I went to bank the month's rent.

A minute later I was standing behind the counter, surfing one a floor that wouldn't hold still. The sounds were deafening: the building rattling, glass crashing, one of my artists screaming.

When it stopped I got the upset girl outside, went back in to start cleaning. Enough equipment was broken or damaged that I knew we'd have to close for the day.

More people started yelling. Something about 'flooding' and 'trapped'. A dark wet line appeared through the carpet. I went out front, pulled the sidewalk-sign in and locked the door. Brown water was rushing out from between sidewalk and building. On the other side of the wall, it was filling my front room. The building was still rumbling. Aftershocks made cracking sounds in the roof.

Out back, more water gushed from under the building. In the time it took to lock the front door and leave through the back, the nose of my car had been buried in wet brown mud.

I snatched a cigarette off the first smoker I saw.

I got three weeks off work. Unpaid.

Poison Door sank like a stone from the UK charts.

Now, it's a month later.

Zyban's cutting the smoking habit- in just over a week I've gone from a pack and a half to five. My gym's reopened, now almost an hour from my house. I'll travel that distance, just to lose the results of four weeks of fried food. (Most nights I'd just stare at the fridge, stare at the stove, and go buy fish and chips.)

My new shop is open. The new place is smaller, more intimate, and the rent isn't such an incredible stone around my neck. I can't help but be aware that in a city where half the storefronts fell down and competition for those still standing is fierce, I was wise to hustle and a little bit lucky too.

And in the UK, Poison Door has sold two copies. That's right, two. I don't know why, any more than I know why it sold so many in February. Sales in the US are steady and growing, but that weird spike in England... just baffling.

In times of trouble and times of joy, I read the Stoic philosophers. They help me 'meet with fortune and disaster, and treat those two imposters just the same.' And seeing as I opened with a quote from one of my favorites, I'm going to go out with him too. Especially poignant in light of the tragedy in Japan:

In the presence of death, we must continue to sing the song of life.

We must be able to accept death and go from its presence better able to bear our burdens and to lighten the load of others.

Out of our sorrows should come understanding.

Through our sorrows, we join with all of those before who have had to suffer and all of those who will yet have to do so.

Let us not be gripped by the fear of death. If another day be added to our lives, let us joyfully receive it, but let us not anxiously depend on our tomorrows.

Though we grieve the deaths of our loved ones, we accept them and hold on to our memories as precious gifts.

Let us make the best of our loved ones while they are with us, and let us not bury our love with death.

Seneca

Thank You, Rudyard

So yeah, earthquake. Again. This time, it hit close to the city, in the middle of the day. The devastation is pretty goddamn insane.

Now, as so often in life, I've taken my cues from the words of Rudyard Kipling. I've spent most of my life trying to 'fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' distance run', and quite a bit this last year I've had to learn how 'being lied about, not to deal in lies.'

This week, with the flooding of my tattoo shop and the condemnation of its building, I know I have to 'see the things I gave my life to broken, and stoop to build 'em up with worn-out tools.'

So once again, thank you Rudyard Kipling. Your words guide me through life...

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

And as far as that sixty seconds' worth goes, not once this week have I missed my daily word count.

Interviewed

Shauna Roberts interviewed me today on her blog, For Love of Words.

I feel a little bit famous. :-)

Shaken, Not Stirred

It was still dark when I woke. 4.30 Saturday morning, and someone was shaking my bed.

Except: My bed's enormous and I live alone. Shreds of sleep were still falling away when I knew the truth. I was in an earthquake.

More than one ex-girlfriend has compared me to stone, to wood, to a machine. I've been called cold-blooded, soulless and untouched by human emotion, usually when the women in question were trying to draw me into a shouting match.

Fact is, I'm just not that emotional in a crisis. Clear and decisive, yes, but not in the least emotional.

My bed thumped and jumped across the floor. Furniture rattled. The house shook but did not screech, creak or groan. I thought about the plate glass window behind my head and decided the curtains were protection enough. The power died. In the front of the house, something crashed.

I stayed calm enough not to wake Butler, sleeping beside me.

After the tremor stopped, I got up to check on Midge and Buddy. There were books all over the floor, but nothing major was broken and the cats were well.

I went back to sleep.

Unfortunately I didn't get the rest I needed. There were aftershocks to endure, texts and calls on my cell to send and receive, a bright spring sunrise and yet more aftershocks.

That morning I had coffee with some elderly neighbours. With no power, they boiled water and made toast on a barbeque grill. By then I knew my friends were safe, and vice versa. My neighbours and I had a lovely chat, and it was off to work.

The tattoo shop looked a wreck. Once the lighting fixtures were back in place and a tipped-over sculpture set back upright, it wasn't that bad. Frankie showed up, and together we cleaned up the spilled ink and broken potted plants, set the jewelry cabinet to rights and got the place back together. The room shook and jumped, stopped, shook again. We set the shop up so any further shocks wouldn't break anything and locked up again. That night I went to a friend's birthday party.

We've had over a hundred earthquakes in the last few days. Some of them rattled no more than a large truck passing in the street outside. Others had me scrambling to keep palette, painting and brushes from juddering to the floor. Buildings are falling around town, and some of my favourite restaurants and businesses are gone. We have power back, but will need to boil our water for some time to come.

Meanwhile I've kept the tattoo shop open and running, got the shop's bookkeeping sorted out, done my workouts at the gym (a building too old and tough to crumble) and navigated the rubble downturn to make it to the NZSA's monthly writer's lunch.

I also kept writing. Through all this, I keep drawing, painting, tattooing and piling up pages on my novel.

Way I look at it, life is just as fragile in good times and bad. Love is just as precious. Every life has disasters and crises.

None of that is any excuse. Every single one of us tap dances under a dangling sword. One day the blade will fall, and the only thing that matters worth a damn is the manner of your dance.

Or, as James Lee Burke is so fond of putting it, sometimes you just have to smile and walk through the smoke. :-)

Christmas Meme

Yes, I'm late on this. It charmed me, and I'm doing it anyway. So there. ;-)

The original argument:

Here's what you're supposed to do, and try not to be a SCROOGE!!! Just copy this entire note and paste as a new note on your Facebook page blog. Change all the answers so that they apply to you. Then tag this note to a bunch of people you know, INCLUDING the person that sent it to you...'Tis the Season to be NICE! OK, if you're reading this, feel free to cut and paste for your own blog.

My answers:

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags?

I *love* wrapping. Probably my favorite part of the season!

2. Real tree or Artificial?

A real tree (regardless of size) is under $20 here. I'm digging that real pine smell, baby!

3. When do you put up the tree?

December, prefer before mid-month...

4. When do you take the tree down?

January 6th-- Three Kings or Twelfth Night, as you prefer

5. Do you like eggnog?

It is a very fond memory, though I wonder how all that heavy cream would go over in the middle of summer...

6. Favorite gift received as a child?

I think I was eight or nine when my parents gave me a wee plaque that read "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it because he dances to a different drummer. Let him march to the music he hears, however measured or far away." It was the closest my parents ever got to acknowledging the freak flag I fly, and that plaque still hangs on the wall in my home.

7. Hardest person to buy for?

I do pretty good, I think. Mostly. Except when I don't. What am I talking about-- who doesn't like pine tree deodorizers and wiper blade refills?!

8. Easiest person to buy for?

My parents: they get a phone call.

9. Do you have a nativity scene?

No.

10. Mail or email Christmas cards?

Not this year. Christmas kinda snuck up on me and everything was last minute...

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?

Such a long line of parental 'Why can't you just be normal' gifts to choose from...

12. Favorite Christmas Movies?

Freaking "A Christmas Story"!!!!

Like Highlander, there can be only one!!!!

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas?

Wiper blades and Pine Tree Deodorizers give you any idea?

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?

See previous answer.

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?

Lift the other end of the dinner table. I'll unhinge my lower jaw and you just let the food slide on in there!

16. Color of Lights on the tree?

Lots of colors. Pretty Colors. The more I drink, the pretty they get...

17. Favorite Christmas song? Dublin BLues, by Guy Clarke and Townes Van Zandt

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home?

Where's the option for Wrestle the Cops on the Front Lawn?

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer?

(Stares into space) "On Dasher, on Dancer, on Prancer and Vixen, on Comet on Cupid on Donder and Blitzen!" And of course, that alcoholic corporate whore, Rudolph.

20. Angel on the tree top or a star?

Angel.

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning?

Christmas morning. Santa takes his time reaching the Antipodes.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year?

Every year, some knucklehead wants a 20-30 hour tattoo in time for Christmas dinner. They usually wander in with incoherent ravings and cocktail-napkin scrawls sometime around the 23rd...

23. Favorite ornament, theme, or color?

I'd like to hear more about those X-rated ornaments Charles mentioned earlier.

24. Favorite for Christmas Eve Dinner?

Does bourbon and Vicodin count??

25. What do you want for Christmas this year?

To finally beat elderly Grandma Dynamo's record for the annual Christmas Day Police Wrassle. It's no use, though: she's wrinkly and stretchy, she's old and naked, and she refuses to share her recipe for body grease!

26. What is your wish for Christmas?

Refer to previous question.

That was fun! Now... who's got a hatchet?! :)

Losing It

Charles posted on writers who destroyed themselves when they felt their best work was behind them. The examples he used were vivid: Hemingway, Howard and London, two suicides and one who drank himself to death.

Truth is, Charles barely skimmed the surface, but he did make his point. Writers struggle with the idea that they've 'lost it'.

Reading his post, it occured to me that I might have a useful perspective on this. You see, I've lost it a few times in life. Sometimes lost and found it again. Others, just, well... lost.

Comics: I haven't drawn a comic in some years now. My last original work was two parts of a trilogy that still sits unfinished. I never meant to stop, it just sort of worked out that way. The stories that have come since then have been novels, or sometimes paintings, but no comics.

Painting: While I'm on the subject, I was a keen painter in my twenties (back when paint was a newfangled invention) but I somehow managed to go the best part of a decade without picking up a brush. Those rare occasions I did try to paint, the work simply wasn't up to scratch. I made up my mind that those particular guns had been hung up.

Then one day a couple-odd Christmases ago, paintings were requested as gifts. I dutifully strapped on my brushes and made a big old mess out of some canvases. The work lacked my old magic (whatever that was), but it was too late: I was once again in love.

I got back to painting. The magic wasn't there, but the love was back. Then Frank Frazetta's Painting With Fire gave me permission to paint like my new self, if that makes any sense. New magic came. Last year I did my best to date. This year, well... it remains to be seen.

Tattooing: I've also certainly had fallow periods in my tattooing. Times when the work I turned out was... uninspired. When I'd look at the next tattoo and think I just couldn't be bothered.

Couple of those times I took a sabbatical, lived off my savings, took in illustration work, whatever. The most recent one, I couldn't afford to quit. So I just kept on keeping on. One day, I found inspiration again, this time in the work of Guy Aitchison, Kat Von D and Nikko Hurtado. I remembered why I picked up the needles in the first place. My focus shifted. The magic returned.

Personally, I think plateaus are natural. Exercising and learning, the curve tends to be periods of sharp, upward development and long, flat stretches where what really counts is the will to continue. No reason to think that things should be any different for creative skills.

Who says we have to be fresh, always doing our best?

And who says we can't?

Any writer who worries that they've 'lost it' should look to Johnny Cash for inspiration. Johnny came out of the gate with a bang: the first few years of his career, he wrote Walk the Line, Cry Cry Cry, Folsom Prison Blues and most of his classics. It was an unbelievable streak of creative brilliance.

Thirty-odd years later, he was still playing those same songs. He'd had a few bright spots creativity-wise (as opposed to commercially), but by the late 80's he was well and truly in the has-been category.

He was sure his best days were behind him. He even thought he'd quit recording, spend his time doing live concerts performing the music from his glory days.

Enter Rick Rubin, and a different vision. Johnny stripped down to the absolute essentials: his guitar and his voice. American Recordings may or may not be the best work he ever did, but it sure as hell showed the world his best days were far from over.

Maybe for Johnny (as for me), it was permission to be himself. To be that old guy with all the hard miles on him, not trying to fit who he used to be or who the other singers around him were. I know for me, those times I 'found it' again were also times I realized I had to be me, not a knock-off, even of my own earlier self.

Maybe if Hemingway hadn't spent so much time trying to reiterate Fiesta and For Whom the Bell Tolls, he would have had more, and better, work than The Old Man and the Sea. And maybe he wouldn't have been so damned depressed that he got the electroshock that made him suicidal.

And yeah, the Steampunk Word-O-Meter stands at 12,800 words. I think it's the weekend (my busy time at work) that's the culprit, not the scenes themselves...

Junky - Chasing That High

Addiction is strange. At its heart is the pleasure released when opiate chemicals flood the brain. Addicts' brains have certain chemistries in common, even though their pleasure-triggers can take many, sometimes weird forms. It seems strange to me that moments of pleasure can create lifetimes of damnation.

Most of us cross that dark threshhold in a rush of warmth and light. We spend the rest of our lives comparing every dull moment, every blunted, habituated high, to those early, golden days when the high was still new.

For me, it started with Batman comics. Spiderman and the X-Men figured in there too. And Wonder Woman, who woke other, darker pleasures in my four year old breast.

Once I learned to read, I moved on to harder drugs. The way a heroin addict can tell you about their first really good high, or a hard-core alcoholic remembers the early days when every beer was his friend, I remember a book called Splinter in the Mind's Eye, by Alan Dean Foster. And Octagon House, by Andre Norton.

Those were the first books that really shook me. The ones that made the life outside go away, that cut me to the bone, that gave me that rush.

Today, I'm still chasing that rush. Trouble is, same as the drinker, the junkie, the problem gambler all habituate to their highs, I can't get that same rush in the places I used to. I get pleasure, sure. Quite a lot of pleasure.

But what I'm looking for is that serious, major, insane high. That up-all-night-call-in-sick-the-next-day-because-I-can't-close-this-book high. There are a handful of places where I know I can go for it, but those bastards right so damned slow! And too many of them are dead.

I've just finished Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child, Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson and COld Flat Junction by Martha Grimes. Mighty fine, all of them, but none cut too deep. Today I'm returning to James M. Cain and Joe Lansdale's masterpiece, The Bottoms. The Tiny Dynamo is flying through the Harry Potters once again.

A little more leather and a little less bathing, we could be a literary Sid and Nancy...


Check that apply:

___ I frequently (once or twice a day) find that my
   conversation centers on books or reading experiences.

___ I read to deal with tension or physical stress.

___ Most of my friends or acquaintances are people who read.

___ I have lost days of school/work because of reading.

___ I have had the shakes when going without a good book.

___ I regularly read upon awakening, before eating, or
   while at school/work.

___ I have been arrested for Driving while reading.

___ I have periods of time that can't be remembered while
   reading or buying books.

___ Family members think reading or book purchasing is a
  problem for me.

___ I have tried to quit reading but cannot.  (A good test
  is voluntarily going for six weeks without a good book
  and not experiencing physical or emotional distress.)

___ I often double up, reading two books at a time or
   regularly read more books than others.

___ I often read to "get ready" for a social occasion.

___ I regularly hide books and reading material from those
   close to me so that they will not know how much I am reading.

___ I often read by myself.

___ My reading or book buying has led to conflict with my friends
  or family members.

Three or four 'yeses', you may have a problem. Five, get thee to a counselor!

In fact, go anyway. They have *great* promotional literature....

Arisen

Every year at Easter, the executed corpse of Jebus rises from its tomb to feast on the living and we ward it off with talismans of chocolate and marshmallow.

In a similar vein, I'm rising from my blogging-coma to catch y'all up with what's going on.

1) BURIED (the work-in-progress) is *very* nearly ready to go out to the Tiny Dynamo and the Beta Readers. (sounds like a band, doesn't it?) I've taken the story as far as I can. Now, the readers will tell me what's missing, what's too much and what (if anything) just plain misfires. After that, it'll be the marvelous Agent Anne's turn, followed by the Eventual Editor. At least, I do so hope.

2) My day job has changed. After six years, my gig at Planet Tattoo is over. The owner and I had been doing business on a handshake agreement, and a couple of weeks ago I found out that a handshake is worth the paper it's printed on. So that was it for us. For a time there was talk of me buying the shop off him, but wiser heads and random signs writ in the heavens all pointed a different way...

The Ink Spot opened its doors for the first time yesterday. Sonja and Betty and Jay and I are all there, and the new place is really, *really* nice. I can't believe how much we did in such a short time. But then, look at the blog title: I pretty much live with a brick dropped down on the accelerator and the steering wheel snapped off in my hands. And the brake pedal? As shiny and new as the day I got it!

Once Jebus has been chased back into his grave for another year and this mandatory holiday is over, we'll be able to get back to normal. Or to figure out what normal is in the shiny new tattoo shop we all just built:

The Ink Spot
205 Hills Road
(across from the Mad Butcher)
385-2334

For my Christchurch readers, drop on in. I'd love to see you! Anyone out there who wants a beautiful portrait tattoo, something photo-realistic, cartoonish or other high-quality illustration in skin, I'm your man!

And for the rest of you who miss the days when I wrote about writing, I'll get back to that too!

Aftermath

Well, this year it happened again: the Great Pumpkin passed us over.

In years past, I understood. We lived down of a long drive at the end of a dead-end street. Not exactly a big area for foot traffic. This year, though, we were on a more-traveled street. I decorated the front of the house, and because New Zealand shops did not supply my needs this year, the decorations were handmade. Dammit, I was sincere.

Of course, it might have helped if my home were not quite so Dark & Forbidding. Good thing I'm moving on Wednesday!

Many people I know got trick or treaters. I have an enormous bowl full of candy.

Hmm.....



Maybe that's not *all* bad, after all.

That All You Got, Pansies?

So I'm basically hammering away:

Yeah, I'm taking over the tattoo shop in a month.

And working a LOT of extra shifts to make it happen.

And finishing the new novel. Another week. Maybe two.

And moving house. (Did I not mention moving? Yeah, I'm moving in a couple weeks.)

And trying like hell to find a tattooist who won't flake out after one day.

You know what I need? What's been lacking? This weekend I found out:

Food Poisoning.

Maybe it was a stomach virus, I don't know. After a day and a half of vomiting, I didn't care.

One good thing about the experience, there was plenty of time to think. I figured out where BURIED was going wrong, unpicked the bad chapters and am once again going strong. Full throttle, as it were...

Also, it turns out, I'm less the Marv-type than Dwight. Probably on account of that time I faked my own death. Maybe it's a coincidence on account of the Dwight tattoo on my leg these last ten years. Who knows? My favorite thing is that I came in second for Lucielle! Which Sin City character are you?




At the moment, the Full Throttle Daily Wordcout-O-Meter stands at 63,000 words (since about 3,000 had to come out...)

Second Act Insanity

Something I've noticed: the middle of every novel drives me insane.

Driving hard, never stopping, it's no wonder some of the more tender gears start to slip.

My first novel, large quantities of beer in the sun played a major part. At the time, I chalked up those crazy couple months to the effects of beer, and sun. My second, I got through that Scary, Saggy Middle in a deep and wistful melancholy. I blamed it on the winter, the poverty of those days, the cold and the lack of light.

Those novels seemed important at the time, but really, they were practice. By #3, when I gave away my car (in favor of my mountain bike) and reconnected with (and horribly, hopelessly alienated) several old friends from college now living Out East, I started to notice a pattern.

The recently finished #4 was one hell of a long hard slog. Long enough, and hard enough, that I went crazy twice: I found myself compelled to shave with straight razors, and later, to write with a dip pen.

Insane. Bloody insane.

So as I cruise past my Enormous and Stakes-Changing Center of my latest, I've kept a chary eye peeled. At 40,000 words, the worst I'd seen was that I reconnected with the Southern side of my heritage by making iced tea again: probably the first pitcher I've made in twelve or thirteen years. My cute wee Kiwi thinks the idea of cold tea is a crime against nature, but she eats whitebait.

I thought maybe this time, I had a pass.

No such luck. :-)

Turns out the owner of my tattoo shop is getting itchy feet. He's opening a new place across town, and I'm taking over the current place. So now my life is a flurry of equipment purchases, jewelry wholesalers, retail stock and the hiring and training of new staff. Exciting, yes. Exciting and something else.

Insane, that's the word. Bloody insane.

Day 43, the Full Throttle Daily Wordcount-O-Meter stands at 47,100.

Some things never change.

The Meme Raths Outgrabe

Meming time again....


What were you doing 10 years ago?

I had either just moved to New Zealand, or I was just about to move to New Zealand. It was a scary, exciting time for me, and one of the best things I ever did.

Five things on your to-do list for today

Write.

Read.

Paint.

Draw.

Play with the Tiny Dynamo.

(not necessarily in that order)

(What can I say? La Vie Boheme is La Dolce Vida up in here!)

What would you do if you were a billionaire?

Two Words: SECRET VOLCANO LAIR, baby!!!

Seriously, about five years ago I quit worrying about money. My life now is *exactly* what I would want if I had a billion bucks, just with shabbier clothes, house, etc. I do my best every day to humbly serve the talents I've been given, and there's always enough money there by bedtime.

And, while I would like a little pied a terre in Chartres (I could always take the train into Paris), it seems to me that *actually* having one billion dollars would be a job in itself. And not a fun one. Even if I managed NOT to be one of those 'Winning the Lottery Ruined my Life' stories, I do believe the constant demands of dealing with that kind of cash would detract from my art.

What are three of your bad habits?

1. Action. (The title of this blog might just as easily have been Ready, FIRE, Aim!)

2. Horizontal Organization. (Or, as the Tiny Dynamo puts it, clutter.)

3. Coffee rings. (The not-so-secret ingredient to the Full-Throttle lifestyle has a dark side of its own...)

What are some snacks you enjoy?

1. Baby Ruth bars, unavailable in New Zealand (my penance for life in Paradise)

2. Whittaker's Chocolate, the finest in the world imho

3. Coffee. It is snack, beverage, pick-me-up in the morning and relaxing break in the middle of the day. Teacher, mother, secret lover......

What were the last five books you read?

1. Severance Package, by Dwayne Swierczynski

2. Frank Frazetta: ICON

3. Cold in the Light, by Charles Gramlich

4. Shane, by Jack Schaeffer

5. Money Shot, by Christa Faust

What are five jobs you have had?

I've pretty much spent my life doing creative work.

1. Tattooist

2. Illustrator

3. Cartoonist

4. Storyboard Artist

5. Painter (like gallery shows, with the wine and the cheese, not houses, with the overalls and the dropcloths...)

What are five places where you have lived?

1. St. Paul, Minnesota

2. New Orleans, Louisiana

3. Barcelona, Spain

4. Jerusalem, Israel

5. Auckland and Christchurch, New Zealand

And now for the tagging:

Riss

Lana

Sphinx

Shauna

Avery

SQT

I've tried to leave out those of you I know don't like memes...

A Few of My Unremarkable Things...

So both Avery and Sphinx Ink have tagged me with the Six Unremarkable Things meme. The rules are:

* Link the person who tagged you. (See above)

* Mention the rules in your blog. (These are they)

* Tell about six unspectacular quirks of yours. (See below)

* Tag six bloggers by linking them. (They shall be "it")

* Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger's blogs letting them know they've been tagged. (OK, that will take a little time.)

I rather enjoy memes, let's see how I do on this one:

(just to hedge my bets, funnies will be served as a distraction...)

1. I have a weird, Ayn Rand-ian belief (Fountainhead, not Atlas Shrugged) that we each have something in life that nourishes our souls above all other activity. It might be playing with the kids, following the Mets or crafting dollhouse furniture, but identifying that thing and staying true to it is the key to a fulfilling life.

2. That pile of wood outside is larger than my old kitchen. I'm splitting it with an axe and maul and having a BLAST!

3. I prefer cats to dogs. Nothing against dogs, but for me it's cats, all the way.

4. I went blonde again with my dreads, hence the change in the profile picture.

(even managed to get my tattoo in there!)

5. IF is my favorite poem.

6. Three times a week, I shave with a straight razor. My oldest razor is 180, my youngest a mere 60-70. I find the ritual of shaving calming: something about knowing that a moment of distraction can mean a lost nose is very centering!

Yay, fun! And for all you Tom Waits fans out there, his new gangsta rap album:

Literary Love

This New York Times article got me thinking. How important is taste in reading?

A love of story is central to my life. Books, comics, even those paintings I'm drawn to have a strong narrative element. I can't imagine a relationship without a shared affection for stories.

But how closely shared?

In my checkered past, I kept company with women across the social spectrum, from doctoral candidates to former teen runaways. Levels of formal education varied widely, but two things were constant: I've always gravitated to smart women, and to women who read.

And it goes both ways.

First eye contact with the Tiny Dynamo, my world slid a little bit sideways. Second time we met was our first chance to talk. She was smart, scary smart. Our third meeting, I compelled her into a reluctant (very reluctant) first date.

Did I mention reluctant? I'm unlike anyone the Dynamo ever dated: Foreign. Fashion-challenged. Funny-looking. But I do have certain Secret Powers, and before she knew what she was doing, she found herself sitting across a table from me.

I can thank the contents of my backpack for our second date. And the last several years. In my pack was a novel she'd read, an ashcan of Serina and my sketchbook diary.

We started talking about books, and the Tiny Dynamo realized that 'unlike anyone she ever dated' might just be a good thing.

So I reckon I can understand a bit of a literary acid-test. But to reject someone for reading Proust? Or not reading Proust?

That I don't get. The Dynamo and my tastes overlap, but they also widely differ. She likes the classics. She likes Victorian sensation novels. She likes those girly Shopaholic-type stories. That's cool.

She doesn't get my love of comics. She doesn't respond to the 'over-macho' voices of John D. MacDonald or James Lee Burke. Covers with half-naked women holding guns have kept her from discovering the fine writing coming out of Hard Case Crime. And that's cool.

We still have plenty of tastes in common. And (to me, the point of dating a fellow reader) plenty to talk about. And our reading sometimes comes closer. I turned her on to Dickens and Du Maurier, Sarah Gran and Donna Tartt. She gave me Wilkie Collins, Marian Keyes, Bryce Courtenay and (oddly enough) Dennis Lehane. If either of us had been too fussy about the other's taste in books, we would have missed out on all of these new favorites.

And one hell of a lot of fun!

What about y'all? How important is taste in books to your relationships?

Cardboard Box Blues II

So we're shifted out of our former Secret Headquarters: a sunny and lovely, though all too small, flat.

Our former surroundings were horse pastures and orchards, and it was delightful.

Yesterday saw the last of the boxes move into our new Secret Headquarters.

The new house has its own, peculiar, charms and delights. Not unlike that house in Anne Rice's The Witching Hour.

I'm still armpits deep in boxes and trying to figure out where we packed the towels, etc. but I'm still writing, still revising, and I'll blog properly again tomorrow. Promise.

Meantime, I now live in a place where there are no right angles, the floors slope like the deck of a ship, icy drafts curl through the air even in the middle of summer, and dark shapes flutter behind the surfaces of mirrors. And this house has a lot of mirrors...

Will this have an effect on my work? We shall see. Certainly all those stairs will be good for the exercise!

Meantime, I really should go see about that noise out the window. A bit like the flap of leathery wings...

Cardboard Box Blues

The holiday was most... rejuvenating.

Now we shift to our new Secret Headquarters. There seem to be rather more boxes than I remember.

All should be back in place by Monday. I hope.

Sweet as Pie...

(this was the pumpkin pie I made all by myself - without even canned pumpkin to help! Mmmmm....)




Right now I'm soooo close to the Final Showdown.



But.


But I've got all these notes about things that need to happen, and things that need to change.



I've got a couple of REALLY important plot points to change.



So I've gone back to the beginning and am doing a rapid rework. And I do mean rapid: roughly 10-20,000 words a day. My word count is staying about the same, mainly because I rip out almost as much as I put in.



Being so close to the end is the best place to see the beginning. And to tighten any flab from the middle. Also, tomorrow or the next day, when I *do* finally reach the Final Showdown again, I'll hit it with the momentum of a runaway bloody freight train!

Synchronicity: After staggering to bed at 1.30 last night (back up 5, but that was Butler's fault), I decided to 'chillax' with Joyce Carol Oates' Faith of a Writer. The essay I picked, Miss JCO talked about doing just the same thing I am, and for just the same reasons.

Oddly, that makes me feel better.

And for anyone who wonders about life with the Tiny Dynamo, I did do an 18"x48" painting on a break from writing yesterday!

aaaaaaaaand...... ACTION! Final Take

And glad I am to see the back of this topic, too!

Today's final action-showing technique: Poetic Detail

Like Break It Down, this method of showing action is heavily grounded in our brains' chemistry. In moments of great stress (or great pleasure - our brains don't understand the difference), adrenalin floods our bodies and does whacky things to a little brain bit called the amygdala. That's the bit that controls how memories are written. Hence, the way I don't know what shirt I had on a couple days ago, but I *do* remember my first kiss, my first fight and exactly what I was doing the morning of September 11, 2001.

Thing is, the adrenalized brain is a quirky thing. Emotional memory is powerful and vivid, but also prone to pick out the oddest details.

This is where Poetic Detail comes in.

My first kiss was in a K-Mart parking lot. A drunk teen I barely knew wobbled up to me, said "You're cute" and kissed me. I was too stunned to do much more than stand there. Not exactly the stuff of movies, I know. Looking back, she was the first of too many bad girls.

But when I remember that moment, I feel the slap of summer sun on my skin and smell the hot asphalt. I see the movement of her hips and her flat bare belly. Her fingers were cool and slick on the skin above my heart. When she leaned in close, her hair smelled of strawberry shampoo, her skin of liquor sweat. The kiss tasted of lip gloss and cigarettes.

Now if I was to tell this event with Break It Down, I'd be shaving that moment into smaller and smaller increments, exploring each sense impression, each motion, whatever told the story best. But to use Poetic Detail, I'd pick *one*, or at most two, of those sense impressions and explore it at length.

He watched her approach. She was unsteady in her steps, thick cork heels sticking in the half-melted asphalt.

"You're cute," she said.

Her tongue flickered against his lips. Her teeth were small and sharp. She wrapped him in the smells of liquor and sweat and hot tar.

I really liked the 'slap of sunlight' bit, but instead I went with the asphalt. I could just as easily have gone with the sun on skin and stayed with the other touches on skin (her fingers on my chest, her lips), and on another day, I might have. Now, asphalt has nothing to do with the kiss. It's just one weird detail that my adrenalized brain fixed on and rendered in hyper-clarity.

Two things about that passage: I only give myself twenty minutes to post, so the writing is sometimes rushed. More important, I was trying to show how the brain picks detail from a real event. Writing fiction, that telling detail can come from any part of the imagination.

One of my favorite writers to use this technique is James Lee Burke. He has a beautiful way of choosing just the right image to impart moments of violence and terror with a sense of loss and redemption and the soul's flight from a world of beauty and pain.

Official Daily Wordcount-o-Meter:

12,678 words but I don't know what day it is!

As Above, So Below

Steve's Doctrine of the Barrage: a Primer for Fistfights, Knifefights and Literature.

While I chip away at My 5 Strengths, I thought I'd do as Charles asked and elaborate on structure. This essay originally grew out of Charles' discussions on power words and their placement.

I spent my formative years fighting. Somewhere around the onset of adolescence, I quit escaping into adventure fiction and started sweating in the gym. I sought the guidance of rough and violent men, and learned what they had to teach.

It's actually not uncommon. A great many nerds and geeks like myself decide we want to be Conan, Batman, Bruce Lee. I was just a little extreme. Full throttle and fuck it.

And oddly, I learned my literary style.

Look at the structure of those two paragraphs. They're more or less representative of my usual structure of attack. Now, they form a structure to tell an effective story.

Open hard. Once you've got your hooks in, that's the time for poetry, imagery and metaphor. Close strong.

#1) A short sentence to open, using a strong, simple verb. You'll draw the reader in.

#2) Now you have the leisure to wax poetic. I seem fond of what I call 'the triple-tap': a quick three-count of adjectives, a complex sentence of three complicated actions or sometimes a list of three examples (Conan, Batman, Bruce Lee). The point is, here in the middle, I'm free to open up with more complicated structures. I can diagram the second sentence in in this paragraph, but I'd hate to open with it...

#3) Close strong. Candy made a strong point about last words. Strunk & White agree. People remember the last part of what we say. Decide what's most important and put it at the end.

Sounds like I'm only talking about paragraphs, right? Not at all. For me, the paragraph is the fundamental unit of fiction. They are what the panel is in comics. Big or small, they are the basic beat of the story's telltale heart.

Go smaller. Consider the sentence. I still want to open strong (subject and active verb-- none of that wussy 'might have done' kind of stuff) and finish on the most important element. If you've caught me opening with a modifying clause or prepositional phrase, there's a reason.

Go larger.

My chapters kick off with the previous cliff-hanger and end with the next nail-biter.

I write in three acts. Act I opens strong. Whether I write romance, horror or adventure, there's no doubt what you're reading early on. (By the way, notice that little triple-tap in the middle there? Love 'em!)

Act II is where all the elaborations and frills come in. Characters act on each other in earnest, and everything gets complicated.

Act III is the end. That's the part the reader walks away with. Make it strong.

As above, so below. Sic terra mundi.

Of course, not *every* paragraph goes like that. Pacing changes things. As tension grows, sentences and paragraphs shorten. As tension recedes, this structure gets relaxed a bit. Sometimes, a theme or element wants extended riffing that doesn't lend itself to this structure. So I leave it. At least, for a time.

The story's most important.

I don't have to write like this. In fact, I have a terrible weakness for compound, comlpex sentences, with lots of adjectives and adverbs and modifying clauses. (triple-tap again!) It's like I only have one sentence to tell the whole story, so I better jam it all in there!

Days when this bad habit gets away from me, my work is eye-crossingly dull...

And of course, not everyone cares for tension. Every now and then I come across a writer whose sentences unspool in a leisurely fashion, each word crafted with care, the whole proceeding, sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph, chapter to chapter, with the kind of lanquid torpor we all felt as children on a hot summer's day by the water, never dreaming that time and mortality could touch these timeless, golden moments.

Me, I write thrillers...