Grief

I carry my grief high in my chest. A hard lump, slightly smaller than a clenched fist, it lives just below my collarbones. 

Every breath has to get through this knot. Every bite of food, every drink. Every word I speak has to make it past before it can reach my mouth. I need to be careful with the words. Anything too serious, too close to real, the knot may unfurl -- a great dark bloom, wet petals dripping with poison. 

It’s overwhelming. 

Better to let my hands speak for me. Writing, drawing, tattooing. My hands are happy. They get to speak their truth without sneaking past that awful knot. // They don’t have to sneak past that awful knot to speak the truth. 

Sometimes it sleeps, the knot. You’d never even know there was anything wrong. Times like that, I can almost, *almost* forget it’s there, sleeping high inside my chest. 

Waiting. 

I’m good at grieving. As good as you can be. None of us make it to our fifth decade without a lot of practice. I know how it comes and goes. I know better than to fight it when it rises up, and better than to dwell on it when it chooses to sleep. 

And I know that finally, eventually, grief passes. Life demands too much of us to allow anything else. That’s both a blessing and a sadness. 

It’s been a couple of weeks now since my mom passed. Her illness and pain are over, her end was gentle, and our relationship these last few years was the best it’s ever been. You can’t ask for better. 

So, you know, it’s natural and all that. Still hurts, of course, but that’s natural too. And I’m glad to know it ends, because somewhere on down the line, I’m going to pass this same grief on to my own daughter. And I don’t want it to hurt her too much, or for too long.

Swallowing Stones for Love

Love is a sweet cake with a hard stone buried inside. Sometimes more than one.

We think about love, we think about the cake. The sweet parts you'd see on a car commercial.

They show you the happy family. Not the part where you change your father's diapers and bathe him.

They show you the embracing couple. Nobody mentions the way you'll feel trapped on an airless moonscape as the relationship unravels, or how words become a minefield until the only safe topics are the weather and the state of the roads.

Parents glow as they hold their baby. That's a very sweet treat, the best I've found in all my life. Any treat that big, that sweet, I know I'm going to swallow a good few harshly-shaped stones before I get to the big one: The only truly good outcome is that she has to grieve my passing.

Midge was my friend for sixteen years. Less than half an hour old when I first held her. Except for one month she stayed in a cattery while I was homeless, we were constant companions. Through all the ups and downs and right back ups, home for us was each other.

I took her to the vet in September. She wasn't eating much, and Hazel noticed brown drool around her mouth.

When your cat is sixteen, every trip to the vet makes you nervous. You wonder, will this be her last trip? This time, she came back. But she came back with bad news:

The tumor was at the bottom of her mouth, under her tongue. Surgery was a one in ten chance of working, and it involved amputating her lower jaw.

Yeah, nah.

She did get oral surgery to fix a bad tooth, and special food. Painkillers twice a day. She took over the library, sunniest room in our house.

For four months, she was a happy little old lady. Sitting in the sun and watching the birds. Watching Charlie play in the back yard. She put on weight again, and her coat was glossy.

Sometimes of an evening, if there were no smelly boys or loud toddlers about, she'd come out of her room and join us on the couch. Christmas, she spent the morning helping us open presents.

But the tumor had been busy. It got so big it pushed her tongue to the side, so she couldn't eat or drink properly. The painkillers weren't working as well as they used to.

She looked up at me, and I called the vet.

December 30, 2016, I held her and stroked her told her how much I loved her as she died.

I haven't been able to write about it until now. It just hurt too much.

Some stones are hot coals.

A Very Good Day

Merry Christmas, everyone!

In a few minutes, I get to watch an amazing two year old rip through all those presents. It's gonna rock!

Talk again soon... :)

Writing Again. Mostly.

It took awhile, but I'm finally writing again. Sort of.

You see, in the nine years since I started this blog (Nine?! Seriously?!) I've had a pretty consistent method: I'd get up early and write for a couple hours before my day starts.

Then I had Charlotte.

Turns out, she also likes to get up at 6am, and her agenda has nothing to do with Daddy sitting in front of a keyboard staring off into space. That was one problem. The other is that I wasn't able to sleep more than two or three hours at a time, usually about five hours a night. Rough, but it needed doing.

I coped. My business ran off my phone whenever Baby wasn't looking, and seriously unhealthy amounts of Red Bull let me concentrate well enough to do my paying job. And more often than I should probably admit, I fell asleep at the wheel coming home from work.

Point is, no way I could concentrate enough to write. Hell, I used to fall asleep in the middle of conversations!

Then, the last couple of months, a miracle:

Little Miss started sleeping through the night. I started getting as many as five, six whole hours in a row, and my imagination started to work again.

Writing was a bit harder. It was still early for a laptop-- all I had to do was open the lid and it was palm-mashing the keyboard and other explorations-- but I was able to use pen and notebook. Sure, there were breaks here and there for a certain young lady to take over the pen and fill a few pages, or draw all over her (and her Dad's) arms and legs while saying, "Tattoo."

But I gotta tell ya, those are breaks I don't mind a bit. :)

I'll continue this again soon. Right now, a Certain Somebody wants to show me something called a 'Finger Family'...

Man Plans, God Laughs

So, back last July? I had a plan, a pretty good one I thought: Move back to the US for 3-5 years, buy a house, build some equity, come on back to New Zealand finally able to afford a house here.

Pretty good? Heck, that plan was great!

So naturally, the gods began to titter...

Fifteen years or so worth of clients got mad at me for leaving them. Most understood my reasons for going, but none of them were any too happy about it. My friends felt the same way.

One close friend even offered to use his equity to finance my mortgage.

This... complicated things. Suddenly, a home in New Zealand was a possibility. Now, my decision had pros and cons: I had to weigh the cost of moving overseas against the increased income. The opportunity to start a new tattoo shop against the loss of hundreds of loyal fans. The house I would afford in NZ against the house I'd afford in the US.

This wasn't going to be easy at all.

Until I told Hazel.

She pretty much jumped up and down and tore up all her packing lists and did a merry dance around the room. I may not be a weatherman, but I do know which way the wind blows.

I wasn't moving.

Now, you all know I have a certain commando sensibility: Adapt. Overcome. Nothing can stop me, only make me shift gears or change tactics.

So I shifted gears. I changed tactics. By the time my daughter had gone from crawling to standing, I had opened a brand new tattoo shop in a great new location, and my buddy and I started scouting houses in my potential price range.

At least, until his partner got pregnant. Now, him making that offer in the first place was HUGE. And while he hasn't said anything about taking it back, he hasn't said much about it all. This whole odyssey for me started with that thought of what I'm going to leave my child, so I totally understand. Support him, even.

But it does mean that I've had to change up again.

I have moments where I think, oh we should be closing on our house in the US right now, my new studio would be building clients, and it would be summer soon. I squelch those thoughts as quick as I can. After all, what's that Yiddish proverb? If my grandmother had testicles she'd be my grandfather? I could just as easily be in the US right now with a homesick Hazel, a studio tied up in red tape, and a child covered in mosquito bites.

And the added horror of a possible President Trump.

Oh hell no.

Charlie has gone from standing and walking to stomping all over the house and climbing on everything. We've gone from the big, expensive place that was all we could find three years ago to a smaller and less expensive house that feels more like a home. Still renting, but there you are. I'm whipping my new studio into shape, running it in a much more professional way.

And I may have my eye on one or two new opportunities. Nothing I'm ready to talk about yet-- I'm not quite ready to hear more heavenly tittering....

Hard Call

A few years ago, on a visit back to New Orleans, I had a truly fantastic dinner with CS Harris, CharlesGramlich and Sphinx Ink. (And Candy's husband Steve, but he doesn't have a blog to link to) That night, Candy said something deeply alarming...

I knew she'd lived in Australia. I didn't know she'd been there for over fifteen years, or that she'd been heartbroken to return to the US.

I remember feeling a chill. I'd only lived in New Zealand twelve or thirteen years at that point. Suddenly, those years didn't seem long enough.

Why, I asked, would she ever leave a place she loved? Her answer:

Family.

What a relief. I was about as alone, and as lonely as a body could get. My parents were used to having me on the other side of the world. Family, that single, treacherous, weighted word, had no hold on me.

I was safe.

But things change. Things always change.

Now I have a daughter. And lost a father. Either would be a pretty major event, and I got both less than six months apart. No surprise that my perspective has shifted. My world is different now, and every time my girls smile at me, I'm reminded that my decisions don't just affect me anymore.

We're leaving New Zealand.

It's been a hard decision, but in the end it comes down to carrots and sticks.

On the one hand, we could raise our daughter here. I make a decent living, enough to support us all. But the cost of living is high-- high enough that we get by, and not much else. Since the earthquake destroyed our housing stock, rents have gone insane. Our house is warm and dry, and over $2000 a month. The average price to buy-- the average, now-- is $485,000, and banks don't want to talk to you without a 20% deposit. For me, like a lot of people here, home ownership is out of the question.

And I want a house. It never bothered me before-- most artist are so far below the poverty line that just paying the bills is a triumph-- but now that's just not enough. I want equity. Permanence. Something to pass on to Charlotte when I go. In the US, the average house is $136,000, and there are a lot more options for finance. Like, a lot. As dreams go, that one's in easy reach.

And then there's family. My wee girl already lost one grandparent. I want her to see as much as possible of the ones she has left. Moving, I can put her family in England and her family in Atlanta within a few hours of her. And afford to make those trips too.

I'm going to miss Christchurch. I really am.

But this city is broken. The city I loved, with its relaxed and easygoing people, its heritage buildings and Edwardian feel, its art galleries and opera house and vibrant public life, that city is gone. It died one afternoon in 2011. The place we live now is road cones and single lane traffic, the country's largest consumers of alcohol and antidepressants, fields of rubble and clattering jackhammers. Government types in ill-fitting suits are using my city as a testing ground for conservative social engineering. No matter how badly an idea has been repudiated in the past, they're determined to try it again.

The social engineering aside, our Mayor and City Council swear that all the other inconveniences are temporary. Just stick with us, they say, and this place will be even better than it was before!

In twenty or thirty years.

I love this place. These people. I'll never be able to fully leave-- especially because my daughter is a triple-citizen, and I want her to be a part of her New Zealand heritage. So I'll come back. To visit.

Meantime, I've got a life to build.  

Voice

(What follows is the text of the eulogy I wrote for my father's funeral...)

When I think of my father, I think of his voice.

Trained by the Church in a day when priests had to reach the back pews without microphones, my father's voice was a wonderful instrument. Deep and rolling, the pure low rumble of it calmed my childhood fears. Allowed to boom, his voice could rattle the windows. A sudden sneeze in a department store when we were kids was so loud a salesgirl was startled into noodle-limbed terror.

His voice was lively, agile. Tales told around the dinner table had the whole family laughing until our sides ached and tears streamed from our eyes. Stories of his childhood and family, of life in the priesthood, of his coworkers at the bank... In his hands, every voice acted out, his timing so perfect, all of these everyday stories became so funny we forgot to breathe.

His voice, for me, will always be the voice of the Bible. Every year, in the weeks leading up to Christmas and Easter, there would be after-dinner readings of scripture. Those readings, and the discussions that followed, were a door into the world of his faith.

Dad saw churches-- whatever the denomination-- as human institutions, mortal and flawed. But God's love was constant and absolute, bigger than man's frailty. For him, faith wasn't something you do for a couple of hours on a Sunday morning in a special building. It was the bedrock his life was built on. His love for his wife, his children, his grandchildren. All were different expressions of his relationship with a kind and loving God.

His love of God was his life. He and Mom met when he was still a priest. Their mutual faith brought them together. It united them in forty-eight years of marriage.

Once, when Tania and I were little, he woke to the sound of someone breaking into the house. I can't imagine how he felt. No baseball bat in the closet, no gun in a drawer. That wasn't my father. Instead, with two sleeping children and an intruder forcing his way into our home, my father walked naked out into the lounge to talk to him.

That voice worked its magic. By the time the cops arrived-- hours later-- Dad and the burglar had shared a pot of coffee and some serious conversation. He sent the police away and took the burglar to rehab.

That was faith-- his faith-- in action.

It was how he lived every day. Secure in God's love, and living the message of compassion and Christian charity.

As we grew, his children made choices he didn't always approve of. Choices he sometimes didn't understand. But he had faith in us, faith that the paths we walked were part of God's love.

Looking back, despite all the twists in the road, he may well have been right. :)

Over time, my father's voice softened. Chelsea and Kristen, Cameron and Brennan and Brandon, may have missed out on the lively entertainer and firebrand preacher. But they had the joy of growing up with a wonderful and soft-spoken grandfather. His church eventually forgave him for falling in love, agreeing that a family was in fact God's plan for him and welcoming him back with open arms. My father was happy. Truly happy. His voice grew more gentle now, often little more than a low murmur.

As the years wore on, his voice became a whisper. The last time I saw him, he spoke so softly I had to strain to hear him at all.

On May 18, at 12.24am, that voice fell silent.

I miss him. We all do. It's hard to think that we've had our last good talk, whether about serious matters like books we enjoy, or something silly like politics. It's hard to think that his voice is gone.

Except, it's not. I still hear him. We all do, everyone here today, can hear him right now. Whenever I face a choice-- between selfishness and love, between fear and doing the right thing-- it's his voice, his faith that guide me. And when I hear myself laugh with my daughter, it's his voice I hear.

So, this happened....

Her name is Charlotte Grace, and we call her Charlie. She was pretty much the coolest birthday present I could have imagined.

I was going to write something witty and clever, but it's been two month now. I've had to accept that witty and clever just aren't much on offer.... Maybe once she sleeps through the night. Maybe a few weeks after she leaves for college.

Work on the new book is going slower than I might like, but it's going. I carry pen and notebook everywhere, jot a few words as and how I can. Several times so far, I've fallen asleep in mid-sugar. I mean, sentence. I've fallen asleep mid-sentence. 

Can't wait to re-read the first draft on THIS one :)

Live, and FREE!

The new book, PRODIGAL, is finally out, and for the next few days, it's absolutely FREE!

Download your copy here :)

Wrong Dinosaur

Seriously-- a year?!?!?! A whole f**king YEAR since my last post?!?!?!?!

That's just taking the piss, that is.

Oh, and what a year it's been. Lot of personal stuff I won't go into here (odd of me, I know-- but I did have that year, remember...), but mostly it's been the year of the Book That Damn Near Broke Me.

Seriously, I think I came closer to quitting than ever before. Days would pass, sometimes as much as a week, where I would dutifully sit in front of my screen and stare. Just... stare.

Y'see, I had this bright idea: I was going to polish up all those rough drafts I've got sitting around and trot them out the door. I put in the months of writing them, it'd be nice if folks got to read them, right?

Wrong.

I picked out a tidy little thriller. Young woman comes home after a long absence, trouble ensues. Pretty straight ahead.

If I'd just hit the spellcheck and sent it on its way, life would have been different. But noooooo... I was missing stuff. All this great potential between her and the Sheriff, and her and the local crime boss, and I skated right past it. I skated past a lot of things.

I told myself, "I'll just flesh it out some."

Yeah, right.

Maybe 2000 words of that original draft survived. Once I started going deeper into my heroine's family, her history, and the way those bonds pull at us, my old plot didn't work. My ending didn't work. My beginning changed.

I had to rethink my dinosaur.



When I was a kid, T Rex stood upright. My wee plastic dinosaurs had him standing straight up, just like the skeletons in the museums. (Old picture of one up top) Oh, and he lumbered too. I remember that. Turns out, we all had it wrong. T Rex was a low--crouching, fast-moving nightmare.

Hopefully the new book will be too.

PRODIGAL will be available before Christmas. I hope. :)

Ripping Off Hamlet

So, work is going slow on BURIED.

At first I thought this would be an easy one, a finished manuscript that needed little more than a quick polish an off to the Beta readers. It's a tidy wee thriller about a young woman who returns to her hometown and starts asking questions about her brother's death. Think Walking Tall meets Pink's song Trouble.

Naturally, there was one small problem. A little thing, no more than a dangling thread at the edge of a garment, really.

The story read too fast. Not 'wow I finished it in a single night' fast, but 'who are these people and why are they doing this stuff' fast. In my haste to keep the action moving, I had neglected my sequels.

So I sat down every morning with my feathery quill, ruffled shirt and candle-drippy skull (so I'd know I was a *real* writer, see) and go through my manuscript. Correct a typo here, tighten some language there. And yes, broadening out those sequels so those characters could explain their who's and where's and why's...

That dangling thread metaphor a couple of paragraphs back? I bet you can see where I'm going this.

Yup. As I filled in the bits I had glossed over, that thread pulled further and further. I was writing about messed up families, about the ties that bind us to our pasts and histories, about the strange relationships between mothers and daughters. I had two mentor characters, one a hero who has to choose between her heart and doing the right thing, the other a black-hearted villain who did it all for love. And my poor protagonist, sucked into all these plots and feuds and jealousies and betrayals by the loss of a brother she barely knew, her last family.

Once I started pulling those threads, I felt like the biggest asshole to ever stare moodily from a garret window. Glossing over good meaty stuff like that should be criminal.

And of course, it wasn't long before the entire hem of my garment had dissolved. Stepping gently away from an overworked metaphor, my old ending no longer worked.

It was tidy. It was fun. It littered the bodies all over the stage.

But my old ending didn't do justice to these characters and what they were going through.

So, once more into the breach and all that. And this morning it hit me: the REAL central conflict of my story...

My heroine really was fine being a black sheep. She liked it. But family does hold its ties and obligations over us. Going home was the last thing she wanted to do, but it was what she had to do. And now that she's back, everyone wants her to further *their* agendas.

Basically, my story is one long Call to Action.

My earlier version had her answering that call at the Act I Climax, just like every other bloody Hero's Journey. Lot of good stories go that route, but it was making my heroine's choice seem shallow and facile.

But, who the hell writes about HALF the Hero's Journey? Okay, maybe the fiction team behind the Synoptic Gospels. (I mean, sure, maybe you could say Jesus answers the call before the start of that story, but I'd argue that he spends damn near every minute up until the Last Supper trying to find a less painful way to answer that call.) But those folks are NOT the writers to turn to for characterization...

Had this ever been done by anybody GOOD???

Oh yeah, Hamlet! That poor Emo's entire story is about the difficulty he has answering his call to action. If your dead father's ghost is crying murder and howling for vengeance, do you *really* need investigation and fake plays to figure out what you have to do? No. He knows from the start what he has to do, and what it will cost him.

And when he finally DOES take action, man do the bodies pile up quick!!!

This is gonna be fun..... :)

The Next Big Thing — Find the New Authors You Need to Read

I’d like to thank fellow author Avery DeBow for tagging me to participate. Click the link to find out about her book, Resonance.

In this particular hop, I and my fellow authors, in their respective blogs, have answered 10 questions where you get to learn about our current work in progress as well as some insights into our process, from characters and inspirations to plotting and cover decisions. I hope you enjoy it!

Please feel free to comment and share your thoughts and questions. Here is my Next Big Thing!

1: What is the working title of your book?

BURIED. I'm planning to release it as a summer beach read.

2: Where did the idea come from for the book?

The opening scene came to me out of whole cloth, just sort of landed in my lap. From there it was a matter of figuring out what the heck was going on there.

Once I'm revising, it's easier to see the certain sources (action movies, the strange relationship between mothers and daughters, my grandfather's old place in rural Georgia), but at the time it's all just getting to the next chapter...

3: What genre does your book come under?

Thriller/Suspense: Think a less-Floridian John D McDonald with better-written women.

4: Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Hmmm....

For Kira, Either a young Isabelle Adjani (maybe late 70's), or a current Leslie-Ann Brandt. Neither looks how the character is written, but both crackle with that exotic wild intensity. Of course, with my luck it'd turn out Taylor Swift was looking to get into acting...

And for the Sheriff, Jody Foster. Hands down, Jody Foster.

5: What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A young woman returns home after a long absence and starts asking questions about her brother's death.

6: Is your book self-published, published by an independent publisher, or represented by an agency?

I self publish. I had an agent for a couple-three years, and some interest, but in the end I'm happier this way. :)

7: How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

This one went quick, I seem to recall- maybe three months? Rewrites, of course, took considerably longer....

8: What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I'm sticking with John D MacDonald with stronger women. MUCH stronger women...

 9: Who or what inspired you to write this book?

The Sheriff just kind of wandered up one day, brought Kira with her, and the two of them wanted me to write a story. They were standing in that parking lot, kind of freaking me out.

 And they were pretty patient with me when I got lost, never let me write them too far off-track.

10: What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Let's see... I've got a sleepy Southern town with a tough-as-nails Sheriff, an oily and evil crime boss, a team of professional killers and a hot chick who kicks major ass!

Sound like you? No?

Well, how bout it's also a thoughtful meditation on the love and antagonism and tangled loyalties of family and the way that no matter where you go you'll always feel the pull of home...

Because it does both. I swear! :)

Happy Writing and Reading!

Recap and Intro

Hey everyone, just a quick intro/recap for any of you who are new here:

My name is Steve Malley. I write thrillers with a hard dark edge, full of action and intelligence, sex and violence and bad, bad love...

At least, that's what it says on my Amazon profile. :-p I'm an ex-pat American in New Zealand, an artist in my day jobs (tattooing, painting and comics). Basically, life rocks. :)

My books:


Street kids are disappearing from pre-quake Christchurch, and tough cop Sarah Crane is going to find out why...

Drifting bluesman Kane and a murderous Irish girl hell bent on revenge stand against a wicked and aging country singer with a serial killer in his entourage...

Vengeful ghosts, dark sorcerors and the walking dead all have it in for Sam Roark in this urban fantasy set in the world of tattoos and piercings.

Half Gothic ghost story, half two-fisted suspense....

Loaded Thoughts

Naturally enough, I can't stop thinking about the school shooting at Sandy Hook. And at Chardon, Virginia Tech, Red Lake, West Nickel Mines, Westside and of course, Columbine. The list is sickening, and it keeps growing longer...

And that's got me thinking about guns.

A gun, any weapon really, is a force-multiplier. Pure and simple. Stick, knife, brass knuckles, assault rifle or fighter jet, the point is that your weapon does more damage in your hands than your hands do alone.

One thing about guns: any damn idiot with a trigger finger can do a lethal amount of damage.

This random, horrible, murderous urge is, I hate to say, universal and very human. I imagine it has to do with the effects of social pressures, rage and hopelessness on marginal, borderline personalities.We have seen it in modern China. We see it in the cafard of Polynesia, the mal de peleo of Puerto Rico, the Navajo iich'aa and the Philippine/Malaysian syndrome whose name our language adopted, running amok.

Some folks just melt down. And when that buzzing starts in their heads, they go on a killing rampage. The only thing that changes are the available weapons.

Which brings me back to guns. Some poor bastard loses the plot and takes after a bunch of kids with a knife, he gets tackled and subdued. Yes, seven deaths is seven too many, but he only got those because of the shock and delay onlookers experienced at the sudden attack. And that shock and delay WILL happen in that situation. (You concealed-carry advocates may be sitting there with Diehard scenarios running through your head, but even with extgensive and specialized training, violent surprise will cause you to lose a step.) Point is, grownups went, "Hey, that guys stabbing kids" and tackled his ass to the ground. Imagine if instead he'd opened up with a pistol or shotgun, or an assault rifle.

Obviously, the US has a LOT of guns- 89-90,000 per 100,000 people. My new home New Zealand has 22,000 per 100,000 still one of the highest on the planet. Thing is, while we certainly have our share of amok here, we don't get school shootings. We don't get workplace shootings. Even our own Aramoana Massacre only claimed four lives.

Why? Kiwis certainly aren't nicer than Americans, or less prone to violence. Every darkness that dwells in the human heart dwells in us, and we certainly have our fair share of guns.

So what then?

Near as I can figure, it's that here they have gun control. Real, live gun control. Nothing illegal at all about owning a gun, or a lot of guns if you like. But you do have to be licensed. Not a criminal. Not mentally ill. You MUST have effective safeguards, gun safes, etc. The more guns you have, the more secure your home had better be.

And the cops actually come out to your house and CHECK! They visit, to make sure you haven't gone mental. To check out that gun safe/cabinet/etc. and see who has access and are they licensed too. They will check your alarms and such, because they don't want guns in the hands of criminals, naturally.

And you know what? Cops here don't carry either. If guns are called for, there's something called the Armed Offenders Squad, specialists like a SWAT team who take care of any shooting needs doing.

We/re not perfect here. We're human. We don't get it right all the time. Bad things happen, and will happen in the future.

But by limiting the ACCESS of the mentally ill and unstable to deadly weapons that require little more than to point and click to unleash hell, we do live better, happier, safer and more secure lives.

How many more dead does my birth country need before it finally takes action??

Bass Ackwards

One of my favorite Neil Gaiman quotes is something along the lines of 'you never really learn to write novels- you only learn how to write the novel you've just written'. (Except, of course, probably better phrased than that, since he is, after all, Neil Gaiman...)

Certainly true in my case. Over the course of a dozen-ish novels (including the graphic novels) I have plotted and pantsed. I've thrown my carefully crafted plots out halfway through. I've outlined a scene or two ahead so that I'd have an idea where the words were headed. I wrote my first graphic novel from an outline on a single page of notebook paper, from an idea I got while face-painting children at a public pool.

I've pounded out pages on a 1920's Remington typewriter, tippity-tap-tap-tapped them on a variety of laptops, once even forged my way through some ugly writer's block by slowing down enough to use a 19th century dip pen. A. Dip. Pen. 

No two novel-writings have been alike. Maybe I'm still finding my particular groove. Maybe I'll never have just the one method. 

All I know for sure is, I've never had anything quite like this. 

I've been working on Paris Blues (not it's real name, I'm sure, but we gotta call 'em something) for some months now. I started as usual, vague idea of a plot arch, tapping at the laptop (well, HP mini notebook these days- easier to cart around) and well aware that my plots rarely go where I think they will. I was happy to roll along for the ride. 

Things got weird. For reasons I can't remember anymore, about 10,000 words in I found myself scribbling away in a blank notebook with a fountain pen. No complaints out of me: I find the shush of nib on paper, the glistening trail of ink to be the most sensual writing experience possible. And as sometimes happens, slowing down my hand speeds up my words. 

I was prepared for characters who seemed important in the beginning to fade as I went on. I was just as prepared to find new characters walking on with plenty to say, knowing they'd mean a pretty big rewrite at the beginning to fold them in. I was even ready to find that my gangster story was more of a murder mystery. Maybe. Or not. All part of the fun. 

What I wasn't ready for was the story to come at me out of order. I love Stephen King's analogy of writing a story as pulling at a buried thread. Well, this here thread seems to be one big tangle. I can see (kinda, sorta) where it's all going. Going-ish. Okay, so there's a sense of it all hanging together, but I keep getting scenes that DO NOT fit chronologically. 

On the one hand, I could leave them as they came, be the next Vonnegut, maybe win some kind of literary prize. More likely, I'm going to end up opening a second draft as I transcribe them into the laptop and start monkeying with things until the whole shebang makes sense. 

No Whitebread or Booker for me, but hopefully a story that's fun to read and hard to put down...

Challenge!

(pronounced 'shall-ONGE', for any of you who were wondering)

So I've set myself a challenge: release four books before Christmas. Yup, that's right: not one or two, not even three, but FOUR separate titles in less than a hundred days!

I like my goals BAD: Bold, Ambitious and Doable. I'm sick and tired of sitting on all this unreleased work, and four out the door is a good start.

And as the blog title says, life ain't got but two speeds worth using, and it's high time I started burning asphalt again. :)

I started this about a month ago, end of September-ish. And it was harder to get in gear than I'd thought. Too much rust, too many parts fallen into disrepair. But I never let that stop me before, and it didn't now. And sure enough, as I've picked up the rhythm again, it's getting easier to open that throttle.

First up was a new novel, in THREE editions. With all the separate formatting for Kindle, Smashwords and then (the doozy) print, I was mighty damn tempted to call that three of my four. But I knew that would be cheating, so I ticked that one up and stepped on the gas.

Next up are a print reissue of my first graphic novel and a revised and expanded new edition of Crossroad Blues with a wonderful new cover by the magical Kate Sterling! I figured these would be easy ones, but formatting a graphic novel for print turns out to be just as big a pain as formatting prose, and none of the skills transfer over. I'm still tackling it at a pretty good clip!

Not sure what the fourth will be yet...

Likely candidates are a crime/suspense (BURIED), a flat-out Noir (MAYHEM) or a mystery still searching for its title (I've been calling it High School Gumshoe while I work on it lol). There are others, of course, in various stages of first-and second draftage. But these are closest to ready to go out, so they'll be sitting nervous in the back seat, looking out that open door and listening to the rush of wind.

Me, I have no doubt before this challenge is done I'll have the gas pedal mashed to the floor, bugs in my teeth and the engine screaming, the road ahead a blue tunnel.

Once I've hit 'Publish' that fourth time, THAT'S when I've earned myself a nice nap and a day off.

Before I do it all over again. :)

And in case you were wondering, yes, I will throw some posts up here to hype the new stuff! Later. Right now, I've got to get back to work!

Not Dead Yet...

So a series of hardware meltdowns and my own dependence on stored passwords left me locked out of several email accounts, as well as blogger. As time went on, I got (and stayed) sidetracked. Until today. The 7th anniversary of Katrina, the advent of Isaac, my own mounting frustration with bulldozers and road cones... well, something in there made getting back into my blogger account important today. My New Orleans friends, I want you all to know you're very much in my thoughts. <3

Kaning It!

Well, for a change this blog has been quiet for a *good* reason: Kane's back, and just like last time, he's kicking ass in longhand!

I don't know what it is about that character (maybe that he's pretty old-fashioned and low-tech himself), but writing him goes quicker when I break out my trusty old fountain pen and a thick blank book.

Of course, that first draft is not all I'm up to. As usual, I keep my plate pretty full: I've got another short story about halfway done, a couple of workshops I'll be leading for New Zealand Book Month, a novel set in rural Georgia just getting its final touches before release and staying booked out about a month in advance for my tattoo work.

But every day I force a block of time to sit with Kane: It's two years after the end of Crossroad Blues, and he's been in Paris. He's got his own apartment, a regular gig at a small Blues club and some money in his pocket. An indie record label's showing some interest.

One night he sees a girl in a party dress go down a manhole and pull the cover shut behind her, and everything changes...

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...

NOT A DRILL!

Yup, it's really happening: I'm coming to New Orleans and Georgia!

Totally excited to see so many friends and family from the birth country. And yes, totally excited to know that I've got my ticket back home... ;)

Now, all I have to worry about is earthquakes and, er, volcanoes?!