This past weekend brought the privilege of a visit by the estimable Tim Pratt, aka tim_pratt, who came to march down beaches and eat pizza and burgers and large breakfasts and drink barley-hops and watch superhero cartoons and Spencer Tracy movies, among other things. By happenstance, my lovely friend Bobzilla had brought his brood to San Diego for a weekend visit, and he managed to get away for a Saturday night sit-down at an Irish bar overrun with karaokers, which was a great opportunity to see two strong representatives of different friend-o-spheres meet one another. A very lovely weekend.

There's a Thanksgiving ham in the fridge and I believe I deserve some credit for not having yet eated it.

I've got a flash piece up at PodCastle, Change, read by the estimable Dave Thompson. Dave does a very fine reading, and with the improvements his voice and inflections lend the story, I prefer this audio production to the original text version. It's a very short story, with a fairly simple idea: People can get used to anything. Sometimes this is a good thing, and sometimes, not so much.

I have not one but two eye doctor appointments today. One will be akin to harsh interrogation, in which they'll look to see if diabetes is eating my eyes. The other will be a more common test to determine if I still know the alphabet, and it will probably result in new glasses, as I've been wearing my current pair for something like six years and I ain't gettin' any younger. I don't even know what hep glasses are anymore. Are the square plastic frames still cool?

I don't know why I think I have the right to grump about what other people post on their LJ's, especially when all I post any more is writing stuff.

I wiped down all the kitchen counters yesterday, including beneath and behind the microwave. There was a lot of red onionskin down there. That wasn't writing-related.

Last night at the coffee joint there were some super-duper old farts planning some kind of musical event, and they were going on and on about these dusty old songs from their youth, and of course the music they were talking about was stuff from my high school days. And, yeah, okay, I still really do like Dire Straits (the Brothers in Arms tour was one of my first concert experiences), and "Save a Prayer" really is a good Duran Duran song ...

And, actually, I was at the coffee joint to write, so the preceding was technically writing-related.

Anyway, what I actually came here to say is that Kid Vs. Squid has an Amazon listing and a release date now: May 11, 2010.

Here's the product description:

The citizens of Atlantis are stuck selling cotton candy on the boardwalk, and only our hero can help

Thatcher Hill is bored stiff of his summer job dusting the fake mermaids and shrunken heads at his uncle’s seaside Museum of Curiosities. But when a mysterious girl steals an artifact from the museum, Thatcher’s summer becomes an adventure that takes him from the top of the ferris wheel to the depths of the sea. Following the thief, he learns that she is a princess of the lost Atlantis. Her people have been cursed by an evil witch to drift at sea all winter and wash up on shore each summer to an even more terrible fate—working the midway games and food stands on the boardwalk. Can Thatcher help save them before he, too, succumbs to the witch’s curse?

With sharp, witty writing that reads like a middle-grade Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Greg van Eekhout’s first book for young readers is a wild ride packed with as many laughs as it has thrills.

So much of writing is waiting. Waiting for checks, waiting for responses to submissions, waiting for paperwork, waiting for answers to questions. The part that's not waiting is working. Neither the waiting nor the working is easy, but the working, at least, feels like moving forward, rather than mucking about in the tar until the saber-toothed cat comes along, licking its chops.

From Last

I wrote. I read proofs. Ayup.

From Last

From Kid vs. Squid proofs

Asked on his blog when he started drawing, author/illustrator Adam Rex borrows and expands on Shaun Tan's answer to the same question:

Nearly all kids draw for fun, and their drawings tell stories. We all start out as illustrators, and we all start at about the same age–as soon as we can work a crayon. Most people quit at about the same time too, in their tween years somewhere. I don’t know why people stop–are they distracted by organized sports or hobbies or the opposite sex? Do they stop simply because they aren’t good enough, and in these years we all abandon those activities at which we don’t already excel? ... Tan’s is the only response that makes sense for a question to which we all already know the answer. It makes sense because it answers the secret question inside the question–“Why can you draw when I can’t?” Because you stopped and I didn’t. This is also why I can’t play guitar or throw a Frisbee.

I suppose this makes sense to me. If you want to get good at anything, sustained effort is almost always required.

On the other hand, there's my my friend, Todd Young, whom I've known since we were seven, longer than anyone outside my family. Todd and I started photography around the same time. We weren't in the same class period, but I'm pretty sure we were both taking high school photography at the same time. I stopped and Todd didn't. But I don't think that's the only reason why I'm a haphazard snapshooter of coffee cups and Todd produces works of beauty. To be sure, Todd's worked at it. He studied photography in college and kept at it while working as an assistant at a commercial studio, as well as aftewards, when he was working in non-photography jobs. He's worked hard at it.

But he's also really, really talented. His eye's always been better than mine. He sees things in a way I don't. His personality lends itself to painstaking effort and finesse. He very early found a way to make darkroom equipment and chemicals write wordlessly profound things on paper.

If I hadn't stopped taking photos, I might have become a good photographer. And I am a believer in hard work trumping talent. But when talent meets hard work, something else happens.

And all of this is really just an excuse to say, "Hey, go look at my friend's photographs. He's awesome." ( Awesomeness below the cut )

Thanks for all the weight-training tips over at my last entry, you guys! The message that's resonating most with me is I should get at least a few sessions with an expert so I don't explode my own spine and rupture my spleen. That makes sense. My local YMCA has reasonably-priced sessions for beginners, so I'll probably go that route.

What I'm looking for is something to do while I'm trying to find a new martial arts school, and I've been looking since May, when I decided my perfectly good kung fu school wasn't quite what I wanted. Watching my body slide back into its sedentary condition is getting depressing. So, it's either find a school or do something else. I'm pretty sure I've checked out every kung fu school around here, and it's discouraging to find schools that look great at first but turn out to have problems or just not be what I want (require contracts, or excessively kid-focused, or provide disinterested instruction, or focus on competition-style wushu, or do a 40-minute warm-up consisting of standing still in one position) so it's at least going to have to be a new martial art. Maybe kempo again, as I really do like kicking and punching. Especially punching. And forms. And weapons. And ... I'm talking an awful lot about martial arts instead of weight-training, aren't I?

Yeah.

Anyway, I appreciate the tips and advice, and I look forward to checking out the links to the training sites you guys sent me. Thanks again!

From Last

Anybody have any tips/sites for someone (someone very much like myself, in fact) getting started with weight training? My goals are increasing my overall fitness and beauty. Mostly interested in stuff I can do on machines rather than free weights, since my apartment's gym has the former.

Came home from evening excursions last night to find Kid vs. Squid page proofs waiting at my door. Of the many things that occur in the journey from manuscript to book, getting page proofs is turning out to be one of my favorites. It's the first time that a book starts to look like a book and it fills me with squee.

From Kid vs. Squid proofs

From Kid vs. Squid proofs

And then there's the somewhat more laborious part of publishing, which is writing the durn book.

From Last

I have to admit, I'm just a little bit afraid to start this book. My normal process, which involves writing tens of thousands of words that take the story off in wrong directions and must be deleted and replaced by tens of thousands of new words, is getting a bit old. It's also a waste of time, and I foresee a 2010 in which I'll have to get more work done in a shorter span. So, I want to get this book right the first time. More right, anyway. Pretty right, at least. Less wrong.

I've got by far the most detailed outline I've ever begun a book with, but it's still an incomplete map, and I could easily justify spending another month playing around with it. But it's starting to feel like dithering now. Dithering is something I'm trying to eradicate from my life as much as possible, and if writing is an expression of living, then avoiding dithering in my writing seems worth the risk of getting lost a few weeks or months down the road.

So, okay. Time to light 'er up.

From Lost

Twitter says my account is temporarily locked after too many failed login attempts. I'm to "chillax" and wait it out. I just changed my password and now I'm worried I mistyped it twice. I bet you're all having a ton of fun over there without me.

My thinking is too rigid.

From Last

No, I haven't actually been sitting here for twelve hours. I did other things today. Among them, working and drinking coffee at home.

I also went to Mysterious Galaxy for the launch party of Steven R. Boyett's new book, Elegy Beach.

Steve taught just about the only good writing class (not counting workshops) I ever took, and he largely informed my idea of how a writer thinks, what a writer does, and what a writer is. I'm delighted he's got a new novel out, and it was great to catch up with him at World Fantasy Con and then stalk him again at his launch only two days later.

Also nice: A couple of people I didn't even know came up to tell me they'd read and enjoyed Norse Code.

THE STUDENT HAS BECOME THE MASTER.

Well, no. But the student wrote a book and it was really cool to be able to hand a signed copy to my teacher.

From Last

Adapting my synopsis into a workable, detailed outline. This is not what I would deem a thrills-a-minute task, but Future Greg will be very happy Past Greg endured the tedium and challenge.

From Last

My awesome editor at Bloomsbury just gave me the go-ahead on the outline for my next book, so I can now commence with the writey-writey! It's a post-apocalyptic upper middle grade called Last, and it's about the last boy on Earth, a broken robot, and a cloned pygmy mammoth. Scheduled (probably) for summer 2011.

You may expect many entries over the next several months consisting of content such as this:

From Last

Hey, I'll be giving a reading at World Fantasy Con:

Saturday, 11:30 AM
Garden Room

Schedule:
11:30 Begin reading, probably something from Norse Code, maybe also some Kid vs. Squid
11:35 Glare balefully
11:37 Gnash teeth
11:40 Cluck like a chicken
11:43 Sing a song, but only inside my head where only I can hear
11:51 Still singing inside my head, but now with swaying
11:57 Repeatedly scream "AAAAGGGGGHHHOOOOOOOOOGAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!" as loud as I can
11:58 Try to pull the taser darts from my chest
11:59 Nice, long nap

Hope to see you there!

OMG I HAVE THE MOST AWESOME PUBLISHING NEWS BUT I CAN'T TELL YOU!!

(Actually, that's not true. I don't currently have awesome publishing news, and if I did, I would tell you. I just always wanted to type one of those awesome-but-can't-tell-you posts.)

(Actually, thinking about it, maybe I have posted one of those kinds of posts in the past, but being the internet exhibitionist blabby mouth I am, it would have been uncharacteristic of me, and I sometimes blot out my own uncharacteristic behavior.)

(Actually, that's not true. I agonize over my own uncharacteristic behavior just as much as I agonize over my characteristic behavior. I agonize a lot. I'm like a poet.)

Anyway.

I may not have awesome publishing news, but I do have some nice publishing news: My story, Carnival Park, is now up at PodCastle. It originally appeared as part of "Tales From the City of Seams," a sequence of flash stories in Polyphony 4.

Now's a great time to buy books (such as the acclaimed Polyphony series of anthologies, among other things) from Wheatland Press. A relative of publisher Deborah Layne (and an indie bookseller in her own right) lost her house in a fire, and Deborah is donating $10 from every Wheatland book sold this month to help her out. A good cause, and you can get some good books out of it. Details here.

Remember when I used to talk about my life a lot here? Well, I still live. It's been a busy October. Saw an NBA game outdoors in the middle of the Mojave Desert, went to a Moby show, and have several more fun and social events coming up in the next couple of weeks. I've also been writing and waiting for awesome publishing news.

ETA: Forgot to mention another bit of nice news: The Greek newspaper Εννέα recently published "Far As You Can Go," my story about a boy and a broken robot being adventurous and brave and poignantly broken. You can buy it in its original form from Tropism Press and help the publishers get through some challenging economic circumstances.