The right channel of my headphones just quit and I feel like I've lost an entire hemisphere of my brain. There's probably a Latin term for this, but despite one year of Catholic school, when it comes to Latin you might as well be speaking Latin.

1. Breakfast at the neighborhood breakfast joint where we've never eaten even though it's literally across the street. I went for straight-forward bacon and eggs, but they have a fine array of Mexican-inflected items on the menu I want to try. It was really good. And it was right across the street. It's going to make me so fat.

2. Shopped for toilet paper and Cheerios. Then got my mom the first Midnighters book and The Lightning Thief for Mother's Day.

3. Hit up a coffee joint and worked on the series proposal I'm hoping to wrap up this week.

4. Happy-hour sushi. Including one-cent sake. Yum. Oof. Yum.

5. Beach.



6. Starship-motortrike.



7. Mississippi paddle-wheel traversing a bay in San Diego between two Polynesian resorts.

So, I'm writing a proposal for a series grown out of my story, "The Osteomancer's Son."

Among the dramatis personae are the protagonist's ex, Carmen, and their daughter, Miranda.

I named them Carmen. And Miranda.

This wouldn't make me cringe quite as much if they hadn't already appeared in the story, published two years ago.

ETA: Okay, I must be tired. In the story I actually named her Connie. So I was only about to introduce new error rather than repeat existing error.

So tired. Rush show was awesome, fun time had by all. Bought a tour shirt, my first since "Hold Your Fire" in 1988. That one was a flimsy, long, narrow tube with sleeves, like a t-shirt made for asparagus. This one is very much more shirt-like.

Since there was miraculously no traffic between San Diego and LA, I never once had to dip below 70mph and made it to Culver City with time to spare, which I used productively at a coffee joint to do some outlining-type stuff on the new novel.

In the news, a teacher is accused of wizardry for making a toothpick disappear.

I'll be heading up to LA to see Rush today with friends Todd and Lori. After the show, I will get back in my green Prizm and drive like the wind, straining the limits of machine and man.

I'd advise any gleaming alloy air-cars, two lanes wide and otherwise, to steer well clear of me.

Another Monday, another free story. Like the previous two, Carnival Park and Chinatown, this one is from is from "Tales From the City of Seams," originally published in Polyphony 4, and reprinted in Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: 18th Annual Collection.

Old Heights
by Greg van Eekhout

Maybe he's a retired heavyweight who owns a cigar-stained Italian restaurant downtown and still spars with the kids when he runs his youth boxing camp. Or maybe he's a cowboy actor who exaggerates his Texas drawl when he does commercials for his Ford dealership. Possibly, he's an old news anchor who emcees the annual leukemia telethon and does a radio show early on Sunday mornings.

Every town has one, the old local celebrity who represents the people in a way an elected politician never could. Whoever he is, you can be sure he's a raconteur, that he's been entertaining people for as long as anyone can remember. People agree that he's simply the nicest guy in town, though there are some faded rumors about womanizing, and some drunk driving allegations. But those happened so long ago, and anyway, they somehow make him human and better loved.

Around here, for my generation, at least, that guy was the Green Thunder.
( Continued below the cut )

It's been a very nice, bum-around sort of weekend. Yesterday morning the weather was too perfect, so we strolled along the bay and out to the beach and had a relaxing breakfast at Seaside Cantina. Great place to watch waves and people.

Returned home after wading in the surf and caught a showing of Iron Man. I don't think I liked it quite as much as some people, but I really enjoyed Robert Downey, Jr.'s performance, and the suit was totally neat. Sometimes superhero movies turn into CGI cartoons in the last half hour, but there were enough shots of Tony Stark's face behind the helmet that I never felt I'd lost contact with the character and shifted into a different movie.

Stopped at the market on the way home from the movie for sandwich fixings, came home and quickly assembled a picnic, and then headed out to sit on the sand by the bay and munch. I even snuck a beer out there, which you're not supposed to do anymore on account of the hundreds of drunken knuckleheads who rioted last Labor Day. I quietly drank my beer and did not riot.

I've already gotten some feedback on the novel from very-first readers, who caught some stupid things I thought I could get away with, some dumb decisions I made with pacing, and various and sundry. Trying to fix some of that today.

Now, however, I am sleepy.

Starting a new book!

Just tippy-typing some notes so far, actually.

I'm at a very pleasant coffee joint in Pacific Beach. I like this neighborhood. It's far enough north from Garnet Ave. that it might not be full of bar-hopping knuckleheads at night. And I can see ocean when I look down the street. Definitely an area to check out when the current lease runs dry in a few months.

I AM TOTALLY AT LOOSE ENDS!

I am forcibly giving myself a day off writing to recharge. Figured it would be a good time to start screwing around with Scrivener, because my next book will require keeping track of things like characters and settings and timelines, and Scrivener looks like it might help me do a good job of that, and also I'm freaking sick of Word a little bit.

Also, I am blasting Metallica very loudly. Old Metallica, when they were still good. Cliff Burton-era. "Ride the Lightning," to be specific. Rar.

Many thanks to everyone who commented with nice things about the almost-finished draft of my YA novel, Flotsam. I spent the last two days going through it, doing the meatball surgery that will get it to the Army hospital in Tokyo. Now, it goes off to the Blue Heaven workshop in June. I think I'm going to give my brain a day or two to rest, and then I start work on a proposal for my next book. But right now, I drink beer.

Why am I wearing a hat, you ask? I think the better question is, why aren't you?

I'm making pretty good progress going through my book. About a hundred more pages to go.

Came across a telling typo:

Slug-like creatures slithered at my feet among truck tires and safety cones, fish skeletons, gelatinous blogs, undigested leftovers.

I do not have a complete draft of my YA novel, but I have typed the first word of the first scene (the) and the last word of the last scene (laughed), and all the words in between. The reason why this doesn't constitute a first draft for me is because if I sent it out in the world in this shape, even to trusted first readers, it would die. The lungs are hanging on by mere threads. The heart is sewn onto the elbow.

So, what's required now is what they used to call meatball surgery on M*A*S*H. It's not polish and perfection. It's more stuff like, if the heroes employ a mummy in the climax to save the day, I have to actually go back and write in a mummy for them to employ.

This is a dangerous time for me. The language is clunky, the characters inconsistent, some of the plot business completely nonsensical, and not being able to fix all these things before people read the draft can push me pretty far out on the ledge of shame and despair. But I don't have time to fix all these things. I only have time to shove the heart into the chest cavity and hit it with my fist and scream, "Live, damn you, live!" Alan Alda-style.

Working from home means I can play all the goddamn Journey I want.

I think I'm going to post some free fiction on Mondays for at least a few weeks. As with last week's offering, this week's piece is from "Tales From the City of Seams," originally published in Polyphony 4, and reprinted in Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: 18th Annual Collection.

"Chinatown" was inspired by the Han folktale about a family of brothers, each with a special ability. I'm sure I must have read The Five Chinese Brothers when I was a kid, but I was more directly inspired by Margaret Mahy's The Seven Chinese Brothers.

Not to be outdone, I put eight brothers in my version.


Chinatown
by Greg van Eekhout


I used to work for a plumbing supply wholesaler in Chinatown, and the best part of my day was always lunch. I'd walk by the window displays of tobacco-colored ducks strung up by their necks, the scents of grease and ginger trying to draw me in. But I was like a man passing a row of prostitutes without interest, secure in the knowledge that a more desirable lover awaits him at home. Lady Sze's Golden Crown Café was my destination, the only place in town where you could get a bowl of soup that had been simmering for a thousand years.
( Continued below the cut )

Driving up to Los Angeles in a bit. Most likely we'll be hitting the LA Times Festival of Books on the campus of my alma mater, UCLA. I've never been to the LA Times Festival of Books. I'm hoping to find books there, people engaged in all things books, and parking. I'd hope for fried chicken, because I used to love the fried chicken at the Treehouse, which I would order with the mashed potatoes and gravy and chicken-fried potatoes, and then the cashier would say, "You sure you got enough starch on that tray, sport?" and I'd mumble something grumpy and incoherent as I was wont to do when I was a college student and dig into my chicken while trying to dodge the calcified chicken feathers. But there won't be any fried chicken, because the Treehouse is long gone, alas.

Plans afterward include an outing with friends to an Irish pub and a stage play. Then, tomorrow, we'll drive my parents around so they can buy things like cheese and cat food and whatever else they need. Then, back home and write and write and write.

Or, we might spend the entire weekend in traffic. Heat wave in Southern California might mean everyone flees to beaches and air-conditioned shopping hangers. I need to find the subterranean express road. Then I'd just have to shoot Morlocks.

A swimmer got killed by a shark this morning at Solana Beach, my very favorite San Diego-area beach and the site of my Mystery Dream House. Apparently a lot of seals and sea lions have been beaching themselves in the area, which they do when there's a big predator out there.

More people die from coconuts falling on their heads than get killed by sharks, so it's not like I'm worried about getting eaten by a shark. Still kinda freaky, though.

Woo! The fantasy podcast site PodCastle is buying "The Osteomancer's Son," my story about bone magic in Los Angeles. It'll probably run sometime next month.

And today I got my contributor's copies of Spin, a Finnish science fiction/fantasy magazine, containing "Kirjailijatalo," a translation of my story "Authorwerx."

The podcast of "Authorwerx" was in Escape Pod last year.

Now I need to get "The Osteomancer's Son" translated into Finnish ...

***

We in the USA are now assaulting teens with ultrasonic noise weapons. Because if there's one thing teenagers can't do, it's retaliate by making noise of their own. And it's always a good idea to antagonize those who will be responsible for our care in a few decades, isn't it? Our nursing homes will be pits dug in the ground. At least we'll be able to gum our earthworms.

I'm an old man with the knees of Geezer McCreakster, but I have the hearing of a young adult. I'm immune to these assaults, but not by much. I did have the Lakers game on when I took the test, though, so for all I know these emitters will melt my geriatric brains.

You are about 20 years old

The teen repellent will no longer foil you, but you can still hear some pretty high tones. The highest pitched ultrasonic mosquito ringtone that I can hear is 16.7kHz

Find out which ultrasonic ringtones you can hear!

Crappy phonecam footage of Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson joining the Foo Fighters on-stage last month to play YYZ. The footage is really crappy, and you have to sit through a tedious Taylor Hawkins drum solo before Geddy and Alex come on (Neil Peart is the only drummer who should be allowed solos), and Grohl must've been eating cold cuts backstage because he's nowhere to be seen, and there's an obnoxious guy screaming, "Holy shit! Holy fuck! OH MY GOD!" the whole time.

If I'd been there, I would have so totally been that guy.

(Geddy and Alex come on at the two-minute mark.)