God, I'm boring.

This would be maybe a little more exciting if you could hear the alarming zap of of the proprietor's scary electrified fly swatter (not pictured, because I was afraid).

From Osteomancer's Son

Well, yesterday was very fun and exciting. From the bottom of my pitiless soul, thank you for the emails and Tweets and Facebook things and pics of my book and journal and blog entries and comments. I'm grateful I could share the day with the bunch of you.

Aside from the inordinate amount of time I spent on the internet yesterday, I also had a celebratory lunch with Lisa, and I also did some writing. Not very much of it, but that has as much to do with book-release headedness as it does with the fact that I reached the end of act one and realize I haven't sufficiently thought through act 2. Thinking's hard. Stupid thinking.

From Osteomancer's Son

No hype today, but I will link to the podcast of my story Frequent Flier Miles (originally published by my friends at Flytrap), which was posted on The Drabblecast a couple of days ago. Cat Rambo graces the story with her reading. (I'm confident she does, though I confess to not having listened to it yet, so it's something I'm still looking forward to.)

"Frequent Flier Miles" appears to be another one about the consequences of immortality. That's largely what my story coming soon at Tor.com is about, too. And it also pops up in NORSE CODE, too. I'd say it's becoming an obsession of mine, but it's possible the obsession has less to do with immortality itself than it does with Highlander.

But who knows? I've been having a lot of vivid and unsettling dreams lately, and when motifs and scenarios appear in my dreams again and again, it seems rude to my subconscious to ignore it when it might be trying to tell me something. Writing stories is usually such hard work and full of deliberate choices that sometimes I forget my typing fingers are getting their orders from more than one source.

Heh. I just remembered that OSTEOMANCER'S SON is full of characters going to great lengths to achieve immortality. So, there it is again, right on the screen in front of me.

From Osteomancer's Son

This morning there was no coffee cup, no juice, not even a laptop. I mean, I had coffee, I had juice, and I still have my laptop, but I figured I'd mix it up a bit today. Now, though, it's back to my traditional tools and substances.

From Osteomancer's Son

A few weeks ago I woke up with an overwhelming craving for tomato juice. I tried quenching it with a Bloody Mary, and it was very good, but it didn't satiate my craving. Nor have the Spicy Hot V8's I've been drinking every day. I just can't get enough. This morning I craved my V8 even before I craved my coffee. And beer? I guess I'd be happy drinking a beer at some point, but I don't really want a beer.

Does this mean I have the scurvy?

I'm kind of in between projects this week, waiting for editorial and agent feedback on things, so I'm poking at a book series proposal. I've been working on novels non-stop for months and months now, except for some days or a couple of weeks here and there when I've been in this in-between stage. It's unsettling. Between this and the V8 thing, I'm all unsettled.

From Osteomancer's Son

So, thanks again to everyone who recommended heist movies and books. Over the last few weeks, I've watched Heist (David Mamet), The Great Train Robbery (Michael Crichton), The Italian Job (Marky Mark), Lady Killers (Obi Wan), Rififi, the three Firelfy heist episodes ("The Train Job," "Ariel," and "Trash"), and read Comeback (Richard Stark). In addition to Sneakers and Oceans 11 and sequels and Pink Panther and probably a few others I'd already seen. A lot of fun and entertaining stories there. And all of them dependent on stunning coincidence, absurd depictions of computer hacking, conveniently easy access to police uniforms and ID's and security passwords, cops who have to wait for shops to open up so they can use the phone, and likesuch.

My conclusion: Heists don't work and writers are just makin' shit up.

Real heists are almost always inside jobs. Except for art thefts. Those tend to depend on conveniently incompetent museum security. So, my advice: Steal from museums. Or pull the Brink's Job. But that's a lot of work.

I don't think I can stand to watch another heist movie at the moment, so I'm going to consider my homework done for now and get back to writing.

Oh! We're having an earthquake!

It's over. Still alive. Anyway, back to writing.

ETA: The earthquake was apparently out in Chino Hills. That's a fair distance from here. Hope all my LA peeps are okay. :-/

Still on the road ...



( more under the cut )

I've been unaccountably grumpy for the last few days. Today, I largely ignored my responsibilities -- not that I have so many of them -- and played. I mean, I play a lot, but I work too. Really, I do! Kinda. It's complicated.

Anyway.

Now, I feel better.

( A few pics from my day below the cut )

"The Osteomancer's Son" just got posted on PodCastle, in podcast form: here.

Writing that makes me think of Milhouse saying, "Remember ALF? He's back. In POG form!"

And, no, I never have noticed that I bear a resemblance to Milhouse Van Houten, thank you very much for asking.

Breakfast at the breakfast joint across the street, then writing at the coffee joint in Hillcrest. Still refining the book proposal. I thought I would hate writing book proposals -- mine consists of a pitch paragraph, a synopsis for each of the two books, and four sample chapters from the first book -- but it's actually been really fun to work on. I'm shocked. Shocked that I'm having fun.

So, basically, everything is more writing and more snacks. Not very interesting to blog about, but I'm having fun, and I hope you are too.

My proposal for the new novels isn't entirely sucky. In fact, my agent really liked my sample chapters, though she thinks the pitch paragraph needs more work, so that's what I've been working on, plus an additional sample chapter just because I kinda felt like writing it. So, Monday it'll go back to her and we'll see what she thinks. My agent is great with editorial feedback, and she gets back to me quickly on stuff, so I'm a very happy client right now. I'm also excited about these books. I really want to write them.

I just emailed a proposal for two books to my agent. I'm hoping she thinks it's absolutely perfect as-is and that I'm shopping for my private yacht by the end of the week.

Today's office was the Ocean Beach Pier Cafe, which is that little white speck at the end of the pier.



I was able to pick up bunches of wireless signals, even a couple from Crystal Pier in Pacific Beach, miles and miles away. I wonder if all that open water with no buildings in the way makes the signals bounce or something. Anyway, I couldn't actually sign onto any of those networks, not even the one for the cafe, but it was just as well, because it meant I spent less time websurfing and more time watching the surf.

They weren't really set up as a coffee joint. More as a quaint and salty breakfast/lunch joint. The waitress wasn't quite sure what to do with me in the nearly empty room. She even offered me a refill of coffee, which is so unlike a coffee joint that I'm afraid I stared at her for a while in utter confusion. Ultimately she brought me some water, and I think that satisfied her.



And apropos of nothing, man, I wish I lived on this street in Dana Point:

Rush!

Yes, I saw Rush again, last night, in Irvine. This time Lisa got to go, and we used the occasion of the show to have a leisurely drive up the Pacific Coast Highway between San Clemente and Laguna Beach.

In San Clemente a guy in traffic got me to roll down my window and asked if we were, in fact, on the Pacific Coast Highway, and if it would take him to Irvine. I told him we were, in fact, on PCH, and that even though we'd never taken this route, we believed it went to Irvine, as that's where we were headed. Even though the show wasn't for another five hours and we were probably only an hour away from Irvine, and Irvine's a city of almost 200K people and there are many reasons to go there that have nothing to do with Rush, he held up his Rush baseball hat with a questioning look, and then we hung devil's horns and screamed "RUSH!!!" at each other until traffic separated us.

The show was quite terrific. Of course. Even though the crowd was kinda lame. I mean, who sits during Neil Peart's drum solo? Who sits through "Natural Science," for crying out loud???!!

I did quite a bit of head banging, which aggravated my sore shoulder which I made sore last weak by sitting. I'd call this a sign of aging, only I've been doing stuff like this for decades.

The fact that I've been doing this for decades -- 21 years of Rush shows -- now that's a sign of age.

***

On the way up we stopped at a very nice coffee joint in Dana Point, where I finished a draft of a proposal for two books. I used Scrivener for this, and I loved how easy it was to juggle notes, an outline, a synopsis for each of the two books, sample chapters, and be able to quickly display and reference the short story these books are based on. I might try to draft the first book this way. Assuming somebody buys the books.

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.

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.