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.

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.

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 )

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!

About two weeks ago I met up with writer and podcaster Shaun Farrell, to record an interview for his podcast, Adventures in Scifi Publishing. We drank coffee and hung out and chatted about writing and personal finance and traded a little gossip, and it was a lot of fun. At one point Shaun hit the record button and shoved a mic in my face and I blathered for about ten minutes and then we went back to using profanity.

My interview's appears in a new segment, Out of the Slush, which features writers who've just signed their first book deals, and I come on at about the 37-minute mark, after the main interview with Cory Doctorow.

Listen here.

I haven't posted any flash fiction here in a long time, but your luck's run out, 'cause here's some now. "Carnival Park" first appeared as part of "Tales From the City of Seams," a suite of linked urban fantasy flash pieces published by the fine people at Wheatland Press in Polyphony 4, and reprinted in Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: 18th Annual Collection.

One of these days I'll find the box with my recording equipment, not seen since the move last summer, and I'll commit some fiction in podcast form.

( Carnival Park, a tale from the City of Seams, blow the cut )

There are houses I like better, but this one has a more scalable cliff than the others, so I think I might steal it.



I'm not a huge fan of the architectural style (I favor the Craftsman), but the location is nice.



***

Just 500 words today. The ending is starting to take rough shape in my head. One thing's for certain: It will involve the kelp guys.

So far today my word count has measured in the dozens. That would be pretty kickass for a poet.

The lesson here? Novels are for suckers.