Review from October Country

Cinco de Mayo just received a great review at October Country. Of course, if it wasn't great I probably wouldn't be linking to it. Though, I don't know for sure. I haven't had any bad reviews, so I'm not certain how I'd react. It might be a huge post on how ignorant people shouldn't be reviewing books. How some people don't 'get it' and I won't be hailed as a genius until after I'm dead. Luckily, I don't have to do that right now. I got married in October. My wife's birthday is in October. It's nice in October Country.

Slow Draw

My friend Tom runs everyday. Not usually into a tree, as he just did, making the event fit the old 20th century journalism school definition of news. I saw the river of blood running down the front of his face, like he’d been fighting the English, and thought, ‘there’s a story.’ That’s what I always think. I’ve been writing stories my whole life. I didn’t think, ‘there’s a blog post, Facebook post or Tweet.’

Nor did I think, ‘snap a photo.’ Aside from the fact that image capturing equipment doesn’t snap anymore, I should have at least remembered that I’ve got a camera in my pocket all the time. It’s built into my phone. I’ve got the gadgets, but not the instincts.

And that’s what puts me perhaps my generation in the right lane, watching other whiz by on the left. I’m not whining about it. I’m trying to adapt. I went and got a photo of Tom after I thought about it for ten minutes. Sadly, he’d cleaned himself up at the same rate it took me to realize everything I wanted to do with everything I have available.

Were I a gazelle on this techno-Serengeti, the lions would’ve been watching me today, licking their fuzzy chops. Although today, they may have actually caught Tom.

Kids with e-readers. Yeah.

The Misspellers Kindle edition is up. Actually, a bunch of electronic versions are up. I didn’t want to leave out the Nook, and other e-readers. So they’ve got versions, all of which I find kind of weird. The book is for 9 to 12-year olds. Apparently, a lot of them have devices only dreamed about way, way back in 2002, when the book first came out.

Initially, I found it odd that intermediate readers were moving their line on e-reader stats. Then I realized I’m just old enough to be outside the new model. They learn how to operate Blue Ray players before they can form full sentences. I have a two-year-old niece with an iPod touch that she manipulates with the casual skill of a Star Trek, The Next Generation extra.

Besides, if a kid wants to read a book, we should do everything reasonable to make it possible. If there’s a gadget that makes reading more fun, more accessible, more like all of the other forms of entertainment thrown at them, then fire it up. I’ll try to stoke it in my own little way.

The terror from below

So I’m swimming today, like everyday, in a big collegiate pool, in my lane, lost in thought, when a black shape passes beneath me. I mean holly crap. My vision is stupid without my glasses, but holly crap. After yelping in the water and splashing around for a second, I realize it’s a scuba diver. What else could it have been, really. He’s picking stuff up off the bottom, looking for cracks. I don’t know. He swims to the side, then I don’t see him, then, foolishly, I forget about him. Lost in thought and there he is, passing beneath me. I yelp and flail around for a second time, like some kind of goldfish with a 40 second memory.

I think there’s a writing tip in there, somewhere, with regard to the unexpected, but completely plausible. How context and habit create their own absurdities. There’s a bigger lesson about pool safety, though. I’m not sure they should be scaring the swimmers. At least the half-blind science fiction writers who immediately assume every dark form in the water is a robot shark. Killer robot shark.

Interview: I Just Finished

On Monday, March 28 at 11 AM EST, I get interviewed on the blog radio show I Just Finished. I have no idea what a blog radio show is, never quite conceived I'd be doing one and I'm not entirely sure how the whole thing works. My whole life seems to be a work in progress, making the I Just Finished moniker for the show funny to me.

I don't finished things. Yes, Cinco de Mayo came out in print, because EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy was smart enough to take it away from me and give it a wise and patient editor. Otherwise, I'd still be fooling with it. There is an upside. I haven't finished promoting this book. Don't think I ever will. Hell, I'm still pushing The Misspellers, which came out in 2002, when that Tweet bird wasn't even an egg, a facebook was an actual book your college gave away and the radio blog . . . I don't know. Still trying to figure it out, and will, shortly.

If you're home next Monday, or hate what you're doing at your desk or, my friends across the pond, just got home - log on, tune in or click through. Not sure of the phraseology.

Remembering Manny Fried

Playwright, actor, union organizer and pretty much the patriarch of theatre in Buffalo, Emanuel J. Fried died Feb. 25 at the age of 97. Though always conscious of his presence around here, I only met Manny once, when I was 12. I never forgot it. He was a writer, after all. I hadn’t read or seen “Drop Hammer” or “Dodo Bird”, but that didn’t matter. My father liked his work. The man was the real deal.

“So you want to be a writer?” he asked me, all knowing. I think I nodded. I don’t remember saying anything.

“Write everyday,” Manny told me. “If you’re sick, even if you don’t want to. Especially if you don’t want to. Writers write everyday.”

I took his advice. I still take his advice, like a vitamin – daily.

Academy Award for Best Makeup

One of the artists my publisher - EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy - uses won an Academy Award last week. Dave Else won for Best Makeup (he worked on "The Wolfman"), and is the cover artist of the new Sherlock Holmes anthology GASLIGHT ARCANUM: UNCANNY TALES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. I'm very impressed.