The Middle of the Dark

You're just a freak, like me. The writing is very slow and frustrating. Lots of thinking and figuring. I write fast, but I take time to gather material. Everything becomes material. Filtering becomes an issue. Add to that I desperately need a title for this novel and nothing seems to work. My head has been ringing with headaches for days. I went to see I Am Legend on Saturday, and while not legendary, was very good. The cinematography of abandoned NYC was extraordinary, and featured the best CGI work I've ever seen in any film. The movie went back on itself in the end, but Will Smith was excellent and understated in what was essentially a one man play.

Somehow it's December 9th. Somehow it's December. I shouldn't be surprised because of all the snow and ice on the ground. Writing has been good but slow. I go in spurts. I wrote a new short story, which I'm letting marinate for now, and I'm about 80 pages into the novel (91 or so if you count stuff I've generated - scraps of fabric I'll hopefully be able to use later) which I should be very happy about, considering. I'm in a thinking/considering/exploring phase and generally I don't get a lot of pages down during these periods. I don't outline, I discover things as I write and this is the downside of doing that: sometimes you hit a dead end and have to turn back and go the other way. Best to explore all paths, though. I saw The Golden Compass yesterday. I was really looking forward to it, and it was entertaining in a general epic fantasy kind of way, but the script rushed through just about everything. It's far too talky (show don...

Follow this to hear Kat read an excerpt from her new and groovy new novel The Secret History of Moscow . I'm up to 67 pages in the novel, and was thunderstruck yesterday by an idea for a short story. I sat down and wrote most of it in one sitting, and then realized on my walk downtown, hey, this could be a really cool novel, too. Hard to make work, but really cool.

Actually 57! That's how far I am into the new novel. And I'm excited because I haven't written a new novel in oh, two years. It feels like going out on that first date with someone new, after you've been out of the game a while, and it's good. It works. You click. This book is clicking for me right now. There's a lot I'm still sorting out, but that's normal (it's been so long since I wrote something this involved that I have to remind myself, it's normal). I remember now the thrush and the thrall of a first draft. The blind confidence (I can do whatever!). I've spent so much time writing and rewriting the Big Damn Epic, I got lost in the woods. I focused on short stories for long time, and then found out what I already knew, which is that I'm a novel writer, not a short story writer so much. But here we are. Back on the road.

"Keeping Up Disappearances" , a story of mine which appeared in Issue 19 of Storyglossia back in April, has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize . My thanks to Steven McDermott for taking a chance on the story and all his support not just for me, but for the other nominees as well. Support your writers!

Beach erosion in Wales turned up this incredible find, a WWII era P-38 fighter that ran out of gas and ditched on the beach 65 years ago. Rocky planets are forming in the Pleiades . Oh, and support your writers:

The Japanese recently sent a space probe to the moon, and slapped a HD camera on it, which has snapped some spectacular pictures of the moon and the earth as well. This is a link to a mini-movie of the probe's very low pass over the lunar surface; it's extraordinary to watch how much the surface changes in this little segment, considering how bland and uniform you might think the moon looks from here.

Go buy my dear friend and unbreakable pillar of support Kat's shiny new novel The Secret History of Moscow right now on Amazon! Also dig her thoughts on the origins of the book here .

Because my friend Mike's wife Becca told me to or else. The main reason I'm not posting regular is because work leaves me super tired and I'm coming home and working on a new novel. It's slow - slower than I'm used to, which I think is as much fatigue as I've become a very picky writer - but I'm very excited about it. Hopefully I'll have more to say about it in the near future. And hopefully I'll be blogging more regular and not such a wuss. Beyond that what has me excited is that a solar system very similar to ours has been discovered around 55 Cancri, a sun-like star about 44 light-years away. It has five planets, the most yet discovered around a distant star, and one of them, albeit a gas giant, lies in the habitable zone Earth occupies around the Sun. The sweet thing about the giant is it no doubt is host to several moons like Jupiter and Saturn, some of which would, if rocky, be elegible for Earth-like goodness. And there's plenty of E...

So I was walking home Friday night with my cousin Matt and we were looking up at the stars (as I am want to) and pondering the fall constellations like the Pleiades (which with my new glasses I can finally see again) and also Mars, which is brightening. So I look up, directly overhead, and see a group of five distinct lights, oval shaped, pumpkin orange, glowing, absolutely flying across the sky. They weren't airplanes, though they were flying at about cruising altitude. They had no blinking lights, no exhaust trails, and they were much fatter and wider than planes. They weaved across the sky in this bizarre, furious motion. It reminded me of this film I saw of schools of dolphins swimming in the ocean, weaving in and out of each other, breaking apart and coming back together. That's what these did. They did this for less than 10 seconds - they crossed the sky much faster than even the space shuttle or the space station does, and again, these were not either of those - s...

All the dirt here .

Ben told me to update and so here goes: Not a lot to say, except the Cubs won the division (yay) and my friend Amitabh had a short film uniquely titled The Art of Stalking win the award for Best Short at the Boston Film Festival. Congrats to him. I'm sick and working lots of overtime right now (the perfect combination) but I did FINALLY get new glasses after a years of questing. The stars are now tiny round dots again and not fuzzy halfway hairy things of blue and silver. I'm reading Francine Prose's Reading Like A Writer which is a very good 'How To' book without being a 'How To' book. Her central point in the book is that there is no how-to when it comes to writing. There are ways of seeing, and it's simply (well...) a matter of choice. That's my problem. I cannot choose. I feel like I can deploy a certain style or tactic of writing to one degree of success or another, but I never know what is right for me or the story I'm working on....

Madeleine L'Engle, the author of probably my favorite book as a kid, A Wrinkle In Time, has died at 88. Following the many links and tributes around the web I found on her website her acceptance speech for the 1963 Newberry Medal Award: So how do we do it? We can’t just sit down at our typewriters and turn out explosive material. I took a course in college on Chaucer, one of the most explosive, imaginative, and far-reaching in influence of all writers. And I’ll never forget going to the final exam and being asked why Chaucer used certain verbal devices, certain adjectives, why he had certain characters behave in certain ways. And I wrote in a white heat of fury, “I don’t think Chaucer had any idea why he did any of these things. That isn’t the way people write.” I believe this as strongly now as I did then. Most of what is best in writing isn’t done deliberately. Do I mean, then, that an author should sit around like a phony Zen Buddhist in his pad, drinking endless cups of espres...

NASA will take Luke Skywalker's lightsaber to space on the Discovery in October. No. Way.

This picture looks like Hell to me: The Greek wildfires are in danger of destroying ancient ruins, notably the Olympic sites. Here in Iowa, and elsewhere in the greater Midwest, it's water. Flooding has sunk many communities, including Waterloo. It's not too bad here, not as bad as Fort Dodge, but the Greenhill road folks are submerged, again.

Holy shit . What the hell is it? My brain already is spinning with ideas about what it could be, or would be, in a story with a universe that has a hole in it.

The Endeavour made it back safe earlier today, a day ahead of schedule due to the hurricane down in the south. NASA had been worried about it making landfall in Texas, which would have put the landing in jeporady.

Automatic do not stop go directly to Hall of Fame Space Picture: Sounds like they're not going to attempt the repairs to the Endeavour, thinking them unnecessary. Excuse me if I don't jump up and down with relief.

So the Endeavour has a serious hole in its belly from a piece of foam - the same culprit in the demise of the Columbia. It appears to be fixable, but there's a little too much debate amongst NASA types about its seriousness which usually means it's pretty fucking serious. I had a weird flashback today to when I was a kid, in the months after Challenger. I carried around this shoebox of newspaper clippings and other artifacts from the tragedy, the investigation, anything to do with the shuttle. I even took it to school with me. It was a green shoebox. I wonder whatever happened to it; it seemed so important then, like it contained something priceless inside, beyond understanding.

And no end. Flawless. Astronomers have discovered the universe's largest planet - so far - in the constellation Hercules, about 1,400 light-years away. It's a gas giant nearly twice the size of Jupiter, which is stupefying, but even more weird is that it has half the density of Saturn, the lightest object in our solar system. Saturn would float in water if you found an ocean big enough.

Jane Espenson explains it all.

Went to Loo Town's first annual Irish Fest this weekend. I had a blast. There was a U2 cover band that outdid themselves and of course, lots of beer. It made me think of my Irish buddies, many of whom I have not talked with in a long while. Salinte. I've long been a fan of The Great Gatsby , so I've always been interested in Fitzgerald's writing process, which was legendary. He never really stopped revising; he was even making changes to the page proofs of the novel at the printer. I feel a little bit of kinship with him. I'm an endless tinkerer. Maybe it's because I lack the clarity most writers possess; they arrive at solutions much faster than I do. I know when I get deep into my stories, as I certainly have with the Big Damn Epic, for years now, I'm not able to see the forest for the trees. The book has evolved as I have evolved as a writer; most other (sane) writers would have abandoned it as a first project, a failed project, but it's a ...

Slowly reading Harry Potter. I like it so far, mostly the fact that she's abandoned the recap and the strict adherance to the structure the other books all share. July has been a very blah month. I missed my friend Ilona's wedding. I missed RAGBRAI. I've missed opportunities with interesting people either because A) they turned out to be not at all the person I thought they were or B) they like most other beautiful interesting women do not live here in Waterloo. The rejection letters I've been getting vary so wildly that I just don't know what it is I'm missing. Everything, apparently. I get so sick of overthinking it, and the fact that I have not actually written a new novel in 2 years because I have been rewritting others (necessarily), that I look at the trashbin sometimes with desperate hope. My friend Matt is close to having roughs done of the zombie comic we are doing together - !!! - I cannot wait to see them. I'm more excited about this tha...

This reminds me of the time God killed a whole lot of Israelites to prevent people from spoiling the 10 Commandments. Anyone else on earth would kill for an early review from the New York Times. I think Rowling - who I admire a great deal - should not sweat the inevitable interest in the book. People who do not want to be spoiled will not be. The only real way to protect the book's ending is to never release it all.

I post because Ben shames me into. I just never have time, and I don't want to post that I am not posting but I actually have something of interest: so I loves me some astronomy but I am not shall we say astronomically gifted with the math and such. But I have found a cool, democratic way for me to take part (and you can to) by identifying the shape and nature of distant galaxies for dudes who also just don't have enough time: Galaxy Zoo is a website where you can register and provided you pass the test, you can join thousands of others in a public project to catalog millions of galaxies. By the way, Queen guitarist Brian May finished his Phd thesis - finally. He only started it in the 70's, but then he got off track with this little rock band... and the subject? Interplanetary dust. And he's co-written a book on the history of the universe - suh-weet - that is alas presently only available in the UK. Whatever. I may just break down and buy it. It's been to...

It ain't easy being green. The greatest action film trailer ever. And the glorious wonderful where did they ever go Sundays on YouTube.

Justine writes awesomely about the trials and tribulations of the third books of trilogies - the fits and starts, the rock solid ending that morphs into something, the difficulty of publishing as you go as opposed to writing all three before selling them. I luckily have been blessed with the opportunity to write all three before publishing them, because I cannot sell the first for the life of me. But actually this has worked out to my - the story's - advantage. Writing the second book had a ripple effect on the first. Starting the third had an effect on the second and the first and so you go back to make it all work - Justine says she did it six times - I lost count - and this would have been impossible if I had sold one of these books before the others were complete. Which they're not. I am yet again revising the first book. I am halfway through a revision of the second and I have a hundred pages of the third. No doubt there will be more changes and revisioning as I g...

Not posting again. I've been writing a lot, though. I've kind of gotten into this pattern where I'm doing everything on the weekends. Writing, biking, hanging out, eating, you know, everything outside of working, and so the weekends dry up so fast and it feels like I never get anything done. Yesterday was fun, though. I tried to talk my brother into going up to Chicago for the weekend, but no dice. We ended up going to Cedar Rapids for a few hours. We used to go up there all the time for the record shops, but of course those are all gone. We came back and grilled some hot dogs with Ben and Matt and took it pretty easy. Then we played spoons (but with plastic forks). I hadn't played spoons in a long time, but I am a professional, therefore I lost only a few hands. Now I must go write and not watch dvd's I bought weeks ago.

My dear friend Ilona is getting married this summer and to celebrate she has a wonderful blog that's as classy as she is. I met Ilona in Dublin back in 2000 and I remember one of the first things she said to me was, "You're shy, yeah?" Yeah. She wouldn't let me be. She pried me out of my shell and made me take advantage of the gigantic leap I had taken and I have much to thank her for. So go check it out, if you can read French. And even if you can't. Congratulations and best of luck to you both.

Pluto isn't even as big as the tiny not-planet that put it out to pasture. Also, the tenth planet - I mean the second not-planet - now has a name, Eris, which is actually kind of fitting. Eris is the Greek goddess of discord and strife, who in addition to orbiting the sun at a distance of 9 billion miles, sometimes showers her dark over Waterloo, Iowa. Been listening to a fantastic new collection of John Lennon covers by the likes of U2, REM, Green Day, the Flaming Lips and most cool, Regina Spektor. She does 'Real Love' which if you remember is one of the 'lost' Lennon songs the remaining Beatles finished up for that box set about 10 years ago. It's one of my favorites and to hear her version of it is pretty sublime. All proceeds go to the Save Darfur campaign so definitely check out a great set of classic music.

Pass it on. Working/writing/sleeping/watching Scrubs/biking/you don't care.

Yesterday I helped Ben move to his new apartment. It was a lot of fun (I like lifting heavy things? What?) and Matt was there to help too so of course we spent a lot of time talking about how we could make Star Wars better. I went home and did a lot of writing. I complained to Ben and Matt earlier in the day that I had so much work to do and if I really wanted to get it done, I would write from the time I got off from work at 9 to 3 or whenever I went to bed. I wouldn't pass out in the chair watching Scrubs or Futurama. So that's what I did. I wrote from the time I got home at 8 until 1 in the morning. I made a little break through after floundering in the short-end of the self-doubt pool there for a while. Of course the tide is always dragging me back, so. It's good to be out for now.

So I'm never posting anymore. I just don't have time in the day. I have so much writing to do - I could take a week off work and still not get through all I need to. I envy and admire people like Kat who is married, teaches, and writes novels and short stories and I assume sleeps at some point, too. I work 8 hours and then come home and write for 2, if that, and then sit down and watch Scrubs and pass out in the chair. It's like this everyday. Except the ones where I go downtown for a beer that turns into three. Maud has a nice post on the catch-22 of wanting to discuss your writing - it helps untangle those knots - and the fear of 'talking it away' as Fitzgerald feared he did. I fear that as much as I do I am simply polishing a turd. I realize - for the umpteenth time - the 'correct' way to begin the first novel of the Big Damn Epic and the work required isn't remodeling, its demolishing what was there and putting something new up in its plac...

Hard to believe it's been 30 years today since Star Wars first premiered. I remember, vaguely, the first time I saw it at the old Starlight drive-in here in Waterloo, which would have been the summer of '77, though not necessairly May. I was only 2 1/2, but obviously it made an impression. The totality of the SW universe that George Lucas invented is at this point, somewhat overwhelming. I think if you melted all the action figures that have been produced to date, you'd have enough plastic to manufacture a plastic planet. But it's not the cons of SW I want to touch on today. It's the pros. I am a geek. GEEK. I am a Star Wars baby and I am proud to be one. I make the lightsaber sound. I can imitate both Yoda and the Emperor and on (drunken) occassion, Chewie. I imitate that sound X-Wings make when they streak past when I'm really bored and no one is looking. And I studied Latin, the classics, mythology and Joseph Campbell because a cheesy popcorn mo...

A while back I mentioned that Kat sold her novel The Secret History of Moscow to Prime Books . Somehow I forgot to post the fantastic cover, which has been on her site for a little bit now. You can also pre-order the book at Amazon and get your copy first when it comes out in November. Congrats again to Kat, who knows how to cheer a mopey writer up when he gets rejection slips from a girl and an agent on the same day. Perscription: blimps. Everything is always cooler with blimps.

So last night was interesting. It began at the pub, as Saturdays often do. Then it migrated to Kings & Queens, where a pretty righteous 80's prom revival was going on. Lots of mousse and gel, polos and ankle braclets. And music. All the best 80's music. But I drank way too much. Because I had a green straw and green straws meant you got a dollar off your drinks. Which were often a dollar. I woke up today with the appropriate hangover. Nevertheless, I hung out with my mom for Mother's Day, found time to ride my bike (after being run off the road yesterday - my leg looks like I was involved in some shark-biting incident) and even began a new short story, my first in ages. It started pretty accidentally, with one line that blossomed into this voice, into this idea and five pages later I was writing something new. And I'm pretty excited about it. I spent a long time trying to consciously break out of the mold I sort of made for myself in the last couple yea...

Power-sharing begins today in Northern Ireland, and maybe finally so does peace. Cloum McCann remembers the Troubles as a teen.

It's rainy and Sunday, so: Saturday seems to be comic book day now. Yesterday happened to be Free Comic Book Day, but that was merely a bonus. There was a new issue of Joss Whedon's triumphant Buffy Season 8 out, and more than that, it was the one where Willow finally comes back. How did I wait four days to go and get this issue you ask? Will power. Never let anyone tell you I don't have any. Good thing I didn't wait any longer - I got the last issue they had. I didn't see it anywhere on the wall and meltdown was in progress until my cousin Matt averted disaster and located it. Whew. Issue #3 was very good, shocker, but maybe not as good as #2. There wasn't enough Willow for one, but it's early. The shockers are shocking, the twists and turns are neverending and it feels like a story that needs to be told, which is pretty damn good for a TV show that's been off the air for a few years. A story that lacked urgency, or any sense of cohesion, wa...

In the movie version, Ben's talk with God happens in an all-night dinner just before the last call refugees show up to soak up their drunk with pancakes and eggs. In the movie version, I have where I'm supposed to be and who I am figured out before the age of 32. 30, even. 30 would be cool. In the movie version, what I write sounds like it does in my head. In the movie version, Michael Keaton plays me. Apparently. In the movie version, I do not sit at my computer and think of clever blog posts to expedite the awareness of my malaise. I do not watch Scrubs as if it is going out of style when I get off work because I'm too tired to work on my book which is like having an overgrown child that won't leave the house. In the movie version, I do not get up and check my email first thing in the morning to see if the agent or the publisher has written back to tell me they like my book and would like to publish it very much. In the movie version, I'm dating a much young...

The New Horizons space probe - destined for Pluto - made a pit stop at Jupiter a couple months ago, and beamed back a whole series of grogeous images of the planet and its moons. I live for this stuff.

Viking is publishing a YA short story collection by Kelly Link in 2008. Suh-weet. Even better, Sense Five Press is publishing the urban fantasy anthology Paper Cities , edited by the wonderful Ekaterina Sedia who gave me my first break in her previous anthology, Jigsaw Nation . I am not writing stories. I am very tired and searching for pictures of Marley Shelton on the internet. I have a weepy soul and no tissue for it. It's not just Earth warming up .

I figured it was going to happen soon, but not this soon: astronomers have discovered an earth-like planet outside our solar system, in orbit of the red dwarf Gliese 581, only 20.5 light-years away (that's actually pretty close). The planet, 581 c, is about five times heavier than Earth and may have liquid water on it surface. Suh-weet. Also, astronomers have picked up on a interesting connection between two cycles: the extinctions on Earth, and the Earth's journey through the galactic plane of the Milky Way. Both occur every 64 millions years or so. Hmm.

My story "Keeping Up Disappearances" has published in Issue 19 of Storyglossia magazine. I had an idea for a long time about an out of work actress - a former 'It Girl' who ended up back home, washed up at 33. I never knew what exactly to do with it until I found myself watching these cable 'news' shows last summer, drawing every last ounce of blood out of these successive, unfortunate missing child cases. I put the two ideas together and got a down-on-her-luck actress suddenly back in the spotlight thanks to a scandalous missing-child case in her hometown. I decided on the transcript format after realizing the only way to really get at the hysteria and melodrama of these types of shows was through the actual words of the hosts and guests. Give it a read. Hope you enjoy it.

This is so in my novel. I don't know what to say about VT. Other than tragedy is too frequent a visitor these days. Some are wondering what this tragedy says about creative writing, because the POS murderer was a 'writer.' He wasn't. He didn't kill anybody because he was a writer, and creative writing isn't responsible for violence anymore than movies or TV or whatever the scapegoat is this week. That's how I feel. I admit I haven't devoted any attention whatsoever to this man, his life, or his work, such as it is. He deserves none of it. Sci-fi writer Michael Bishop lost his son Jamie, a teacher of German, at VT. He leaves a devastating message at the inferior411. I don't know what to say about this , either. I pray we'll wake up from this endless nightmare of mass murder one day and realize the destruction we visited on ourselves because we valued the ease of owning weapons over the future of our children. I hope those guns serve ...

The perfectly square and perfectly unnatural Red Square Nebula . This is the sort of thing that sets a writer's brain buzzing. Sure, it's probably a natural occurance. Probably.

So I went saw Grindhouse yesterday afternoon. Again. It's that good. Death Proof, the Tarantino half of the double feature, I could watch all day. The first time I saw it I didn't know what to make of it. After the thrill-a-minute first film and the hysterical fake trailers you're primed for more of the same and Death Proof is much more deliberate. The second viewing you're prepared and you discover how excellent and singular a film it is; you sort of wish DP had the theater all to itself. Tarantino calls it a slasher film with a car as the weapon, but it struck me how similar to Jaws the film is. In Jaws you never see the shark. The tension builds as a result of what you imagine and Kurt Russell shows up in his car every so often, the hood ornament a fin breaching the surface of the water as he hunts for his next snack. That's actually the first thing we see Stuntman Mike doing: eating. Gratuitously. There's a lot going on in the film. The first ti...

Whatever it is, it's not sci-fi. Because sci-fi is not a literature of ideas. Check out the performance-art website of renaissance-woman Miranda July, who is quickly becoming my favorite artist-type person. She's one of those artists, like Regina Spektor , who seem to arrive fully formed. They're the kids on test day who are sitting at their desks with their pencils down when you're still struggling with question #7. I have not written in days. Longer than that. Anything new. I pick at the second novel of the BDE, revising it in trickles. Not writing starts to feel like cabin fever; you feel like you're suffocating. I hate it and yet there's this ridiculous sense of constipation. The writing just doesn't come. The words stand you up. But it's been almost two years since I finished the first draft of the second book. two years since I have written a new novel. In the meantime I have revised heavily it and the first book, the angel book; I...

Kurt Vonnegut died last night at 84. Lots of great links at Maud and Matt .

Buying Buffy Season 8 #2, Mouse Guard #1, and Jossified Runaways #25 at local comic shop: $10 Buying vintage 1978 Jawa doll at said comic shop: $30 Lunch at Burger King: $5.67 Matinee of Grindhouse: $5.50 Medium Diet Coke at the theatre: $3.00 Seeing sunshiny Zoe Bell ride a 1970 Dodge Challenger: priceless

"I'm evil now." Hmm. How tired must I be to be posting only funny videos? ???

Alanis takes down the humps.

First some people couldn't accept William Shakespeare wrote all those fantastic plays. Now Mary Shelley can't have written Frankenstein because she was too stupid and young. Oh, and feminine. People will always leap at conspiracy theories in which a small cadre of shady government power brokers maintain elaborate secrets about aliens or assassins or blood lines across generations, but no one person can write a great novel or play. It's beyond human capacity. Whatever. A couple days ago I had an idea for a new novel. I was falling-in-love for the first time excited. I have not had any worthwhile ideas for a book in ages. In the course of a few hours the book blossomed in my head, the characters, the structure, lines and passages that I wrote down furiously. I felt (as you often do at this stage) that I could just sit down and write it in one lump. But it never happens that way. I did write the first few pages, where I discovered some possibilities and or problem...

All sorts of goodies today: Northern Ireland announced a historic power-sharing deal today that may finally end the troubles there and bring about some sort of independence for her. They built the Titanic in Belfast. That eventually led to a series of events that gave the world Kate Winslet and Leo Dicaprio in a big movie, and now, they're reuniting for Revolutionary Road . J.R.R. Tolkien's son Christopher has 'finished' the draft of an unknown work of his father, The Children of Hurin , which will be published next month. It's supposed to be connected somehow to Lord of the Rings . Hmm. We'll see. And last but not least, the apocalypse is bringing the genres together.

Watch this. It's perfect. Last night was a night of much watching. I sort of make up for my not watching anything during the rest of the week on Sundays, because that's when everything is on. It started with 60 Minutes, then Planet Earth on Discovery, which is really as amazing as they say it is (there's nothing like watching a Great White shark take down a seal in one bite, in slo-mo); then it was over to HBO for the too-soon series finale of Rome. I loved this show. It was a little hurried and scattered at times, but it was often brutal and magnificent and the ending was excellent. Then it was Battlestar Galactica. All I can say is wow. And Bob Dylan. Who knew? Then I capped it off with some cheesecake. The L Word. Yes. I watch it. Any guy with a pulse should. Not only is the writing often very good (not always - Papi, give me a break) but Jennifer Beales. 'Nuff said.

I came across this fabulous comic by David Peterson called Mouse Guard the other day. It's one of those stories when you first read what it's about, you immediately go, "Of course! Warrior mice!" Unfortunately Elizabeth Edwards' cancer has returned . To say it's a shame is an understatement. She seems like a wonderful person. I'm glad John Edwards is continuing his bid for the White House, and I wish the best for her and her family. The fight to save the Vesey St. staircase, the only surviving remnant of the World Trade Center, goes on in NYC. Stellar finality. Awesome.

Ben details St. Patty's Day over at his blog, and even includes some Harn family history for good measure. Excellent post on the demands readers place on writers and the narratives they weave, vis-a-vis Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8. This is the sort of lit theory re: 'pop art' that gets me going. It's only in a serialized form - and only in comic continunation of a TV show that is a continuation of a failed movie - that you can get at this kind of narrative complexity. When do stories end? Do they ever? Do continuations like Buffy or a proposed Angel Season 6 spoil what came before? Do readers/viewers have a right to know what comes next? Does Joss Whedon have a right to potentially water down his own creation by going back to the well, to satisfy his own personal desire for narrative continuation? What closure will the comic series bring, if any? This relates to a conversation Ben and my cousin Matt and Sugu have quite often it seems: the pros and cons ...

I got BLITZED last night. I usually never drink that much, and I honestly don't know how much I drank, though I know it involved Irish Car Bombs. I met up with Ben down to the pub early in the evening and I was happily surprised to see a bunch of guys from my Dad's side of the family, who I almost never see. It's moments like that when I realize a whole part of my life is missing. I grew up in a house with generations of my mom's side of the family. They raised me and that's pretty much all I've ever known; I felt like an alien a lot of the time because my interests, creativity, history, all things Irish, etc. are not theirs. But they are on my Dad's side. They're all poets, writers, artists and when we get together I feel a real sense of loss. But Ben and I hang out all the time, and maybe I can get to know them as well as I've gotten to know him. There's a lot of things I'd like to go on about (300, the new Buffy comic) but I'...

The space probe Cassini has discovered liquid seas on Saturn's moon Titan. One is the size of the Caspian Sea and the other twice the size of Lake Superior. But, we'll probably never go there . At least not ourselves. We may not be doing anything manned mission wise after the shuttle retires in 2010, the way things are going; so this might be it, the future of our space exploration. Sitting back at home watching the pictures come in, watching probes do the work Columbus, Magellean and the other great explorers once did for themselves.

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Lord Darby the Foamy of Divine Intervention Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

After other peeps : Turn to page 123 in your work-in-progress. (If you haven’t gotten to page 123 yet, then turn to page 23. If you haven’t gotten there yet, then get busy and write page 23.) Count down four sentences and then instead of just the fifth sentence, give us the whole paragraph. Gunnar places a damp dishrag gently across her forehead and Sojourner feels like a girl again, the heartsick girl who imagined this itinerant explorer a sister, a mother, her future self; her dream of escaping to the stars suddenly comes rushing back, a dream once so vital and desperate she can’t believe she ever forgot it. Yeah, I didn't revise the hell out of this little bit before posting it or anything.

Brad Delp, the lead singer of the band Boston, is dead at 55. My brother Aaron and I went to see them twice on a reunion tour back in the 90's. I think they're his second favorite band after Queen, and I always loved them from the days of 45's - remember those? - when we had a copy of "More Than A Feeling." I loved the guitars, the production, which I'm always attracted to in anything (my brother, too, which is why I think he gravitated towards Queen and I did people like George Lucas and Orson Welles, who are essentially the same person as Tom Scholz: It's never finished). Sad, sad news.

Geek alert: The US Postal Service is celebrating the 30th anniversary of Star Wars this year not only with stamps, but mailboxes designed like R2-D2! Are you kidding? That has to be one of the coolest things I've seen in a while. Speaking of anniversaries, it's the 10th of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the best TV show ever. Here's the very well researched Wiki feature article for all you neophytes. The weather here seems to be finally inching back toward something pleasant, but now that layer of ice is a puddle of water and the backyard and alley looks like upper Minnesota. And of course yesterday it rained. But it's supposed to be near 50 today and tomorrow, which means it's close to bike weather in the 'Loo. Fighting for Pluto's right to be a planet.

They killed Captain America (yeah, right) - and the vasy majority of people like me had no clue what led up to it. Lucky for us, Chris's awesome Invincible Super-Blog does the Marvel Civil War in 30 seconds, and pretty much sums it up right here:

Polly's brother Matt is headed back to Iraq for his third tour, and the local paper was there to cover it. I wish him and all the other troops the best of luck. I'm trying to think of what else to say about the war, but it's all been said. More snow and rain and ice here. And wind. Half the state has been declared a disaster area. The electric company has their station a few blocks from where I liv, down at the river, and for the last few days, around the clock, crews have been loading up with new utility poles and new lines to replace the hundreds lost to the storm. They depart the ball park they're using for a staging area en masse, so you have lines of utility trucks and crane trucks, 20, 30 at a time. The weather has made doing anything or going anywhere difficult, and since I was sick the week before, weeks before really, I haven't done a damn thing. I'm a little stir crazy right now. I thought about going to the movies today to see Black Snake M...

Well, sort of. The ads of Children of Men, up close and personal.

The New Horizons probe destined for Pluto paid Jupiter a visit today and of course there are lots of awesome pictures. This one on the left is of the "little" Red Spot, a newer storm similar to the Great Red Spot. Previous pictures showed it was white, but now it's red and getting bigger. The probe also got snapshots of all the major moons, including Io as a volcanic plume erupted from its surface. The probe will get a speed boost from Jupiter's gravity, speeding it up even further so it can make it to Pluto in just eight years - down from 15. Unusual dictionaries.

Kate Winslet is pretty much the only reason to watch the Oscars anymore. Well, I do like the schmaltzy montages that make you remember how extraodinary film is, but I'm a sucker. I knew Kate wouldn't win, but the fact that Pan's Labyrinth was shut out of its two major awards, after building steam for what looked like the night's only sweep pretty much put me right out of the show. Martin Scorsese finally won. Yay. George Lucas actually took the stage at the Oscars for something. Awesome. The older you get the more pointless the Oscars become. The Academy is half-blind most years. People and films that should win, much less be nominated, don't and that's how it is. This year there were many good films like Pan's Labyrinth, like Children of Men, like Little Children that did not get the recognition they deserved. But maybe it's a better club to be in to have won. Hitchcock never did. Welles never did, either. And Kate. She's yet to win, ...

Stole this from Caitlin R. Kiernan : List seven songs you are into right now, no matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're not any good but they must be songs you're really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your LiveJournal along with your seven songs. In no order: 1. "Us" Regina Spektor 2. "On" Bloc Party 3. "Mi Voi" Julieta Venegas 4. "Phantom Limb" The Shins 5. "The Pines of the Appian Way" Ottorino Respighi 6. "Guerrillero" Javier Navarrete (Pan's Labyrinth soundtrack) 7. "Alife" Lily Allen

Hate the cover your publisher picked for your book? Make your own that you can apply as a sticker right over that ugly old cover. At a time when the health of our own planet is in doubt, NASA is reducing funding for its storied Earth-observation program. Not only will we not be going back to the moon - much less anywhere else, giving the budget cuts on the horizon - we won't even be paying any attention to the planet we're on. If this is NASA in the 21st Century, we don't need it. Doubts linger over the Freedom Tower. It's hideous, if you ask me. The article does a great job of pointing out its monumental futility, a thing so defensive in its very existence it's become this rigid, city fortress that defeats the very optimism and spirit of renewal that calls for its being there in the first place. Here's a much better idea. Of course it's just today I discover the theory of arcology, after spending years writing around the same thing in the BDE. ...

Just doing some exciting late Friday night research on three-toed sloths, and thought I'd share. Cry for me.

Even more evidence that there is presently water on Mars. I suppose we will have to actually witness one of these geysers or flows - and the little microbial dudes that undoubtedly surf them - before we get our act together and get up there. So I'm using the 'new' Blogger. Not that I had much choice... I'll tinker with it some, see if I can't get a little more raz-ma-taz (there's an oldie!) and some economy up here in this piece. Who else watched The Office tonight, directed by Joss Whedon? Of course I did, what with the hacking and coughing and the sexy cold sore. Why, what else would I be doing? Socializing? Qua?

Fourth time this winter, which is four times more than last year. I think it's mostly stress. I notice I'm doing more bad habit type things lately. I'll be very happy when the cold lifts and spring arrives, but then I'm sure I'll get sick again. I do everytime the weather changes, and it fluctuates pretty severely back and forth here in Iowa. It always has. Iowa is a flip-flopper. Lunar eclipse . March 3rd. Mr. Burns voice: "Excellent." Science fiction. In the New Yorker. Deep breaths. Um... are you serious? Actually Ben called this, but I don't think he necessarily envisioned this being the method they would use... hmm. There are only two rules in comics (or there used to be): Only Bucky stays dead, and you don't mess with Mary Jane. Marvel has trespassed on the gods. The universe will collapse post haste. I so want to move to Scotland. Slouching towards Baghdad.

Barack Obama decided to make Waterloo and its nest of active Democratic voters one of his very first stops after announcing his candidacy for President on Saturday. I went to Central Middle School with my brother Aaron and cousin Ben for what they expected to be a kind of intimate affair. They had a thousand tickets - 2300 showed up. He gave a great, inspired speech, but he was obviously tired from a very long day. That didn't hold him back though. He is very impressive and I have to admit to being very torn between him and John Edwards. They both advocate universal health care and getting out of Iraq sooner rather than later. They both talk about change. Edwards focuses mostly on poverty, so that speaks to me. Obama focuses on America's lost idealism, optimism, its desire for challenges and that speaks to me, too. When he says we've gone from JFK saying we're going to the moon in 10 years without a clue as to how we're going to do it, to saying universal ...

After work yesterday I finally made it to the theater to see Pan's Labyrinth. I don't know what I expected; I had heard how great it was, what a fairy tale it was and I knew it was Guillermo del Toro, and Doug Jones in some fantastic make-up, so I anticipated something... magical. And it was. Beyond my meager expectations. It was also stunningly and surprisingly realistic; brutally so. I have never seen a fantasy film allow so much reality to intrude on it. Most films that follow the Alice In Wonderland/Wizard of Oz formula of transporting the heroine to a fantastic alternate world never go back to Kansas until the very end, if at all; in this film, the heroine (Ofelia) routinely crosses the border, back and forth as she performs a series of three tasks for a faun that inhabits an ancient labyrinth, a gateway to a magical kingdom expecting the return of a long lost daughter - Ofelia. In the real world, it's Spain, 1944. The fascists are trying to root out the rebel ...

Amazing discovery in Italy.

I know I post a lot of space stuff, but this is literally out of this world. Michael Chabon on Cormac McCarthy's The Road and apocalyptic fiction in general. I'm at this moment in the BDE right now, not quite of apocalypse, but certainly catastrophe, and again I find myself struggling with it. I think a lot of my concern comes from the depiction of the event. I'm a detail junkie. That's the culture I live in. I obsess in deconstructing the most uncomprehensible events of the day - disaster, like God, is in the details - and when I write, this comes out. I want to show the moment of failure, the progression of events, but I've come to realize that not only reduces the magnitude of the event itself, but the enormity of its impact on the people it affects. We know now, largely, how the towers of the WTC fell; on that day we didn't. Rumors of explosive charges ran rampant. What detached analysts very calmly called a typical pancake collapse looked like a ...

A meteor came down in the sky above Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin last night. It was visible here in Waterloo (though I missed it, because I was watching the game - grr...) and all the way up to Green Bay. It apparently broke up before it hit the ground. I came across this novel by Susan Beth Pfeffer, which has an asteroid knocking the moon out of its orbit and causing all sorts of hell on earth. It reminded me of my own story, "Black Eyed Moon," which has a not so devastating asteroid creating not so apocalyptic conditions on Earth, also witnessed by teenagers. Lots of people told me at the time I wrote the story it could easily be a novel, and now I can't help but wonder. I want to check Life As We Knew It out; I love end-of-the-world scenerios same as anyone else, and I love anything with the moon. Plus, Gwenda Bond says it's excellent.

It's literally 20 below with the wind. Without, it's a balmy 6 below. Kate Winslet will help keep you warm:

Some talk about the anxiety of influence - the deadening paralysis brought on by the crushing weight of the artists that have come before you - but Jonathan Lethem writes wonderfully in Harper's about the 'ecstasy' of influence. The beauty of second use. Appropriation, intertext, allusion, theft, plagarism may all be words for the same thing: Bono said 'Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief / All kill their inspiration and sing about their grief.' Art is a succession of talents; the work one artist began thousands of years ago with Gilgamesh gets picked up by another after his death and it continues down through history, the whole of our culture and creativity passed from generation to generation - across generations - like a title, a secret, or sacred duty. And here we go . How to bake a planet . The Red Sea is parting again - and so is the entire continent of Africa.

The new Bloc Party album isn't due until next Tuesday, but it's streaming for free right now over at their MySpace page. Give it a listen. The last record was outstanding; I'm not feeling this one yet. Sometimes it takes a couple listens.

I failed to mention before I did see "Children of Men" a couple weeks back, making the trek on bus to Cedar Falls, where all interesting films roost for a week or so. I loved the film, top to bottom, and today I found an absolutely fantastic post regarding it at the Valve , which in turn is part of a larger series of posts about the apocalypse in writing. That discussion is also part of a larger dialogue around the web that's been going on in recent days. All of it is very worthwhile reading, so check it out. Lots of food for thought. Read Ben's review of the film, and also the Strange Horizons review . Tidbits: The Hubble Space Telescope went blind . Neptune may have literally thousands of escorts following it through space. The most interesting part about this is what it suggests about the planet's early history: it may have been like a snowball drifting through the outer solar system, picking up material (Triton?) and interacting with other objects (Pl...

The surface of Mars is devoid of life due to intense cosmic radiation - but underneath... This brings so much new meaning to the term hackjob. Shame these writers aren't alive today to take scissors to these misguided people's work - you know, their computers and all those expensive wires in and out of them. Ben saw Pan's Labyrinth before me. That's because I was throwing up all weekend. Thank you stubborn flu virus. Between that and work, writing has been slow, but I managed a little writing yesterday, which was productive. I'm working my way through a revision of the second book in the BDE as I ramp up to writing the third, and there's a lot of relandscaping. Ideas and presentations are evolving all the time, I'm getting new ideas all the time, and part of me wishes you could just set these down, let them be part of a past. I wish I could say I'm moved on and evolved myself as a writer and this is my work then, and this is my work now. But I...

NASA marks a trio of consecutive tragedies this week, observing the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire, the 21st anniversary (which seems impossible) of the Challenger, and the fourth anniversary of the Columbia disaster, all of which fall disturbingly close together. I posted my thoughts on the Challenger last year, so I think I'll let them do the talking again.

My new crush: The future of the moon , with lots of sweet lunar links. I've got those sucky winter blues. Comes from being sick, poor, stuck between bills, sick, poor... and in all that I'm in a funk writing wise. Can't seem to get anything going, and when I do find a few hours (yeah, right - a few minutes) to write, it's usually me thinking, "Hey, I need to add a chapter to my brick of a novel that elaborates in detail the socio-economic history of a particular family, as it relates to the larger society, because it's not boring enough." So, yeah. Bright shiny times. I am making a little progress. I trimmed quite a bit today, after basically rewriting an entire major scene in a pivitol chapter of the second book in the Big Damn Epic. I hadn't looked at this scene in about a year, and I was surprised at how sloppy it was. I remembered it being much tighter. It seemed slow and scattered, and confused. So I cut all the fat, pancaked some action...

Caitlin R. Kiernan writes on her blog today about the old fast vs. slow writer 'debate' which is sort of the literary equivilent of the blonde vs. brunette debate in that it's not really a debate at all. Doesn't stop lots of people from going over it from time to time though. I have never equated speed with quality. Novels are like wine - they take as long as they take to mature. If that's 28 days or 28 months, does it matter? I write fast. I think you write as fast as you think. I can turn out five pages in a couple of hours - but then I can spend days or weeks going over it because everything is not illuminated to me on the first go around. I've spent years with my novels, refining them, evolving them, and in that sense, I'm a very slow writer. So is it both? Does it matter?

Friend and artist Matt Hanneman has his excellent Effingham strip up on the web for your viewing pleasure, so check it out. The last week or more I have had the worst case of flu in a very long time. I passed out twice (and fell down) from dizzy spells that hit me out of the blue like a linebacker. I sweated away a few pounds in night sweats. I had seriously deranged delierious dreams that invloved at one point the aforementioned Matt and his wife Lisa's apartment, but not their apartment, overrun by some sort of jungle growth that wasn't jungle growth. Neither seemed too worried about the foilage. Ben had some good posts on his blog about Regina Spektor (he bought the CD!) and the subject of the ubiquitous/tired/cliched trilogy format that you find so common in sci-fi/fantasy publishing. It's not even trilogies much any more - the cycles tend to be longer nowadays, or just run open-ended. Sugu has been trying to lobby me off the trilogy format for a long time, not s...

Probably the greatest video ever . Margaret Atwood, with Bill Moyers, on myth . The Pillars of Creation may have been destroyed by a supernova and we won't see it for a thousand years yet. Regina Spektor on YouTube . You'd think in a day and age when Apple is combining cell phones and iPods that the literary community of magazines, journals and publishers would have long since abandoned the wasteful, costly, and time consuming practice of demanding hard copy submissions. I dislike printing out my book, or short stories, and sending it out en masse mainly because I'm poor and the cost of ink, paper, and postage negates the possible return in most cases; you'd think the magazines and journals deluged with stacks of paper submissions would gleefully embrace e-subs for practical purposes, but many haven't. I can't think of any other craft that the internet age seems more disposed to, but the community resists, in large part I think because of its own age. It...

So there's a new comet out there that showed up out of the blue, and no sooner had I read this article yesterday, than I saw it before sunrise this morning on my way to work. It's in the east, fairly low on the horizon, and about as bright as Venus right now. I figured I'd have to have binoculars out in the country, but it's very visible in the city and I bet it will get even brighter as the week goes on. I love comets - one of the biggest disappointments of my life had to be Halley's back in '86, the bust of the century - but I saw two in the same year, '96, I think, which may have been better than Halley; the one only comes around every 5000 years. There may be life on Mars after all, and we might have killed it. Pluto gets its revenge, in words .

There's no doubt any more that Saturn's moon Titan is a world of rivers and lakes . Methane rivers, so you know, no smoking on the boat. The Martians are attacking us with catapults , and last but not least, the Buffy sensation that's sweeping the nation.

Very pleased to announce that the very excellent Storyglossia magazine accepted my short story "Keeping Up Disappearances" for Issue 19, due in April. The story is about a once almost-famous actress caught up in the media frenzy that develops around the disappearance of a little girl in her hometown. So the new year is off to a nice start writing wise. Hopefully it will continue. Overall, I look forward to things improving. Since it got pretty damn bleak last year, it won't take much to let a little light in. I have a new computer (finally), a new job, and a new outlook on some things that used to bother me quite a bit. You get to a point in life where you begin to live with your troubles - well past the point of fatigue, like the country is right now with this war - and you lose the power or will to oppose them. You feel like there's nothing that can be done except endure a train wreck unfolding not in seconds but in years. But then you snap out of it. What...