The Middle of the Dark

Sunday an F4 tornado destroyed most of Parkersburg, a small town about 10 miles north of Waterloo. It killed seven people, destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses, and made a war zone out of several towns. The same tornado persisted for nearly an hour, blazing a path across several counties into Waterloo along Dunkerton road, where it destroyed several homes a previous tornado did in 2000. My house is roughly 3 miles from the path the twister took through the city, and we didn't get a single drop of rain. There was never any thunder, only the sound of an avalanche, sustained, for nearly fifteen minutes; when I was a kid, my mom said tornadoes sounded like trains, and living less than a mile from the train yards, I can finally say, yes they do. They sound like trains from hell. Several people at work were affected by the tornado as well. A lot of people say, that's life in Iowa. One minute, it's blue skies and sunshine, the next it's snow. Rain. Tornadoes. A...

Right out in front of the library in broad daylight, ripping it out of its lock and chain and no doubt damaging it - a brand new bike I worked my ass off for - I hope there is a big giant city bus in your future.

Thank God it's Friday because: There is a new issue of Buffy: Season 8 (I got the last one! Jesus!) There is a new episode of Battlestar. There is a new Star Wars movie coming. This one is animated and now Anakin looks like he escaped from the set of the Thunderbirds . There are only 8 more chapters to go in my revised draft of the novel. There is no cure for dibilitating headaches or unrequited romances except the new Radiohead record is pretty fucking sweet.

Hollywood Video here in town is closing its doors, and today they marked everything down to 90% off. I found a treasure trove of movies old and new in their library - films you take to heart and then somehow forget for a few years like Hideous Kinky or And The Band Played On - and I made off like a bandit. One film I didn't find hiding in the aisles that would have been perfect was Orlando , the '92 adaptation of Virginia Woolf's novel starring Tilda Swinton. The novel and the movie both left such a deep impression I didn't find it again until just recently, when I began work on The Book of Elizabeth . An older Elizabeth features in Orlando (Quentin Crisp does her in drag in the movie, which I fear made more an impression than anything else) but when I close my eyes, it's Swinton I see as my Elizabeth. I discovered in writing the book just how much of an impact the themes and ideas - half remembered, like a dream - the book/movie had on impressionable young me ba...

So now that I'm taking a brief breather while I recharge the old batteries to revise the novel, I thought I'd share some pics from the trip my cousin Matt and I took to Chicago earlier this month. We visited my good friends Matt and Lisa, who are expecting at the end of the summer (congrats!!!) and also took in some of the sights. It was a great time, and great weather. We had great weather today, finally. I biked up to CF, watched some Season 1 of Battlestar on DVD, and naturally, because I'm not supposed to until Sunday, revised chapter 1 of the book. Kerry Wood goes to ice the Astros in the top of the ninth: The Wrigley Building from orbit (aka the Hancock): The shadows of the towers:

Yay! I finished the first draft of my novel The Book of Elizabeth today. My eyes and fingers hurt. I sleep now. Zzzzz... Oh, wait. I do have a lot of revision to do, but that's after I take a few days off. My editor Sean Wallace at Prime Books mentioned the book in an interview he gave over at Bibliophile Stalker: "What's the editing process like? Do you also focus on grammar, spelling, and the like or do you solely focus on the story and the idea? I actually don’t consider myself a traditional editor, someone who copy-edits or proofreads material, but more an instinctual editor. I don’t sit down and figure out why I do or don’t like something, which might sound a little strange to a few people, but that’s how it works out. I can tell you in generalizations why I’m hot-to-trot on a particular project, but I can’t get into specifics. Mind you, it’s easier at sales presentations, because I have a wealth of data to play with, and can sound reasonably intelligent and ...

Endeavour returns to Earth earlier tonight.