The Middle of the Dark

I've been back from Indy and Chicago a couple days but it's taken that to get back in the groove. Very tired from an exhausting but exciting trip. I got to see great old friends and stand in unreasonable lines to see silly Star Wars stuff. Pictures soon. I had an idea for a new novel on the way to Chicago. I got that same 'uh-oh' feeling I do every time one of these happens upon me uninvited: now I have to write it. You sort of see the years of toil flash before your eyes. Of this novel, the current beasty in production, I believe I'm somewhere in chapter 28. It's up to 663 pages at any rate and the pace accelerates now toward the end. I'm not sure yet just where the end is, but it might be closer than I thought before. Kevin Guilfoile is a Chicago writer keeping a journal of his press tour for his new novel. It's really very interesting and funny.

The world is ending everywhere you look. It's on TV and now it's real: Comes the Anti-Christ. I suppose if Natascha McElhorne was the nun running things, I'd be okay with it. EPIC TRILOGY ALERT: Wrote ten pages of Chapter 27 tonight, bringing the book up to 638 pages. This is the big chapter at the end where hopefully it all comes together. Revelations indeed. But it's not over. I'd say it has maybe three more chapters to go, maybe four. In 28 the B plot reaches critical mass, and in 29 A and B should finally intersect. 30 will feature end of novel mash, and then maybe an epilogue. We'll see. That will for sure put it over 700 pages, but by how much I'm not sure.

Cold here all of a sudden. And rain. Anyone else watching 'Deadwood'? Best show on TV (only because 'The Wire' isn't on right now). Finished chapter 25 and am nine pages into chapter 26, bringing me up to 617 pages on the novel. The seeds planted way back at the beginning of this thing are now starting to bear fruit and it's very satisfying tying all the threads of this tapestry together. I kind of planned to be done by the time I left for Indy/Chicago on the 27th, but that seems a little optimistic right now.

This morning some world class losers rolled out of the sticks to defecate on our town. They failed miserably. I gave these guys what for this morning, like a lot of other folks did. I have never seen such a vicious display of hate. It celebrated the murder of an innocent man, and with their signs, which I won't repeat here, they celebrated 9/11, the tsunami, and the death of the Pope. One of them told me I would burn in hell with the Pope. I told her I would keep a seat warm. With that and everything else in Casa Darb work on the book has not been as methodical as in recent days, but I'm still doing fine. 595 pages as of last night. Oh, and dig Jon Stewart's take on Midnight Madness.

Working hard on the book. I finished Chapter 24 tonight, bringing the book up to 580 pages. It's not quite finished, since I left a tasty morsel for tomorrow night. Then it's onto chapter 25 and the last leg of the book. I have a dream to have this thing finished by the end of the month. At a chapter every 3 days, with no interruptions from the outside world, maybe... I did write fifty pages in the last week. That's twice my average. If I only knew how much farther to go!

And so it happened. The last Star Wars midnight madness for ever. There was sadness. There was pushing and shoving. Just like old times. The best part was the statue at TRU that wasn't a statue. He got everybody. Every man for himself! My cousins Mason and Marshall went along, and we had a blast.

Pope John Paul II is dead. Among so many other things, least of all the Pope, he was a poet. A playwright. A scientist friend of his once said that mathematics, the language of science, was the language of the universe. Of God. The Pope said the most direct language to God was poetry. Drama. Myth. A lot of people talk about how conservative he was. He was a revolutionary.

Fiction The Book of Elizabeth , novel, 2010 "News Right Fresh From Heaven," Fantasy Magazine , Forthcoming "Keeping Up Disappearances" , Storyglossia , April 2007 "Judy & Norman" , Reflection's Edge , July 2006 "Black Eyed Moon," Fantasy Magazine , Summer 2006 "The Switch," Jigsaw Nation , ed. by Edward J. McFadden and E. Sedia, May 2006 "Paper Man," Shimmer , May 2006 "Roof On A Lake" , The Angler , April 2006 Poetry "Santa Monica" , The Pedestal Magazine , Fall 2004

I learned yesterday that I sold my first short story. "The Switch" will be published in the anthology "Jigsaw Nation" sometime this fall. I'm very excited and shocked and relieved, I think, that at last all my hard work is starting to pay off, even just a little. The anthology is built around the themed 'What If?' concept if the Blue States seceded from the Red States. I can't wait to see what everyone else came up with. For my part, "The Switch" takes place a short time in an imagined future, and is about a man trying to cross the Mississippi river from Iowa into Illinois, a task now something like getting over the Berlin Wall. At least now on my taxes I can put down as my occupation: "Author, bitches!"