Jordan Castillo Price's Blog, page 14

The Psychology of Clutter

There’s nothing like company to make a person take a good hard look at their surroundings and see all those weird things that have become so much visual noise and static. I’m having guests this weekend and I can’t wait, though they’ll have to deal with my lack of organization. Right now, I can use the excuse that I’ve just moved, so things are a little jumbled. But, ultimately, I hope that I can eventually achieve some semblance of order.

There’s plenty of space here, and as for shelving, I can always obtain more. I think the big stumbling block for me is not the space or the willingness, but the fact that I’m not quite sure how to categorize certain things, so they just end up residing on the nearest horizontal surface.

It got me to thinking about Vic and Jacob, and their household dynamic. It’s often fun to play Jacob’s blase attitude toward housekeeping for laughs. But, I think it actually reveals something deeper about his personality. It comes down to his ego, big surprise. He tends to strew items around because he feels that his attention is better spent doing more “important” things.

Vic, on the other hand, is an obsessive de-clutter. It’s not because he’s particularly clean. In fact, he often finds pockets of dust, rust, or other sorts of schmutz. For him, it’s more of the fear of being snuck up on that drives his desire for an empty, white space.

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Clearly, I have no don’t need to worry about getting that stark myself, ha ha.

Sonofa…

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And then what happened?

So I’m mostly unpacked from my big move, except for a few stray boxes, but it’s occurring to me that the most difficult part of doing projects, be it writing a book or unpacking a house, is figuring out the logical order in which to do things.

Take my treadmill, for instance. It has been living at my ex’s house for a few years now, and I was really excited to get it back. On the day I decided I wanted to head downstairs and get some extra steps in, I was disappointed to realize I had no idea where the power cord was. I kept my eyes peeled for a few days, and luckily, because I do my best to group similar things together, I eventually spotted the power cord among some other cords and adapters. I plugged it in. Great! Time to walk, right?

Not quite yet.

The treadmill belt was misaligned from the move. No problem, I would just get the key and fix it.

You guessed it, no idea where the key was. I looked for a few days, and then decided that I couldn’t picture anything I would group it with, so the likelihood of me finding it was very low. But, it was just an Allen wrench, and I had several of those.

None of them fit. Cos that’s how it goes.

As I was in the hardware store looking for the Allen wrench, I saw that there were Imperial sizes and metric sizes, and I had the strong hunch that maybe none of my other wrenches worked even if they looked like they should because it needed a metric key. I bought one set of each anyway, thinking I wanted it to be my very last trip to the store for an Allen wrench, ever. (Disassembling and reassembling my desk already took three trips to the store where I bought a few keys at a time, so you can imagine…)

Success! When I got home, the very first metric wrench that I tried was the one. Jackpot! I’m off and walking, right?

No, now the belt is super out of whack, and I’ve had to reference the website to see which way I should be turning the wrench. The treadmill is in the basement and the computer’s upstairs on the second floor, of course…

Well, you get it. It’s still not right. But it is damn close.[image error]

I mention this not because I think my treadmill is inherently interesting, but because writing a novel, for me, is exactly like this. I might think I understand one element of it, but if the sequence of events and the logical cause and effect is not in place, ain’t nobody walking.

Random aside: as I looked for the domino image, I found this blog which looks kind of cool. http://www.howsthenovelcoming.com/

Another random aside. I can’t figure out if there’s an “e” in the word dominoes/dominos. Seems like there should be.

Third random aside: I used to lay out my novels with post-its on the wall, which I gave away to some delightful readers in London because the stickies wouldn’t survive the move. Now that I’m resettled, I have pulled up the program Scapple and decided to do my old sticky note process on the computer. I’m digging it, I’m finding I’m more detailed this way, plus they don’t fall off. But that isn’t to say I’m not still awash in Post Its…

Fun with fingerprints

I’m in awe of people who decorate their homes well. Heck, I’m in awe of people who decorate their homes at all. Well or not. Just the fact that they have a cohesive “look” impresses me. I hang one curtain and I have to go take a break.

There’s a trippy, glittery, bodacious preserved and reconstructed home I visited this weekend that reminded me of the Sticks and Stones hallway, which was decorated with rainbow fingerprints. That scene plays out in Skin After Skin, possibly in a way you might not expect.

So when I noticed paint-daubed fingerprints made up part of the overall look of the Original Rhinestone Cowboy’s house, I snapped a couple of pics to share.

I imagine there could very well be some glitter in Crash’s hallway as well.

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Pretend you were shopping at Sticks and Stones

It drives me nuts when I stop at the store and realize I’ve forgotten to bring shopping bags with me. I loathe the thought of more plastic coming into the world just because I’m forgetful. Yes, I do use those flimsy plastic grocery bags for cat poo…but there’s only so much Frank can poo. Thankfully.

I suspect I need to order myself a Sticks and Stones bag so I can stop forgetting. Or maybe so I can put some incense and an astrology book in there and pretend I was just shopping at Crash’s.

Check out the bags

Profits help fund the production of the Skin After Skin audiobook with the incomparable Gomez Pugh!

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It Shed So Much Light on Everything

[image error] On Skin After Skin:

It was refreshing to see everyone through Crash’s extroverted eyes, rather than through Vic’s mistrust. I thought it was brilliant that JCP took the story back to the beginning. Actually, it was before the beginning. It was Crash’s beginning. It shed so much light on everything. It explained Crash’s relationship with his mother, his history with Jacob, his love for Red. It even explained his complicated feelings for Jacob too. Skin After Skin definitely altered my perception of every character, but I think it deeply altered my opinion of Jacob and of Crash himself.

-Wendy F., Amazon Review

Skin After Skin available in ebook and paperback.

Audiobook with Gomez Pugh currently in production!

Don’t judge a ___ by its ___?

The old saw goes that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. (I do this all the time anyway.) But what about judging a TV show by its title?

I did not even pause to see who was starring in the show Schitt’s Creek because I thought the title was juvenile. But a friend was visiting and we were trolling for something to watch and he said, “I’d watch a few minutes of episode 1” and I said, sure, why not?

And now we’re totally hooked on it.

I adore Catherine O’Hara. ADORE. If I’d known she was in it, I might have gotten past the title sooner.

But for me, the big scene stealer is Dan Levy. There’s a scene where the character and his friend are discussing his sexuality that’s just gorgeous in its understated sensitivity. And the show has a pan character without making a whole big thing out of it. Definitely check it out if you’re looking for something to binge.

Upstairs, Downstairs

I’ve owned homes before, but never by myself. A couple of weeks ago, I took a new leap into home ownership. Man, what an adventure! I’m not being sarcastic…not entirely, at any rate. But, hoo boy, there are some things you just don’t anticipate until they happen. I thought that living on the second floor of an apartment building, I was climbing a normal amount of stairs, but I was grossly mistaken. Now that I have a two-story building, I’m up and down between the basement and the second floor all day long. The first few days were so crazy, my FitBit was sending me all kinds of congratulatory emails about my step count. (It’s calmed down now, but I’m getting the 10000 step days again that I used to when I was teaching water aerobics.)

Back when my cat Frankie first adopted me, we lived in a trailer, which is all one level. Then we moved to the apartment together, and the only time he went downstairs was in his carrier. So it’s quite possible he was encountering stairs for the first time! The way he went up or down one at a time, it seems possible they were new to him. Now he’s not exactly racing up and down, but he’s definitely getting the hang of it.

I even started wondering if maybe I could increase his food (which I measure out on vet’s instructions), because he is starving at mealtimes now, and not just I-can-see-the-bowl-bottom cat-starving. But as you can see, he’s still got some chub reserves.

Before I moved, I had visions of myself tucked away in one of the many wonderful nooks in my new home, pouring out brilliant and prolific prose thanks to my gloriously private surroundings. Fast forward to the reality of the room I’d set aside for the den turning out to be distracting, and all my crap in boxes where I can’t find it.

I think the disorientation goes deeper, though, than not knowing where my spare backup drive is. (And I’ve been looking for that sucker for two days now.) There’s the “where am I?” strangeness that’s psychologically distressing for a homebody like me in the situation of being somewhere new, even if that somewhere is pretty great, and it’s mine.

This morning I was delighted to finally, FINALLY produce some wordcount. While I gear up to write PsyCop 9, I’m warming up for it by doing a Vic novella for PsyCop Briefs Volume 2, which I think will be ready toward the end of 2018.

One especially delightful thing about having an obscene amount of space is that I can get back to things like drawing, painting and sewing. My friend was just remarking on the sewing machine on my dining room table–I’m hemming some sheers–and I almost said, “Well, I don’t really sew.” But I caught myself. Because maybe now, I do!

Bag-tastic!

[image error]I am appalled at how many plastic bags a single trip to the store can generate for me. It really annoys me when I leave the house without my reusable bags.

Now here’s a bag I’m unlikely to forget! Victor Bayne and Crash in glorious full color–the perfect company on your next shopping trip.

Find these delightful bags and even more goodies, like mugs, caps and T-shirts at my JCP Books Merchandise online store.

Dig Into the Archives

[image error]Miss any recent newsletters? Now you can find the 20 most current issues of JCP News and the 20 most recent Saturday Snippets on my PsyCop site!

Let the browsing begin!