Joshua Alan Doetsch's Blog, page 9

Networking in the Morgue

Simon Meeks tried to be social. He gave this Facebook notion a whirl. He posted stuff on his wall, and he waited and waited and waited for someone to friend him…

Of Comics & Sparrows & Crows

Once upon a time, I listened to an awesome podcast — a full cast, radio drama style bit of lovely called Wormwood: A Serialized Mystery. I was (am!) a huge fan. Now, a comic book featuring some of those characters (Sparrow & Crowe) is soon to be released, and the above full page ad features a creator quote by me. Fandom comes full circle! You can see the ad in the May addition of Diamond’s Previews catalog (in a comic store near you later this week).

Conversations at the office

I work at a game studio, where conversations are fun. Events at the office today may have caused me to say:

“If I dropped a heavy dildo on my keyboard, I’d end up with a better sentence than that.”

Also, I had a meeting with one of my bosses. I’m doing work on two different games right now, so there’s multiple bosses. The writing meeting opened up something like this (the names have been changed to protect the devious):

BOSS:  “Josh, did you cut your hair?”

ME:  “Yes I did.”

BOSS:  “Hmmm…you got your Greek on. Do you have any Greek in you?”

ME:  “It’s possible.”

BOSS:  “There’s something about you…a…a sexual anger that’s very Mediterranean. Clara, what do you think? You’re a woman.”

CLARA: “Oh, God…”

My Religion is Quixotism

It’s important to tilt at windmills every day. It’s important to show reality that you don’t give it too much respect. It’s important to know that some people who say “rational” really mean “unimaginative,” the one who says, “I tell it like it is,” might just be verbally clumsy, and that the main life prerogative of most (the one typing this included) is to spin their weaknesses as strengths.

Return of the Tombstone Trees

Last post, I scrivened on about one of my favorite places to take a midnight walk in Montreal: Westmount Park. There the trees are tombstones. It’s also a really nice park of winding paths.

Tonight, I had a pregnant skull full of heavy thoughts about a particular someone. I took a walk to clear my head. To the park. It was windy and a pseudo-spring that feels more like fall — the perfect sort of night for this kind of walk. I toured the park. It was good. I sat at a bench. I thought about the trees. I thought about pubs with funny names. I thought about what blues songs written in Enochian would sound like. I thought of nothing in particular.

Then I thought the heavy thoughts again.

I said to myself, “Self, you need to occupy your mind with something else for a little while.”

I looked over and noticed more of those trees, the ones with the metal plaques with names and dedications, the ones that turned the trees into weird tombstones — trees I hadn’t visited on my previous walks. For some reason, I find the dead names and words on the trees interesting, so I got up for a look and a diversion.

On the very first tree, the wind had twisted the chain of the plaque to face backwards. I turned it around. The first name, on the very first plaque, on the very first tree, was the name of the person stuck in my head.

I shit you not and hope to die.

Nevermore, Mother Hubbard!

Where the Tombstones Are Trees

 

I like late night walks. In Montreal, one of my favorite spots is Westmount Park. Already a nice place, midnight turns it into a new dimension, with its winding brick walkways, black iron, and empty playground–it's all autumnal shades. "Creak-clink" says a chain swing in the wind. Places like that become yours after the witching hour.

 

 

It's about this time that the lights take on strange properties, panting trees in ghost plasma. Living downtown, I've found exposure to trees to be a little more important, a little less for granted, a little more communionesque. But trees are not always trees…

 

 

I took a closer look, and some of the trees had dedications on them, to people who had passed. Suddenly the place took on graveyard connotations. Sepulchral trees. Not just a favorite haunt, but a haunt. Tombstones that shed leaves. Just me, the empty swings, and arboreal spirits. Do loved ones visit the trees? Do they visit in the day, or creep about at night like me? Do other people read each and every plague? What was Irene Kon's least favorite color? Was Sally Gagnon looking forward to the change of the millennium? What kind of tree would I want to have my name on?

 

How does that line go? By myself but not alone.

Nights keep coming, and I'll keep walking. I'll visit Irene, Sally, and the rest. Someone told me it'd be healthier to get up in the morning and do my walks then. But I like the skewed view of midnight. I don't think that's a bad vice, as far as vices go.

 

Hug a tree and it might turn into a tombstone. But then we live in a world where rocks might be rock lobsters. I wonder what the tombstones actually are…

Oh…and if you're going to be up late, you should be listening to The Tailor.

Skål!

They’re letting me talk to the pretty people!

Tomorrow night, I’ll be part of live a devcast for Age of Conan (where I do my day-job writing). I and some other game developers will do a live video walk through of the pirate isle known as Dead Man’s Hand, while answering questions. Good old mature gaming fun.

They're letting me talk to the pretty people!

Tomorrow night, I'll be part of live a devcast for Age of Conan (where I do my day-job writing). I and some other game developers will do a live video walk through of the pirate isle known as Dead Man's Hand, while answering questions. Good old mature gaming fun.

They're letting me to talk to the pretty people!

Tomorrow night, I'll be part of live a devcast for Age of Conan (where I do my day-job writing). I and some other game developers will do a live video walk through of the pirate isle known as Dead Man's Hand, while answering questions. Good old mature gaming fun.

 

 

 

Letter From a Christian Goth

Back when Strangeness in the Proportion was being serialized on White Wolf's website, we received feedback from readers, even as we were still editing sections to be released (and further polishing for its upcoming ebook and print incarnations). That was the coolest thing about serializing and the immediacy of interaction on the web — being able to get feedback while the clay was still a little damp. One World of Darkness denizen in particular, Marshall Finch, gave back a lot of copy-edit input that went into improving the book (you can find him in the Acknowledgements).

Marshal recently sent me an immensely nice letter. I think it's my first fan letter. I've communicated electronically with a lot of people, but I do believe this is the first physical missive sent to me by someone who knows me primarily through my writing. I'm several hundreds miles away from my parents' fridge. So I'm posting this here. Enjoy. Or don't. This is for me.

Dear Joshua:
Thank you so much for signing this (and for writing it)! It was a pleasure to be one of the first to read it during proofreading. I have several favorite books, between which I cannot choose because they fall into different genres and do not compete with one another for the niches they occupy in my heart. Strangeness is among those favorites, establishing its superiority in the ranks of those works that populate the peculiar realm at once morbid and humorous.
There are few perfect characters in fiction. It's the rare author who ever creates a character perfectly. most characters are flawed by design, too passive, uninteresting, or unrelatably without error, Even those characters designed perfectly usually come with some error in their execution, a scene in which they deviate, a page which doesn't seem to fit with the rest. Simon is without such error. Simon is one of those rare perfect characters.
You deserve all the praise you've been given by your fans, and more attention. You're handicapped by the strange void that your work fills — unfortunately the romance genre is more popular. Notwithstanding, yours is the better novel, better than any I've read in a very long time. Thank you for making it a part of my life.
In Christ,
Marshall Finch
Christiangoth

A big…proportion (see what I did there?) of credit, for Simon turning out the way he did, should go to my editor, James Lowder. I had a very raw idea, and Jim helped me hammer it. Simon had quite a few changes from the first draft on, both in conception and execution. Jim helped me make the most of him.

Good Lord! You should see some of the offshoot ideas I had in the re-outlining phase, that Jim killed with expert scythe swings. Simon just may owe him his life. Once a year, he leaves small, gory sacrifices on the mantle and raises an absinthe toast to the force known as the Lowder.

Skål!

Raven’s Eye

Is my one-eyed cat, Raven, actually a supernatural familiar summoned forth to help me cast my scrivnomancy? I’ll let you decide.

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