Matt Maxwell's Blog: Highway 62 on Goodreads, page 13

HAZELAND

The name has changed a lot, let's just set that record straight.I started this whole thing out a bunch of years ago, with some malformed and half-baked ideas that haven't yet seen the light of day. Maybe they will. Things have turned around like that. But this really didn't get started until I submitted a story called "Chunked" for an anthology called TOMORROW'S CTHULHU, put out by an outfit that I'd never heard of before but would get to know a lot better, by the name of Broken Eye Books.Amazingly enough, that story got accepted and printed. Step forward about a year and a half, maybe two, maybe a touch more. I talked to the publisher about whether or not it was cool for me to do something else in that setting but under my own thing, for comics back then. Back when making comics on spec almost made sense. Hint: they don't, unless the person who's actually drawing and therefore co-writing the comic is working for just back end pay (sub-hint: nobody works for just back-end) you need to come up with a way to pay them. About thirty grand if you want to pay non-insultingly for an OGN's worth of material.So I asked the publisher if that was cool, and to my surprise, he asked me to pitch him the story instead. In short order, I came up with the story of a counterfeiter of occult books who wants to stop making fakes and make something real. Which she does. Then things come unglued. Throw it all into a compelling setting and mix in some atmosphere and it's just a couple steps to QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS. Which that book became.But the plan was always to do more of them. Just wasn't sure how. Fast-forward a bit to October of last year. Got the go-ahead from the publisher to run with two more follow-ons to QONT, those being the currently-underway MY DROWNING CHORUS and the one after that which is a little more nebulous called GLASS WOLVES (h/t to Richard Kadrey who threw the title out there on Twitter and said "do as thou wilt" so I did.) After that will be VOIDMAW which is a weirdo gothic space fantasy, more DUNE (1985) in tone and feel than STAR WARS or other more obvious antecedents. That'll probably be worked on in the second half of next year, but I can't name a publishing date.Which left me with the problem of series identification. See, my first published writing under my own name and all was in comics. And there, stories are usually constructed under a single title with arcs broken out of those. But the over-reaching title comes first, then the 'book' name. So for instance STRANGEWAYS: MURDER MOON was the first of my works. THE THIRSTY was the second. No you can't buy them on Amazon, only over at the bigcartel store. And I'll never sell physical other than POD at Amazon until they change their ways and actually order say ten at a time so postage costs don't destroy any shot at anything like a profit (but you know Amazon makes their nut every time.)I found myself needing a series name now. I played with NO TOMORROWS or THE SMOKING CODEX or SIGHTLESS EYE. Went back to SMOKETOWN (which may yet come back around). Tried some new ones like ABYSSAL or even THE NEON ABYSSAL and they weren't quite right. I worked on a new name, one that could evoke the city of LA and the region around it, as well as summon up a feeling of mystery and intangibility, all useful in describing the weird.I decided on the below, and it was approved a few days ago.This is an early treatment. Lots to do, but the basic concept will hold. I hope.More later.

POTD 1/23/20

Running this one a little early, since I've got a weird schedule today.Taken at the Museum of Neon Art, back when they were downtown LA, not Glendale like they are now. Photo data says 2004, which tracks, since I lived a lot closer to LA then and could make it up there at basically a moment's notice.

POTD 1/22/20

Something different today. This photo actually shot by my daughter. Yes, that's me in my office being a gamer, playing WORLD OF WARCRAFT. I'm guessing this is 2007-2008 maybe. The camera in question was a bright orange literal toddlers camera. Wish I could be more specific. It was made of mostly rigid, but somewhat pliable plastic that felt something like I imagine a recently-dead body might. I never told her my feeling on that.Note the two comics splash pages hanging in front of me, one from an issue of THE FILTH (art by Chris Weston, writing by Grant Morrison) and one from the first issue of SEAGUY (art by Cameron Stewart, writing by Grant Morrison). Both are important to me still and hang there to this day. Note also the Spacemen 3 tour poster with art by Chris Cooper (who I'm proud to call a friend) from the aborted PLAYING WITH FIRE tour of the US that never happened. Something about visa issues. Shocking. The Scenic/Lanterna tour poster isn't there anymore.There's a few other tidbits to be picked out here. Enjoy.

POTD 1/21/20

Tustin, CA 2004. The airship hangar at Tustin airbase, which is a colossal structure whose scale is not effectively conveyed in this photo. Wonder if it's still standing? It was in 2013 when I went last, but they were clearing land around it.Ugh. That white point.

LINKMIX 200121

Another week of weird and wonderful links. Okay, mostly weird, at least in conjunction with one another.https://filmmaker.bandcamp.com/album/spectralYou'll like it or you'll hate it. Kind of a fusion of late 80s EBM and current-day synthwave sounds, which shouldn't be a surprisng combination at all.LAist takes on an oral history of BLADE RUNNER. This from last November, given the whole Los Angeles, November 2019 thing that went around like wildfire. Still, worth a look or even a re-visit.https://laist.com/2019/11/05/blade-runner-november-2019-los-angeles-future-is-here.phpThe Vox AC100 websitehttps://www.voxac100.org.ukGosh, why would I like this site at all, I wonder.The City is Neutral: On Urban Warfare in the 21st CenturyI have to give this a read sometime but don't have the focus right now, nor have I for awhile. But still, I offer it to you.https://tnsr.org/2019/10/the-city-is-neutral-on-urban-warfare-in-the-21st-century/Age your Content in Photoshophttps://gomedia.com/zine/tutorials/illustrator/introducing-the-photocopy-noise-texture-pack/Because age denotes authenticity.David Hoffman talks to children of the Baby Boom in 1991.https://youtu.be/_rTuPEdlhQsYeah, sure. It'll get an "Okay Boomer," but history is history.And, finally. Remember TV movies? The original prestige television.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM1nAHqGIs8&feature=emb_logoYeah, that's the good stuff.One day, I may yet get back to original work being posted here. Though I must say, that smacks of The Discourse, and The Discourse is a thing that's been coarsened and sharpened in ways that make it a lot less appealing.

MY DROWNING CHORUS - INTERSTITIAL

Okay, so you may or may not know that I'm actually a writer. I'd say for my day job, but that'd be a lie. And I'm working on a follow-on to the weird-fantasy/crime book of mine that came out in 2018, QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS. This one's called MY DROWNING CHORUS. And it's been kind of a doozy. I've managed to box myself in several times in the outline phase, but I think I've finally broken that, even if I don't know 100% of the answers to what's going on in the book. I'm hoping that those will be revealed to me as I actually, y'know, write it.Broke ground on Friday, started for real today. Here's a bit of what came out. Don't worry, no spoilers. I'm feeling like it went pretty well. Take it when you can get it.--INTERSTITIAL Eliano Gonzales-Lynne usually went by "Gonzo," the name having been given him when he took on three of the front four of Pacoima Polytech's football team, nearly seven hundred pounds of them versus one-fifty, soaking wet and holding two cinder blocks. It was in the parking lot of the Bob's Big Boy in Toluca Lake and they'd hassled him endlessly, before finally making a grab at his then-girlfriend, now-wife Ronnie Diaz. The biggest one had pulled her half-way through the window of his primer-gray nova and Gonzo went for it. The neon of that sky-high Bob's sign lit the scene as people made a circle around the fray, all whooping and cheering. Those assholes had it coming to them for a long, long time.He remembered it for a moment as he leaned against the railing of the big whale tank. The new owners hadn't emptied the water yet, though the whale was off to San Diego or Miami or some other damn place. Popping a Marlboro from the pack in his uniform coat pocket, he flicked the match with a thumb and smelled the bitter hell-smell of sulfur over the faintly septic scent of the couple million gallons of salt water going rancid. No techs for maintenance now. The only crew left at Marine World was security to make sure nobody stole anything or vandalized what couldn't be unbolted and carted off. How the hell were they gonna get that big, sad orca 'cross-country, he wondered?Stupid white bankers, all interested in counting more money and not how they were gonna move that damn whale. It didn't make sense. Marine World was on hard times, sure, everyone was. No reason to close a place with history.He remembered taking Ronnie down here. She loved the tropical fishes like living jewels in those bright-lit tanks, so many you'd go crazy trying to count them. Gonzo didn't complain about how much it cost to come out to Palos Verdes or the traffic or paying two dollars for a beer, even a Budweiser at that. He just loved to watch her face all bathed in that light, watching her little gemstone fish. They came so often, he ended up getting a job here. Why not? It was steady. At least until everything wasn't. He sucked down the cigarette and figured he'd at least pretend to do his rounds. There hadn't been anything after the first week of curiosity seekers and jazzed-up kids on a dare hopping the fence. Gonzo figured there was maybe another month of this before the whole thing got condemned, or at least written-off to the point where they wouldn't want to pay his salary any longer.His fingers rolled the butt between them and he thought about tossing it in the pool. Why not? The rising moon cast a big reflection in it, all dancing in crescent ripples brought on by the winds. At least the diablo winds were over now, so hot in November that he sweat through his undershirt just standing in the night. He thought about tossing that butt, but then he imagined the horror on Ronnie's face if she'd seen him. Trash can is right over there, just go do it.Gonzo stubbed the butt on his boot sole. He'd stopped wearing the regulation shoes some time ago, and his boss was long gone. He ground it down good when he heard the splash.It sounded like a Southern Pacific engine had been dropped in the water, from a big height, taller even than that Bob's sign. Not even that black and white whale made a sound like that when he was side-flopping like he'd do when he got really bored or agitated. It was too big a sound.Gonzo's hand went to his billy club and rested there, without a thought of it. The sickly salt smell got huge, splattering from the broken surface. On it, the moonlight went violent and erratic, floating around like the stars Gonzo saw when that Miles kid went dirty and rabbit-punched.

POTD 1/18, 1/19, 1/20/20

Yeah, sorry, distracted this weekend.So, canonically, this is the photo entry for 1/18/20. Taken near Eloy, Arizona. Early, early morning during the monsoon season.Here's 1/19/20, taken at Rice Air Force Base (decommissioned) in, oh geez, probably 1988 or 1989. Possibly even earlier. Scan of a film print and yes, I'm so lazy, I didn't fix that error right in the middle of things. Hell, it might've even been on the print itself.And today's, 1/20/20. Taken in 1992, Joshua Tree CA, not far from the AFB depicted above. Scanned and used in the cover art for BLUE HIGHWAY, which received only an aborted POD release and has so far been impossible to find. I have seen copies for triple digits, thanks to the algorithm, though.

POTD 1/17/20

2006, San Diego CA. The USS Midway flight deck. Pretty good timing on my part.Taken with that FujiFinePix that I never did set the white balance right on. I can blame only myself.

POTD 1/16/20

2014, Fox Theatre in Oakland CA. Noveller opens for St. Vincent. Noveller puts on a great show.I do not stick around for the headliner.

POTD 1/15/20

Taken in Los Angeles, on an onramp to the 405 south in Culver City. Swarming question marks. Very dangerous. Approach with caution.