Matt Maxwell's Blog: Highway 62 on Goodreads, page 16

FULL BLEED: FEAR IS A MAN'S BEST FRIEND

I really was better off in this business when I didn't think about things and instead just figured I could write. It's weird to bodily, wholly understand that, on a level best described as physical, if not anxiety-inducing.So, yeah, I'm Having a Time working on this second book. Even though it's not my second book, closer to what the tenth that I've started (have several ones I gave a college try on before giving up on them, years ago.) Shocked that it doesn't get any easier. But I suppose I'm just a weirdo. I've known that for a long, long time.But fear? Yeah, that's new. Suppose it comes from what, six years of being in a near-perpetual state of alert. I'm not just talking about living through the Current Situation, but life even before 2016 was draining and fearful and largely dread-driven, and while those events resolved themselves as good as can be expected, I barrelled into writing QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS while I was on my last nerve.And I never really realized it at the time. Took awhile. Never addressed it after, either. That whole period is sitting like a benign tumor, fine so long as I don't poke at it.Still the fact is that I was able to get past it and pull out something from nothing more than nerve and ego and frustrated output. So I told my editor I could do it without thinking about it. Sure. Why not?The problem now is that I've been allowed to think about it. Enough to completely change the branding/name and scope of my next set of projects. I've generated a huge bible that nobody but me will ever read. I've managed to overthink the place of magic in the world and what genre I'm even writing (ah, but that's a trap of its own making, right?) I've spent too much time thinking about things and outlining, and that's a good way to kill a book dead.But I did get to explore a couple different looks for what was once SMOKETOWN and is now NEON ABYSSAL. Let's take a quick look.Neither of these have been approved. Hell, the name hasn't been approved. Oh well. I can come up with others. It only took... uh... a little while...So the other thing I'm doing now is going back through my process on writing QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS. And I suppose as close as I can get to the inception of that project is this, the short outline/pitch. This is what I sent to my editor after he asked if I wanted to write a longer piece, maybe or maybe not set in the same universe as the story "Chunked" that I'd written for the anthology TOMORROW'S CTHULHU and submitted blind. I'm still shocked that I managed to slip in with that one, honestly.I don't have the one sentence pitch around, or the original original idea. QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS was a synthesis of a bunch of different ideas I'd had, some straight cosmic horror/fantasy and some in critique of the whole affair (protip: "Chunked" is a savage assault on the Chulhu fiction thing, sort of an OG cyberpunk - in ethos, not aesthetic - take on the subgenre.) I suppose THE DROWNING CHORUS is no different. Part celebratory and part yeah I'm gonna do something different and you're not my dad.But I had to remember how I started with nothing and turned it into 40k words (originally slated at 30k, and I believe, a serial, which is why it was broken up into chunks -- I'm glad it wasn't, because the below structure would not work out in reality.) So here's the notes that started me on that path.MAJOR SPOILERS FOR QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS FOLLOW. So do typos and other garbage. I'm not going to fix them.Note that some of this stuff did not come to pass and some of it never will. The story changes in the writing.--QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWSSETTINGLate 1980s, in a Los Angeles that is feeling the slow seep of unimagined powers and alien gods making themselves manifest.OVERVIEWCait MacReady is an artist, writer and (secretly a) forger, primarily of occult texts and other lost books. She's previously sold to professors, collectors and criminals, but her latest sale is different. This work, THE SMOKING CODEX, has attracted the attention of No Tomorrows, criminal adherents of a god that doesn't yet exist (but wants to.) It has somehow spoken to their cult Queen, Ariella Gutierrez, and needs the Codex so that it can be willed into existence. 1When one of Cait's long-time fences (and one-time romance) Rico goes missing, Cait realizes that No Tomorrows used him to find her in an effort to push her into selling the Codex to them. Cait is tracked down by the cult, and invited later to meet with their Queen, Ariella. No Tomorrows is both an occult and ordinary crime organization, though the cult trappings make it easier to intimidate any competition. Cait refuses and is given a clue that she can't, but maybe she should ask Rico what she should do.TURN - Rico turns up murdered in his home, eyes removed and ritual suggested in his death and murder scene.2The police who are investigating the messy death of Rico check into Cait's connection with him, leaving her a suspect. The cult makes plans to take the Codex, but only after it has been finished (Cait's cover being that it is making it way through sources to her.) They don't care whether or not Cait is alive in this, but the cult leader, Ariella, recognizes that Cait has a special connection with the book, though she is unclear what it is. TURN - Reveal that the Smoking Codex is a forged text, one that Cait herself is writing. It can't be real, or shouldn't.3Cait is stuck between the cult and the police. She has no choice but to meet with Ariella and see what, if anything can be salvaged of her life and freedom. Ariella shows Cait the power of her belief and after this, Cait is left questioning not only the book, but the nature of reality itself. The gang after her worships a god that only exists in a book that she herself is writing. How can this be? Is this something that can be controlled and turned to her own escape?TURN - What she is writing may be coming true and what does this mean about reality?4Before she can answer, Cait is attacked by the cult (including a thing out of nightmare and the pages of the Codex). Only by threatening to destroy the Codex does she escape, along with a sacrificial knife made of white obsidian. Suggestion that this is another branch of the cult, but at the moment, nothing is important other than keeping herself alive.TURN - She is confronted with actual evidence of a monster out of the pages of the Codex itself. If this is real then what else is?5With the police and the cult after her, she tries to slip out Los Angeles. She knows she should destroy the Codex (but she finds it offers its own attraction to her, especially since she doesn't fully understand her power over it.) Cait realizes that she can't escape the power that her own imagination has unleashed and has to see this through, has to see if this is all real or not. She takes the Codex to No Tomorrows themselves to see this through one way or another.TURN - Cait is in the hands of the cult and maybe she's beginning to believe herself.6With the Codex, they plan on conjuring their god, the Veil of Countless Eyes into being. Ariella is using this opportunity to just to raise a god, but to use its power against the true head of the organization so she can ascend in both her imagined celestial throne and that of the No Tomorrows organization. Cait struggles through the shock of this experience and her own attempted sacrifice to turn the tables and instead feed Ariella to the Veil.Denouement 1Cait can't bring herself to peer under Ariella's veils to see the truth of her transformation. The manifestation of the Veil could be explained away, perhaps, but not this.Denouement 2The King of No Tomorrows (until now unseen, but responsible for the attempt on Cait's life in order to stop Ariella's plan) surveys the wreckage and Ariella's fall, noting that he owes Cait a debt that he perhaps doesn't fully understand, but will honor. He disappears beforeDenouement 3The cops, including the murder investigators, come to mop up. Cait is badly, perhaps fundamentally shaken, but still whole. What can't be fully explained is swept away, but if nothing else, Cait is responsible for this arm of No Tomorrows being cut off, which gets her at least some leeway.But we're in a world that is left in uncertain shadow now.--All in all less than 900 words, but still, there was enough there there to keep rolling. I can't lay claim as to it being perfectly paced. I tend to write stuff as it makes sense to me, and while I like narrative ficiton (I know, so basic) I'm not a master of the tight plot.I'm sure that I have a lot more than that in the outline for THE DROWNING CHORUS as it stands right now. That may not be a good thing. But it's probably enough to start running with, even if I don't have all the answers or even most of them other than a sense of direction and vibe that I'm reaching for in the book. It's just time to sit down and start the train rolling downhill and then to jump the tracks, powering through the industrial suburbs as it gains speed like the Chicxulub meteor hitting the atmosphere before pulling into the station.It's just a matter of hitting that unconscious voice, and the only way to do that is to sit down and start working.Fine if you can keep the fear out of your mind.And yeah, I didn't even mention what, exactly, I was afraid of, did I? If you've written a thing, you probably know. That you're gonna reach for it and there won't be anything there. That what you said you could do, you simply can't. That the world was right to have kicked your career to the curb for the better part of a lifetime. You know. The usual stuff. And none of which, I'll add, is necessarily without basis in reality. Especially that last part. Which is why I can't allow the dubious pleasures of thinking about it. Pleasure? You bet. You get to shirk responsibility. The world won't care so why should you? Just give it up. There's a freedom in that powerlessness, isn't there? I mean, from a certain perspective there is.Yeah.

FULL BLEED: THE QUALITY THAT GOES IN BEFORE THE NAME GOES ON

So, remember last week when I pointed out that my current book needed a new title because THE DROWNING CITY was taken (albeit indirectly). And then that got me thinking about the working title for the entire series that I was working on, a series that started with QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS.Right now, that name is ABYSSAL. The code name for all six plus novels. Really it's a name that's supposed to encompass the setting more than just the characters, though I do have a stable central cast set up. In short, I'm conceiving of it as I'd conceive of a comic book series: a central setting and cast with an umbrella title to cover the whole works. Now, I'm oldschool. I'm conceiving of a series without a definite end. That's a no-no now. Nowaways, you come up with a short arc and cross your fingers that it gets to continue. But that's another talk for another time.Now, coming up with a name, particularly a short, punchy name, to encompass a whole series is a daunting task. Even worse, is my deliberate aim to mix two disparate genres/modes while doing this. It's hard enough to just pick one genre and stick with it, having the name reflect that. Effectively doubling that? Yeah, that's dumb. Don't be dumb like me.Granted, I have a lot of practice in this. My first comics series was a horror/western book called STRANGEWAYS. And when I did that, I learned that you piss off not only one but two sets of genre purists and never the twain shall meet sorts of folks. "Hey, you got a werewolf in this western!" "Hey, you got a western in this werewolf story!" Whereas I want to explore the space common between the two, most readers want to keep them disparate. I learned my lesson with that.Only I didn't. Because I'm either stubborn, cantankerous or stupid.With QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS, I clearly staked out territory in both crime/noir (though I'm hesitant to use 'noir' as a prose descriptor, since it's more appropriately used to cover a set of aesthetics/mood in film) and horror/fantasy. And I'm *really* hesitant to use horror as a descriptor. I'll write about that some day and I'm sure that my doing so will result in me being asked to leave the horror clubhouse forever. Additionally, twenty-year-old me is as appalled as anyone that I'm writing a thing and willingly calling it fantasy. Contemporary/urban fantasy was not much of a thing (aside from obvious exceptions like say LAST CALL by Tim Powers and a whole range of work by Jim Blaylock, at least in my orbit.)So here I am breaking all kinds of my own rules. But yet, in doing so, I'm doing my best to stay true to the nature of the work. And if I can't be brave enough to do that, then what the hell am I doing even writing? Oh, I know. I could tick things off the checklist and write suqarely to a set of genre expectations. I could do that, only I'm apparently not capable of doing so.Yeah. Stubborn. Crime and fantasy. Street-level crime and urban fantasy if you want to drill deeper, but let's not. I'd rather let the work be itself. And if you're wondering who I got to be broken like this, consider that my mom wrote SF that read more like fantasy and ultimately pioneered (among others) the whole school of writing known as romantic suspense, which is, you guessed it, a combination of romance/mystery/suspense which definitely breaks the old rules and makes something else out of them. She wrote something satisfying to her and made it work. I can do no less than follow her example.Now, you'd think that people would be happy about this, about widening the palette and putting more pieces in the toolbox. Lemme tell ya, that's not the case. There's plenty of quite vocal people who are only insterested in maintaining the existing boundaries and making sure that nobody climbs over the walls and brings invasive ideas along with them. Life's too short and I'm honestly bored to tears about discussion of what is or is not fantasy or horror or science fiction or a goddamned western. Bring me on a panel to talk about this stuff and I'll do everything I can to tear down the walls between them. Then someone will bring up the "promise to the reader" and hell no. Honestly, it's okay to shake things up some. Trying to give the people what the writers think they want has led to shelves after shelves of very samey stuff. Go down to Barnes and Noble and check it out for yourself.So I can only do what I'm going to do. But I still need a name to call it all. Short, punchy, evocative of both mystery and fantasy and unreality. Easy, right?I've been circling around this for more than a week. Here's the original name, which is being abandoned mostly because there's a TBN series of the same name that barely showed up in a Google search. But, let's be frank, the last association I want in this world is to be with those grifting preachers and their money-extractive network. Nope.It's a nice name. Fitting, even. I wish I could hold onto it. But that's not in the cards. And yes, there's a historical connotation to it that's not appropriate for me to use. It's not my story to tell. Though I hope that others actually do it.Which leaves me with a problem to solve. I've worked harder on this than any other name for any other project that I've ever worked on. Usually titles are easy (or they're very difficult.) We know which this one is. And I have a few candidates, but none of them really do the trick just yet. I suppose I'll be forced into one that emphasizes the weird/fantasy side of things than the crime, but I'll fight for that.Oh, and I do have a name for the follow on to QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS. It's pretty close to the original, loses a little but maybe gains a lot. The publisher hasn't officially announced it, but I can here, to you, my tens of fans and readers.It's called THE DROWNING CHORUS. More later.

FULL BLEED: TAKE OUR HANDS OUTTA CONTROL

So I guess that my trip to the World Fantasy Convention this year was kinda my debut at the establishment. I moderated a panel right out of the gate, spoke on two others. I’m one of the experts now. Got a book with my name on it and I didn’t have to publish it myself, even got paid pretty well. Thanks, Broken Eye Books! So why didn’t I feel like it? Sure. WFC is pretty crazy high-powered in terms of attendees. Robert Silverberg and Alan Dean Foster and Joe Haldeman for crying out loud, and that’s just names from my youth.But then every show has its own personality, and the bigger the show, the more steeped in lore and tradition it is, the harder it is for someone to find a way in. For all the talk of this being a gathering of like-minded folks, it often felt like going back to high school. But I say this as the goldfish intently studying the water that all the other goldfish are floating in.Firstly, the venue. The Marriott over by LAX is a mid century holdover with a recent coat of paint. This is not a gripe. Though for my tastes, I’d have preferred a restoration, not a new coat of paint and decor that’s more 2012 than 1966. The location worked against total enjoyment as well. First, you’re flying into LAX, which is an example of a model that isn’t working any more with the infrastructure around it, that and all the passenger cars still insisting on swarming their way around the traffic flow. Take shuttles. Come on. Additionally, there just isn’t that much right around the hotel/airport within walking distance. This would not be a problem were there a downtown LA location (the food and sightseeing options there being nothing short of staggering.) Friday night I walked half a mile or more for Greek food instead of paying hotel grill prices for a just okay dinner. Sunday morning I walked more than a mile to a Mexican joint that I guarantee no other convention goers went to. Both trips were worth it.So by design, you’re trapped in a part of LA which is more like a bunch of little mini HIGH RISE scenarios just waiting to take place. It’s a transit spot for capital, not even people, really. Which I guess is fine if you plan on not ever leaving the hotel. If you’re okay with high school. Fascinating from a sociological/cultural perspective but not nourishing.Don’t get me wrong. The rooms were nice, even if the motion sensing lights plunged me into darkness more than once while working. Yes I went to my room and worked instead of doing bar-con. Sure, I went down there and went to social events, looking for familiar faces. And I’m grateful for the ones I found, thanks to you folks, should you be reading this. But it was a few minutes of pleasant talk and then dissolution, looking to the aggregate pods of talkers and faces who I neither knew nor knew me. Tough to scale that cliff face, at least for me. Yes. I realize that’s a me problem. I also realize I’m not the guy with a me solution other than to go out and take pictures of the palm tree apocalypse sunsets and uncanny scale of capital-driven construction along that end of Century Boulevard.I’ll spare you my remembrances of the are from flying out of LAX as a kid, other than to say they sure chased a lot of strip clubs and adult theatres out of there since the eighties.I suppose I should talk about the actual show, huh? Sorry.I got there with enough time to check in, find out that I had made room reservations twice, change clothes and then get down to the panel areas. I should have showered to kill off the flop sweat but that wasn’t in the cards. My debut as moderator came at the hands of "California Screaming" which covered California as a horror setting, featuring Kary English, S. Qiouyi Lu and Laurie Tom. Lucked out with great panelists who had smart stuff to say about horror and setting and California as a place. And, importantly, the need to dig deep on location, particularly for horror, since a lot of horror is tied to history and trauma carried through it and all the things that make life worth living. I had a whole hour between that and having to appear on "California Dreamin'" which covered the Golden State as a fantasy setting. You could write a thesis on this, much less spend an hour. This was somehow more worrying as being a moderator, all I have to do is keep the ball rolling. Here, I’m expected to actually say something interesting and yikes. Fun fact, most of what I had to say wasn’t directly tied to the fantasy genre, but rather writers and history well outside the genre. But if you’ve read this blog for any length of time or follow my twitter account, you well know what I feel about genre as boundary or even marketing term. I won’t repeat it here other than to say I practice expansio (ad absurdum). It keeps me sane.Spent some time in the dealer’s room and looked at a lot of books I couldn’t afford, like Arkham House editions with Hannes Bok covers. It hurt a little. Walked to a Greek diner more than half a mile out, took a lot of pictures, surveyed the crowds at the social event (ice cream — I got mango and it was okay), surveyed the bar and then went back to work on a reread of QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS. I was looking for breadcrumbs that I might’ve left myself to pick up and run with. This ahead of writing THE DROWNING CITY, which is a direct sequel. Found some. But that process goes into another entry.Met a longtime friend for a drive over to Pann’s for breakfast. Chicken wings and eggs and hash brown and a biscuit. Inglewood PD eating all gathered at a table alongside cable crews and folks headed out to work later. A soft Googie time machine that I’m glad is still around.Couple panels, the contents of which were largely exhausting. Mostly because they’re about the marketing of books and writing and I don’t think I can do that any longer. Not when I’m trying to marshal forces and get another book rolling. It’s hard enough to write what I’m going to write anyways much less second guess myself that I haven’t hooked the reader on the first line (they’re harder than last lines) or nailed the genre promise. Hell, I don’t have an agent even, and I don’t see how I’m getting one to be brutally honest. Feral authors don’t come with a built-in audience. And the book isn’t about quality, but about what will sell and I’ve wrestled with that for thirty years. The only way for me to win that game is not to play it. I’m sure the information was good for the audience, but for me it was kryptonite.I found the audiobook publishing/production panel pretty solid, and well-timed since I’m looking at that in the future for my own work as well as some other related projects. But I kinda hit the wall on the two next panels I hit, covering mixed genres and science/magic in fantasy. Mostly because I learned that Amish SF is a thing and apparently a successful microgenre, due to the, wait for it, amazon algorithm, that finds readers respond readily to this. And yeah. I wanted to scream. But otherwise, discussion of these fields, at least in semi-public fora, tends to dodge around the issue of tone and taste. When that’s all it ultimately is. One person will declare “make-believe!” then throw up their hands and another will layer on quantum physics keywords to do the same thing and one gets a pass.I still need to write my long piece about liking and loving a work role of gut-level personal opinion dressed up in reason and critique. I won’t here, but I’ll have to let it out sometime. That said, there’s so much that boils down to just this yet seems like it can be nebulously imposed as a legitimate boundary to be respected. Did Chandler write fantasy? No. Did he describe an absolutely fantastic landscape in Los Angeles and Southern California? Absolutely. One worth study if you can go in understanding that he did not share today’s political or racial or gender sensibilities in the slightest.Afterwards, I retreated to the dealer room, got myself a subscription to LOCUS as I should’ve a long time ago. Then I made a jarring discovery. The title for my next book? The one that I loved so much? THE DROWNING CITY? Yeah. I saw it, or rather, one so close as to it that there was no way to salvage my using it. Sure, you can’t copyright a title, but you can’t just go around biting them either. Anyways, it was Paolo Bacigalupi's THE DROWNED CITIES and I should have googled it. I didn’t and now I get to pay the price for my foolishness. So that was a bummer. Also was the sneaking suspicion that the umbrella title I had come up for all six books (oh, don’t grouse, they’re very short) I had planned out was probably not going to work and I’d been trying to make it work for such a long time. That title being SMOKETOWN. So that was going to have to change, too.All of which kind of combined to a stone bummerland trip. I walked in to the last panel of the day kinda reluctantly. I should have gone in head high instead. The subject was Afrofuturism, which seems an odd fit for favorite panel of the weekend, but it wasn’t and I’ll let you in on why.These folks up there weren’t dissecting meaningless and ultimately entertaining bullshit as many of the other panels I’ve been on or watched were. This was Real. It wasn’t academic, but visceral, bodily, down deep. Nor was it about Afrofuturism per se, but Black experience in writing and existing in the world of these books and stories I’d been reading for such a long time. And yeah, complicity in the worlds around them. But not a surrender to that, not obliteration by that existing in a system that was fundamentally bigoted and yes built on racial supremacy. Not that this was all, but that it was a fact. That I could pretend to hold this at arms length but that time is past. I’m still processing it and still dealing with where and how I was reached. A high point of the show, but not a passive enjoyment. It was demanding and rightly so.Headed off to dinner with a friend along Sawtelle Boulevard. Tsujita LA, a ramen house that specialized in a very particular presentation, tsukumen. In it, you get the noodles at room temperature and dip them in a very thick broth, thick enough that sticks to the ramen. Very tasty, though it cooled off a little quickly, and my chopstick technique was pushed to its limit and beyond. Then a little wandering up and down the streets and finally a trip to Ginger’s in Culver City. They do homemade ice cream and they do it very very well. Brown sugar bourbon and smoked whiskey coco make for a formidable combination.Back to the show, back to being bewildered by crowds. Ultimately, I figured out that I’m a weirdo and was surrounded by geeks. Now I use both these terms with the maximum possible affection. But they’re different things, largely dependent on a base level of gregariousness, of which geeks have a much higher degree than weirdos. At least in my experience.Played hooky for a good part of Saturday. Breakfast in West Adams after a wandering drive through south LA and watching a weirdly isolated storm roll in over the course of a couple hours. Then along the Miracle Mile to visit some mimetic architecture and the infamous Tar Pits. A sudden and brief and cold rain shower. Walking among walls of fossils and an oddly compelling matrix of ancient mammal bones encased in lucite, refraction of light through time itself and that’s a pretty good start to the morning. Drive on down through Koreatown over to downtown and a visit to the Last Book Store there. It was all for research, I promise. And my penance? Having to carry them by hand afterwards. Chorizo and horchata with cold-brew coffee snack and shooting through the open sunroof of my friend’s Celica while trying to make the battery last long enough to get a few more shots and it’s a really great way to spend a day.Oh, right. Since we’re in the BLADE RUNNER timeline now, I had to go visit the Bradbury Building. I mean, it’s right there across the street from Grand Central Market. It’d be dumb to not do it.Back to the show. More argumentation over the future of the genre when it’s happening all around us already, and that maybe even discussion of the genre while the delivery mechanisms are being reassembled in real-time isn’t a thing that I can get with any longer. At least there was some admission of that, the graying of the audience, in particular the audience that was watching in the room. Though I had to ask which had been more read: Slenderman copypasta or the best-selling book to win an award for genre publication this year. And Slenderman is so five or ten years ago, right? Yeah. Keeps me up at night. But then horror as shared and homespun tradition has a long history. Maybe there’s no difference.Wandered along Century again down to another tombstone for titans hotel tower and sushi for dinner. Of course the one roll on the menu that didn’t have avocado as a listed ingredient came with cliches of avocado wrapped along the top. Yeah, I had to send it back. The avocado-free version, though, was pretty tasty.Back to the room to finish re-reading my “debut” novel. Yeah, long story, that. There was still lots of stuff I liked in it. And a few errors that I’d missed in the three proofing passes that made me want to stick my head in an oven. I got over it. It still played with a few ideas that I want to run with and as sinfully prideful as this sounds, it’s still something I quite like. Even if I can’t remember precisely the writing of some of the better lines or what source I was channeling when I wrote them down. Remember, the writer is just the conduit. Which is why only the writing ultimately matters, whatever is turned up in that process and not trimmed out or whatever.Managed to talk my friend into another trip up to Ginger’s and it’s really a place where I could try each of the flavors and probably be happy with them. This time it was yuzu (Japanese variety) lemon and boysenberry paired with blood orange and dark chocolate chips. It’s as good as it sounds.Sunday morning was a long walk to El Puerto Escondido, a little more than a mile from the hotel. The funny part about that section of town is that the pathway of titans, s shaped by capital, mutates pretty quickly and radically. Within a couple blocks, I was walking past razor wire-topped fences encircling industrial complexes and being told that I couldn’t take any pictures there because of course not. This gives way to gas stations and a scattering or barred and grated-window low structures that might be homes or sole proprietorships and none of them looking particularly welcoming. El Puerto Escondido was worth the walk, though. Though I’m pretty positive that they didn’t expect a white dude with a camera to be their first customer of the day. Pretty pretty sure that the guy behind the bar figured I was lost until I asked for chilaquiles in my ridiculous high school Spanish. Anyways, they were good.Walked back, ducking under trees stunted by lack of water and shrouded in a mixture of jet fuel residue and brake dust. Yeah, that’s LA, too.Got ready for my last panel: author as art director. I hopefully didn’t embarrass myself, but it’s tough to tell. My basic advice? Keep it as simple as you can, if you’re making your own covers. If you’re hiring an artist, be upfront with them and allow yourself to be surprised at the result. You don’t get to plan everything. Barbara Hambly showed off some examples of the kind of design work she’d done for her own books over the past several years, and there was some really good advice about working with an artist from Reiko Murakami. Much of it seemed like common sense, but somehow always slips through the cracks, right? But really, writers, plan out what you need the art to do before you fall in love with a gorgeously painted cover or artist’s portfolio.Sat in on a solid panel about sensitivity readers which became more than that in short order lots of points made and questions brought up that can’t be easily answered because we live in a world that’s been made complex and for a long time, the realities behind that were denied. Back to the dealer’s room for a couple books and lovely talk with Margaret Mannatt, who does a lot of appraisal work in addition to selling lovely books on the side. I really didn’t mean to pick them up, but it sorta happened. Given the opportunity, I’d do it again.Then a couple hours of time passing at the lobby lounge. Note to people who glanced at my badge before making eye contact, I’m not famous at all. Caught the award ceremony for the World Fantasy Awards this year and don’t have a lot to say there. There was a lot of discussion about inclusion and family and I know that it was heartfelt even if not evenly distributed at times during the show. Again, I’m feral, so that works against me.Bugged out, took an early flight, paid for that, packed my suitcase too heavy and paid for that, too. Overthought things and wrote a bunch in the long notebook I have going for the book series. I’m still not quite ready to start actual writing, but I’m getting close. Anyways, the book is about, to steal a little twitter meme: the Forger, the Rainmaker, the Water and the Thing That Remembers. I think it’s even got a title now.As for shows like this, and say, Worldcon, they’re great when I’m on a panel or talking with folks or looking over things in the dealer’s room. I don’t quite know what to do with myself during those other times. And I can tell that while I’m of the family as it’s described, I’m certainly not in the family. Feral Weirdo. I’m better of with a cardboard box and an old towel, sleeping with one eye open. It’s a hard habit to break. It’s hard to remake yourself.

FULL BLEED: DON'T PASS OUT NOW, THERE'S NO REFUND, NO FINDING OUT WHAT YOU WERE MISSING

This morning I signed a contract for a new novel. If you've been following closely on Twitter, I've been letting some details slip out in terms of research, and I think that I even mentioned titles but let's dive in a little deeper.The book is called THE DROWNING CITY, a direct follow-on to QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS. Yes, it's about Cait MacReady and the cast that I assembled in the last book (minus the titluar Queen for reasons that would be obvious if you've read it -- no spoilers). Yes, it's being published by Broken Eye Books out of Washington state.I mostly know what the book is about. That is to say, I have the plot basically laid out. There's some threads that are crossing and I'm not sure what they're going to weave themselves into. I'm only kind of in charge at a fundamental level. Yes, the setting will be Los Angeles once again. No it couldn't really work anywhere else. The energetic landscape of Southern California exerts a magnetism that's too difficult for me to overcome, at least for now. A particular gravity that bends everything back towards it. And why shouldn't it? I was a kid there once. You only get a single shot at that. It warps your atoms.The plot largely orbits around water and memory, deep time and revenge, paleontology and the submergence of depression. And crime. My only hope is that it's not what you expected yet sits right next to QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS without upsetting too much of it. And yeah, I'll try to make it stand alone, though to be sure there's going to be some notes that started ringing before page one and will continue to sound into the next book and after.For the record, I've got plans for several more books after THE DROWNING CITY. I can't speak as to the publishing plan beyond it, though. I believe the loose plan is for there to be one more following this one and then a gothic space fantasy/horror titled VOIDMAW. That's today. I'm still not positive where this is going.I'll probably share some research work on this. And I guarantee that some of the things I post will be absolute red herrings. Ha ha. Only serious.In other news, I head down to Los Angeles and the 2019 World Fantasy Convention at the end of the week. Los Angeles is on fire currently, so it should be an interesting trip. I'll be at two panels on Friday: moderating a panel on contemporary horror and California as a setting, speaking on a panel on fantasy fiction set in California. Additionally, I'll be speaking at a panel on Sunday covering authorship and design. Floating around otherwise. Hope to get to the Museum of Neon and maybe the LA Museum of Natural History and even the La Brea Tar Pits. Oh, I should see what Esotouric is running this Saturday, too.Oh, right. I'm supposed to be doing the convention. Work, work.

FULL BLEED: DEMONSTRABLY INFERIOR

I was reminded of a picture I'd taken, back eighteen years ago now. Little more, actually. March 28, 2001. It's a hallway in my wife's paternal grandparents' home. I'll reproduce it for you here. I suppose the date matters, if nothing more than a yardstick of technological progress more than anything else. Here.There's not too much to it, right? Solid single-source lighting and a lot of shadow. Underexposed, really. Blurry. Some halation/doubling/smearing from where I moved for that fraction of a second. I suppose if I looked at the metadata, I could figure out how long the exposure was, etc. That's not the important thing for the conversation at hand.What matters is that it's a technologically inferior photograph, right? It's not clearly focused (in fact, the camera I took it with didn't really have a focus setting, but it did zoom) not well-lit, taken of a house that may or may not be standing still. If it is, it certainly doesn't look like this any longer. The last resident of the house I knew personally moved out of it in 2006, the same year I moved up to Northern California. I'd imagine that everything was stripped out, pictures on the wall taken down, etc etc. People want to make a thing their own when they move in.Still, though, this picture captures a lot more of the character of the place, of that moment, than I suspect my iPhone camera would, and certainly either of my (much, much nicer digital cameras) would now. But this picture was taken by a very particular camera, a Kodak DC290. Now, when this came out, it was frighteningly expensive. I received it at Christmastime in 1999. Back then, the novelty of digital photography was pretty strong. And yes, this was marketed as a consumer camera, not a professional piece of kit. And it cost something like nine hundred bucks retail. Crazy, right? Normal people are not coughing that up for a camera.And if I told you how small the pictures were, you'd laugh. You'd be appalled at the fact that a sixteen megabyte (not a typo) memory card held something like, I don't know, fifty to seventy images, probably a lot less once formatting ate into that. And one of those cards cost a hundred bucks. It was slow and clunky, taking a long time to boot up and to process/write images. Granted, actually taking photos was pretty responsive because there was no auto-focus to process. But writing them to memory took a bit of time.It was only a fast camera in broad daylight. But even then, there's a softness to the pictures, some from resolution and compression, some from the lens. And again, there's so little light in this that I couldn't pull a sharp image if my life depended on it. Every camera I have access to now would pull bigger, better shots out of this situation. I'd have control over the exposure, etc etc.But would the shot be any better?A little secret. All my photography has been collaborations with machines, doing stuff that I'm not really supposed to be doing, which more likely than not gets unsuable results. This has been made a lot easier by the automation of things like focus and exposure control. My close-up vision is terrible and getting worse as I get older. If I was to use a split-ring focus through the viewfinder, I'd have to wear glasses that would make it impossible for me to see within my own reach. So autofocus is (mostly) a huge help.So why are the results from this twenty-year-old camera so compelling? I suppose if I really wanted to, I could mess with levels and focus and filters in Photoshop to approximate this. But it was certainly easier and more spontaneous to just take the picture in the moment and get this result. Pretty sure it was Eno who talked about art being made with technology and how that ends up being secretly about the limits of the technology, tube amplifiers and distortion, manipulation of tape spools, sampling errors, digital clipping, introduction of film scratches and dust on purely digital animations. Art's about making choices. Art's about the imperfect, about the inability to take in every aspect, about the blur and lossiness and gauzy quality or jagged edge where the CCD can't measure the light accurately so it just blows out the source and tosses the rest into shadow.Art's about making choices, sometimes the choices are made by the machine.

FULL BLEED: BUT YOU'RE NOT FUNNY

Saw JOKER. Spoilers follow. It was beautifully shot, well-acted, locations curated and lit and retro-aged perfectly. Great costuming and sense of other place that mostly stuck aside from a few really notable exceptions. I think Joaquin Phoenix did a good job with the role. I think. It's tough because it's the kind of role that will elicit all manner of "it must be great acting because it looked so arduous and awkward and painful" but I don't know that it really rang.The script was kinda funny in places, mostly too-heavy in others. Unfortuntely, it centered around not just a visualization/realization of the character that I really don't care for. Also, giving the Joker an origin is like giving Cthulhu an origin. All it will do is take away from the power of the character. You know, like when George Lucas and his writing crew took Darth Vader's mask and showed the aging hulk of greyed flesh and weakness beneath it, killing him utterly? Yeah, like that. I know, we're in the Superhero Age and origins are all the rage. Gotta explain why someone puts on the funny suit."We do it because we're compelled." Alan Moore got that right. Of course, his characters are all compelled, all characters are compelled, by their very nature. They're not real. Only in our heads. This makes fiction difficult sometimes.It's a movie I would have liked a lot better (not that I would have found it more meaningful, mind you) had it been about a sad dude who gets trounced repeatedly by the world and snaps, igniting the powder keg of the city at the same time. And, as my daughter and I were spitballing around the ending, a far better and more interesting ending would have been Fleck escaping the studio, taking a police cruiser and driving down to the riot, admiring it. Only to have the rioters that apparently he himself inspired smash the car because of their desire to rebel against something, anything, then the car subsequently crashes and Fleck is consumed by the crowd and the flames they light. That ends the franchise, you'll say. And then I'll suggest that the original Joker is like the Velvet Underground of Jokers. He goes on to inspire copycats of every stripe. When one is killed, another steps forward. The franchise goes on forever.Then we might've had something like irony instead of the boulder rolling down the hill as we watch it gain steam for a couple hours to try and smash us.I guess my largest problem with it, and you doubtless did not have this problem, was that every single instance of shoehorning it into the Batman mythology just felt forced. Oh, and ZORRO THE GAY BLADE? Well, I guess you gotta stay close to the original timeline, but come on. Not a bit of that story worked. But the story of a man who just snapped? Sure it's been done. But it could be done well again.I know. I'm not supposed to try and fix movies. I'm supposed to let people just enjoy them.More later. Working on some kind of structured posting schedule here, because, as is evident, I can't take actual social media any longer. That's a me problem, mine to solve.

FULL BLEED: LOS ANGELES WAITS

The Eastern Columbia building, Deco tomb obelisk of empires.Got my panel assignments for the upcoming World Fantasy convention coming up in just a couple of weeks. Let's take a look, shall we?Oh. I'm...moderating a panel? That can't possibly be right. Hold on. I need to sit down. Damn, I'm already sitting. Let me pass out on the couch for a moment.(Time passes, imperceptibly for you but glacially for me.)Okay, right. I'm back. So, yes, I'm moderating "California Screaming: Modern Golden State Horror Stories and Writers." Join horror writers as they discuss modern stories set in Calfironia. What makes California a unique setting for horror, both psychological and supernatural, and what can stories set there tell us about the nature of fear?With S. Quiuyi Li and Laurie Tom.Well, that should be fun. I suppose I can talk about California as 'energetic landscape', a term coined by Mike Davis. Maybe rope some history, both archaeo and current into things. And the fact that California is the place where everything in the US that wasn't nailed down rolled into. Which collects a lot of...variety in terms of belief systems, extremity and outlook. Even if the state as we reckon it is barely 150 years old. That might even make it better.Okay, so I'm moderaring. I can make that. I'll power through. What else."California Dreamin': Fantasy Set in California" From mystical ficions of Hollywood to fairies roosting in the Muir Woods, California has always been (fixing a typo in the original here) a favorite setting for fantasy novels. What is it that makes California such a rich setting for fantasy? What are some great examples of fantasy novels set in the Golden State?Yeah, right up my alley, since QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS (and the in-progress follow-up, THE DROWNING CITY) is set in Los Angeles, and that's certainly the capital of (Southern) California, in spirit if not in fact. And, honestly, it couldn't have been the same book if it were set anywhere else. I'm here for this. Let's check who else is on the panel. Ellen Klages, me, Ysabeau Wilce, Kevin Murphy and...Tim Powers. Okay. Back to the couch.(An eyeblink for you, an eternity for me.)I'll try not to make myself come across as an idiot here. And try not to repeat myself too much from moderating the panel before. Which will be tough, because so far as I'm concerned, fantasy and horror are the same genre. Just they have different aims, particularly at the endpoint of the story and impact on the reader. (That and I've really tired of the nihilist streak running through a lot of horror, but that's a subject for a different time and set of posts unto themselves.) Still, California and fantasy. I'm ready to work with that some.Both those panels are on Thursday, 10/31, late afternoon (actually I think everything is late that day). I'm not due to speak on anything Friday or Saturday. Let's check Sunday."Author as Art Director?" You've decided to self-publish. The gext is fine. That's your specialty. But what about things like covers? What shold go there? Where do you find artists? What about the cover design? The font for the title. Where on the page should it go? What do you need to know? Are there services or people you can turn to? With Reiko Murakami, me, Barbara Hambly and Anthea Sharp.Oh, I'm on a panel with Barbara Hambly. Okay.I can only hope my experience will be handy here, though I wonder how much it'll apply in general. Yeah, everyone has a unique set of expertise and training. Just come in so you can hear me say "Set the title in Futura Bold as big as the cover will support." Ha ha, only serious.So, yeah, my first World Fantasy convention and I'm right there in the soup. It should be a good time.Maybe I'll set up a tour of locations used in QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS, or something like that. There's interest, right?Updates as events warrant.

FULL BLEED: GOING DOWN TO THE LOVECRAFT SHOW

Not going to lie. This was a big trip. If you've been reading along (and I know that each and every one of you are, since I'm having the server feed all the pings back to my Apple Watch and I haven't gotten a bit of sleep since that happened) then you know that this has been one of those periods of turmoil in my career and there isn't an asterisk in the world that's big enough to park next to that word to convey the ambivalence of my feelings on the issue, that is unsettling to say the least. The payoff on this one hits late, so stay with me.So, yeah, going up to the HP Lovecraft Film Festival (hereby shortened to HPLFF because who's got the time?) in Portland was a nice break. I get to hang out with friends, get to go over to Powells, get to eat too many biscuits. The usual. And, hopefully, I get to figure out where my next writing gig is going. Both relaxation and torment, dig? Hooray.Nothing has been helped by ongoing issues with my foot, which I guess is attempting to ratchet up the pain levels to a point where I give into its demands and allow it to become its own independent nation, or perhaps just be adopted by someone else, because something I've been done has been pissing it off something fierce. Was acceptable when I got on the plane (with no breakfast because sure why not be doing freeway construction at 5am and make the commute take almost too long) and shuffling around town once I got there. But then it cranked over into HELLRAISER territory as I walked up to Powell's Bookstore. And stood on the concrete floor, trying to shift my weight in a way that just hurt less, much less felt good at all.For a couple hours. Then walk back to the Helioscope Studio.Anyways, pain is draining. I've known this for some time, like every time I get a surgery and try to do anything useful after. But this was a stark reminder. About all I could do was sit on the studio couch and push the pen around like I was pretending to work on a notebook filled with crabbed block letters. You know, like writers do. Pretty sure I fell asleep a couple times. Maybe I still am. Just like in MOUTH OF MADNESS.Got back to my friend's place and about all I could do was sit in a chair or occasionally get up and try to stretch out the pain (Hello, Uncle Frank, yes I know you're quite cross with me but why are you flaying my heel from the inside? What did I ever do to you?) Couldn't even generate enough focus to really read anything that I'd found that day (yes, I had to ship books back -- no I don't have a problem). Just looked at the pictures, mostly. At least I think I did.Leisurely Friday morning since the show didn't even set up until three or so, and open until five. Helped out on a minor amount of setup, and was reminded that yes, these shows largely exist on volunteer power (as well as money, but money doesn't get the tables set up directly). So a round of applause for those folks who risk throwing their backs out much less keeping their patience in the face of a thousand questions from dopes like me who can't even read the set-up email. Derp.Originally, besides the work stuff, I came up to the HPLFF to see two movies. 1. Richard Stanley's adaptation of THE COLOR OUT OF SPACE, which was informally announced, or at least teased at last year's show. Was lucky enough to even be in a short panel discussion with him and got to ask about Clark Ashton Smith and the OTO and the use of infrasound and infared photography in the upcoming adaptation. So I was looking forward to that. Unfortunately, the lines for both the Friday screenings of the film were around the block and completely full. If I'd knifed three hours, I might've been able to get a decent seat for one of 'em. But it didn't come together. Oh well. The film itself is supposed to hit screens around the end of January and that's one that I definitely want to see on a big screen.The second film I wanted to see was Roger Corman's THE HAUNTED CASTLE (itself an adaptation of THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD by HPL). I didn't get that one either. Because I'm a dope who can't really read. However, I was at least able to catch storytime with Victoria Price, daughter of actor and bon vivant Vincent Price. Which was certainly the highlight of the first day. Yes, even moreso than signing books and putting stories into readers' hands. One can only work for so long without needing a break.I know other stuff happened. It was mostly a blur.Saturday was a very long day. Started out with an author signing (and, weirdly, it turns out that most people at an HPLFF aren't really interested in weirdo science fiction about weaponized melancholy and the industries springing up around that or a boy falling in love with lost technology. I know. I don't know my markets very well. Anyways, that started at ten am. The room itself would stay open until eleven pm that night. That's, uh, 13 hours. That's a very long time, and maybe even too long. Even if you're having fun.Spent a lot of time watching programming on Saturday (mostly because the dealer room is also the main panel room). Tough to pick a highlight, though it was a great joy to watch Victoria Price and Roger Corman both be interviewed up on stage. Oh, and if you want one takeaway quote? Consider Mr. Corman's answer to the question "How did you film LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS in three days?" the answer being "You plan your shit." Sage advice. Oh, and that movie, THE WICKER MAN, the original? The version of the film we know and love all came from a print that Corman had been given in an effort to sell him on distribution. The UK censors ripped the first version to shreds, and apparently it was the only print the producers had. Except for the one that Corman had in a cabinet here in the US. The rest is history.A great surprise was "A Warning to the Curious" by MR James, perfomed by Robert Lloyd Parry in a darkened room and by candlelight. Super-effective, and a great way to experience the piece. Worth tracking down, if you get an opportunity to. Richard Stanley recited another story by James (and I'm sorry, but the title escaped me) also delightful. Sneaked out to catch the "Deep Time in Fiction" panel, which was pretty entertaining and informative (even got to my beloved LAND OF THE LOST) in its wide-ranging discussion (which did veer from deep time to time travel paradox a bit, but that's a danger with the subject matter.) Staggered home to do it again the following day.I'll note that the only reason why I survived the long days was that I had started my morning with breakfast at the Biscuit Rambler. And I know, Pine State Biscuits is really good and all. But having to fight to get in on the weekends is not nearly my idea of fun. Biscuit Rambler is easy to get to, quick to serve and next door to some really excellent coffee. Oh, and really good. And biscuits are a thing that can come out really not good if you're not careful. So, go there if you're in Portland.Meant to catch THE HAUNTED CASTLE on Sunday morning, and instead ended up in a theatre where they were running a host of short films. Mixed bag, really. Shorts are very challenging, and often not really my thing. That's not an indictment of the form, just my reception of it. Certainly interesting to see how other folks attempt to visualize the unseeable, though. Always take an opportunity to see things as someone else does.Caught a panel on mental states and the fiction of Lovecraft. It was billed as "mental problems" and I'm not sure that's fair, but whatever. The panel was made much more lively by the presence of John Shirley, one of the original cyberpunk authors (and whose ECLIPSE trilogy is more prescient than 90% of the genre). He's always a hoot on these. And yes, I fanboy'd out and passed him a copy of QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS 'cause I figured it would be up his alley, or at least close enough by. I know. Don't meet your idols. Whatever.Sold some more books, which is always nice. Had dinner for the second night in a row at the conveyor belt sushi house right down the street from the show. Don't roll your eyes. It can't be beaten for the price. All you care to eat for less than twenty bucks? Sign me up. I'm easy.Caught the last panel of the show, for me anyways, with David Heath talking about Lovecraft's presence in comics, both directly and indirectly (such as Warren Ellis' and collaborators' GLOBAL FREQUENCY, which did take some overtly Lovecraftian themes and stick them right into sci-fi spy action and I'm sure he'll hate that capsule description so don't tell him for godssakes.)And I talked to my publisher about what direction we're going to be taking things. Originally I'd thought I'd be working on VOIDMAW right about now (which is dark fantastic space opera) but it looks like there'll be more books following QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS instead. So if you're into that book and I sure hope you are, then this is good news, right? Nothing official yet, no timeline, though I have one in my head. And you'll certainly hear here when things line up. So that's the gospel, the good news, right there from the top of the mountain. Yeah, I'd say more but I'm probably not even supposed to say this much.Flew back last night, shambled home, didn't sleep. Kinda want to sleep now. Sleep sounds good.Planning on returning next year.

FULL BLEED: THE NAME IS TRANCHES

Okay, so this is gonna be a weird one, replete with psychic spelunking and Jungian wrestling with if not the angel then something almost as uncanny. This may not be your cup of tea. That’s okay. I’m writing this for me more than anyone else. As all the other stuff that I write, it turns out. I mean, that’s a realization that I’ve put off having for some time, even if it’s been absolutely true since I started writing fiction nearly thirty years ago. I’m doing it for me. Only I hamstrung myself by worrying about success and selling (not even selling out because how can you sell what nobody wants to buy?) I’ve wrestled with that debilitating, crippling dilemma for too long. So I’m doing my best to Alexander that motherfucker by just slicing it in two and walking away. Oh, all my income from writing... Yeah, this has been a non-profitable hobby for some time now. Don’t worry about that. If anything, this will increase my output because I’m no longer ripping my guts out because I’m not making the big connect. I’m lucky in that, I guess. I’d love to make money from it, but worrying about making money (among other things and I’ll get to that) was preventing me from doing the work. Mostly because I don’t have to sell books to do anything than pay for my book-making habit.So instead of being free, I was trapped in a jail that I myself had made. Yeah, we all are, I know. Who else are we going to trust to be a jailer but ourselves? Ask the person who is yourself.Still, writing for myself. Even when I was doing assisted writing, I ended up pushing things in ways that I thought were interesting, trying something new, not just telling the same story over and over. Sure, I know we’re always doing that, if you go out to a far enough macro level. I got that. But we don’t all live out there. Believe me, one of my favorite things to do is to over-analyze the work I’m consuming. It’s hard for me not to. I can only hope that the first time I get into a work, I don’t think about how it’s made or pick it apart. I want to fall into the work and be lost there. Doesn’t always happen. But I want that for the folks reading it, too. Even when I’m working with someone else. (And this isn’t a discussion of collaboration in comics.)But I was still tied up in the whole “who’s ever gonna buy this” thing. Or worse yet, trying to modify my work to make it more salable, or to chase genre. Remember, the first ding note I got on a manuscript ended with “hey, do you have something in a whole ‘nuther genre because that’s what sells now” and no I didn’t. Then you start taking deep dives into what makes a genre a genre and subgenre and and so on and so forth. When you understand that it’s all dressing and worry less about the dressing, you do better. Or at least I do better. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you’re very invested in grimdark or steampunk or whatever periodizing term interests you. Okay, you be you. No skin off my nose. Just don’t expect me to argue online and generate some free clicks out of it. The Howling Pit hungers still. Hungers all the time.Okay, so I’ve done this much psychic self-surgery. And I guess I’ve been doing it in public. Well, nobody made you read or charged you money for it, even asked for a tip jar donation. Honestly, all I’m in it for is to get people to read and buy my books. Humble, if not borderline pathetic.Ah, there it is. The self-deprecating joke that masks self-loathing. You know, fake smile hides real pain. Yeah, there’s the incubus. Now there’s a traditional meaning of the word, which basically translates to weight, or duress. I’m gonna stretch it some and suggest that in my case it’s a self-inflicted duress. It’s a weight I’ve hauled out for my own pleasure and entertainment. It’s known by a number of names, self-sabotage, depression, anxiety, fear, and a hundred others. It’s not one thing, though Steven Pressfield referred to it as “resistance” in THE ART OF WAR. It’s a tranche of things, of feelings, neutral to negative to wholly self-destructive. Hence the name Tranches.Tranches is my incubus. This is simply an effort to name and contain things. If you don’t have a name for something, how can you hope to apprehend it? Tranches isn’t a literal demon resting on my chest, though sometimes it’s felt like it. He, and yeah, I’m picking that deliberately, is a way for me to put my arms around a thing that’s very obviously a part of me but feels like an externality as well. When that bad feeling comes by, you know it, it’s a physical presence that isn’t just you. Not wholly you. Which is to say, not wholly me.So, where does someone come up with a crazy idea like this? Couple of places. Let’s start with my long-held contention that the things I’m writing are for lack of a better word, coming from outside this reality-construct that we call me. Sure, it’s filtered through all kinds of personal experience and predilection and aesthetic choices. But that first thing, that’s from somewhere else. Maybe it’s a weird thing to think. Oh well. I’m long past worrying about what’s weird and what isn’t and try to worry more about what’s real. I remember hearing an interview with Tom Waits once, where he talked about the genius, the inspirational spirit/urge/whatever as something that was outside him, that came to visit. That doing the work was about making conditions more likely for a visitation. Sometimes the genius showed up when he was behind the wheel of the car, stuck in traffic, and he’d say “hey, now’s not a great time, can we work on this later?” Maybe it even worked. Maybe it was all bullshit, like the story about the soldier who got part of his testicle shot off and it ended up impregnating a nearby bystander. That’s what storytellers do, right? They line up bullshit that ends up telling the truth, or something that feels enough like the truth to hang on to.So yeah, the incubus is the shadow genius. So maybe by giving my incubus a name, Tranches, and being able to identify and address him, I can change my relationship with him. Instead of him just taking up space in my head because it’s not a thing that I’m ready to deal with, it’s just Tranches. He shows up, wants some energy, maybe drink all the beer in the fridge. Yeah, Tranches is kind of selfish and maybe even an asshole, but he’s there. He’s not going away entirely. That doesn’t mean I have to put up with him all the time. Or even as much as he’s been hanging around lately. Here, let's have a look at him.Adorable, right? Don't worry. It's not being charged. It's a visual representation of an abstract weight.This isn’t a cure. I’m not curable. Ain’t none of us is. Welcome to being human in this weird-ass timewave zero of a culture we’ve found ourselves in. It’s okay. And yeah, this isn’t anything more than putting a face and a name on a thing I’ve been living with forever. But maybe he wants a name and a face and to be known. Beats pretending a thing isn’t there when it really really is.So, hey there, Tranches. I see you over there. Yeah, I see you.Is this just Jungian gobbledygook? Self-realization? Chaos magic(k and what’s the difference there anyways?) I don’t know. I do know that it makes sense with the way I’m seeing things, with the way I’m working. Maybe it’s better to make friends, or at least be able to keep Tranches at arm’s length. Or know that he’s not everything.Oh, my genius? Definitely Gojira. There’s no question. A shimmering destruction, a guardian capable of burning down everything in his path. But also a skipping Showa superhero. He contains multitudes.None of this makes sense. It completely makes sense.There was more I was going to go over here, but I’ll stop after this next thing. The only thing that matters, ultimately, is that you’re the one giving a fuck about your work. For too long I was only giving a fuck if it could move my career, if it could get me published, if it fed my ego. I was doing it for the wrong reasons. I mean, yeah, the “is this a thing that’s good” was there in the equation, but there was too much else in the way, which I put in the way, to be clear. I’ve got to be the one giving a fuck, and not worrying if anyone else does or is. I know, noble, man. Divorcing myself from success like I’m above it all. Nah. I’m divorcing myself from it for my own sanity.But back to giving a fuck. It starts with me. And it’s time to stop listening to Tranches whispering to me that nobody else will, ever. (Yeah, that’s a lie, but it won’t be enough to pay my mortgage either.) Who gives a fuck if nobody gives a fuck?Me.Special thanks to Laird Barron who was kind enough to help me get my head screwed on straight last week.Okay, that’s a thing done. In other news, I’m off to the HP Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland this weekend. I’ll be sitting at the Broken Eye Books table, signing copies of QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS and TOMORROW’S CTHULHU, as well as copies of THROUGH THE LIMBS, a SF novella about weaponized melancholy and the industries that get built up around it. Yup, that’s the kind of thing that tops the charts and gets influencers talking. You bet. I’ll sell you copies of this thing that I made up at Kinko’s. Don’t give a fuck.

RINGER

Started on this a couple weeks back. Finished it today. I hesitate to call it a story. It's more a portrait. Too long for Daily Science Fiction, too short for much of anything else. Maybe you'll enjoy it.It's about consumer technology falling short. And other stuff. Scott sat there nervous at his workspace. It wasn't even a space, really, more like a section of flowing and elegantly curved table. It looked nice and sleek as a catalog entry, with clean lines that would never be covered with workstations and cables and half-eaten doughnuts and stacked Styrofoam cups. It looked good on paper. It looked great, a testament to not only the manager's taste, but their desire to reflect perfection in every stage of the workplace.The reality was chaotic and messy, with every crumb and spill and untidy cable, thick and open binders and tiny shrine to family or aspirations as yet unearned. Just like the reality of BlueSky's latest division, the Ringers.It was simplicity itself. Affix a Ringer to your doorframe. Unbreakable, unshakable, permanent as your building itself. Inside it was a camera and microphone that could see and hear everything happening within a one-hundred-fifty-five-degree arc of the Ringer unit. If someone should activate the doorbell, their picture would be taken (well, really, it would have been shot the moment the camera detected movement within a ten meter threshold, fifty meters on the deluxe unit) and cataloged at BlueSky's main headquarters. Needless to say, this was all instant anywhere in the US, minus Arkansas and Delaware, whose legislatures saw fit to hold out for better deals to generate the necessary law enforcement partnerships.If someone wasn't supposed to come in, they would be warned off by verbal command, verbal rebuke and then warning that local police would be called, with a final threat that a BlueSky response team would be dispatched, and their rules of engagement were very different from the local police's. "M-16? Hell, these are like M-32s!" declared the ad copy. All this happened without the owner having even heard the doorbell chime (should you have chosen the Cold Discretion setting, which ensures absolute minimal intrusion.) No more solicitors, witnesses of any religious denomination (again, exceptions allowed as per user), not even so much as a youth activity organization selling cookies or popcorn or Christmas tree removal services would ever bother you again. This was BlueSky's promise of Sane Security™.Only Scott Dyson was having problems keeping the company's promises. In particular at 1432 Dahlia lane in the Hollywood Hills over Los Angeles. The unident/preint (Unidentified/Pre-Intruder, as specified in the binder and in all of BlueSky's literature) would be given every opportunity to avoid police or BlueSky operative intervention.Usually those were enough.This unident wasn't going away.Scott had only been on the job for a week, if you count the four-day intensive training seminar. All he could remember of that was the smell of flop sweat, chicken sandwiches chilled to a chewy toughness and bottled water that tasted more like Love Canal than a tropical island like the label on the bottle said. He could feel his head creak and groan as he stuffed it full of protocols and procedures, the difference between Cold Discretion and Warm Neighbor and All Drop Back for customer engagement levels, the various sensitivity thresholds of sound and motion that would mark the difference between a preint and a null-target, the load-outs that various levels of BlueSky response teams worked with to protect their customers (Threaten, Terse or Total). But they hadn't really covered what to do when a preint refused to back off. And this one wasn't. He, and Scott was sure of the assessment, with the square shoulders and ungainly bulk, was hunched over the camera, so close that he blotted out nearly everything on the monitor, leaving only a small corner of blown-out-white the shape of a state he couldn't quite name. He'd been like that since lurching up into the Ringer's view, like the earth had coughed him up after trying to grind him with the force of continents shifting, oddly boneless and awkward. The shape could have been drunk or something else.Scott had checked the dossier on the homeowners. Married couple, she works, he stays at home with their adorable five-year-old son. He'd even flipped back to the initial pickup on camera. Light was bad behind the guy, silhouetted for the time that it took him to get to the Ringer camera and blot it out. That had been a problem, crappy CCD software, slow to compensate for hard light. He read the profile again. It was all right there, up on the monitor the second the ping came in. The preint didn't match any of the homeowners or their cleared visitor list. There was a pseudo-hit on a cousin who visited on holidays, but the algos tossed it out based on motion study baselines. Still, there was enough hesitation that Scott thought things might've just gotten fucked up. It happened, but you never talked about it with anyone but your superior or customer service. E. V. E. R. Too many hack journalists and news streamers saw BlueSky as a tasty target.He'd tried the standard warnings. "Step off of [the customer's last name] property! This is a warning!"He'd tried notifications of police response. "I am calling [local police force] and units will be en route immediately."He'd tried escalation. "You leave me no choice but to dispatch [response team appropriate to subscription level] teams and they will be there in [time dictated by subscription level]. Nothing moved the guy.The shape just stood there like maybe he was dying. But he wasn't. There were slow breaths, but very faint, like he didn't need that much air to breathe, shallow, almost not even there. Slow and slurred vowel sounds came out of the shape's mouth, but faint, like sleep-talking.Then there was the drool. Not a lot of it, but enough to be concerning. It cut long vertical streaks across the camera eye, only really visible as they refracted the sunlight behind the shape when it shifted. Which wasn't often. Guy was mostly standing still. Maybe he was asleep on his feet, or on a nod. Scott had seen that plenty of times in his club days, kids just so worn out from partying that they stood with their head on the wall and leaning into it. But he wasn't supposed to take "personal anecdotes" into account when he made his judgments. You looked in the binder and matched the situation to the flowchart. Only this situation hadn't matched anything he'd seen in the guidance documents or flowcharts.More concerningly, the team was late. The cops were late, but Scott was told to expect that. Local law enforcement is overstressed, understaffed and under-budgeted. What's more, they weren't happy to run out on service calls for private industry. That's why BlueSky could even exist. To step in and provide service where the municipalities or county or state can't. It just made sense. But the team was late. Even if the customers had only been paying for copper-band protection (all the way up to platinum, providing a personal intervention specialist as well as the armed response because BlueSky understands there's multiple needs, both physical and emotional). But they were silver-band. Fifteen minutes, assuming proximity to a BlueSky depot, and there was one in West Hollywood and the one on Beverly and Rampart. Not that Scott had seen any of this personally. He was operating his station from Billings, some twelve hundred miles as the crow flies.This was breaking protocol, but he was already off the map, and what the hell. It would only be his first write-up. On his first day. Scott leaned into the monitor as if to make himself heard better, despite the headset and mouthpiece that felt like orthodontic hardware. He sucked in a breath and tried to make himself sound big. "Hey. Buddy. You gotta not be there." The shape only shifted minimally, as if turning its head, well out of the camera range. Maybe he was looking for the voice. More vowel sounds drooled out of him, enough so that voice to text just gave up on it and marked [UNINTELLIGIBLE] with a timestamp that spun down to milliseconds. Like that mattered on a human scale."Look. The response teams, they don't screw around."The shape said nothing. It settled back into its lean.Scott tabbed over to the West LA station switchboard clone. It was lit up pretty hard already. Lots of domestic disturbances, street blockages, looked like unruly crowds. But there were units open. He made a note of it all and included it for the action report that he was going to have to send to his supervisor. He liked and didn't like her. She was like a schoolteacher, just a little too much for his tastes. But she did know how to get results.And Scott was going to serve up a nice steaming plate of somebody fucked up, just hoping that it wasn't going to be hung on him. Sure, he was going to leave out the whole bit where he pleaded with the guy to leave. How would that look? He'd just chalk it up to nerves and she'd probably narrow her black eyes at him, but it's still just the first day, right?Scott grabbed the screenshot of the West Hollywood cops activity to mark the lack of response from one of BlueSky's partner organizations. It still didn't explain why there wasn't a house team on the way or already there. Of course, he couldn't check on the ready status of any particular team or detachment. That was supervisor-only."hoooahh." Like that. Real quiet. The mic feed barely picked it up, even though the guy's mouth couldn't have been more than a couple feet away."Sir. This property is protected by BlueSky and you are hereby ordered to leave the immediate area."The shape shifted again, like a drunk guy coming to and trying to place himself, lost as a kitten at sea.Scott ignored the prickles running up and down his spine and arms. He knew his skin was all broken out in gooseflesh. It wasn’t anything in particular, just the sound of that from twelve hundred miles away. Sometimes voices get distorted after being digitally broken down and reconstructed, but this one sounded hollow and not all there. Like the sounds were just falling out, the last gushes of blood right before someone bleeds right out.Shit. He'd forgotten aid protocols. "Do you need medical attention?" His voice came out like a butterfly in a shoebox."hakh nnah." More drool, a rope of it worming over the protective lens now.Scott decided to forget it. This was going straight up the chain. He would—Every light on the police/dispatch bank went over from amber to red, and the red ones went purple. Purple. Something big just rippled through the system, kicking everything into overdrive. He'd asked once about the code purple and had been told that "It'll never happen." That was the smug guy from Tallahassee, the one with the gap tooth which a mangled chunk of too-tough chicken sandwich stuck to. "That's like armageddapocalypse. We just put it in there to make the users feel like we got a plan."Scott closed his eyes and saw the purple afterimage, throbbling like staring at the sun.He tried not to think about what would qualify for armageddapocalypse."nhahh," the preint said.Like it was said through dead lips.Scott ran down the hall, no longer caring what his fifth day was going to turn out like.