Matt Maxwell's Blog: Highway 62 on Goodreads, page 9

BLACK TRACE - chapter 4

Two years following.The 1203 Club didn’t belong in Orange County, yet there it was as plain as a thumb in an eye. It should have been built in Riverside or Fontana, in the shadows of a dead steelworks or next to one of the Inland Empire’s auto graveyards. If there was a square drawn out of Santa Ana, Westminster, Garden Grove, and Fountain Valley, the 1203 would have been right in the center of it, just off Bolsa Avenue before it became 1st Street.“1203” was what they used to label gasoline in those giant mirrored tankers, the rolling bombs going down the freeways, just waiting for a chance to go off. One of them would take out an entire six lanes with the flames, and the oncoming traffic would be shut down so that citizens didn’t kill themselves staring into the boiling smoke and burning concrete. Karla had seen it herself, river of cars frozen at Edinger on the Four Oh Five.Karla Castillo-Aguilar took the bar over from her father and fought the same battles he did. Crooked cops, well-meaning family types, career-minded council members, heavies squeezing. All of them wanted something from the 1203: money, respect, or just to go the hell away. He hadn’t, not in twenty years, and Karla wasn’t about to either. This wasn’t just a bar, but a home, for a family that might never have had one. All you had to do to walk in the doors was to love. Cars mostly. You could love people who loved cars, that would work too.The front parking lot was miles of lovingly polished paint and metal gleaming under the banks of LED lightcloud fixtures. But the real action was in the back lot, away from prying eyes. Out back, the real blood would show their current projects. School was conducted back there, where the fresh-faced, should they be lucky enough, could sit at the feet of masters and learn how any damage short of fiery disintegration could be undone. Frames could be unbent, and the crippled could be made to run again. Top fuel, nitrous or pure 93 leaded smuggled up from Baja. All kinds welcome, so long as you show the love.Of course, love was a tricky thing given the other ties that dug into people’s lives. Sons of the Tiger and Los Coyotes, Spider Sevens and No Tomorrows might love their speed, but they hated each another. And that was without having to worry about all the up-and-comers who hadn’t yet signed compacts and might do something stupid like start a fight so they could earn some teeth. Smart ones didn’t fan any flames. Dumb ones might do it on the grounds once. Nobody had done it twice. Giving up your wheels for a month as atonement, with the option of working for free for a week once the stitches came out, convinced the young ones that there was such a thing as bad attention.Still, every Friday night was a new trip. And word got out that the 1203 had been featured on some undercover clipshow again. There would be a whole bunch of people who didn’t understand the rules coming through the door. Season would be open.She poured a whiskey and traded it for a sheet of blue crisp held in a sanded-oak hand, knuckles scarred and enlarged from a lifetime of torqueing. The gearhead stared at the magenta and blue and silver Edelbrock print like it was a centerfold or something holier, then he took half at a gulp.**At least Jake was here tonight, she thought as she nodded him through the door. Guy was a mirror; nothing stuck to him and you couldn’t see past him at all. He walked through the brass and swept the room, jutting out his chin at Jason and his ’clave over in the corner. They sat under that giant canvas, the one that Robert Williams called Hot Rod Race, which always felt like disaster, until you remembered that half the cars were going to leave the cops and their big Chevrolet in the dust. The horror of that yellow Ford with the flame job, though, that put a chill in everyone who lingered over it.Jason laughed at that danger. He relished sitting under the painting, thumbing his nose at the second of weightlessness he might get before tumbling to his death. Jason with his devil smile and almost gold skin and jet black streaks of hair, Jason was going all the way. “Sit your ass, man. Get you wetted down,” he said with a flash of white teeth.Jake did so, slow and wary. But that was Jake. He never jumped into anything easily, even friends. So far as anyone knew, he’d been born at age twenty and three, steering wheel in his hand and a toolbox in the seat beside him. Make up any story you like, because it was no closer or further to the truth than he’d ever tell.“Yeah. Bourbon, clean.”Jason laughed silently at that. “Like you’d order anything else. Hey, Karla!” He yelled over the noise of the bar. “Get something single-barrel back here!”“Splashing your chips? Since when do you reach for that top shelf?” His hands rested on the table edge then gripped for a moment and he relaxed.Jason’s smile pushed his eyes so far closed that they looked like razor slices over his perfect cheeks. “Since I got signed, man.”“Bullshit.” Jake waited for his drink.“No joke. Did it this afternoon. Energy Tijuana. Western Pacific circuit. No more underground.”“Swimming with the sharks. No more small pond,” Jake said as he slapped Jason’s hand then they brushed knuckles like brothers.Karla set the almost egg-shaped bottle on the table. A pewter horse in mid-stride capped the cork. The seal was still intact. Toppest shelf.“I’d say on the house, but now you’re all crisped-up so I should make you pay double.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest and the ink on them became a jumble of tattooed gears and pistons over the red cotton tank top.He sat back arms out and empty, all but pouting. “Oh come on, T. You know I’m good for it.”Her eyes smoldered at him. “Last time I tried to collect on a debt from an ET driver, I got a bucket full of nastygrams from a lawyer. Cash or go wash glasses for the rest of the night.” Her eyes smiled but her tone didn’t. The black lipstick smirk was evenly balanced between the two.Jason grumbled and tossed a thin pair of League twenties to her. “Bring your crew back here when you’re in town, big-time,” she said as she tucked the bills into her back pocket. “Just pay when you play.”He poured out two big, fat ones. Jake eyed his cautiously. “You know I ain’t finishing this tonight.”“And you’re still a goddamned baby.” Jason knocked half his back and then tilted his head further, letting the rest drain.“Sticks and stones, man.”The crowd was a little rowdier tonight. A lot of folks dressed nice, and not just nice for the 1203. They smelled after-party, too loose for Stone Velvet but way too nice to be here. Their wardrobe implied ownership of wherever they happened to be standing, cut and pressed, the sheen of the new. They spent too long ordering and made a show of the money they spent. Karla stood impatiently in front of a couple who looked as if they were reading the labels one by one and finally told them to tap her once they’d finished.“So, what’s with the fresh faces?” Jake asked. “They’re not ET legal or fans for you, right?”Jason shook his head, lips pursed. “You come to them, not the other way around. Karla told me that the Twelve-Oh was on OC Uncovered earlier this week. Clips got passed around a lot. Guess we’re it for tonight.”“At least it won’t last,” Jake said.“Never know what’s going to stick until you can’t pull it off.” Jason poured himself another.“Nah, these kids are just out slumming. They’ll find some other local color for next week. I…” Jake’s voice trailed off.“Oh, that’s no damn good,” Jason said as he looked at the silently gaping Jake. “Shut your mouth, son. You’re gonna get flies.”Jake tried to compose himself, but it was like holding onto oiled chrome. The woman had long black hair that was straight and loose and glossy like the rain on the road. She smiled at the man next to her, but her green eyes were tight at the corners and then the smile evaporated like gas left in the open. It wasn’t the room that bothered her.“You know her?” Jake asked. “She’s not a regular.”Jason narrowed his eyes and peered at her. “Don’t think so. She’s a little fancy for the Twelve-Oh and the guy she’s with is… Shit, I don’t know what he is.”“I’m sure you can find a word. Just try harder.”The boyfriend wasn’t a big guy, but he stood like it, taking up more room than he needed to. His denim was clean and crisp to the eye, walked out of the store with them on an hour ago. The leather jacket hanging on his shoulders was probably real and equally new. It was as if he’d heard it was dress-up time and ran out for a fresh outfit to show off. The bar light shone off his glowing brow. He was lit already and looking for more.“So, hey, Jake. Take your eyes off the unattainable for a moment and listen to me.”“My ears work just fine, Jason. Talk.”“Look, I wanted to ask if maybe, you know, you’d want to come with me.” He couldn’t even manage it as a question. Jake picked up the glass and pointed with a finger while bringing his hand around. “What? To TJ? What do they have that’s better than this?” It stopped without a shake at the brunette.The alcohol had loosened Jason up, but not enough to hide the trace of shame that came at the asking. “You and I, man, we both know who the better driver is.”He finally took a sip out of the glass, lips staying tight after. “Better ain’t the issue, is it? Racers aren’t just about racing, but about the after-show and pre-race-show and the face in the glass, right?”“Yeah. And I’ve never known someone who dislikes the glass as much as you do. Hell, I can’t even point my phone in your direction without you shooting me the look.”“I’m camera-shy. Not a big deal.”“Okay, so then you don’t have to drive. I need a tech who knows the black magic.”“Bullshit.”“So what if it is?” Jason reached for the glass and realized it was empty, then veered his hand away like it was hot metal. “Just, man, you’re better than the little day jobs you’ve been pulling down. And I’ve seen you…”“Seen me what?” Jake asked, wanting to look away, both for the raw nerve being touched and to see the woman back at the bar before she walked out on her boyfriend.“I’ve seen you throw races. Hell, two months ago on the Criver near the 39. You all but spun out at the end so that douchebag Martin could take first place.” His smile was gone and his eyes were black and wide in the bar’s low light. “I didn’t know why then.”“But maybe you do now?”“U-ground Races had lenses there.”Jake took as big a hit of bourbon as Jason had ever seen. “Whatever you think it is, you’re wrong. And I’ll say ‘thanks, but no’ to your offer. Finally found a place that I fit in. Not real interested in moving anymore.”“Limited time,” Jason urged. “And my answer’s still no. Pretty soon I’m going to shave the ‘thanks but’ off it.”“Okay, okay.” Jason raised his hands as if getting ready to block a punch. “I was just trying to spread the butter around a bit, you know?”“I appreciate it,” Jake said, eyes sliding back to the bar, back to the unlikely pair. “Just get me some tickets when you’re at Riverside.”“Riverside? Since when do you go that far east.”“Since they opened it up as the only no-limit track closer than Rosarita.” He wasn’t looking at Jason anymore. He couldn’t. The show going down at the bar was well-timed. He was done talking and didn’t want to be rude, but he didn’t know how long he could keep saying no without a damn good reason.Karla eyed the boyfriend as he pointed out a black glass bottle of tequila. He waved a sheaf of money around like he was buying the air. The woman at his side made a face and pushed away from him. She’d had enough, which Jake understood. He wanted to flatten the guy and he’d only been in sight for ten seconds now.Karla was bringing down the bottle against her better instincts, but those bills would spend fine long after the asshole had blown out of the bar. She pulled up two glasses alongside it.The boyfriend didn’t bother, popping the cork out of the Mano Negra and taking a pull out of it before looking around, remembering that he hadn’t come in alone. He nudged the black-haired woman and poured two drinks. The tequila was almost clear, only a slight brown tint from the aging hanging in the glass. He leered and then downed the drink.She refused. And by the time that he figured that out, he began to get angry.Jake was up and pushing away from the table before the guy understood what was happening. The crowd was loud and chattering, too many tourists with open smiles, shitting like seagulls everywhere they stood. The regulars were beginning to smell it, knowing that this wasn’t so much a safari but a sightseeing trip. Their patience for being the main display was at an end. The boyfriend was about to become a very convenient target. And while he could afford the bridgework that he was about to have bestowed upon him, Jake wondered if there might be a better way, one less likely to get the Twelve-Oh shut down for a week while OCPD cleaned it up. Jake glanced at Karla and saw she knew it too, but she was also thinking, “So worth it.”The crowd watched Jake approach and dropped their conversations. The regulars only knew him as a racer, as the guy who built Blue out back, out of desert junk and something approaching love. He’d never started a fight, not once, but maybe he was going to do it now. Out of respect, no money was changing hands, but some onlookers were placing bets in their heads.Like an occupying army, the visitors kept up their chatter, oblivious as they talked and sketched out the scene on their glowing handhelds. Blue-white LED flashes went off in a nimbus around the room.The boyfriend was scowling at the woman who’d come with him. She hadn’t touched her drink and he’d half a mind to make her. Instead, she smiled without warmth and splashed the liquor at him. The air in the bar got sucked into a hundred simultaneous breaths.Jake was a step or two out of reach. The scene had changed too quickly for him to catch up to. Not that he’d expected anything like this.Her face was clear and open, not screwed up in panic. She was very direct in what she was doing, ready for a follow-through and even for him to react. Feet apart, she twisted her body into the blow and brought the heavy bottom end of the glass down on the bridge of the guy’s nose. Dulled by the booze and the whatever else, his arms were too slow in coming up and stopped absolutely none of it. He stood there, dripping in three hundred dollar tequila and wondering what the hell had just happened. When the pain hit, it hit like the Gold Coast Zephyr at two hundred per, gliding on maglev track.She stepped back out of reach, arms up at her sides, blocking out space to move and react should he do anything other than wonder at how his nose had gotten itself broken. Spilled tequila fell off her, but it didn’t change her focus. She’d just picked a fight with a man who had fifty pounds on her and screwing around wasn’t a winning plan.He gingerly touched the contusion, so high up it was almost between his eyes and was thinking about maybe getting mad.“You!” Karla shouted. It split the thick hush of the crowd like the roar of an alcohol-fueled dragster. “You are cut the fuck off. Get out of my bar!” “Dy dose,” the guy whimpered. “Bish broke dy dose.”“And you’re lucky that’s all you got,” the black-haired woman said quietly. “So why don’t you do what she said and jet?” She wasn’t bluffed or blustering. She didn’t have the power of six bodyguards in Italian silk at her back, either. Whatever she was pulling down, whatever juice she had, it was all from her.Jake stood in quiet appreciation. It wasn’t hard to find tough women, even tough girls, out here. But to be so quiet about it, to not mess around and announce what you were going to do, but instead do it, that was worth notice.The ex-boyfriend scrunched up his face as unpleasantly as he could. It didn’t take much to make him ugly. “Your fader’s godda hear about dis. He’s godda hear!”She smiled wicked enough to bring Jake right to his knees. “That’s it,” the woman said. “You go cry to my daddy. Go do that.”The dude looked around as if the room were on fire, tears streaming out of the corners of his eyes, lost quickly in the alcohol glow. There were a couple snickers, some stifled and some wide in the open.“Yeah, go cry to my daddy, too,” someone called from the back, giggling. “Hey, buddy,” Jake said with ease, dialing things back. “Look, why don’t you sit down on your car outside for a minute and sober up before trying to drive home. Cops like to sit on Bolsa and deuce drunks. They like shiny cars best. It’s like catnip for ’em.”“Fuck you,” he said as if Jake was the waiter who’d brought him a sandwich with half a turd on top. “Fuck all of you lowlifes. I could buy dis place and drow you all oud.”“Not for sale, champ,” Karla said. She smiled brighter than one of OCPD’s helicopter searchlights. “And certainly not to no crybabies like you.”The drunk glanced sidelong at the woman, who stood easier now, but hadn’t dropped her guard yet. Then he flinched at her, trying to get her to start something. Maybe he had a weapon, or maybe he was stupid enough to actually think that she wouldn’t beat him right out of his skin. She stood without motion, only pursing her lips at him.That was enough. He swung, clumsily, wild, fueled by incoherent rage and stung pride and the slow belief that there was only one way for an idiot like him to try and gain face in the eyes of the crowd. She sidestepped and let him stumble into the red vinyl seat just behind her. He flew forward, trying to adjust his path, to catch up, but she was more steps ahead than he could understand. He fell forward, unable to stop himself at all.Jake tried to catch him, but the guy snarled and twisted further instead.She laughed at the ex- as he buried his front four teeth into the glittering plastic seat covering before both he and the chair tumbled to the floor. Metal clattered and rung hollow and he rolled onto his back, one hand on his mouth, maybe trying to keep his teeth there.“Come on, buddy,” Jake said as he pulled the guy up. He came up, stunned and insensible. He might figure it out by the next morning, but maybe not even then.The drunk mumbled something, slobbering hard between the syllables. Then he swung again, fist balled up tight.Jake caught it with one hand and it made a meaty slap of skin on skin. With the other, he was heaving and moving the guy off the floor.“Karla, cab.” Jake said, helping the guy lean against the bar. “Mr. Smooth can trust us with his car, right?”“So long as he keeps the drool off the bar,” she said with a smirk.“You can do that, right?” Jake asked, waiting for the guy to nod an answer. He did.“Now look, we all don’t take kindly to bullies here,” Jake said, evenly and smoothly. He wasn’t mad but he wasn’t going to let the guy off easy, either. “So don’t ever come back, or we’re going to let your date take a monkey wrench to your face. Not that she needs it,” he said, looking right at her. She’d calmed down, but was still ready to swing if she had to.The guy nodded, napkin held to his face showing a long and ragged strip of red where the teeth had been knocked loose. **“Hey, what’s your name?” he finally asked her.She turned her face up from where she’d been peering at the bar, the black bottle still resting there on its side. Not every day that three bills of liquor was spilled but not drunk. No less than five people had taken pictures of her with it, one of them with the still-bloody tumbler in her hand. “Why do you want to know?”“’Cause I want to make sure I get it right when I tell the story about how you shut that guy down.”“I shouldn’t have done that.” She pulled at one of the long locks that had fallen over her eyes. “He was just a garden variety asshole with a pedigree.”“And you run into a lot of guys like that?” Jake finished off the last of his bourbon, that pour having carried him the hour since the crowd carried the guy to the door, everyone in the bar having laid hands on him at least once.“It’s Madelyne,” she said after a pause, as if she’d come to some kind of private decision. “And yes, I’ve met more than my share of entitled children.” She pushed her own highball around, contemplating it as the light from the backglass fell through it.“That’s a good name. Maybe a little old-fashioned.”“Okay, then,” she said with the tug of a grin. “What’s yours? We’ll see who’s more old-fashioned than the other.”“I got a name, but everyone calls me Jake. Jake Culver.” He extended a hand.She regarded it cautiously. “Look, just ’cause I kept from getting the tar beaten out of him doesn’t mean I endorse what he did. But you looked pretty plain to be in charge of the situation.” Jake shrugged his shoulder then swept the room. “The crowd would have turned him into tomato paste and then there would’ve been cops. Nobody needs that.”Madelyne didn’t know whether to laugh or not. “And yet you didn’t flatten him, even when you had a chance to. He took a swing at you, you know.”“I was there.” He shook his head. “That wasn’t a swing. That was him feeling useless and shamed. Nothing to be won out of beating up a drunk like that.”“Except maybe the fun factor.”He shook his head again. “No fun, even when they’re begging for it. He walked in like he owned the place, and you,” he said, nodding at Madelyne and her green eyes. “And now he has to live with the fact that he doesn’t. That feeling’s gonna creep up on him when he’s alone.”“And just what is it that you do, Jake Culver, when you’re not saving raving assholes from themselves?”“Never saved anyone. I fix cars. I drive cars. Sometimes race them.”“Definitely more old-fashioned than me.” She smiled and didn’t shy away from it. “Racing cars? You ever win?”“Best I do is second place,” he said without shame. “I find that pretty hard to believe.”“Believe it,” Jason interjected from behind them. “He tries real hard, though.”“Guilty.” Jake raised up his hands.“Hey,” Jason said. “We’re going to do a recky on the Criver and do a quick couple of runs. You in?”“You’re gonna show us all how it’s done now that you’re stepping up to the big time? Oh, Madelyne, Jason. Jason, Madelyne.”“Enchanté.”Madelyne answered in a very long and very elaborate spate of French, smiling brightly.“Hey, look. I just do the opener. I don’t really…”She laughed at his abashment. “I think you’ve been shut down,” Jake said. “And no, I’m fine right here.“Just fine.”Jason and a few others looked at Jake and Madelyne on their way out and understood. Karla told her that she was welcome back anytime, something not a lot of strangers ever heard.

FULL BLEED: THE APOCALYPSE IS A HIDDEN TRUTH

In the past, I’ve used the perhaps prickly comparison of “cosmic horror is the literature of helplessness.” I think it, like Judge Dredd, is tough but fair. After all, what is more iconic in cosmic horror but the witnesses to it being simply overwhelmed, reduced to a place of not even subservience but utter meaninglessness in the face of the Horror From Another Place. You can’t win, you can’t break even and it’s the only game in town, which you like an idiot started playing by dint of the terrible crime of having been born or written into a piece of cosmic horror.But let’s explore another potential, more generous, axis. Let’s discuss cosmic horror as an apocalyptic construct. Now, I’m not talking the apocalypse as in the most boring possible construction of Imagine Dragons this is it the apocalypse which leads to the dystopia which fuels the imaginations of a generation of readers used to life in relative affluence and even privilege. That’s dull. The Apocalypse as destruction isn’t even a real thing, but perhaps in one aspect which I’ll get to, I promise. And I won’t go deep into eschatology, Christian or otherwise, though I suppose the roots of this view, or rather the rhizome-construct, ties into this way deep in my core. Yeah, I spent Sunday mornings watching Dr. Eugene Scott and flicking across various televised for your enlightenment and contributions Sunday School programming. No, it never really took, though it did prime me for revisiting them years and years after.The apocalypse here I’m talking about is the hidden truth of things. After all, isn’t this the basis of all the horror in Lovecraft? Humankind is revealed to have been a cosmic accident and not the heir to Kingship of the Universe. Yeah, the tentacle creatures hold that crown. We can’t even look at them because the sight of their quivering magnificence triggers suppressed genetic memories and we are reduced to gibberish uselessness. We fail our SAN rolls and lose all of it at once, only we’re still together enough to keep writing this letter that you’re now reading. I know. It’s fiction. I’m taking cheap shots because I can. That and the influence of the man is in the concepts that are now so deeply ingrained in contemporary fantasy and horror, they’re never coming out. I kid because it can never be erased no matter what I do (hint: read my story “Chunked.”) I tried.So, the basis of horror is revelation of a hidden truth, something so terrible we can’t look at it directly without surrendering everything we are. I know. You’re gonna say “Oh, Matt, there’s nothing like that in real life.” Oh sure there is. The Founding Fathers believed in absolute freedom yet owned slaves. There you go. Our history as Americans is not one of benevolence but of chains of slaughter so that we could have the land and resources that required in order to enrich comparative handfuls of people and fuel expansion. But that’s a truth very few people can look at and reconcile with the myths we tell ourselves about Exceptionality and Greatness. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m supposed to be talking about fantasy and horror. Whoops.Luckily, I’m not the only person to look at things this way. Take, for example, Cormac McCarthy’s BLOOD MERIDIAN, which is a novel of cosmic horror disguised as a deconstruction of the myth of western expansion in America. Cowboys. What could be better? What could be a more American archetype? What could be more pure? Yeah. McCarthy turned the idea of the Cowboy as agent of civilization and reclamation into bloody uncle and insensate carnage, carnage unleashed against the Other, against Innocents and against themselves. It’s a harrowing read, and one of my favorite books, one that’s probably had too much influence upon me, honestly. Maybe I’ll outgrow it one day.And what good would cosmic horror be without its avatar of the uncanny in the strange and hairless Judge Holden, who sought to catalog all things known and to smash what which did not fit into his view. But is he actually the Uncanny or is he just Reason given form? The civilizing urge unleashed on an untamed landscape (and the men set out to tame it, ultimately.) Which truth is more shattering? Yes. They both are. We are both the monsters that killed and pillaged and stole and reduced the achievements of any culture in our way so that we could forge this magnificent civilization we now walk in. There's the shattering truth, the truth that must be hidden so that the myth of exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny and every other justification wielded to explain away the actions of the past, so that those myths can survive.If a thing can be destroyed by the truth, then let it be. Only that can't abide. So history is rewritten and suppressed and shrieked at NO! NO THAT WASN'T HOW IT HAPPENED AT ALL. Only it was. So yes, BLOOD MERIDIAN is cosmic horror played out on a different stage, a different set of pageants. Rather than the interior horrors, or the weird and ghastly of New England, or the glimpses into the otherworld, the terror comes from a blood-soaked landscape and that we all know whose blood it is and who spilled it. (Note and aside. This is not to say AND WE ARE THE MONSTERS because I still see that paraded around as if it is some great revelation, some absolutely new thought and unique and original, and my people, it simply isn't. Even if it's said interestingly, and it almost never is. Nor would McCarthy be so crude as to come out and say it. So let's put that whole line of thought aside.)The land itself is made strange and unknowable, alien and unloving, inhuman because it is primordial and staggeringly vast. It will never be fully tamed, just as the humans on it will never be fully tamed because they've managed to fool themselves as to the nature of reason and civilization and will continue to do so because to look at it will destroy what they cherish. Just as Lovecraft's protagonists are utterly shattered by the truth that it isn't white and educated and wealthy men at the center of the universe, with their cherished ideals and words. No it's not them at all. Instead it is something other, not even human.Cosmic horror is exposure to the hidden truth and the revelation that comes swells and pushes out any other rational thought, filling instead with the wisdom of the gulfs between stars and other worlds. Often, it's tied to the nihilist/defeatist "we are nothing compared to this [points to everything]." I don't truck with that. But then I don't really write cosmic horror. Oh sure, I'll straight-up steal from it, no problemo. See, in fiction, the shattering truth can be allowed to destroy the viewer. End of book, last page turns, movie fades to black etc etc. We are not so lucky in life. We not only must continue from that shattering truth, we must take it within ourselves and grow and fight and try to bend events into some kind of better order. Or just keep lying and hug that myth.More later, but I'll be honest in saying that there's been what appears to be pretty unwelcome, though unsurprising news. Oh look, a truth that shatters. Yeah. So I need to assimilate this and move on.

FULL BLEED: PLAINSONG

Oh, you already know what song I'm working off of. You can hear it in your heads right now, cathedral reverb, smashing drums and veil after veil of keyboard drones like the skin of the universe being peeled off layer by layer. It opens up DISINTEGRATION and is the perfect place to start talking about 1990.I know. DISINTEGRATION came out in 1989. But I didn't put down money for it until the springtime of 1990, when everything was falling apart. Sure, I'd heard "Fascination Street" a bunch, as well as the singles that were getting play on 91X, which was my radio station of choice back then, though I'd mostly transitioned to CD from tapes. Yeah, see, the house that I grew up in was nestled against a hill. I mean, right next to. The sun went behind it a couple hours before it actually went down, so it felt like I was always in shadow. Worked out okay. But the upshot of that was that I couldn't get FM signal from Los Angeles stations. AM, sure. Listened to KFI 640 when they were basically a pop station from the late seventies on.So I came up listening to 91X and not KROQ. I suppose if I knew what I was missing, I'd have been mad. But it's not like I was staying up to listen to Rodney on the ROQ, which I kinda wish I'd done now.So, yeah, 1990. Everything falling apart. Why? Oh, because I was leaving school. It was probably overdue, but I'd managed to work a fifth year in on account of getting not one but two valuable degrees. It's true. English Literature and Social Sciences. Humanities and theoretical soft science. Perfect if you want to continue being an academic or get an office job. Or write, I suppose. Not that said path was expected of me by anyone but me. My parents were both writers, both successful, perhaps even generously so, with contracts that seem absurdly grand in today's world. But writing in the eighties and into the nineties bears absolutely no resemblance to writing in the world of today. No ebooks, no internet, no Amazon, a vast array of booksellers and relatively healthy local libraries, no to mention a vastly reduced variety of time-sink entertainments (such as blogging, to name one.) Of course, I wanted to write, and yeah, having the kind of success that my parents had, that'd be pretty goddamn nice too.Anyways, back to DISINTEGRATION. I listened to it an awful lot in the springtime and run-up to graduation. Though I almost didn't graduate due to mis-reading a finals schedule and therefore not getting the proper amount of units to acutally, y'know, graduate. But that's a story for another time. DISINTEGRATION was the perfect listening in sunny southern California, aka the Southland while everything crumbled beneath my feet. I mean, what the fuck am I going to do to make myself useful? Yeah, that job search from summer until winter of 1990 was just a goddamn low point, more like series of low points. So, yeah, "Same Deep Water as You"? You're right it was an anthem.Because, honestly, fitting in has never been high on my skill set. So an office job? I'm lucky I survived in the one I did for just over five years, and I was working on self-sabotage to get myself removed or sent to another department, but again, another story.So June is a big Cure month for me. Even more so since I've backslid into coldwave/goth/whateverwave as part of my regular listening, even a big part. And while DISINTEGRATION is not the desolate and brutal howl that PORNOGRAPHY (mostly) was, it really was my doorway into all kinds of stuff I listen to now. Yeah, sure, I picked up smatterings of it from friends and the like. Not to mention the regular procession of vendors selling (no doubt bootleg) merchandise all over campus on a monthly basis it seemed. You know, the giant, door-sized and bigger posters of album covers or stills. Lots of Cure, Siouxsie, Bauhaus in there. An assortment of punk mostly when it was still hardcore, but some of the early stuff from both sides of the Atlantic. And all that stuff like Kate Bush and Cocteau Twins and Xymox or Dead Can Dance with the ethereal postpunk axis. It was all around me then, but I wasn't into it as much as I am perhaps now. Nostalgia? Perhaps. But sometimes the classics just hold up.Oh, I'm supposed to talk about writing, since that whole writer's journey is what a whole raft of people want to read about for some godforsaken reason. Yeah, it's funny to admit that thirty years after starting actually writing (though in varying degrees of seriousness at different times) I've barely made a dent. And what's that, both my parents didn't nepotism me into the business magically? I thought that always happened. Yeah, no. The worlds of publishing are pretty balkanized and what I wanted to do wasn't the same as what my parents were doing. Nor was I capable of doing that. This is merely a fact, not a slam on myself as a writer. (I try to be better about that these days, and the truth is I'm very good at the relatively narrow seam that I work, but at least I've grown up enough to say that out loud now.)Yeah, I still don't even have an agent. Weird, right?It's like I'm not even real sometimes. Like I'm this half-vaporized cloud. It's okay, I've gotten used to it.So, yeah, admitting that I'll never be the kind of writer that I thought I was gonna be when I started out. It's still an unsettling feeling. I suppose that I only have to be thankful that I didn't go out and try to make this my sole-money-making endeavor. I've had a series of day jobs as well as being a father of two kids who are smarter than me on their slowest days. I've done okay. But I'm not on any must-read lists. I can do anything I want, just that I may reap the readership rewards of that (and am.)Okay with this. If not, well then I better learn to sell out, which is a thing I haven't been able to manage even when it would've been a benefit to me. Yes, there've been opportunities to. No, I can't make them work because I figure that like an office job, I'd end up getting bored and self-sabotage comes from that. But I'll be darned if I've been able to find an audience or yet learned how to make one. The old dream dies hard, y'know? But maybe you gotta murder that thing, just let it bleed right out so it isn't holding you back any more. That takes some bravery, even if you won't admit it. Even if you won't admit you've been doing it over a long period of years, just letting that dream disintegrate.Right. Gotta go. "Fascination Street" just came on and I'm gonna meditate on that.In the meantime, here's some more artwork I've been working at. One's old, but fitting. The other was finished up just this morning.

FULL BLEED: YOU LOVE NOTHING

Don't worry. That's not a blanket statement of nihilism or anything, rather it's an excellent track from the excellent band LA Witch, whose debut I just snagged a little while ago. Closest easy approximation is Mazzy Star meets Deadbolt, but since it's on Bandcamp you can listen for free. Here's the link if you're interested.Yeah, I haven't posted any new thought content lately. I'm kinda torn on that, really. Lots of it feels like writer as product brand burnishing and damn, that's the last goddamn thing we need right now. Writer as product is the path of grinding bleakness. Smash that like and subscribe. Pump up that engagement. Join the army. Don't even consider who the creator might be, just join the movement. Consumption as identity, yeah.Just be careful who you sign up with because you might not really know them. At all. Even the nice ones. As for what else is going on, I'm working on logo design for HAZELAND. Yeah, that whole post last week? It's already been superceded by the work this week. I'll throw a couple in here so you can see the process and the final. Doing a little more 3D modeling/design as well, more for a break from writing than anything else. It's still, however, staring at a screen, which isn't ideal. I don't know how to change that out, except maybe take up longhand writing and then type from written text. That sounds amazingly inefficient and physically taxing, though. I'm big on inefficiency but the physically taxing thing? Nah. Plus I can still type way faster than I can write and I'm okay with being crazy and sloppy in first draft territory.Here's what I believe the final will be. Still need to do a full environmental rendering, but you get the idea.That said, I should be at work on the ASPHALT TONGUES story collection for HAZELAND. I'm probably psyching myself out just a little because I gave myself a ridiculous deadline for delivering, uh, 12 short stories of 5k-10k in length and a 20k or so novella, that being the end of September. Actually, if I get this all out by the end of October, that would give me time to run edits on MY DROWNING CHORUS which I hope will be in my hands around then, and then let everything go berserk around the run-up to Christmas as it usually does.The hope is to have ASPHALT TONGUES ready not long after MY DROWNING CHORUS hits, mostly because I don't expect my current publisher is going to be interested in a one-person-anthology. Maybe I'm wrong. So yeah, it'll probably be self-published and won't have a print book available. That may change if I can get a good price on a small enough run to make show sales viable -- that said, POD does not service that need. POD is great if you really want to have a physical book and don't have to be the resale agent. But if I'm paying to print the book POD and then ship it to a reader? Yeah, there's no money in it for me as the person who created the thing unless I make the cover price so high that nobody is interested in it.And then there's BLACK TRACE. Look for another chapter next week. Then maybe one after that. It'll probably be offered simply as an ebook with little fanfare, more as an exorcism than anything else. I feel like I've been carrying it around since the year after I graduated college, which the first draft was finished right around that time, so... It's got lots of neat stuff in it (yes, I just re-read it) and a lot that I look at and don't know how to fix. Please don't say "Just hire an editor" because an actual editor will require (and deserve) actual payment on a book that might move 100 digital copies with Amazon eating a third of thiat right off the bat.I know. I should have built an army. But that's the whole author as product/best friend thing again, and we all know where that leads.Was running through some other thoughts on cosmic horror, evil, cosmology and its place in HAZELAND, but I think I'm going to run those another time, as another little nugget of brand burnishing. In the meantime, I should write some stuff for people to talk about instead of talking about what I plan on writing. It's a process that's pleasing, sure, but it's not getting the work done.Wonder if those blackberries are ripe yet. Got half a pint yesterday.

BLACK TRACE - Chapter 3

Third chapter for your perusal. One more after this I think. Maybe a chunk of the fifth.Final cover, too. Finally got a text treatment that I like and works, this after my daughter looked at the old one and said "BLACK MIRROR, dad." And I smacked myself on the forehead because she was absolutely right (and it's not a show I watch, either.)--CHAPTER 3Six months later.Joshua Tree languished in the sun, everything baked to an even shade of desert nowhere. It lay in the flat between uneven and carelessly heaped low mountain peaks. The whole place felt like a drunken afterthought, where a mighty hand laid the ground low and then was struck with a sudden sense of something missing. Anything there had blown or rolled in from somewhere else, finally losing momentum or a wheel or running out of gas right here. So the town became a place for people to give civilization another shot. It attracted westies because it was the first spot after Federal lands where people only wanted to sell them something at two hundred percent markup and not borrow a lung for the black market or take a shine to that ride they came in on. It persisted out of stubborn refusal to quit, dust-caked and always dry. As much as it was the desert frontier, it was the first line of the chain of cities that led out to the great and shining Pacific. Franchises and combines made their stakes here, trying out new markets, seeing if there was enough capital to be squeezed out of the residents to make the establishment costs worthwhile.The scattering of fuel stops with repurposed logos and signage testified that the desert would not be converted to a marketplace so easily. Joshua Tree would only accept these corporate settlers on its own terms, where the signature red of Dakakari Motors faded to the carmine of Satori Optical Electronics in mere months. The inability to maintain a uniform identity had shaken the faith of more than one commercial settlement team, abandoning the works to locals who then rechristened the shops into something with more local flavor. --Mullins scratched at the curly white hairs on his chin and burped, making a face at the taste. The coffee was all gone and he’d been reduced to drinking the stash of green tea that Kelly had left. The dry air wouldn’t let things age out here. But it hadn’t made the tea any more palatable.Sunlight poured into the glass room and he ate it up. It was already just hot, not the killing glare that would be hammering down from the sky later today. That was July in the desert. You worked on its terms, not your own.Fingers of dust snaked through the metalscape of his scrapyard. It was a place for broken things, things that hadn’t been or couldn’t be repaired. Everything in it was jury-rigged, held together with solder and epoxy. All the windows were cracked, pieces of glass held in place with long strips of duct tape. The cars in the parking lots all rode low on wasted shocks, bent and slumped like fly-bait racehorses. Paint cracked and faded under the sunlight and wind. There was nothing new there, only old and wracked.The scrapyard sprawled outside town like a garden gone amok. Whatever people drove into town and died on the way in ended up here. The rusting hulk of a Greyhound bus squatted in the shadow of a scrapped aircraft carrier conning tower, its paint stripped to raw metal. Oil and coolant and grease from ten thousand wrecks had gushed out onto the sand lot, turning it a viscous green-black in patches. The crane’s steel claw towered over junkers and heaps of battered chassis like talons. Cars weren’t the only dead things carelessly discarded there. Entire generations of technology had been heaped in the yard. Antique radios with transistors spilling out of their shattered casings were buried alongside tiny televisions that could fit in a man’s palm. Vinyl platters with a thousand pop names were mixed in with the works of Beethoven and Mozart, Partch and the Mechanist school. Spools of loose tape like Mylar cobwebs hung from piles of rubbish. Reels of celluloid and video tapes flailed in the wind, any information formerly contained on them now scattered into noise. Yellowed pages were scattered, a cut-up that only a the insane could have pulled meaning out of. There were newspapers and magazines, vast seas of bleached paper and forgotten stories.The yard was no-time and all past. All of last year’s models for the previous century had accumulated there. It was the final home for anything that wasn’t cutting-edge, for all the outmoded fashions, for all images and icons that had been exhausted. Best of all, you could get all that stuff cheap, Mullins thought as he sipped the tea and waited for Jake to show up. On the far side of crazy, that one. Nice enough so long as you didn’t push him or ask him what he was doing six months ago, before he blew into town in a Federal States cruiser with four-fifty under the hood and twenty millimeters of pain up top. Said it was for sale, cheap to the right buyer. Mullins always had an eye for a deal and knew when not to ask about the origins of the piece. If Jake Culver had taken out a couple flags to get the thing for trade, well then maybe he’d done the world a favor. The reloads alone were worth more than Mullins took in a month of scavengers paying admission, good enough to let Jake pull whatever he wanted for life.Something rattled in the garage, a wrench hitting the concrete floor and echoing in the bare room. Mullins poked his head in to see Jake crashed out on the cot, one hand draped off the side, fingers just inches away from the wrench that had dropped.Yeah, Mullins had no interest in knowing Jake’s story. Whatever it was, he kept it down tighter than the wrong size bullet jammed into a cartridge. “You sleepin’ on the job?” he asked before taking another sip.“I’d have to leave the job to not sleep on the job, Mull.”“You’re almost done, ain’t ya? I used to get like that on a car. You can taste how close you are and you don’t want to eat nothing else.” He smacked his belly hard.Jake sat up slowly, hands shining with grease. He was long past the salvage stage, ripping pieces out of wrecks and then putting them back in something new. “What the hell time is it?”“Sun’s up. Does that help?”“It was up when I went to lie down.”“What color you gonna paint it?” Mullins pointed to the ’71 Charger body up on the lift. Right now it was a dusty orange, metal showing in places but no rust. It looked fast even up on the skids, standing still. “Yellow ain’t your color.”“Jesus, Mull, I’ll pick a color when I’m done.”“Oh hell, like you don’t know already. You saw it finished when you put hands on that chassis.”Jake smiled in spite of himself. “Yeah, I did. That’s Blue right there.”“Blue’s a hell of a color to keep clean. Gonna be busting your arms buffing that out.”“Once I got wheels rolling—”“Oh don’t start that again,” Mullins said, making a face. “I don’t want to hear any talk about you taking off. That’s bullroar.”Jake stood and flexed his fingers, as if still stiff from clutching tools. “You don’t want to have to hire another mechanic is all.”“Goddamn right. You know how tough it is to find someone who isn’t just trying to make enough money to get high and then flake off?”“How do you know that isn’t what I’m doing?” Jake asked with a grin.Mullins made a noise through his teeth and held up a hand. “You ain’t cut out for any place bigger than this, but if you wanna get proved wrong, you go do that. Drive your Blue into the big wet Pacific for all I care.” His hand went up big, grabbing air and then clutching in on itself.“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that you were jealous.”Still-black eyebrows went up in disbelief. “Go west? And give up all this? Hell, I got metal they can’t make any more. That’s better ’n gold. Those books? Like diamonds.”“Diamonds don’t blow away in the breeze.” Jake took a poke at the drive train again, a mix of caution and frustration. “Fucker didn’t fix itself while I was asleep either.”“Can’t trust a machine.” He made to leave, then stopped and squeaked out a spin on his boots. “And speaking of not fixing itself, that red Chiang-Tek ain’t any more mobile than yesterday.”“Don’t worry,” came the soothing reply. “I’ll have it working better than the day it rolled off the line in Shanghai or wherever.”“Those were all made in Arkansas. Still are, I think.”“All the same. I won’t leave you hanging on that.”“Fair enough,” Mullins said a little sadly. In his heart, he wondered if he could find something else that Jake would have to fix before he left. But that would be like putting a wolf in a cage and expecting it to be happy. Joshua Tree didn’t hold onto many who could leave any time they wanted. Jake wasn’t gonna be any exception.“You know where you’re gonna go?”“Not here.”“Well if all you’re going to do is leave something, you ain’t got much of a plan. Gotta be heading at something, you know?” His feet were apart like he was expecting something stronger than words in reply.“One step at a time.” Jake grunted as he refit the u-joint, noting that he was going to have to shave it a little to make it fit right.“So, anyways. You gonna be here until the end of the day, right?” Mullins pulled at the end of his beard, harder than he meant to.“At least until the paint’s dry. Gonna be a week or more if that puts your mind at ease.”“And shit, who the hell will I get to fix Slats’ DeSoto? He doesn’t even trust me with it.”“You might lose a customer, then.” Jake grunted and torqued the nut down, letting off by feel, not even looking at it. “Car like that doesn’t belong out here in the wilderness anyways.”“Don’t tell him that.”“I will if he squawks at me. Besides, he asks too damn many questions.”“He is cop. Cop does that.” Mull said it like it was the first commandment.“He has to learn to hide his shortcomings.” Jake replied. He didn’t give advice much and he didn’t often take it.“Nobody likes to hear that, Jake.”“Well the truth does bite.” He took a step back and even through the all-night weariness he could see what it was going to look like when he was done. It was all up there, just needed to fit it together.

BLACK TRACE - chapter 2

[image error]The cover still looks like this.No, I'm not serializing the whole thing. First three-four chapters though, that's a definite possibility.--CHAPTER 2Two nights after.The Colorado River bled out just past the town of Parker, Arizona. It was barely even a sluggish and muddy strip out here. Between the baking sun and the strangulation of the dams upstream, only seasonal runs remained. The last of the winter rains had fed it, plumping it up to a damp stream.Marquez could smell the river more than he could hear it now. People looked at him funny when he said he could smell water, but that was just an easy way to tell if anyone had ever been in the desert. If you had, then the sweet smell of fresh water hung heavy in the air like a woman's perfume or a barbeque and you felt it in your bones.It was about the only thing about this duty that wasn’t terrible. The River was dammed to a shadow of its former self, but for a few months a year. Even the best work of the Federal States couldn’t hold it back. And hey fuck California and the rest of them for stepping out, right? You don’t piss off the man who lives upstream, not if you want to drink that sweet fresh. He swept his glasses to the west uselessly, out of habit. The sun was down and the sky soaked orange at the horizon. The box girders of the broken railroad bridge formed a makeshift fence to the north and the concrete of highway sixty-two walled things off to the south. Beyond that the low and lazy peaks of Whipple caught the last of the sun and wore it like a crown they’d never earned. The remnants of last night’s barricade had melted in place, fused to the bridge deck. It only covered most of the crossing, but enough to scare the hell out of anyone who wanted to try it without paying their bite. Plastic and glass, mostly from old television sets and whatever other junk got left there, glittered darkly. “Whatchu looking west for? Ain’t nobody ever comes there.” Rawls blurted out his words like they were too-hot coffee. “Remind me,” Marquez asked, “which one of us is in charge?”Rawls stared at him and Marquez could actually see him trying out different answers in his head before giving up.“Uh, that’d be me,” Rawls said finally, missing the joke. “Another of life’s numberless tragedies.” Marquez put the glasses down, having seen nothing but the beaten desert going from copper to pale lavender in the sunset. “You aren’t being insubordinate, is ya?” Rawls demanded.He’d only been there a week, dropped off alongside another shipment of diesel and a ragged assortment of supplies. Like everything else that ended up at the Parker Crossing, he’d been left there by mistake. Not Marquez, though. He picked the post because nobody expected a damn thing to happen there, so if he made something go right, then that would be a big fat plus by his name. Out here in the nobody-gives-a-fuck, hind teat on a dying river, Marquez had watched a procession of increasingly incompetent superiors dumped off and then ground down by the grit and the wind and the sob stories of the westies trying to get out of the Federal States and cross the desert to the promised land. Yeah, nobody ever came from the west, but they wanted to get to it. Only the junk dealers and smugglers, at least those smart enough to pay their grease up to the guards. Those who didn’t…well, the desert is a very big place and the soil turns pretty easily in most spots. If you even bother to dig.Marquez understood that Rawls didn’t know and he didn’t want to. He only wanted to be sent back to Tallahassee or what-fucking-ever place he’d come from first.“I’m gonna go take a shit and then I’ll light up the barricade.”At least all that kerosene and diesel that got dumped here had some use, Marquez thought. When confronted with a five-foot wall of burning industrial waste, most folks were happy to pay whatever it took to find another route. Westies gotta cross. It’s in them just like hunger.“Make it worth your while,” he said with a bitter spit as Rawls walked away. Maybe that promotion would come through sooner rather than later and then it could be him telling the pukes what to do while spending an hour at a time in the privacy of the stalls.He looked to the east and saw the glint of an approaching windshield. The river burbled, half-dead as the car rolled to a stop. Black shell, dusty, federal markings, armed enough to roll solo out here or wherever else it wanted. No touching.There was a moment as the side window just reflected the dusk of the sky and then rolled down smooth. Marquez saw the bar on the black leather and made an effort to stand a little taller. Maybe his ship had just come in.All the same, he wondered why the hell this guy was out here. There weren’t any trades working that he knew about, and he’d be the guy to know. The man behind the wheel gleamed sweat in spite of the cool. Marquez smelled westie on him. He caught the name CULVER on the jacket. If it had even belonged to him.“Evening,” the man said, slow. “Almost there,” Marquez replied. “Still see a little gold.” He eyed the car from tip to toe and saw that it had been shot at a couple times, maybe fresh. Dust from the road in made it tough to tell. “What brings you out here to the nobody-gives-a-fucks?”The man turned so he could look Marquez straight in the eye. He had the feel of someone who was used to being in the pursuit position, eyes forward, catching up and not about to let you pull ahead. Being out in front and alone wasn’t something he was used to. He was wanting to make a crossing, westie all the way.“Doesn’t matter,” the man said finally. His face was drawn tight from adrenalin and riding nerve for however long he’d been on the run. This wasn’t Marquez’ ship, but it might be a good chance to turn in a runner, get some points with the regional command. “I suppose,” he replied. “What matters is the here and now, right? The first day of the rest of your blissful and eternal fuckitude.”The man said nothing, not even swallowing hard. Eyes forward.Marquez glanced around, not wanting to give away how little backup he actually had. The guard post wasn’t that big, so trying to front that he had five packed guards just waiting to bust a skull was a non-starter. And in truth, he didn’t trust Rawls to wipe properly much less pull his fat out of a fire.“You got a name? Lemme see if you’re on the list.”The guy nodded, squinting his dark eyes hard at Marquez. “Jake Culver.”“Not ‘Lieutenant Jake Culver’?”“I don’t answer to it, no.”Marquez nodded as he fished out his tablet. Half the screen only showed shades of red and the other half was scratched to useless. But it worked, which was better than the computer inside the shack.His eyes rolled back up after an appropriate interval, at least playing at a thoughtful examination of the list. He didn’t see Culver’s face anymore. He focused on the pistol barrel instead. Culver was holding the gun where it could be seen, but not yet leveled. He’d slipped back to a pursuit position and had known exactly what to do, and fast.“Oh come on, soldier,” Marquez said. “No need for that.”“Now there isn’t. I wasn’t so sure a minute ago.” Culver swept his eyes without moving to lose sight of the other man. “How many with you?”“Half. On a good day.”Culver smirked as if he understood exactly. “Un-holster yours. Steady. Then kick it under the car.” Hunted, he might be, but he was sure enough when it came to giving out orders.The battered nine-mil skated along the pavement. “What is this? You’re not heisting us.”Culver shook his head and angled it so he could see the shack now. He was unshaven, a couple days past regulation scruff, brown hair almost black, cut close. If he had been sweating before, it was gone now.“You got nothing to heist.” He glanced away from the shack. “Just passin’.”“Well pass already then.” The guard shifted impatiently. “You got the look of a westie on you. Could smell it.”“‘Westie’? Is that what you call folks on their way out?” He worked over the word in his head, trying the fit.“Yeah. Get a lot of the water works. Lot of asking for anything, just chance man, just a chance.”“And it pays okay?” Culver did some figuring and pulled the scam out of the assignment. “I mean, you let ‘em around or you don’t, right?”Any hopes of a plus next to his name were blowing away on a thin wind now. Marquez cursed his useless boss, having walked right into a shakedown.“Look,” he spluttered. “Just take what you want. We got nothing out back but fuel and some canned corned beef. You take it and forget my name, forget anything even happened out here.”Culver shook his head slowly. Then he said, “Step back slow.”Marquez did as he was told, no hesitation. The sky over the place was a dusty purple now and the broken bridge to the north looked like a crash site.Culver popped the door and stepped out of the car, watching the entire time. The gun was holstered now, but his hand was near it. He’d drawn it quick and quiet enough before that Marquez figured any lunge would just earn him a free bullet.The black leather hung on Culver with a weight. He shrugged off one arm then the other like he was shooing a fly.“You got a useless supervisor?” Culver asked after looking the other man up and down.Why the hell not? Thought Marquez. He’d already lost by opening up the place to a shakedown and all but admitting fleecing the westies going through, westies he was supposed to be stopping.“Yeah. He’s useless. Goddamn corporals who think they know the way.”Culver threw his jacket to Marquez with his gun hand. He caught it like it was made out of glass.“Keep the bar. I won’t be needing it where I’m off to.” Marquez shook his head. “I don’t get it.”“You read me right enough,” Culver said. “Going out west.” He looked out past the muddy purple vein of the river staggering through, cutting a border between Arizona and California, between federal and free land.“You expect me to thank you?” He flexed, liking the weight of the coat on his arm and the copper-colored insignia fit him real well, pulled the cocoa from his skin tone.Culver shook his head. “Nah. I just want you to forget you ever saw me. Same as you wanted from me just a moment ago.” There was a smile on his face, but it was forced and fit poorly. He wasn’t out yet.“Done.” He threw the coat around himself. It was cleaner than his, save for some dust and sun-beat on the left side. “Anything else?”“I’ll take some of that canned hash you got.” Culver shot a look to the shack, fit to blow over in the next dust storm. “Unless you were just pulling my chain there.”His smile was as sheepish as a wolf in wool. “They chart that stuff.”Culver made a noise through his teeth. “Figures.” He turned and climbed back into the car. “Check the right front pocket there. Go ahead.”Marquez’ hand closed around a bundle of scrip cards, hard plastic that felt like boiled fingernails. He pulled it out, all of them tied with loops of fake leather. Must have been twenty-five of them or more.“None of those will spend where I’m bound. Maybe you can make use of them.”The band slipped off with a tight snap. He fanned the cards out and read some of the names off, barely moving his lips as he did. Pennman’s, Torchco, Burn Heaven and Lester Brothers. All of them contracted to serve out to the Federal States, with this scrip acting as money since the real thing wasn’t so real anymore. “How do I know I’m not being handed a fistful of duds?”“Shit, what does it matter?” Culver said with a resigned and flat sneer. “You get ‘em for free and claim whatever you can. Those names still ring, least for now. Besides, beats shaking down people for their life savings, don’t it?”Marquez shrugged, enjoying the new heft of the jacket. He palmed the cards and slipped them into his pants pocket. “So that’s it?” he asked with brazen disappointment. Culver paused, one hand on the keys and the other on the wheel, gripping it hard. “You might want to quit while you’re ahead,” he said. The engine kicked over and the pipes blasted a fresh layer of dust off the road. “How far you think I got?”He tightened his gaze down to a stare. “You? I think you got a long way.” He backed down then, remembering he was downrange. “But if you’re talking miles, it’s more than a hundred to Joshua Tree as the vulture flies. Them’s hard ones, too. Smugglers and crazies and ghouls.”“Ghouls?”“Yeah,” he said, looking west. “They set traps. You see someone who looks like they need help? You just roll past that noise.”“Hey, I stopped here, didn’t I?” Culver asked with a smile. “Can’t be worse than what I come from,” he said, flat. “Where’s the route past that crap on the bridge?”The other man pointed with a curved arm. “There’s enough room to nose past if you don’t mind scraping the paint on one side or the other. It ain’t lit so you’ll do okay.”Culver grunted as if he wasn’t worried about resale value. “I’d thank you, but I think that’s all reversed.”“Then I owe you one. You’re welcome to collect any old time,” Marquez said with a grin. “But you won’t see me on that side. These colors never run.” He pointed at the flag on his new leathers.“Suit yourself.” The window slid up and just reflected the blank bruise of a sky.The cruiser rolled forward and picked up speed as it approached the slag barricade. It didn’t tiptoe past, instead clipping the side hard. Glass and plastic exploded in sharp-edged debris and the right side of the wall shuddered. A couple of old Sony flatscreens cascaded to the bridge deck, breaking into pieces.The cruiser only picked up speed as it headed west.“Good luck, asshole,” Marquez said and then loosed a lunger to the west. It was the least they deserved for turning their backs when they could have offered a hand instead. The door to the shack slammed open, metallic and hollow. He swore he could smell the stink where he stood, blotting out the sweet of the river.“The fuck was that?” Rawls asked, tugging at his belt and pained.“Just passing through. No big business.”Rawls paused to goggle at the stripes on Marquez’ upper arm. “Hey, that’s a nice coat.”“Yeah,” he said with a grin. “And the bar says that you can kiss my ass for a while.”Rawls flushed with anger, but the light just made him turn pink and speechless.“I’m goin’ into town and visiting Torchco. Keep the seat warm for me.” He clapped his subordinate hard on the shoulder and walked over to his car. It was going to be a good night.

FULL BLEED: RE-MAKE, RE-MODEL

So late last week and early this week I've been working on logo design for HAZELAND. Mostly because what I thought was going to work perfectly ended up looking like oh I don't know, spaghetti with too many chunks in it once I got to laying out covers with it.It happens. Something that looks great in isolation sometimes just doesn't work in a completed piece. And the whole point of design is to get that completed piece together and doing the job it's supposed to do, right?Note that I'm not really a designer. I went to a for-profit "design school" (yes, those are scare quotes) from mid-1996 to early 1998 or so. What did I learn? I learned how to use Photoshop (which I kinda did already), Illustrator (which I mostly didn't), QuarkXpress (which...ugh) and a handful of animation/video packages that nobody uses anymore. This was in the heady days of having a multimedia career, before literally armies of kids got a hold of pirate copies of these tools and went to town. You could've gotten a job out of this education, sure.But I didn't learn how to design a god damned thing. Still not sure I do know. But I have a sense of what I like and what I think works. Sometimes it even works for other people.So for this book series that I'm working on (honestly I am), I had to come up with a design for a logo that will work on all of them, as well as give some sense of the atmosphere of the books, maybe even the setting and maybe even the content. Yeah, that's a tall order, I know. Of course, I first had to come up with a title. For a long time it was going to be SMOKETOWN. It's not now. Spent about a week going through pages of lists of words and combinations to get where I was trying to get to.I finally got to HAZELAND. Or is it HAZE LAND? Who knows. Jury's out. Anyway's here's the first look at it from last summer, just done up in Photoshop real fast:Now all I have to do is come up with a logo. I tried a bunch of different approaches.Note that some of these examples do indeed work off of older series names, but I wanted to explore the concepts for use as a logo/design. So bear with me.I still like all of these. Just that they're probably not right for use on covers as is. Mostly too much focus drawn back to the design elements rather than the design themselves, if that makes any sense. Maybe it doesn't.So I came up with a concept that I thought was gonna be great. Model the text with some dimensionality, get 'em to suggest buildings and architecture. And since the series is more or less about LA and mystery and fantasy, I figured on making the titular haze do some of the heavy lifting. Then I could push that even further and have the grounding element be an LA map, etc etc. It's actually a pretty good look. For a title card on a TV movie of the week. It's not something that works as a title on a book series.Back to the drawing board. Which means going through reference and photos and type specimens until something sticks in my eye. And boy did one ever. Fell hard for it. Which of course means I lost my damn mind.Had to mess around with this a few times, ultimately inverting the solid/dashed lines of the original type (by Cassandre, aka Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron). Then I converted it to a neon treatment (which I'm big on, because I like neon and 3D modeling is pretty relaxing once you get into the zen of things) and laid it out. It looks great. Love it. Gets the art deco mixed with the neon, both of which are critical parts of LA's visual vocabulary. But the moment I finish it, I know it's another treatment that isn't going to work unless it's basically sitting by itself on the cover. Now, that's a thing that you can do. Serious novels do it all the time. I'm not going that route, so, welp.Finished this off on Saturday morning, spent the rest of the day with it simmering in the back of my mind, and then came up with an idea and a sort of a red herring of an idea and start to work.The first one was an accident, but might be something to come back to later on. The second one was the idea that popped into my head and I started on late Saturday night to see if the idea would even execute out well. It works even here. Abstracts the type a bit, suggests urban forms as well as the neon and all that evokes. It's a good path to go down. Just not the right typeface. So I go through my selection of the usual suspects (ie, big sans-serif because serif display type just rubs me the wrong way. It's a personal failing.)So I get it down to a couple candidates and a couple different variations (mostly the idea of having it all ride on a baseline or not) and go ahead and execute them because I'm just not able to see the variations in my head without actually doing them.Eventually I arrive at this. Which I hope will be the final. Publisher hasn't seen it yet and I'm not sure he's even convinced that the title/line needs any branding. Heck, he may be right, but I went ahead and ran with it anyways.I like it a lot, but I'm easy. That said, it shouldn't end up dominating the cover, and makes a nice little statement all on its own. Tough to do.Right, then. Time to get dinner going and to do the ongoing business of life. In other news, I'm working on a collection of stories which are all HAZELAND-based. The working title is ASPHALT TONGUES. It might even become the real title. Other stuff too, but that's going to be the big thing this summer.Well that and picking blackberries off the bush in the backyard.

BLACK TRACE

The rest of this is coming this summer. Unless someone wants to actually publish it and then it'll be on their terms. Right now it's on mine.This book was largely written in 1991. There were some edits around 2012, some additions, but not all that much.Here's the cover. Or close enough.[image error]Here's the first chapter:-CHAPTER 1Denver slept restless, a fevered child sleep. Yellow light from scattered dying fires spilled onto the street. Lazy drifts of smoke blew across the ruined downtown, passing through the exposed steel of the skyline. The streets were still, hours after the chants and roar of the mobs and the men who routed them. Every federal cop in Denver had been out there on the streets of downtown, no troops left to quiet the suburbs and the drift beyond. Lone Monitor APCs mounted with shotguns and gas streamers patrolled the streets now, squat and ground-low like mechanical bulldogs.Harvester teams picked over the bodies of the wounded and dead, looking for any parts that could fetch a price. Their white suits looked out of place, clean and fresh like new snowmen among the tangles of wreckage. Skinnies crabbed through the shadows, fishing up spent shell casings or anything valuable enough to be traded for food, but food was worth gold. Others settled themselves with the body of a dead horse that had been ridden by one of the leaders of the rioting citizens. Fresh meat for once.This had been the fifth straight night that the citizens of Denver had risen against the keepers of law and order. Nerves and skin rubbed raw, even under ballistic vests and Kevlar. The flags were not going to tolerate this disobedience much longer.*The locker room was tight and hot, muscle to tac-vest as the men suited up for tonight's game. “Spirit of seventy-six in the crowd,” someone said. “Skinnies are restless.”“They singin’?” Loomis asked, a deep voice from the well of the Monitor APC.“Oh yeah. ‘Fuck Tha Police’ and ‘Line Them Up.’” Willen laughed at that. “Can’t go wrong with the classics, right?”Garrett shifted, like his wovens were chafing. They never fit him right, not even the new gear. “We go out there and brandish and they’ll shut right up,” he hissed. He drew quick out of his holsters, tens lined up low and ready to spray. It was about the only thing he was any good at, good enough to get him to sergeant and no further.Culver stood at the door and checked his holster straps. Tight. No accidents. “You are gonna check your fire tonight, Little G,” he said cold. His eyes were on Garrett like the nightsun spot on a hovering Bell Raven.“Look at the bleeding heart.” Garrett drew to full height, not that it made a difference. “We don’t get to come home if we don’t crack skulls.”Culver didn’t even look at the sergeant, refusing to rise to the bait. “Depot’s low, and our re-up got sent to St. Louis instead.”“St. Louis?” Willen asked with bright eyes wide. “That was all locked down. Remote-kill, full clips.”Culver shook his head. “Some wise guys jammed the whole flock, turned ‘em on the garrison there. Death from above. They got to watch it coming on their own monitors.”“Can they do that?” Loomis question was scarred by disbelief. “They” meant the thousands of rebel groups, from single cells to known movements, any of which would gladly trade a kidney for a pistol and five bullets to make five dead cops.Culver tapped at the slate then closed it up. “Sure enough. Ain’t no rulebook anymore,” he replied. “So maybe it’s good that we aren’t remote-controlled out here.”“Never send a machine to do man’s work,” Garrett said with a lick of his lips like he wanted it. “Unless you aren’t man enough for it.” He wouldn’t shut up. He could smell Culver’s single bar and wasn’t going to be stopped. He was tall, slow until he needed speed, then he had it to spare. His eyes snapped back onto Garrett and took his size. “I’m gonna need you on shield wall tonight.”Sharp white smile flashed back, saying no fucking way without a word. “Hey look, I need ten bones, can you gimme that?” ‘Cause you know the second the gates open the skinnies are gonna be all over us like we were made of cat food.”“I wouldn’t give you ten bones for the last steak on the planet,” Culver growled. “Now are you on shield or does the captain have to tell you straight?”Garrett’s blue eyes narrowed tight as his sneer. “Real leader would make me.”Culver took the two steps to reach him in the time it took to blink. They were nose to nose, never going to get any closer. “I would right now if our line wasn’t so goddamn thin tonight. Every man out there. Even half-men.” His eyes flicked up and down as raw as a middle finger.Hands open and at his side, Garrett backed down. “Hey, this is all too serious for me, man. You want me breakin’ skinnies, you got it. All night.”Culver’s breath hissed out slow but he didn’t move away until the other man did. Someone coughed and the moment passed, but fingers of it still hung like sweat-stink.“Ya ain’t supposed to call ‘em that,” Loomis said. He had two gold teeth, which in the dim of the APC offload platform made him look snaggle-toothed. “You can only do that if we’re overseas. Captain will chew your nuts clean off.”Garrett laughed. “Fuck ‘em. They act like skinnies, I’ll call ‘em that.”*The scarecrow of a man ran from the fuel depot, past the concertina wire and the white burn of the night-sun spotlights. He flew down the slick streets, jerry can pulling him to one side as he tried to corner.Two cops from the building, Culver and the captain, followed him past the jeers of the crowds and the sweeping lights. The captain brought the butt of his pistol down on a grasping white hand, tight at his belt. There was a crack and a cry and the crowd pulled back like a slug on salt. Boots scraped hard on ice and Culver heard it over the resurgent taunts. He pointed down the asphalt. That way. Shadows stood out black and sharp, cut by the moonlight now, out of the reach of the spots. He was still in reach, can thudding against stone and giving his position away.The runner turned down a side street, out of the blue light and through the yellow curtain of a sodium lamp. He was still within blocks of the supply center, there would be streetlights and power for another three or so, then the darkness would keep him. The half-crumbled brick wall he hid behind was scarred with bullet holes and propaganda. Ice speared through his chest with each breath. He knew that he’d never shake those flagfaces while hauling the can, but there wasn’t any safe place to stash it, scavvies would be on it the second his shadow cleared the alley. But he shot a cop, a flag at that. There wasn’t any take-back there. No undo. Don’t be seen shooting a cop if you’re going to do the rise up. Plain sight was a death sentence.His breaths came out in white vapor that rose up and flashed yellow when the light touched them. There wasn’t a way out, not that he could see or even imagine. He held his breath until the red hands grabbed his chest.The flags turned down the same alley and stopped. The tall one tried to peer through the drops of slow rain beginning to fall into the cone of light. Their breaths were careful and measured, as if they could keep their pace all night long. He cursed the pain that cut his chest to hot ribbons. Light glinted off their badges and the tall one’s shotgun.Coughing hard enough to bleed, the runner exploded. Fear and pain boiled and bubbled out of him in a spasm. Both of them stopped dead. The heavy one turned on a flashlight, stabbing a beam of light to the back wall. A piece of graffiti saying “US OUT OF NORTH AMERICA” was spelled out in dripping black letters. He spat, deep.The runner froze and prayed that the flags would look past him. Another coughing fit squirmed in his chest. He clenched his teeth together, caught his lip and blood seeped warm into his mouth. His face shook for a moment and then he coughed again, spitting blood and saliva. Maybe they wouldn’t see, maybe they wouldn’t know.They heard the noise and ran around the corner, boots sounding heavily on the concrete. They watched as the man ran down the dead end alley. His thin arms and legs faintly outlined in the flashlight beam like oversized matchsticks. He held the jerry can in one hand as he fumbled for handholds with the other one, still clutching the now-cold pistol. The tall flag cocked his shotgun and the runner turned, arms dropping. His pale face was burned into a skull by the white of the heavy one’s flashlight. They didn’t even have faces, just badges and uniforms. The light burned his eyes, watery and weak. His antique .38 clattered as it hit the ground, making a small metal noise. He didn’t even need to be told.The flags were silent, looking at him pinned in the flashlight beam like a butterfly in their collection.“C’mon, man,” the runner said. “What d’you say? I mean, this kero was just to keep my family going until next…”“Just shut up,” said the heavy one.“You want I should cuff him, captain Payson?” asked the tall and faceless flag.The runner thought he had been afraid before, but he had been kidding himself. He wanted to throw up but with nothing in his stomach he simply coughed. “Payson…? Oh, Jesus, if I had known this was your beat now, I…” He was pleading, falling to his knees. One hand held the can, the other went around and behind, grabbing his own neck.Payson quietly as he walked over to the thief. He ripped the jerry can out of the kneeling man’s fist, fingers bony and brittle. “No, Culver. We won’t be taking him into custody.” He worked the top off the can with a metallic pop. Then he jarred the container, heavy liquid slopping out and splashing onto the runner’s neck and chest.“Jesus, I’m sorry!” he cried, spittle and kerosene dribbling down his chin. “I’ll never do it again!”“You say it, but you don’t mean it,” said Payson. “So I’ma help you keep your promise.”The can made an empty noise as it bounced off the rain-slick concrete.Payson opened his long black leather jacket and took a cigar out of the shirt pocket. He passed it under his nose, taking in the Carolina tobacco. “What are you doing, Captain?” The captain had never been one to follow the book when it didn’t suit him, more in the recent past. But this was something else. A sort of distracted resignation hung on him now, as if he’d had a private epiphany and was now let down by it.“You got a light?” the heavy man asked with a gravel voice.The runner’s eyes flicked between the two men, wondering how he could walk out of this. Maybe the crazy would eat both of them.Culver shook his head. “I’ll cuff him. Judge can sentence him however he likes.”“Cop killers get to shake hands with someone bigger than a judge.” He rolled the cigar between his lips. “Light me.”Payson wasn’t tall, but he was big and heavyset as middle age had put its hands on him. Time was mashing granite to clay, but not to dust. His eyes were black and what sat in them now made Culver cold to his heart.But a stare-down would only be a loss. The captain wouldn’t take to that. Culver took a step to the shivering little man who kneeled and slumped in the alley now.There was a flare of yellow light from behind and the fingernail-chalkboard sound of a match lighting.“Stop right there,” Payson warned.Culver didn’t turn. “Come on. Get to your feet.” He reached out a hand to the runner.The tossed match touched runner and flames followed, like ripples in a splashing pond. Heat smacked Culver hard. Then the orange light flared hungrily as the flame ate. He leaped back from it by reflex.Payson took a long step closer, sucking hard on the cigar. He watched the burn instead of his partner.“We’re here to keep order!” he spat. “My job is to decide how.” Payson’s announcement was punctuated by a strangled cry from the thief. Culver turned to face the flames, following the heat. It didn’t look like a man in the fire. Not a real person, but a thing made of straw and screams now.The report of the shotgun was sharp, echoing for a moment as the voice bled into echo and died out. There was only a crackling as hearing returned.Payson turned to face him, cigar blowing smoke like a renderer’s smokestack. “Explain yourself, soldier.”He lowered the shotgun barrel, but not to ground.“Raise it or drop it,” the captain grated.The barrel pointed down after a long moment in the flickering alley. “He was dead anyway. Does it matter how?”Payson moved in, grim and unsmiling. “You giving out mercy now along with rations?”“Pretty weak mercy.” Payson turned away again, looking upon his work. “That ain’t your job, soldier. It’s staying alive so we all can.”The runner looked like he was sitting now, cross-legged at alert attention.

FULL BLEED: DISGUISED IN BLACK

For the record, that title is taken from a Sisters of Mercy bootleg recorded at a show in 1985. I'll probably have something to say about that year, as it's the year I graduated high school and entered college and a bigger world but still as a little boy, just walking around in a nearly-six-foot frame. And of course, this means thirty years since my college graduation, coming up in June. So yeah, this time of year is fraught, to use a word that's appropriate.So, I just finished off the .2 version of MY DROWNING CHORUS. It's off to the publisher. It's still over the projected length and we'll see how that goes down with my editor. Honestly, it could be a bit longer still, but that's only to make sure that the things that I'm seeding in for future volumes had a little more room to breathe instead of just a sentence or two. See, the thing is that I'm looking at running a series of stories with interweaving storylines that come in and out as we follow characters through the HAZELAND books. I guess I never let go of that idea after spending a whole ton of time reading UNCANNY X-MEN comics and seeing how long and short form storytelling got juggled and clues left behind then picked up. I'm just working on a slightly different timeframe. Though I do wonder if I could do it in sequential chunks to be bound together in larger volumes, not unlike trades.I imagine that the differences in comics/prose readership would prevent this from being a good plan. But we'll see.So now I'm supposed to be working on the follow on book, (tentatively) titled GLASS WOLVES. I may keep the title, but I suspect it'll end up getting changed. The only problem I'm running into is the same one that a bunch of my friends in the creative business have run into, that being coming up with creative material in the time of absolute panic and dread. See, I was lucky with the last book because I was just hitting the part of the book where things basically write themselves, all downhill momentum and not having to push that big rock uphill.That's really what pre-writing is about anyways, the uphill struggle. That's the starting from nothing part. And while I've got a bunch of lines of what I think the book is about and where I think it'll go, nothing's really 100% certain until I start putting it down. But that takes a pretty big push to get going. So it might take a little time to roll. Don't worry, I haven't even discussed a timeline for it with my publisher, so there's probably plenty of time. But I'd like to keep going simply to stay in a rhythm of making stuff.It's tough, though. Things are far less certain than they appear on the surface, particularly since we're being sold a bill of goods that reads NORMAL. Things are not and they're not going to be for some time. Which is unsettling and upsetting. The existentia struggle continues even in the face of farcical response to reality. That's the way it goes.In the meantime, I may step back from GLASS WOLVES a bit and work on some short stories in the HAZELAND setting, just as a palate cleanser but also to illuminate some corners of things that I hadn't thought about before. Maybe even do a collection of short fiction in that setting, but I don't know if such a thing will happen with my regular publisher or if I'd self-publish that. I do know one thing, though, and that's "normal" publishing ain't got a lick of interest in what I'm doing. So it's always funny when I see book twitter talking about agents and product and saying what their books are about instead of just saying "hey, here's a book."I've said it before and I'll say it again. Marketing is bullshit. Marketing is telling you what the marketer wants you to think about the product. It's nothing about the product. It's an image. It's a string of words. So keep that in mind. Keep it in mind particularly when I tell you what a book of mine is about, because five'll get you ten that I might be setting you up for a sneak right hook. Hell, the most important scene in a book might take place in a hairdressers and not on the precipice of conflict with cosmic horror. Or wonder. Yeah. That's it.In other news, I think that the electronic rights of a short story of mine, called "A Fifth World" have reverted, so I need to come up with a cover for that and maybe offer it on Amazon. Probably do a new short story collection because nobody buys single stories for the cost of a comic book even if it takes you ten times as long to read them, right?So, like all of you all, I'm trying to find a way to keep going through these weird days, when the most infuriating thing is that people refuse to treat the situation like it is. As if they have a lot riding on their concept of normalcy above all other things. You know, how like the false choice of "lives or the economy" is put up when the two can't be disentangled, and more acutely, there is no "the economy" only "economic conditions which favor me."Yeah.

FULL BLEED: COUGHED UP BY THE SEA (3)

So now that I've given away the secret of writing a novel, let's talk about what I didn't give away.But first, my steps to writing a novel. They're very simple steps. Honest. Anyone can do them.1) Ruminate on the idea and plot for a couple-three months. Jot out notes.2) Codify the notes, knowing what to keep and what to throw away.3) Use the notes to knock out a quick outline/plot. This is just a simple narrative so you don't have to worry about anything like word choice or the perfect metaphor or how one thing reflects another because nobody really cares about that. Yes, it's true.4) Take your outline/plot and expand it out. In the case of MY DROWNING CHORUS, it was about fifty pages double spaced. Again, you don't have to make it fancy, you have to make it sturdy and keep things in order of the way they happened or the way they're revealed (not the same thing necessarily, but I tend to write super linear plots because I like to save up my Reader Confusion Points for more important things.)5) Write the book. In my case, I was good for about 3-4 hours of actual writing time a day, five days a week, for three months to get 470 pages, 50 or so of which got just flat cut. Not boiled, but cut. Good bye, do not pass go.I guess I left a step out there, right? What to write about?Remember when me and everyone else has said that ideas are common as dirt? An idea and three bucks is enough to get you a drip coffee. Not one of those fancy macchiatos or however they spell 'em. But a regular old big coffee.The idea is easy. Only the execution matters. The execution is why people fall in like or love with books. I suppose hate even, but I try not to dwell on that. It's all about the voice and how we get to where we get to. Sure, the exciting climax is neat and all and it feels like the whole book builds up to it. That was an idea once. Without the couple hundred pages of prose before and the work before those, ain't a single person in the world is gonna know how neat it is.The voice matters. Probably more than the plot. Though I'm sure lots of folks will argue with me on that issue. Whatever. 'Cause the voice goes deeper than the plot. It sinks into the characters and the setting and the whole of the world that is being laid out as instructions for you to create something in your head as you read along. Anyways, voice. It's the one thing you can't fake. And while I'm not saying my writing voice is anything other than limited, it is my own.Voice comes out of experience, of getting bloody noses time and time again and still getting up, of fucking up and maybe learning something the hard way, of receiving pain and maybe inflicting it unthinkingly or with malice. This isn't to lay out a Hemingway trip, because that's manufactured out of pure expectation and press releases. I'm just talking regular, everyday experiences. Going to see bands in tiny clubs where it's clear you don't fucking belong, driving around in the middle of the night and drinking too much coffee, of having your heart broken but it never quite hardens up with all the scar tissue you expect.I can't tell you what to write about. I can't tell you how to write it. I can give you nuts and bolts.The nuts and bolts can be valuable, the being told that it's as simple as putting one foot in front of the other, of getting up and doing the work. But the subject of the work? The idea for the work?There isn't any writing advice in the world that will tell you how to do that. Until then, it's content. Don't get me wrong. There's lots of demand for content in the world. A maddening amount, even. But don't settle for writing content. Dig deeper.Or not. I really can't tell you what to do, nor do I want to. Just afford me the same respect.