Pardon our dust, and other topics
Long story short: This is a period of adjustment.
I've been staying up late again, drinking tea over dog-eared notebook pages, working on stories and doing a bit of housekeeping. I mean this in the literal and abstract. Cleaning up my blog-space, my Tumblr-space, adding links and shaking out the blankets. Editing manuscripts about cosmonauts and black holes and amputee fetishism, making lists of magazines I enjoy and want to submit to in the future. (Not unlike Wayne Campbell pawing at the guitar shop window, "It will be mine. Oh, yes. It will be mine." If you publish horror or bizarro, chances are you'll be hearing from me soon.) In real life I can often be seen in my neighborhood in a pair of running shoes, trying to get my two or three miles in, earbuds in place, probably listening to music. Probably being really obnoxious about it, too. (I've been listening to a lot of Nicki Minaj and working on my growling. Just ask the neighbors.) I've even tanned a little, if only just, the first summer in history I actually colored instead of just burning alive.
It's been a very eventful few weeks, indeed.
The novel is being fine-tuned. I keep saying it's done, and it's true. All the writing and editing is done, it's just in the final stages of clean-up to make sure it's as tight as it can be. The longer I dance for my life with sketches and character information, story snippets and excerpts, trying to get people interested, the closer I get to feeling like I got a handle on this. In most ways this book feels more like me than anything I've written in the last year. It brings me closer to home than I've been in a long while, closer to the kinds of stories I was writing before I started publishing (scribbled in notebooks, tucked away in desk drawers and under beds) and the kinds of readers I had cultivated on my own. For me publishing's been like going to a big party where I don't know anybody and everybody knows all the jokes but me. I nod, I smile, I play along (I might even try to tell a story or two), but I can't get comfortable. I'm always just left wondering if everybody thinks I'm boring.
The jury's still out on that, I guess. All I know is this is the first story in a long time that still puts a lump in my throat when I read through it. It's the kind of story that would creep me out if I picked it up in a bookstore or saw it on TV. It would make me laugh and cry and worry, checking under the bed for boxes and children with holes in their faces. Everybody who's read it so far says there's nothing quite like it out there, and I take that as a compliment for sure.
As I said, everything is currently in progress. Pardon my dust. I'll try to clean up after I'm done.
