The Messes We Make

Hello Earth

Summer has always been hot here in Kansas. July is when an air conditioner will usually crap out and leave you sweaty for a few days while you try to find someone who will sell you a good machine for a reasonable price. Lots of challenges with that this year, so please be careful in this godawful heat. Climate change is a thing. Weather is a separate thing. Try not to confuse the two. If you can make choices that are neutral toward the environment we all share, please do. Not everyone has the option and there’s a lot of suffering that could have been avoided if we’d been better stewards. It’s not quite, but almost, too late.

Way to start a blog post, eh? I’m Jason and I write things that I hope show some glimpse of hope for the future.

Organ of Record

I finished a draft of revisions on WAR IN VAIN this month and will take another pass on it here before too long. It’s something I’m really proud of and I think contains some of my best writing. It’s right around 33,000 words, give or take, so it’s a true novella and there’s a lot of action in it. As I was reading it again before revisions, I was impressed at how it was paced. A lot of that comes from Rob who calls me out when I’m writing “the boring parts” that Elmore Leonard exhorts all writers to avoid. But I did put together some good, page-turning pulp-centric writing. These breakers on the shore of the full-length novel we’re planning have one of my favorite devices, the author’s disclaimer that the story you’re about to read is from a reliable source that they trust.

The first time I encountered that was in Michael Moorcock’s THE WARLORD OF THE AIR where the manuscript was presented as the tale of a friend of Moorcock’s grandfather. The manuscript was handed off to him after his father, not a writer, said it was more his thing. It was a fascinating way to plunge young me immediately into a world where these things could happen to other people and we could still know about it. I think Burroughs did the same thing with A PRINCESS OF MARS and certainly the vastly under-rated JOHN CARTER made the same sort of play for my interest. But I’ve gone down a rabbit hole.

WAR IN VAIN is our love letter to 80s action movies but with a twist. It’ll be out sooner than later. Stay tuned.

I’m also working on a revision of another manuscript I wrote over the last part of last year and into the winter of ’22. BLACK MOON is a space opera-style adventure that has ideas/elements borrowed from stories as disparate as ELIZABETH and STAR WARS. I’d hoped to have this revision done by the end of the month but that will be a challenge. It’s currently in the neighborhood of 43,000 words but I anticipate several thousand coming off in the revisions and edits. I tend to overwrite in the Zero and even First Drafts, so I’m developing better habits in the aftermath. I’d rather over write and cut than cobble together things that have to fit, so I don’t hold back early in the process. Anyway, it’s still early days on this one but I’m thinking it will be out in time for Thanksgiving and I hope to have an announcement regarding that in September. That is, IF everything stays on track. The way the world is today, that’s not always a guarantee.

I have some preliminary notes for my and Rob’s third novella that I’m organizing so that when we get together for our next writer’s room we’ll have an easier time pulling a plot together. I’m also organizing notes for REGENERATIONS that will follow that one, I think. Depending on schedules.

Once upon a time I was trying to be clever and come up with code names for things and then it hit me: what the fuck? Who did I think I was? I’m barely any kind of name let alone one that is producing paying work for publishers so why not just share the titles and make notes when they change? It was sort of an Earth-shattering ka-boom if you get my drift.

Fortification

I was part of a conversation a while back about how sun tea is kind of brutal, especially in Kansas in the summer when we have fourteen 100+ degree days in a row. Yeah, it brews quickly but it’s HOT in only a couple hours. So I broke into my cabinet in the kitchen and started looking through the bags of tea I had on hand. Sure enough, there was some Twinings Lemon Ginger and I had a thought: what if I stuck two bags in a pint glass of water and stuck it in the fridge? There’s cold brew coffee, why not cold brew tea?

So that I did and let it steep for about 5 hours. It was good. I mean GOOD. Smooth and flavorful. I repeated it the next day and set up my cold brew in the morning before I went to work. Sure enough, ten hours later it was even better. The ginger and lemon really popped. Wonderful stuff. I recommend taking 8 of those bags from the Twinings box and sticking them in a half gallon of water and put it in the fridge early in the day or overnight.

Black tea works pretty well, too. PG Tips you really only need one bag in that half gallon if you’re going for 8 hours or more. That stuff is strong. If you find it’s too strong, add water about 4 ounces at a time and stir thoroughly until it meets your standards. Happy cold brewing.

Noises

You’ve heard of Kate Bush by now, I’m sure, no matter how old you are. (And yes, STRANGER THINGS season 4 is amazing.) I listened to her back in the day and wore out my cassettes of LIONHEART, THE DREAMING, HOUNDS OF LOVE, and THE SENSUAL WORLD. For some reason, I stopped listening at some point and only in the last couple of years became aware that she’d continued to produce music but at a much slower pace. I was surprised to learn that she’d done a 22-date residency of live shows and released a live album in 2014. I knew she’d never really toured after ’79 so to have a record of a KB live performance was something else. BEFORE THE DAWN is a shining piece of art by an artist who is eclectic, meticulous, and exacting and yet it feels alive in a way that other live recordings do not. Standout tracks include Lily, Waking the Witch, King of the Mountain, Under Ice, and Morning Fog all for different reasons. I highly recommend getting the entire thing on CD because I don’t think the digital shops have every track available. Could have something to do with the actors in the speaking roles or it could just be her deciding you can’t have everything.

At Capacity

Things are weirder than ever now. At least within my memory. Things you once could count on are now more difficult to even find let alone reassure yourself with. I love physical media because if the Internet goes out I have something to read or hear or watch and that’s been some comfort to me. Your mileage, of course, will vary. I bring this up only to say that having a library at home is a dream come true for me. My childhood was very middle-class in the way you’re probably thinking of and not how it actually is now. I was lucky. There was always food, the lights always stayed on, and there was always something to engage my young mind.

But now, as the annual celebration of the first moon landing in 1969 wanes (today is the anniversary of the splashdown back on Earth), we are trapped in a place where our government is in disarray and the electorate is more divided than ever because of some really batshit crazy ideas. I exhort you to not let someone influence you to believe something that you know is wrong, please. Take some time to ask yourself “why is this person wanting me to abandon something I know to be true?” Keep asking yourself questions that force you to come to answers about the motivations of others.

And be kind. At least, that’s the best thing that each of us can do and it costs us literally nothing. Okay, maybe some time. A few seconds to a couple of minutes. In the grand scheme, kindness pays back more than tenfold when you give it. Wouldn’t you rather be thought of as someone who cares?

That’s it for this time. When there’s more to say, I’ll say it here. I’m grateful for the time you spent with me here. I’ll see you when I see you.