When was the last time you got a letter in the mail? December sees a lot of mail and you remember that sense of delight when the first card arrives. You can have that more often.

I have a simple challenge for you.

1. In the month of February, mail at least one item through the post every day it runs. Write a postcard, a letter, send a picture, or a cutting from a newspaper, or a fabric swatch.
2. Write back to everyone who writes to you. This can count as one of your mailed items.

All you are committing to is to mail 24 items. Why 24? There are four Sundays and one US holiday. In fact, you might send more than 24 items. You might develop a correspondence that extends beyond the month. You might enjoy going to the mail box again.

Feeling intimidated? It’s fewer words than NaNoWriMo and I know how many of you do that. Join me in The Month of Letters Challenge.

It’s an interesting idea. I don’t know if I’ll send letters all 24 days (what with February starting tomorrow and all,) but I might send a few. I used to live for letters back in high school (you know, in the far distant past of the 1970s.) It might be kind of cool to send and receive them again. For a while. Until I get writer’s cramp and run out of stamps.

Think you’ll try it?

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If you like this song, please share it with your friends and anyone else you can think of who would like it. I’d love to see them get more widespread exposure. Enjoy!

“Frosty’s slowly melting watching episodes of ‘Lost’…”

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Look no further. Give a listen to the E.P., Seasons Geekings by nerd musician extraordinaire John Anealio. You can stream it here, and if you like what you hear, you can download it from his Web site. While you’re there, check out some of his other songs. My personal favorites are his theme song for Mur Lafferty’s podcast I Should Be Writing; his ode to Steve Jobs Blue Lego (Steve Jobs Hates Flash); The “NaNoWriMo” Song, his tribute to masochistic novelists everywhere; and the iconic George R. R. Martin is Not Your Bitch.

I’ve heard John play live at the last two Balticons, and I’ve really grown to enjoy his music and the weekly podcast  he does with Patrick Hester, Functional Nerds. Give him a listen!

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• Cut down a Christmas tree. This is a family ritual going back 23 years — I cut one down the week after my oldest son was born, and we’ve been doing it ever since. Traditionally, we go the day after Thanksgiving, as we always wanted to have it up for his birthday, and that was one day when we could get around work schedules, basketball games, etc. This year, we went a day later; we had to work around a schedule conflict on our usual work-around day. The tree is a beauty and it’s been gracing the family room for a week now.
• Music: Messiah by George Frideric Handel. When I was in high school, I sang in a chorus that performed parts of this at Christmas-time. I try to listen to at least some of it every year since. I also love the CD We Three Kings by The Roches, several of the old classics (Bing, Andy Williams, etc.). This year I’m listening a lot to On Thin Ice by Pandora Celtica. This is not a Christmas album in the strictest sense, in that I don’t think the lyrics mention Jesus once. It’s more of a Yule album, but the harmonies are breathtaking (par for the course for them), the versions are different than those you’ve heard before (imagine Deck the Halls sounding sad,) and the original song Santa Claus Got Eaten by the Kraken is wickedly funny.
• Books: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (natch — I blogged about this last year). A relatively new ritual is to re-read the fine stories in Connie Willis’ collection Miracle and Other Christmas Stories. Thank you to Mur Lafferty for making me aware of this book. The stories have the holiday spirit without excess sentimentality.
• Movies: Sure, I like It’s a Wonderful Life as much as the next guy, and I can quote several of the funniest lines from A Christmas Story. However, one of my favorites is a made-for-TV movies that most people don’t know about: The Gathering. This excellent 1977 film stars Ed Asner as a curmudgeonly successful businessman who, through diligent effort, has managed to alienate most of his adult children, not to mention his estranged wife, played to perfection by Maureen Stapleton. Shortly before Christmas, he learns that he is terminally ill and probably won’t see February. Reconciling with his kids suddenly becomes very important to him. When his ex-wife figures out what’s going on, she offers to invite all of the kids home for an old-fashioned family gathering. He agrees on the condition that his illness be kept secret. The story that follows warms my heart every time I watch it. One scene in particular, in which the man and his son (played by Lawrence Pressman) have a confrontation that’s been brewing for years, is very powerful. The film sends a wonderful holiday message without ever getting sappy. It used to get rerun on cable every year, but it seems to have been forgotten the last few years. For a long time, I was reduced to watching a recording I’d made on VHS on some long-gone cable channel back in the 90′s. However, when I finally found it on DVD online a couple of years ago, I had my credit card out before the screen refreshed. Now it’s a permanent part of my collection.
• TV specials: Love me some Charlie Brown Christmas (“That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown”) and I caught up with my old friend the Grinch last week. I have a soft spot for Rudolph, of course. Another of my favorites from childhood is Santa Claus is Comin’ To Town with the voices of Fred Astaire and Mickey Rooney. I don’t get to see that one every year, as I don’t think it gets repeated as prominently as some of the others, but I look for it in the listings.
• Watch the Christmas Eve midnight Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica. Our local NBC affiliate carries this every year (tape-delayed, of course; Rome is several hours ahead of us here in the eastern U.S.). Most years, I don’t watch the whole thing, but I try to catch at least some and hopefully most of it. There is something about the pageantry of midnight Mass, especially when celebrated by the pope, that I love. We’ll attend Mass ourselves on Christmas Day, but it’s obviously not quite the same.

That’s my list. I’d love to hear what yours are. Fill up the comments with ‘em — maybe I’ll end up stealing adopting some of yours.

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In the mean time, the last issue sparkles. The non-fiction sections (which, to be honest, I didn’t always read) covered the recent and current crop of movies and TV shows based on fairy tales, starting all the way back to the 1946 French version of Beauty and the Beast and continuing to the current TV series Once Upon a Time and Grimm. The Folkroots section, which every month covers the origins of some fantasy literature-related area, made a detailed examination of the influence of Greek and Roman myths on C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. (Another confession: I have not read these books, but this article got me wanting to.) Elizabeth Bear’s history of urban fantasy is essential reading for anyone who wants to write in that genre, and worthwhile reading for fans. There was also the regular assortment of book and game reviews.

The heart of every issue is the collection of short stories, and this is where this issue really shines. My favorite, hands down, is Scott William Carter’s The Man Who Made No Mistakes, in which a man with the ability to rewind time spills his story to a jaded priest in the confessional. This story made a flight from Atlanta to St. Louis pass extremely quickly, and I’d love to hear it in a future episode of Podcastle (are you reading this, Dave and Anna?) Betsy James’ Sweeping the Hearthstone is a variant on the Cinderella story (fits nicely with the discussion of fairy tales referenced above) in which the Cinderella character acts…not exactly as you’d expect.

In Second Childhood by Jerry Oltion, a woman’s long-dead mother reappears, looking as she did when she was in her 30′s. As you might imagine, this has a significant impact on the woman, her husband and daughter. It ends with a nice message, and it includes the immortal line, “A ghost of your mother gives my willie the willies.” Nick DiChario’s Barbie Marries the Jolly Fat Baker is about a toy, jilted by a Barbie doll, who decides he’s had enough. You need to read this for the conversations between the toy and the family dog alone, but the entire story is humorous and touching.

Lastly, Return to Paraiso by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz tells the story of a land and a people that are under the oppressive thumb of a military dictatorship. One young woman takes on the army. The army clearly has no idea who they’re dealing with.

This fine magazine is going out on a high note. I’m sad that it won’t land in my mailbox anymore, but this issue is a fine swansong. If you can find it on a newsstand, I highly recommend buying it or the PDF version.

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I’ve made multiple trips to Lowe’s recently (there’s no home repair job so simple that I can’t find a way to have to do it three times), and it’s hard to miss all the Christmas decorations, lights, inflatables, etc. on display there. Maybe I’m just getting older (refuse to use the word “old”), but it seems like every year the stores start putting out Christmas merchandise just a hair earlier. I know that retailers make most of their profits in the fourth quarter of the year (the day after Thanksgiving is known as Black Friday because that’s the day they finally get into the black for the year.) From a business standpoint, it’s hard to fault them for doing this, especially as we wrap up the fourth consecutive year of a pretty lousy economy.

Of course, the merchants wouldn’t put this stuff up for sale in mid-October if people didn’t buy it then. So what does it say about us that people start stocking up for the holiday season two months in advance?

I think most of us (okay, me) have mixed feelings about the holiday season. I get to see my parents and siblings on Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve, and we don’t get to see each other that often, so it’s something I look forward to. And I love the movies and the books and the TV specials (some of them, at least), and the food (that’s a biggie.) For a month, the opening notes to Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Suite will be stuck in my head, as will the harmonies from For Unto Us a Child is Born from Handel’s Messiah. I have certain Christmas albums that I love and turn to every December like an old friend. I love all of that.

Also, my oldest son was born in December, and that alone has made the holiday season special every year since 1988. And there are special readings and hymns at Mass, and all of the rituals that make up the holiday season.

So what’s not to like? How about crazed crowds of shoppers, the kind that trampled a Walmart employee to death on Black Friday a few years ago? Or TV commercials telling you that, if you really loved that special someone, you’d park a new car with a big red bow on it in the driveway Christmas morning or give her a diamond bracelet? Or the joyous sounds of people screaming at their kids in shopping malls? Or the letters to the editor (they should start any day now) decrying the “sudden” commercialization of Christmas or worse, the alleged war on Christmas? Christianity’s second most sacred celebration (Easter being the first) becomes just another battleground in the culture wars, egged on by those who know they can boost their television ratings by encouraging Christians to think of themselves as a persecuted minority. This in a country where some tried to paint a sitting President of the United States as an enemy by suggesting that he’s secretly a Muslim.

Why do we start the Christmas sales season so early? And why does it bother so many of us so? Probably for the same reason. We’ve bought into the myth of Christmas days of yore, of small towns with bells ringing and an inch or two of snow on the ground, families gathered around the tree to open a few simple but meaningful gifts, of serene churches filled with songs lifted up by the voices of angels, and without obnoxious commercials, ugly crowds, and crass consumerism. We long for that. We yearn for it. The last 10 years have been pretty rough ones for America. The shock of September 11 gave way to the endless wars in the Middle East and the collapse of the financial system that plunged us into an economic slowdown from which we still struggle to recover. In the midst of all this pain, who wouldn’t want to grab onto the good feelings of the holiday season as early and as often as possible?

Yet selling Christmas merchandise only a few short weeks after the autumnal equinox feels somehow wrong, like it cheapens the season and makes it all about buying and selling. It seems to mock a holiday that we love (or at least are told that we should love.) And that makes people irritable, even angry.

Here’s the deal. I guess I’m officially middle-aged, having reached the age of 50 and all. I was a little kid in the 1960′s, which means that I remember all the good Saturday morning cartoons but not The Beatles being together. And I also remember wanting lots of stuff for Christmas. The holidays didn’t become commercialized in 2011 or 2001 or 1991 or even 1981, for all that. It’s been that way for a long time. The simple, country Christmases that we think used to be the norm? They existed only in movies. Everyone wants to spend Christmas in Bedford Falls because it’s not real. It never was real. We want it to be real because it symbolizes love and happiness and peace and all those other things that seemed so far away with Americans in Baghdad and Kanduhar, in the rubble of the Twin Towers, during the height of the Cold War, in the jungles of the Mekong Delta, and in the blood-stained streets of riot-torn cities in the 60′s.

In the end, we all have the power to decide how to react to what we see and experience. I can let the inflatable Santa on sale at Lowe’s raise my blood pressure, or I can say “Meh,” and go on about finding the repair kit for a leaky faucet. I can rant about how Christmas has become all about the dollar, or I can focus on the image of shepherds on a hillside, in shock as they listen to angels tell them that their Savior has been born. I kind of like that second option better.

So, rather than fight reality, let’s face it with gusto. Halloween’s over. It’s Christmastime! But I’m still going to fast-forward through the commercials when I watch a show on TiVo.

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I haven’t dared step on a scale since I got home.

I joined a gym last fall. That pesky 50th birthday was looming ever closer, and I had the sense that, if I didn’t make an effort to get in shape then, I never would. Also, a few friends who are active gym members actually got me thinking about a gym membership, something I’d never considered before.

Lastly, in June 2010 I was invited to play in a golf tournament organized by the local independent insurance agents association. It was a good time, a good chance to network, and I’m glad I went (my play was, shall we say, consistent.) One of the souvenirs of the day was a plastic coffee travel mug with photos of each player’s foursome on it, including shots of the individual driving the ball. The photos of me are not flattering. The word “blob” comes to mind every time I see that mug.

For these reasons, I decided to get off my ever-expanding derriére and hit the treadmill. I’ve been a regular since November 1, and the results so far have been decent. Prior to this year’s Dragon*Con, my weight had dropped 15.5 pounds from the time the travel mug photos were taken. According to the Body Mass Index charts, I need to lose another 20, though I think I’d look and feel pretty good if I lost 15. In any case, this work in progress is still a work in progress. And I didn’t progress much at Dragon*Con. I made it to the hotel’s exercise room on the Friday the con started, but that was it. The other three days: Fun, learning, food and drink.

Starting last Friday, I decided to workout every day for 14 days to undo some of the damage I did in Atlanta. That doesn’t necessarily mean the gym; I’ve mapped out a running route of 4.25 miles that begins and ends at my house, so if I get a nice day this weekend, I’ll do that again. However, I have hit the gym every day since Friday (for those of you counting at home, that’s six days.) My routine is to go after I get out of work, so today will be number seven. Barring any unforeseen events, I think I can meet the goal of 14 straight days. Then I’ll take one day off. One.

And maybe get back on the scale again.

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Rather than flying out of Rochester, as is my usual custom, I set out very, very early on Thursday morning for Boston. My oldest son has just moved there for law school, and my charge was to deliver a car trunk full of his stuff upon my return. Fearful of Boston traffic and unexpected roadwork delays resulting from Tropical Storm Irene (NOTE: Compared to what other people suffered from the storm, my problem was very minor), I hit the road just prior to 6 AM. The trip actually was very smooth, and I parked my car at Logan Airport more than two hours before my 1:25 PM flight. The flight itself was a piece of cake, and I was at the Atlanta Hilton and meeting my roommate Justin by 5 or so.

Last year, Dragon*Con’s registration process was a nightmare. I spent three hours in line coaxing a little more battery life out of my iPod. This year, they made some changes, and I’m happy to say the changes worked. I was in and out of there in about 15 minutes. My compliments to the staff and leadership — it was a much better experience this time.

Thursday night brought the first of three concerts I attended by the amazing Pandora Celtica. If you like Celtic music and/or you love tight harmonies, you owe it to yourself to give this group a listen. They are a five-part a capella group from Denver (it’s kind of ironic that so many of their songs are about the sea and they’re thousands of miles from the Atlantic Ocean.) I first heard them last year and bought one of their CD’s on the spot, then requested and got another for Christmas. Stalking them was one of my missions for the weekend, one that I’m happy to say I fulfilled. I bought their other two CD’s, got to meet them all, and collected a few autographs on the CD’s. As terrific as they are as musicians, they’re even nicer people. I hope they return to Dragon*Con every year.

Friday brought my one and only workout of the con, the arrival of the eternally awesome Christiana Ellis, and the kickoff of the podcasting track. John Lenahan, the author of two podiobooks but one who has actually gotten said books into print, was one of the panelists. As the author of two not-yet-in-print podiobooks, I was curious as to what he did that I did not, and he very generously gave me a big chunk of his time after the panel ended. He didn’t know me from Adam, and I really appreciated him taking the time with me. I then attended a couple of panels by game designers (game designing is a subject that’s started to interest me — stay tuned for a future blog post); a reading by best-selling fantasy author and writing instructor Tracy Hickman; another Pandora Celtica concert; dinner with Starla and Scott Huchton and their friends Jamie and Chris (who get my vote as the cutest couple I’ve met this year); and a special reading by Scott Sigler of brand new material. I ended up at a small party in Alex White’s room with a bunch of people I’d never met before, hung out with them for a bit, then finished the night in the Hilton bar with P.G. Holyfield and crew.

Saturday: Settled into my ritual of dropping off CD’s of Purgatory and business cards on the freebie table and got caught in the Dragon*Con parade while trying to get to Starbucks. Once I had coffee in hand, I went to a reading by mighty Mur Lafferty, where I heard excerpts of a piece she’s written for Scott Sigler, an excerpt from a new unreleased novel, and something from her forthcoming sequel to Playing For Keeps. Every con, I try to spend a little time with Mur because I love her I Should Be Writing podcast and she gives voice to so many of my writing anxieties. However, whether she recognizes it or not, she’s also something of a rock star, making it tough to get too much of her time, but I was glad for the time I was able to get.

Next were a couple of writing panels, including one where I met up with Abby Hilton and listened to Aaron Allston and Michael Stackpole discuss plotting. The high point of the day was the Parsec Awards, which honor excellence in podcasting. I put on a black suit for the occasion and went in style (practicing for the day when I might actually be a finalist for a Parsec; a guy can dream, right?). Several of my favorites won awards, including The Drabblecast, Nathan Lowell and Scott Sigler. A short party followed the ceremony, after which a small army of us descended on a Thai restaurant. No one left hungry.

Sunday: A good panel on writing in a world that another author has created, followed by a podcast writers roundtable. I had thought that I would be a panelist for this and was a bit disappointed that I wasn’t. However, within five minutes it became apparent that I would have been out of place. Every panelist had at least one book in print, and I don’t. It would have been awkward, so I’m glad it worked out the way it did. The discussion was excellent, and I’m looking forward to the release of the recording as a podcast so I can listen a second time.

I then jumped between a panel of best-selling authors (Kevin J. Anderson, Terry Brooks, Charlaine Harris, etal.) and a panel on favorite books, which gave me ideas for even more books that I will buy or borrow and not have time to read. Another Pandora Celtica concert preceded a panel on game design, leading up to a return performance by Scott Sigler in the role of his cousin Frankie in “Let’s Get Pissed With the FDO”. His interview victim was Dr. Pamela Gay, who gave as good as she got. As usual with these events, the true winner was Tuaca.

During all this, Starla was frantically tweeting about the amazing night she was having. When I returned to the Hilton, I saw her and Scott and immediately demanded to know what was going on. “Follow me,” was the coy answer. In a nutshell: Colin Ferguson, star of the SyFy Channel’s Eureka, Misha Collins of Supernatural and Nicole de Boer of Stephen King’s Dead Zone had ended up in Alex White’s room to record some episodes of his podcast Disasterpiece Theatre. Starla, Scott, Jamie and Chris had been among the lucky throng who attended the recording. However, that was not the end of the night. The three actors and a battalion of hangers-on joined us out on the street, whereupon we went back inside and joined the karaoke party taking place in the lobby (see Starla’s blog for all the details.) I didn’t actually get to meet Colin, but he seemed very personable and down-to-earth, and he clearly knows how to have a good time.

The evening (uh, early morning) concluded with a 4 AM breakfast with Starla, Scott, Jamie, Chris, P.G. and me at the Metro Diner.

Five short hours of sleep later, I was back in the game for the last day. I did some souvenir shopping (didn’t buy anything) and went to a writing panel featuring Terry Brooks, Mercedes Lackey, Timothy Zahn and Mark Van Name. I had every intention of returning to the hotel to say goodbye to Christiana and others, but I dropped by two more writing panels and was quite glad I did. I got to meet and talk e-publishing with Ridan Publishing’s Robin Sullivan and self-published author John Hartness. I learned a lot from the discussion, and it’s got me seriously considering self-publishing ebooks.

Promptly at 5 PM, the con ended. Within a couple of hours, the hotels were ghost towns. The 40,000 geeks were mostly gone. It was really quite a forlorn sight. Had I not saved $130 on airfare by staying until Tuesday, I would have regretted staying through Monday.

Tuesday was for packing up, bidding adieu to Justin, and flying back to Boston and checking out my son’s estate in a comfortable neighborhood straddling Brookline and Brighton. Okay, it’s really a studio apartment, but he likes it, and it befits a first-year law student. I delivered his stuff, we went out to dinner, and then I drove the five hours back to Syracuse.

Was it a good con? Put it this way: I’m already thinking about next year.

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There’s no point in denying it. There’s a pile tipping over in my closet. There are countless more in the basement. When I pop into my son’s bedrooms, I eye their book collections greedily, wanting to snatch several volumes from their shelves.

And we’re not just talking books. My computer bag is stuffed with back issues of magazines I haven’t read yet, copies of Weird Tales, Realms of Fantasy, Asimov’s, Writers Digest, Sports Illustrated — they seem to multiply by themselves.

Some people have eyes bigger than their stomachs; I have eyes bigger than my ability to read quickly. There should be a restraining order against me setting foot in libraries and bookstores. I need help. The cycle must be broken. I can’t go on collecting books beyond my means.

The only solution is cold turkey withdrawal. I must resist the urge to buy more books. I must ignore the reviews on Goodreads, the write-ups in Realms of Fantasy, the recommendations I hear on podcasts. I must turn a blind eye to all those attractive book covers I’ll see next week at Dragon*Con. I mean it this time: I’m swearing off book-buying.

At least until the Liverpool Library’s used book sale next month…

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However, in early June I got an email from my contact informing me that he had sold the company. I felt a little trepidation, but the new owner contacted me right away, I wrote a few articles for him, got paid right away, and more or less felt like it was working out. So, imagine my surprise when I opened my email yesterday morning and found a message from the new owner, informing me that there are “very good freelance writers willing to work” for 1/3 what he’s paying me, and times being what they are, he has to go with them. He did say that he will assign the more technically complicated topics to me, but clearly the flow of work from this site will slow down to a trickle. I may be able to pick up some work for another site he runs, again at a third of what I was getting paid for the other site.

Now, as you might imagine, I didn’t take this news all that well. I’ve spent the last day cooling off, and I sent a professional reply to him last night, expressing my disappointment but stating that I understand that he must do what he thinks is best for his business. After some reflection, I have a few thoughts about this episode:

• It’s a free market. I’m competing with other freelancers, and in a price battle, I may well come in second. No one owes me work.
• That said, expertise, experience and skill should count for something. I write about the industry in which I’ve worked for most of my adult life. I have industry designations that carry some weight. And I think I’ve shown repeatedly that I can explain industry technical topics in clear and understandable language. In my experience, there are people who have a lot of technical knowledge, and there are people who have the ability to write clearly about it, but there are relatively few who have both. That package of abilities is worth something in the marketplace to the right clients. My job is to find clients who need that package and who are prepared to pay accordingly.
• This is forcing me to finally market myself more widely and look for a diverse client base, which is a good thing. Better to have 10 clients who give you regular work in small doses than two who give you big paychecks. This web site wasn’t making me rich, but it was going a long way toward financing my fiction writing and the costs that entails (again, the conventions; marketing materials I bring to conventions, such as CDs of my podiobooks, business cards, etc.; printing and postage costs when I send out manuscripts; software — you get the picture.) Losing that source of revenue presents a challenge. I don’t want to finance my fiction writing out of the income from my day job, so I have to replace the lost revenue from other sources.

Writing this now, a day after I got the email, I have a little perspective. When I was first trying to move to Syracuse 27 years ago, it took me from May until January to find a job. I was relatively fresh out of college, and the job I eventually got was as a mailroom clerk, but that led to a succession of other jobs in the company that launched my career. I spent 14 years at that company. When I was 37, the company eliminated my job and I spent seven months looking for work, eventually landing one for half the pay at a company outside my industry. Two years later, that company imploded in the wake of the dot-com bust and 9/11 and I was out of work for another seven months. My search took me to my present employer and a job that I love.

The point of this story is that: 1) I still carry scar tissue from those long days of job hunting, and even a minor rejection like the one I got yesterday awakens all those emotions I felt when I was unemployed. 2) I overcame those terrible setbacks (and they were terrible; I don’t wish unemployment on anyone) and came out better for it. If I keep my head on straight, the same will happen this time.

And this time, I’m not taking it personally. It’s business. I’m in business for myself, and I make daily decisions about how to spend my business’s money. That’s all the owner of this web site has done. Good luck to him. Good luck to me.

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I have a few lame excuses good reasons:

• I’ve had a fairly steady flow of freelance work. Unlike my fiction so far, freelance articles have tended to result in checks showing up in my mailbox. Therefore, I seem to work on them first.
• Between press releases, blog posts and newsletter articles, I do a lot of writing for my day job. Many nights, I feel like I have nothing left in the tank for fiction.
• I don’t get as much done in the mornings as I’d like. My alarm goes off at 5:30. I then mutter a few profane words and hit the snooze button. After a second alarm and more profanity, I get up. By the time I’ve poured coffee, fired up the laptop, shaken off the cobwebs and done a certain amount of high-priority stuff like checking email and Facebook, it’s 6:00. This gives me roughly 30 minutes to get creative before a certain floppy-eared friend with a wet nose and sad eyes starts looking for her morning walk. Sometimes I get in a groove in that half hour, other times not so much.
• I’m not taking advantage of other free time opportunities like I should. Most of my lunch times are free, but I haven’t done as much writing during them as I could have. At home, the siren song of the TV and the hypnotic pull of Twitter make it oh so easy to ignore Mur Lafferty’s voice in my ear saying, “You should be writing.”

Okay, really this all boils down to procrastination. Guess what: Writing good stories is hard. It takes concentration, mental and physical energy, and discipline. Often, when the angel on my shoulder reminds me that I need to work on my book, the devil on the other shoulder says, “I don’t wanna! It’s too hard!” Funny thing: The book hasn’t written itself. Right now, the house is still haunted, the people are still in peril, and my protagonist is still up the proverbial creek without a paddle. This can’t be a great deal of fun for him, and I half expect to open Scrivener some morning to find that he’s left me a nasty message about getting off my butt and finishing the damn book.

Ironically, WordPress is telling me that this blog post is now up to almost 500 words. It’s not 500 words for the book; just 500 words to explain to you why I’m not writing 500 words for the book. See, my fingers can move across the keyboard when they want. They just need my mind to supply them with the will.

I am going to finish this book. It would be wonderful if I could do so before Dragon*Con next month, but one way or another, I will finish it. You heard it here first.

I’ll get right on it at 5:30 tomorrow morning.

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Good for her, but that’s not what I want to talk about tonight. I don’t often watch cooking shows, though I went through a heavy Emeril phase 10 years or so ago. I really don’t cook that often (but I make this really kickass spicy spaghetti sauce; even my boys like it.) So I’m kind of oblivious to the artistic side of cooking, and that was something that jumped out at me as I was watching Master Chef tonight.

I’ve never really thought of cooking as a creative endeavor, at least not in the way that writing or painting or musical composition are. When I make my spaghetti sauce, my major goal is to make the vegetables soft and keep the noodles from clumping together. But the chefs on this show were just as concerned with presentation as they were with flavor — “plating,” they called it (I’m picking up the lingo.) The look of the dish is at least as important as how it tastes. Of course, on some level I knew that; everyone has received a plate of something and thought, “This looks like the product of a really bad head cold.” We all know how inviting some dishes can be and how repulsive others can be. But I learned from watching this show that, for a professional chef, the presentation of the food is a creative statement, a work of art.

In that way, cooking is like writing. As a writer, I try to evoke an emotional response from the reader — laughter, fear, sadness, excitement, whatever. It occurs to me that chefs are trying to do the same thing when they choose the colors for a dish and the arrangement of the garnish and the way they sprinkle sauces around a plate.

This is probably obvious to most people, but I’ve never looked at it that way before, and I find it fascinating. The next time I go to a fine dining restaurant (it happens once or twice a year,) I’ll pay a little more attention to the presentation of the dish before I devour it, and I’ll be a little more aware of how it makes me feel. It’s a whole new dimension of dining for me. I like that; it feels like I’ve learned something new.

Of course, the next dining establishment I patronize will probably be one of the local ice cream stands. I don’t care about the presentation of a hot fudge sundae. Give me lots of fudge and whipped cream and I’m good. Some things surpass artistic considerations.

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That saxophone has gone silent far too soon, but the man behind it left us a wealth of music to enjoy and marvel at. Thank you for the music, Clarence, and rest in peace.

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If my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine

I feel like that a lot.

Also, the blog was overdue for a new theme. I quite like this one. It displays the links better, and the graphic looks…reflective, I guess. Anyway, I’ll go with this for the time being. Let me know what you think.

It’s alright Ma.

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The Hidden Institute — Brand Gamblin

I’ve met Brand a couple of times at Balticon, and never having listened to his previous book Tumbler (something I must rectify soon), I decided to give his new work a try. It’s the story of a lower-class boy named Cliffy who catches a wealthy nobleman in a situation that the nobleman would much rather keep out of the press. To buy his silence, the man offers Cliffy a free education at a special school; Cliffy, who lives pretty much in squalor with his destitute father, quickly accepts.

My first reaction to this premise was, “This sounds a bit like a certain series of books about a boy wizard.” However, this school is no Hogwarts. The place is built entirely below ground. The headmaster is packing heat and uses it to discipline unruly students. Each boy (only boys attend) has a robot for a man-servant. Students who fail at their studies are dispatched…permanently (to quote The Eagles, “You can check out any time you like…”)

The school prepares boys for careers as servants to the upper class, but it’s more sinister than it first appears. Danger lurks both inside and outside the school’s boundaries. Spoiled rich girls hunt for the students at parties, hoping to expose them as frauds. A mysterious legion of boys that carry a special mark trains for dark missions. When Cliffy (the protagonist) and his best friend mishandle an appearance at a ball, the disciplinarian at the school makes Harry Potter’s Professor Snape look like a teddy bear.

This is a straight read, not a full-cast production, and that’s fine. The author is more than capable of voice the different characters in distinct ways. The story starts with seemingly low-conflict scenes like Cliffy arriving at school, getting his hair cut, taking a bath, etc., but all of a sudden I found myself caught up in the story and asking that question every writer wants his readers to say: What happens next?

The recording is clean and a pleasure to listen to. I only have a few episodes left, and I’ll be sorry for it to end.

Dreaming of Deliverance — R.E. Chambliss

R.E. Chambliss’s debut novel Dreaming of Deliverance at first listen reminded me of Starla Huchton’s excellent The Dreamer’s Thread, but, like The Hidden Institute, it has a darker edge. Lindsay Paulson is a young, bright woman in her mid-twenties doing 10 years in a California correctional facility for a drug offense. Her only escape from prison life is sleep, but this escape takes an unexpected turn when she begins visiting a different world. Though she thinks she’s dreaming, she wakes in the mornings with physical signs of her journeys.

The people of the land she visits view her as a sort of savior, someone to rescue them with her powers. Trouble is, Lindsay has no idea what they’re talking about or how she’s getting there. Worse, when she awakes back in the prison, she’s not sure whether she’s actually traveling to this land or if she’s losing her mind.

I’m only about a fifth or so of the way through this one, but I’m already enjoying it immensely. Chambliss has managed to construct two vivid worlds — the dreary and hopeless setting of a women’s prison and a pastoral world where leaders who have been mutilated as part of their preparation are assigned to communities. The residents of this world are welcoming but fearful, and they’re looking to Lindsay for help. Whether and how she will do that should make for a fascinating ride.

As with The Hidden Institute, this is a straight read, but the author does the different character voices so well that I sometimes forget that it’s only one person behind the mic (her voices of Lindsay’s fellow inmates at the prison are especially fun.) I read on the author’s Web site that she records inside her children’s play tent (as a parent, I love the image of this), and it paid off in terms of a clean, very listenable recording.

A holiday weekend is coming up soon here in the U.S., and a lot of people will hop in their cars for long road trips. If you’re looking for good podiobooks to pass the time on the highway, look no further than these two titles.

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Put simply, I’m tired. I know a lot of people travel more than that, but I’m not used to it. My duties back in my office don’t pause while I’m on the road (though I do get badly needed help, especially from my manager,) so I’m writing press releases and answering research requests in the morning and teaching four-hour classes in the afternoon. Or I’m giving a speech in the evening, answering emails in my hotel room that night, then giving the same speech in another city the next morning. Or answering research requests from the airport Thursday and during breaks in my meeting yesterday.

I know this probably sounds like whining to those of you accustomed to working 60 hour weeks. Sorry. March’s schedule has left me with little time or energy to write either fiction or non-fiction. I completely blew my self-imposed deadline for finishing the ghost hunter novel by February 28, and I didn’t make up much lost time in March. This is frustrating, to say the least. On top of that, I’ve done next to nothing extra for Lent, which is supposed to be a time of spiritual re-dedication, so I need to focus on that. I am also working on a personal self-improvement program in fits and starts in the hope of making some badly needed changes to myself. In short, I feel like I’m juggling a lot of balls, and all these days spent bonding with the New York State Thruway have had me juggling with both hands only occasionally free.

I’m rewarding myself with a couple of days off next week, and I plan to spend some of that time getting back on the writing bandwagon, among other things. I may take a break from the novel to try a short story. It might be helpful to step away from the novel for something different, and I’d still like to have something new to podcast before the end of the Parsec eligibility period. It’s shameless, I know, but I want to have something to enter, even if it doesn’t become a finalist. You can’t compete if you don’t enter, and if I don’t try to compete, I won’t know how I compare to my peers. The Parsec competition may be a very imperfect indicator of my path as a writer, but it’s a handy one, so I want to be in it.

So with no more travel on the horizon until late May, I expect myself to be a more productive writer, spend more time and energy improving my spiritual life, and dedicating myself to becoming a better person. I badly need to do all three. Now that I’ve publicly said this, I’ll feel obligated to give a progress report in 30 days. Stay tuned.

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• While it’s cold outside, the sky is pure blue, the sunshine is bright, and absolutely nothing is falling from the sky.
• The white chocolate mocha (non-fat) that I’m drinking right now.
• The sound of Miles Davis’s trumpet in my ears right now.
• That I’m healthy enough to spend 47 minutes on the treadmill this morning, running 4.75 miles.
• How awesome the hot shower felt after said workout.
• The way my muscles feel the rest of the day after a workout like that.
• A really good pancake breakfast this morning to benefit the varsity baseball team’s trip to Myrtle Beach (I had seconds, thus negating some of the benefit of afore-mentioned workout.)
• Get to watch my son’s basketball team play for the league championship tonight.
• My dog is 95% recovered from her disk problems of last year, wants me to walk her every morning, and amuses us with her addiction to soft chicken-flavored dog biscuits.
• Someone is willing to pay me for the freelance article I should be writing right now instead of blogging.
• Msgr. Hagerty’s homily at Mass this morning. I’ve bitched about other homilies on this blog before, so it’s only fair that I recognize one that meant a lot to me.

Enough for now. To quote Professor Lafferty, “I should be writing.”

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Of course, I recorded the interview and the intro and outro before I listened to episode #4 of Book 3 of Cowry Catchers, in which several male slaves are brought up short and Silveo is left speechless. Having listened to that, I’m both a great admirer of her writing and a little bit afraid of her. (Just kidding, Abbie.)

Abbie Hilton’s contact information:

The Prophet of Panamindorah (young adult series)

The Guild of the Cowry Catchers

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Promo: SpecFicMedia.com

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