MojoWriter.com

After getting to work today, I found out something awful happened.  A friend and co-worker committed suicide.  He shot himself.  It happened this morning before work.  I guess he just couldn’t cope with his problems, and that was that.  I don’t want to go into details, but his method guaranteed there was no backing out or saving him at the last minute.  He made the final decision, and now he’s gone.

So very sad.

Yesterday evening I received two copies of Apex SF and Horror Digest’s new issue, and inside I found my story Wall Of Delusion. Along with all this came a nice little check.

Groovy.

If you all rush out and buy a copy, which would make both me and the magazine publishers happy, just keep in mind as you read my story that it doesn’t feature my original ending. I had written the story as one of redemption. This publisher, needing a darker ending for their magazine, changed it with my permission. Now it’s more a brooding revenge story.

Still, I hope it entertains. That’s all that really matters.

We got some rain this weekend. Lots of rain.

Lots and lots of rain.

My muse and I were beginning to wonder if we should have been building an arc and inviting all the neighborhood animals over two-by-two. On the news we learned about some people being swept away by a flash flood, and one of them didn’t make it. I think it’s safe to say we got more rain in these last two days than we did during the past six months. We needed it, because the DFW area is in a drought, but we didn’t need it all at once.

Right now it’s bright and sunny outside, and the temperature is beautiful, and at least for a little while all the pollen has been washed out of the air. By tomorrow, I’m sure, it will be back with a vengeance, and I’ll be sneezing my head off again.

During this rainy weekend I picked up a book and am enjoying it immensely. It’s called Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, about a hyper intelligent 9 year old kid who lost his father at the World Trade Center during the 9/11 attacks. I can’t give it a complete thumbs up because, well, I haven’t finished reading it yet, but I have gotten 1/3 the way through and so far, so good. Great even. It takes something extremely well done to even hold my interest anymore.

Life is too short to force yourself to read a novel that doesn’t tickle you all the way through. Same with movies.

Overheard at the office this morning, right after a piercing shriek:

“Oh my God, my son is pregnant! He’s going to have a baby!”

Why does it seem that, the harder I try to achieve peace and harmony, the harder the Universe works to undo it all?

It occurred to me this morning that perhaps I’ve been putting unnecessary effort into this. It’s a complicated thought but let’s see if I can express it simply:

The Universe, from tiny atoms all the way up to galaxies (and that includes you, me, and the world around us) all seek balance. Chaos is a natural state of things while they seek to attain balance. Balance is attained without human intervention.

Fighting to attain a “perceived” balance is therefor futile because you’re adjusting things that are ultimately beyond your control, and upsetting the natural patterns that are trying to form.

So then, we shouldn’t seek balance. The Universe will impose it upon us naturally. We should therefor seek to merely endure chaos until balance attains itself.

How zen is that?

That’s right. I erased it. Spent years working on it, writing three drafts of it out on paper, mind you, PAPER, and then finally got to the point where I typed it into a word processor.

As I typed the manuscript into the word processor, I threw the page I’d just finished into the trash. When the trash filled to overflowing, I threw it out. Then I’d fill it up again.

Garbage trucks came and went. Page by page, my original manuscript migrated to an anonymous landfill.

Then, one fateful afternoon, I finished typing. Done, I thought. Completed. Mission accomplished.

I knew that what I needed to do was back it up the files immediately. I put a lot of work into it, a lot of sweat and blood. The files must be protected! So, I proceeded to inexpertly do this “backup thing” and somehow in the process … I erased it.

The novel was gone. All I had left were the few pages of the last chapter, none of which at that point I had actually used. The novel, in essence, had vanished, like the soul of a loved one who’d just succumbed to eternal slumber.

I couldn’t believe it. I could not believe I’d just erased my freaking novel.

I spent about a week mourning it, and then I sat down at the word processor and thought … well, I know this story frontward and backwards by now … why don’t I just type it out again? And that’s what I did. I typed it all out, from memory, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t turn out a lot better. This time around there was no fussing and fighting with the prose, no tight wedging of things in, no forcing this or that character to do some unnatural thing for the sake of the plot. Why? Because I knew the plot already, I knew from page one EXACTLY what had to be laid out, and when. I knew the characters like they were family. I could see how they’d interact naturally, and was able to realistically portray their growth through the course of the story.

Now, I wouldn’t wish this on any writer. It was agony. But in the end it was worth it, and you know how they say things always happen for a reason.

The novel got picked up by AOL Time-Warner’s new experimental publishing company, iPublish, as one of their first three books. “iPublish” stood for “Internet Publish” because they accepted manuscripts online, and the books were to be made available in electronic and print-on-demand format and marketed on the Internet. I never did like the name “iPublish” because it sounds like “I” published it, as in, vanity press. And the rest of the publishing industry did not seem to like this new concept at all, and people have pretty much thumbed their noses at it ever since. I had an agent once, rather coldly, tell me that having a book at iPublish was not, in fact, what he considered being “published.”

Ouch.

The novel came out in August 2001, and AOL Time-Warner marketed it for about a week. It might have been longer than that, but it doesn’t seem like it. I was asked if I’d go on tour, and if I would be available for TV talk shows. Sure, I said. But besides being interviewed by the NY Times, none of that other stuff ever happened. You can probably guess why.

Next month, on September 11th, America got kicked in the crotch. The nation plunged into war, the economy tumbled, and the publishing industry went into a tail spin. AOL Time-Warner quickly pulled the plug on their little iPublish experiment, putting a lot of talented, forward-thinking people out on the streets, and canceling my contract for a second novel. Fortunately Travels was picked up by Time-Warner’s Aspect imprint, who still handles it today. So even though it says iPublish, it’s Aspect that prints it. [Aspect and Warner Books were just sold, and so now my novel is being handled by Grand Central Publishing.]

I understand a lot of people have little or no respect for POD, or “Print-On-Demand,” but I look at it this way: If this novel had been picked up by a traditional press, there would only have been a limited first run of about 1000 copies. That would have been it. Travels would have been in and out of print in the blink of an eye, and the only way you’d get it now would be to find a rare used copy (rare, because most of them would have no doubt been recycled by now). But thanks to POD, my book is still available, still on Amazon, Barnes & Noble’s, and eBay (in fact a few months ago I found a copy sitting on the shelf of a book store!) and I can continue trying to market it as long as they don’t erase the file.

So as far as I’m concerned, it’s a good thing.

And you can bet, if they ever do decide to erase it … I’ll still have a back up copy!

Microsoft just unveiled it’s new “Live” search engine, and it’s much better than Google.

Why?

Because when you type “jerry davis” into Google, the first thing that pops up is a website called Gerry Davis Sports. WTF? It’s not even spelled right! I’m listed below that.

Type “jerry davis” into Microsoft Live Search, and I pop up at the top of the list.

Therefor Microsoft Live Search is better.

These are the days where I love living in an upstairs apartment overlooking a pond.

I woke up with the birds singing, a nice breeze blowing through the open window. It’s 67 degrees outside, 70 inside, and I can hear my wind chimes. Very serene.

…and then the neighbor’s air conditioner comes on.

Excuse me? What, am I living next door to Mr. Chill? It’s 67 degrees outside! Give me a break!

When that stupid air conditioner kicks on, it’s no longer a peaceful, bird-chirping wind-chiming morning. It’s a big rattling-fan-from-Hell scare-the-birds drown-out-nature kind of morning.

I wonder what would happen if I jam a metal rod down into the fan blades?

I find this strange. Someone has 90 copies of my novel Travels and is selling them on eBay.

They’re not the only ones, either. There’s currently three listings on eBay for my book.

Maybe one of the copies will have a coffee stain on page 42 in the exact shape of the Virgin Mary and will sell for big bucks.