Slouching Towards Spring, Waiting To Be Born

Another progress report, accompanied by random photos. Blame it on the weather.

It looks more like May in April. Which makes sense, because it’s been more like April in March. I could use the break on the heating fuel bill, so there’s that. Note the tornado icon at top with the temperature. That’s what the widget shows by default when it’s not working. It’s almost as startling as Saturday’s predicted high and low, which are early summer numbers.

WEATHER REPORT
My wife and I like to joke (so much as we can joke about it) that this has been the hardest easy winter we’ve ever seen. For all it felt like those post-Christmas, dead-of-winter blues were going to smother us, in terms of general Colorado high country weather, it’s been preternaturally warm.

Even along the Front Range where we used to live, we would have periods of zero degrees Fahrenheit and lower during the winter. Those days can go for weeks at a time here in the San Luis Valley. As for the winter of 2017-18, we may have had a couple of near-zero events, but nothing memorable. The La Niña phenomenon in the North Pacific Ocean tends to affect winters in Colorado this way, though, so don’t expect a screed on “global warming/climate change” here. This is just that kind of year. 

Indeed, I’m grateful for the warmth, if wary of the dry conditions that come with this. I’ve stood at the picture windows at sunset celebrating every extra minute we’re getting with each passing day. It’s great to feel good for a change.

This is like 80°F in north Minnesota in February. Unusual, but that doesn’t mean “never.”

ON THE PROGRESS OF THE FINAL NOVEL IN MY ZOMBIE ACTION-ADVENTURE SERIES
As always, it seems to be two steps forward, one step back, then another step back, then three steps forward, and then something else when it comes to finishing my latest novel. Over the last couple of weeks, it’s been one-half page forward, two pages back.

This is the best development to happen in a long time. 

I’m at a very difficult part of The Wrong Kind of Dead. I’ve transported my main characters from the thick of the flesh-eating undead mobs to a remote sanctuary in the Wyoming mountains, where our heroes learn that even some television sitcoms remain in production for the pleasure of the overclass, for whom the Black Resurrection was merely a matter of inconvenience.

These parts of a zombie story, in which the living protagonists change venue, adjusting to new human antagonists by way of setting up for the final confrontation involving the living dead, are stupid-tricky, for reasons you can see for yourself watching TV’s The Walking Dead. The narrative can bog down in a thick, gray mud of who’s-mad-at-whom, what’s-this-shady-character-up-to? soap opera. The living dead, when they show up, aren’t so much objects of mortal terror, they are a relief.

Thank goodness, you finally made it! They’ve been arguing with each other all season, DO SOMETHING!

Here, I have an separate, alien world to build in the midst of an uncanny valley. I’m already playing with one touchy theme, now I’m playing with some serious metaphorical/ philosophical nerve agents here. The charges must be set just so, and quickly. At the end of the day this is an action-adventure novel set in the zombie post-apocalypse. The audience must never be permitted to forget this.

I had a story bible started for all of my books. I’ve only detailed them so far. It’s time to detail them a little more. All aspects of the three-book narrative arc must harmonize.

Above is the complete guide to Chapter 1. I’m not giving that much away here, but you can see where I set rules regarding portrayals of the zombies, along with initial themes I’m playing with. Each chapter description opens and closes with the opening and closing sections of the chapter. Isolating them thus from the manuscript has enabled many an improvement on these transitions.

This has occasioned yet another reading of the complete manuscript, which has resulted in two pages of it falling away. Striking redundant sentences and punching up the action made for a far more powerful narrative. I’m still combing through the earlier chapters while adding onto the latest. So far, everything is making sense beyond those points where this book and the one before it went off the rails in the past.  

It’s great to feel great about my writing for a change. Everything is up and running at optimum. Best of all, this book, along with the rest of the trilogy, will have legs. For years to come The SAGA OF THE DEAD SILENCER will be the kind of story by which other zombie stories will be judged. I certainly hope to have people working harder at them. A little effort goes a long way towards keeping things fresh and fun, especially in a limited genre like this one.

Speaking of fun....

This might have been the place to put a photo of me sitting at my desk looking thoughtful, but I’m a mess.

SOCIAL MEDIA FUN
Given the controversies surrounding the Internet-ancient institutions of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, I’ve been looking at expanding to the emergent alternatives. I have a Minds.com account, but I’ve done very little posting to it. Frankly, I’m still not sure what to do with it. No one I know is there. What do I even talk about among these total strangers? It’s the same problem I have starting a podcast.

I’m grateful these backups are there, though. (Just off the top of my head, see also: Spreaker, Hooktube, Gab, Voat, Bitchute.) I don’t see myself giving up on the Big Three until I’m forced to, although I am making changes to how I do business with them. For instance, Facebook has been too handy for keeping up with people I like keeping tabs on. Over the years, I’ve accumulated a few...I don’t know if I could call them “fans,” or what. They’re good people, though, so I’m not ghosting them. 

It was a week or so ago, however, that I noticed birthdays for people on my Friends list coming up—and I had completely forgotten these people even existed. Going through my list, I found half a dozen deactivated accounts. Many of the rest were simply inactive. That was an easy pruning job.

I did come to wonder why I was still Friends with some people, though. I wondered why I bothered with some groups.

This pruning was not done so cavalierly. However, I did welcome the opportunity to reflect upon whom and what I want in my life. I’ve been through more changes in my general outlook and attitude in this sixth decade of my life than any other time in my existence, most of them in the last two years. This is a spring cleaning years overdue. 

This, too, feels good. So much lighter and freer. 

“There’s a feeling I get/When I look to the West/And my spirit is crying for”...breakfast, as I cross an uncharacteristically empty US 160 in downtown Monte Vista. It’s an early Wednesday morning in April, though. It’ll fill with cross-Valley traffic soon enough. In seven weeks, come Memorial Day Weekend, it’ll be wall-to-wall campers and RVs.

 

FIRST THREE PODCASTS OUTLINED
I tried writing scripts for these things. It proved to be a fun exercise in stream-of-consciousness, write-like-you-talk composition for all of two pages before I realized it wasn’t going to work. What might be fun to write would be drudgery to read. 

I might read off some short pieces already here on the blog for added content—provide, provide, as the poet advised—but to script an entire half-hour show is just more than I care to do. Moreover, I’ll need to do 45-minute to hour-long shows if I care to hit to hit the big time with this, which I need to do to pay these bills. That’s a lot of pages of script to be writing when I should be writing my novel, or blogposts.

So, based on a couple of other podcasts I’m studying, I’ve got the sections mapped out. I don’t even have to record the pieces in order. Select a topic, put down the bullet points I need to elaborate upon, and go. It’s more than I ever did when I was in Toastmasters. My best speeches for them, as enjoyable for myself as it was my audience, was when I got up with just the vaguest outline in my head. Honestly, it wasn’t even an outline. I had a couple of ideas, and I simply improvised with what I knew. 

The irony here that almost makes me laugh—it’s more pathetic than funny—is that, if there’s one thing I learned in Toastmasters, I don’t enjoy public speaking as much as I’d thought I did.  Moreover, unlike years past, I don’t feel the urge to share my opinions, even with friends.

It’s taken long decades to come to this blessed state. I can only imagine how much more successful I’d be as a working American citizen if I’d come to this peculiar mental state sooner. Now I have to turn that around. That is, if I want to be successful as an author and, by necessary extension, Internet personality. 

Which I must. I’ve got bills to pay. Time to be a song-and-dance man again. It never was enough to be an author, after all.

Any day now. I have a feeling April 2018 is going to be one of those life-changing affairs.

A long road across flat, dusty, grease-grassed high valley floor to...DESTINY.  Or something.