Gray Daze

We got a nice snowfall in Colorado Springs last night; we got more this afternoon. At least the temperatures are reasonable, none of this single-digits and teens madness. It’s the end of January, better known as “the dead of winter” here in the Northern Hemisphere, so all is as it should be. I’ll be complaining about the heat soon enough. 

That said, I haven’t seen it snow this hard since I lived in Anchorage. We’ve been long overdue for a good dumping in Colorado Springs. I’d feel a lot better about it if I didn’t have to pick my daughter up after work. Or work a photo shoot all day tomorrow. 

With luck, that’s all canceled. Between the Great Purging of my closet and Act III of Grace Among the Dead, I’ve got too much to do. These are scenes I captured pointing and shooting the camera while driving northbound on I-25 into north Colorado Springs. This is before the next band came through that dropped another three to four inches on my neighborhood.

Of course, the prettiest sight for me is from the warmth of my living room, looking out the picture window.

So. Are you snowed in? Would you like a little apocalyptic adventure? With zombies? In a warm, summery setting? Have I got a book for you.

I’ll be re-posting the excerpts from Bleeding Kansas I ran earlier last year, so don’t panic if you’re a longtime reader (i.e., since last year) and see anything familiar on the blog.

It’s the weekend. February Eve. Super Bowl weekend.  Our passage across that part of the year I call the Void continues. We’ll all be complaining about the wildfires and heat before we know it. Trust me.

BLEEDING KANSAS Kindle Re-Launch Is GO!

After a few weeks off the Kindle market Bleeding Kansas is back in black:

I note with bemused satisfaction that this is the book’s third cover, along with the original and the German-language version available from Luzifer-Verlag. What I especially like about this, though, is the text within has been digitally remastered from the original Word 2010 files, with most of the noise and hiss removed. The prickly observations Derek Grace made about his fellows in the first edition that so many found offensive are gone. A scene involving the death of a special needs child that readers also found distasteful was removed. 

In sanding down the edges, I believe I have a better story here. Derek Grace is still a man undergoing a rather catastrophic career change in a bad economy gone worse, but the bitterness that informed the author when the book was first written has since dissipated. The book moves a lot faster for the shed baggage.

That said, if you prefer a jaded antihero making running color commentary in a shamelessly cruel post-apocalyptic landscape, the original, unexpurgated story is still available, if only in paperback. For $11.98 USD ($8.99 paperback + $2.99 Kindle) you can compare and contrast the two narratives and make up your own mind what works better.

All arguments aside, I expect the $2.99 Kindle price point to do the deciding for most people. And I’m fine with that. Especially the “all arguments aside” part. 

Thanks to the good people at Severed Press, Bleeding Kansas is back and better than ever, from the front cover to the very last page. Now to get back to work finishing that long overdue sequel....

Transitioning in the Void

“We begin again, constantly.” —Robert Fripp

Spring doesn’t start in my part of Colorado
until May. It’s all windstorms and cold snaps
until Memorial Day.

What a week. One month out from Christmas, the New Year no longer new, we begin again.

I like to think it all began (again) on Thursday, a morning of minor catastrophes. First off, the coffee maker went kaput. A Black & Decker I bought in August 2012, not even 18 months old. Just refused to work.

My son was being surly to his mother, which means I hear it from my wife. It had snowed overnight, leaving three inches to drive through in 16-degree Fahrenheit cold. No coffee to warm the insides.

Once Surly Boy was off at school (after a stern, “You don’t talk to your mother that way” from me) my wife went and got a Mr. Coffee. A little more expensive, but at least our last Mr. Coffee machine made it for five years. As luck would have it I didn’t have to go into work until noon. Everything worked out, if a little later and crankier than we all would have liked. Still, going into work was a relief.

It’s been a rough month for the blog. Especially as I’ve had nothing to talk about but work and how I’ve been looking forward to the end of the temp gig so I can get back to my writing. As of yesterday, that finally came to an end. Six weeks, through Christmas and New Year’s, all the way through the penultimate week of January. A lot later than I expected to work, for which I am grateful, because I shudder to think what our bank balance would look like if I wasn’t drawing checks every week.


So now I’m free. Free to hit the ground running.

Except I’m not. As always, I have to ease slowly into my groove. I’m taking my time as fast as I can, very conscious that we’re only 11 months away from next Christmas, and things need to be radically different already by summer.

Here’s to starting over. We begin again, constantly.

Grammar Nazis and Other Mindless Zombies

You may have seen this screenshot of a tweet: 

Zombies can help us with our grammar! Clickbait FTW!

Now why on earth does anyone need “to ID the passive voice?” Here’s another screenshot to explain that:

Click this to go to the original page. Lots of grammarly goodness there.

It’s something you concern yourself with as a writer, though not as much as some would think. I don’t sweat it, myself. Passive voice reads clunky so it filters out easily in my cycles of writing and editing. 

I’ve noticed a lot of wannabe Serious Critics get their panties in a wad over the passive voice, though, as if its use was some sort of mortal sin. Indeed, the admission of its usefulness in the above screenshot is so rare, it’s practically unique, which is why I chose it. No, seriously, use the passive voice once and these losers lose their minds. Your narrative is cursed.

While it’s good to know there are people out there who take such matters as grammar seriously (yes, someone’s got to do this), I can state as a longtime writer who has written for newspapers, zines, written a book, etc., that a lawyerly obsession with grammar does not get the most important thing of all done: finishing the piece. 

Before I leave this subject I have to note my amusement with the people I’ve seen in cyberbully mobs and/or very cliquish forums who will parse the comments of a dissenter for typos or grammatical errors. These people really belive they’re not only humiliating their target when they find a misplaced apostrophe, but winning the argument for no other reason than because they type more carefully.

Thank goodness such people are few. A society that tolerated the breath of enough such martinets would rightfully condemn itself to any number of excruciatingly painful apocalypses.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got an apocalypse of my own to finish. You grammar Nazis can tell me all about it after you’ve bought the book. Writers gotta write. Grammar Nazis gotta...well,  you get the picture.

For My Wife on Her Birthday

Lots of people have tried imitating The Beatles and for the most part they fail. They think it’s the harmonies, or the song structure. Or maybe both! They’re idiots, and in the course of attempting to write a mediocre Beatles song they fail at songwriting altogether.

Here, Lenny Kravitz shows he paid attention while the Beatles were playing. He captures the essence of the individual personalities of the band, from Paul McCartney’s alternately wandering and propulsive, always independently minded bass, to Ringo’s almost painfully slow attack on the drums. The surprise B-flat chord in the coda demands we sing along.

What seals the deal is Lenny Kravitz makes it all his. This isn’t a corny homage. This is a living, breathing statement of the kind John or George were wont to make. Except this is Lenny’s. Thus, “Let Love Rule” is the best Beatles song that isn’t a Beatles song. For that matter, it’s the only one I’m aware of.

My then future-wife had the cassette tape in her car when we first went out. It was my first exposure to Kravitz, and I was impressed with the rest of his debut album. His follow-up, Mama Said, was even better overall. Kravitz has managed a few stand-out moments since then, but “Let Love Rule” is an early cut on the Soundtrack of Us. You can’t beat the sentimental favorite:

Happy 205th, Mr. Poe

Man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe!

                                               —John Lennon, “I Am the Walrus”

According to a 1971 interview Lennon did with Rolling Stone magazine, Lennon wrote that line because he’d been taken aback by some harsh criticism he’d read of Poe. Seriously, who hates on Edgar Allan Poe? Moreover, why?

Edgar Allan Poe lived only 40 years, had a taste for liquid intoxicants and (really) young women. A regular 19th century Jerry Lee Lewis. Except our good Edgar not only established the genres of macabre fiction, Gothic horror, and the detective story, he codified the principles of the modern short story. 

One may complain of the early 19th century density of his prose, but in the short time Poe was writing he inspired the entire career of French writer Charles Baudelaire. Antipathy towards Poe is jealousy, plain and simple.

His death is a mystery, along with his decision to leave his biographical legacy to a man who hated him. Me, I remember reading an essay in an omnibus edition of Poe’s work, which described how he observed his cat learning how to work the thumb-latch door. I recognized that classic paradox observed in creative types, myself included: a fascination with process, even as we engage in deliberate Rimbaudian derangement of the senses.

Like a boss.

Edgar Allan Poe was more than crumbling houses of Usher, black cats and cannibals and haunted tombs. He was a man interested in things. The reason a lot of so-called writers fail is they’re focused on one or two things occupying the whole of their interest. The overclass of writers like Poe, then Twain, then Whitman, etc., embrace worlds of fascinations.

We do love that spooky stuff, though. Myself, especially. The haters can bother me when one of them writes something as sublimely messed-up as “The Tell-Tale Heart,” or “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Cask of Amontillado.” Thanks for all the tales of mystery and imagination, and Happy Birthday, Mr. Poe! 

Night of the Living Dead Key Ring Tags

I’m cleaning my office, translating the clutter from the futon to the coffee table and back again—then back again. Much is culled in the course of said transfer. Some of this stuff gets dropped in the paper bag I’m carrying out to the recycling bin. A lot more is shredded. The rest gets put into their proper places, one by one.

I found a customer loyalty card I wanted to put on my key ring. I already had a lot of cards on my key ring; I would have to remove a few if I wanted a viable fit.

Imagine my chagrin when I found this:

Then, this:




























I found a couple more cards that were simply snapped in half. The one that really got me, though, was this:

It’s completely white on the other side. There’s no indication of what it once was.

I’ve been walking around with garbage in my pockets all this time, some seriously “sad refuse,” at that. Of course, based on the heft of the bags I’ve been hauling out, it’s safe to say I’ve been living in garbage. Well, Happy New Year, Charlie Brown. No time like the right now to get started on the spring cleaning. 

It’s more than a mere detailing, though. It’s a streamlining. We’re throwing off excess weight and preparing the starship for launch. HALLELUJAH, WE'RE FINALLY GETTING OFF OF THIS GOD-FORSAKEN ROCK!

Whatever pokes along the process, I think, as I haul another load to the trash....