football season

It's almost coming up on football season.

Real football.

Not the kind played with pads and helmets, oxygen masks on the sidelines, cheerleaders so the fans don't get bored, and action that lasts for about 15 seconds at a stretch before resting for two-and-a-half minutes. It's almost time to start playing rugby.

I'm not here to start any fights with gridiron football enthusiasts. There's plenty of room in this world for your underrepresented game. Heck, I understand they actually have a sport where they slide big rocks across ice up in Canada. But guess what? They play pretty damn good rugby up there, too.

in between days

When I'm in-between projects is when I get the craziest, but I guess that's where the ideas come from. The last one was hard to get away from because I got so involved in it that I sent my wife and kids away on vacation so I could work alone. And when I was finished and put it away, it was kind of like a burial or something; so I just wanted to get myself back into work... on anything... just to try to get my head back. Like I said in an earlier post, I definitely do not love writing... in fact, I'm pretty sure I hate it. But the alternative is unbearable.

What of all those wayward priests?
The ones who like to drink
Do you suppose they'd swap their blood for wine
Like you swapped yours for ink, for ink

-- Johnny Flynn, The Wrote & The Writ

on not getting it

There's lots of things I don't get. That's why there's so much ambiguous stuff in my books. Maybe it's 'cause I don't watch TV. I don't know.

There's lots of things I suck at. I can't play video games. When one of my friends asks me to play him in (insert name here, I don't know any of them), I usually say -- and I mean this, truly, in the most non-sexist way -- that I play video games like a little girl throws a baseball. Except for Wii Tiger Woods. I own at that. Well, as long as I'm playing my eleven-year-old daughter, who is, like, the only person I can beat. And then, when I beat her, I say, "You know why I won? Because you SUCK!!!"

Then she cries.

Okay, I'll be honest. I don't beat her. And I don't say that, either.

But I would if I could beat her.

She says it to me.

When I was a kid, I lived on Bainbridge Island in Washington. I used it as part of the setting in the novel I just finished writing. In fact, I've been house-hunting there. I showed my wife and kids pictures of what it's like there, how we used to take the ferry across to Seattle. I told her that, when I was small, my dad would scare me by holding me over the rail and dangling me above the Puget Sound.

My wife said, "No wonder you're so twisted. I can't believe he could get away with that around Nana (my mom)."

I said, "He'd only do it when Nana wasn't looking."

I never really thought that I got my twisted streak from Dad. But, oh well.

The other kind of game I totally suck at is the mind-game. Just don't get it, but for some reason, there are certain people who think I am always on the ready at the opposite end of the court. Go figure.

Oh. I got a really nice comment from a friend about the pictures on this blog. Yes, I take them all. I just booked a trip out of the country with my family coming up later this Fall, so I should get some cool ones then, too.

eight eight eight

I work with some of the coolest people imaginable.

First of all, I have this paper hanging on my wall behind the computer that says, "What would Liz do?" Liz is my editor, and she is kind of seriously amazing. And just thinking about that question helps keep me on track when I'm writing and revising my work. It definitely makes things easier, and I could not have paid for a better writer's education anywhere in the world than I've gotten from her.

The other thing is that she can just write one sentence, or one question to me... and it's like I know exactly what I have to do for an entire book as far as the editorial direction is concerned. At least, I think I do. I could be wrong... but, then again, I am a moron, anyway.

Yesterday, Liz sent me a kind of cryptic email, telling me to look for my mail today. This afternoon, a delivery truck pulled up and I got the first-ever copy of Ghost Medicine, hard-bound... not a galley, not a screen image... the real thing.

I'll be honest, it's kind of scary.

Oh well... back to work.

Thanks Liz.

the streak

I try to stay sane by running, but I don't know if it's working. Lately, I've been getting in about 5 or 6 miles per day.

I’m a streak runner. Not like what they did in the 70s, though.

Streak runners run every day, no matter what... rain, snow, fires, whatever. With my current streak, I haven't missed a day in more than eight years. It’s an unfortunate kind of addiction, I guess, because sometimes -- like if I have a plane to catch or just a really busy day -- it might mean getting out for a run at 3 AM, a time when some of my friends are just going to bed.

You see things at 3 AM that you’d never see in the daytime. Where I live, that means seeing things like mountain lions or bobcats and deer, stuff like that. And on really warm nights, I’m always afraid I’ll end up stepping on a rattlesnake. A runner friend of mine did that once, and got bit.

I could carry a flashlight, but that's not very cool-looking, and I kind of like the potential dangers I can't see.

twenty-four hours

Okay. So I finished my work, and right on time. Exactly when I said I would do it. Then I said I was going to take a week off and not write so I could clear my head before working on the edits for in the path of falling objects. Well, the week got shortened down to about 24 hours and I was back at something new today.

I couldn't do it. I was going crazy and pissing people off.

That's it. So here we go.

love, pee, and ink

Okay... I'll be honest, and I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings or make anyone feel defensive, but every time I hear someone say how much they LOVE to write, I kind of throw up a little bit in the back of my throat and then everything smells exactly like barf for about fifteen minutes.

I do not love to write.

Let me explain. I just finished writing, then revising, and rewriting an 84,000-word novel in five weeks. It was a lot of work, many hours every day, and while I definitely didn't suffer while doing it, I didn't love it, either.

I suppose I could no more LOVE writing than I could LOVE to urinate.

Not peeing = exploding.

Not writing = exploding.

Do not make the following false assumption:

writing = peeing

It does not, trust me. If it did, my incontinent dog would have a freakin' Pulitzer.