I’ve updated my bio, added links to my special personal projects, and generally freshened up the content around the site.

In the interim since my last post, I’ve had a couple of big, important things happen:

On March 1st, I published the NINTH ISSUE of Luna Station Quarterly. I’m so proud and humbled (can you be both?) to present the stories to the world.

Then, on March 2nd, I was interviewed by Katherine Tomlinson for her “Feminist Fiction Friday” feature on her blog. I had a wonderful time answering her in-depth questions about LSQ and my own writing.

And I’m so pleased to announce that I’ll be launching a new endeavor on May 1st. I don’t want to give too many details away just yet, but I will say that it’s going to expand upon my mission with Luna Station in new and exciting ways.

So, with all that news out of the way, I invite you to watch this space carefully for coming news!

as i did last year, i’ll be working on a story that has already been started. last year it was a new work, this year it’s my 2007 NaNo-winning novel that’s been under heavy editing for the last couple of months. i’m not really setting a word count goal, though reaching the 50k would be awesome. instead, i’m just going to add as much new material as possible.

regardless of my own word count, though, i’m there to also cheer on those around me. at least one of my writer friends is digging in again, and i’m hoping to recruit a few more or find the ones that have already signed up.

i’m also taking the next ten days or so to get my house in order and clear a few decks for this. priority lies with my design portfolio, which has languished far too long in a half-completed state.

i’m hoping that next year i can do NaNo properly, but for now, i’m just happy to participate and tap into all that wonderful, crazy, creative energy.

you’ve always wanted to write that novel idea floating around your head, haven’t you? c’mon! join me! i dare you! www.nanowrimo.org

happiness is awesome and you should ride it as long as it lasts. hope will keep you going, even when things really suck.

eureka moments often come when you least expect them. sometimes they come when you go looking for them, too. the last couple of days have been spent in the wake of one of those moments. more precisely, there were about 60 of them, taken in the form of the interview linked above (the embed was disabled).

after watching that, my head was aswim with ideas on the process of self-actualization, creativity, and what it means to be a human being in this world. the next time i sat down to write, i had to take a look at what i was working on and ask myself a couple of hard questions.

“is this worthy of the idea that i had when i started?”

“where did the energy, the dangerous edge, of my initial draft go?”

“is there a way to fix it, to bring it back from the dead without it feeling like a zombie?”

i came up with answers. some of them i didn’t want to acknowledge and some i accepted readily. no, it wasn’t worthy of the original idea and i knew quite well where the energy had gone. i had strapped it down and ripped out its soul when i tried to make it into a traditional narrative. plain and simple and easy to recognize and acknowledge.

it was fixable, too, but this was the part i didn’t want to face. it meant rewriting. again. but if i wanted to keep going, to finish it and see what it can become, i had to do it. so i started from the top, pulling chunks of the original first draft back in, making the ‘danger edition’. i know what the themes are underlying this story, but when i sit to write, i don’t think about them. you can’t or the story becomes heavy-handed and the theme becomes the story itself rather than what it’s about.

anyway, there’s work ahead of me and sometimes it will make me happy and sometimes i’ll just have to go on hope. that’s okay because i know i’m digging in deep and learning about myself, my voice, my ability to tell a story, and about the world and how the pieces all fit together. that makes it worth writing, even if it never sees the light of day.

http://www.eclecticflash.com/

“There are wolves in there, prowling behind the words. Sometimes they come out in the pages. Sometimes they wait until you close the book. The musky wolf-smell can sometimes be masked by the aromatic scent of rosemary. Understand, these are not today-wolves, slinking grayly in packs through deserted places. These are the dire-wolves of old, huge and solitary wolves that could stand their ground against grizzlies.” – Neil Gaiman on reading Gene Wolfe’s work.

my novel in progress is progressing, sometimes at a good rate, sometimes slowly. this particular first draft is interesting as i’m finally accepting that i’m a ‘discovery’ writer and not knowing what is going to happen is the key to keeping me motivated. i write to find out what happens next. (long hand, yellow legal pads, sharp pencil, btw)

second draft occurs when i transcribe the thing. as i type i edit, changing dialog, tweaking turns of phrase, embellishing to make things more cohesive, more descriptive, just ‘more better’, as it were.

that’s when the skeleton wolf, the one that is tentative and a bit timid as i find my way through the narrative, gets to finally roam free, growing flesh and sinew and blood and becoming whole, revealing the power and flow within its potential. and possibly ripping my throat out in the process.

i know a lot of other writers detest the editing process, they fly, wings spread wide in the first draft, which is great if you can pull it off. for me, the poetry has to have a form to hang its skin on. story shapeshifting, in my world, is a bloody, messy process and without those bones to build on, it would all turn to dead meat on a slab instead of a living, breathing thing.

so right now, my wolf is docile as a puppy, sniffing my hand when i offer it, following along as we wander the paths of narrative. but he’s growing fast, and before i know it i’ll have to start watching out as the playful nips turn into serious bites.

i just can’t wait until his big boy teeth grow in.

Please enjoy them!

The reason for my extended absence, though, was not that I was wallowing in a pit of despair having failed to meet that November 30th deadline. No, instead I became gainfully and full-time employed once more and the period of adjustment back to the working world was a bit longer than expected.

So, I am now revving up the writing machine again and I’m ready to see what comes out next.

I’ll be posting a few more stories up here, having published in Dark Valentine Magazine and Eternal Haunted Summer in the recent interim. I’m proud of both works and pleased as punch that they were seen by a larger audience. I highly recommend both publications, they publish stellar work.

I’m also looking forward to getting more of my work out into the world. Towards that end, I’ll be editing more of the 52 short stories I wrote last year and sending them off. I’m also working on a number of essays, mostly on web design, that I’ll be publishing online and reposting here as well.

And I’ll be sure to keep you all updated here on a more regular basis in the future.

I’m still working to find the story, to explore the characters, and to figure out how they’re all going to get from point a to point b. This is a good thing. It means I did nowhere near enough planning and I’m flying by the seat of my pants. That’s when the good stuff starts to happen.

Seems I work best when I only know the next one or two steps, but no further. Also helpful? Having three main protagonists. If I get bored or stuck with one, I can always jump to another. I think that was my problem with the last NaNo I did, I only had one main storyline going on and when I got stuck there was nothing to do but wait for the next bit to come to me.

But for now, I’ve written enough for today and I’m off to get some sleep.

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