New Year and Old Business (Reading List, Part IV)

Well, good morning, and welcome to 2018, I hope it's a good one for you. Thank you to all of you who come by and spend a few minutes every week with me, and especially those of you who regularly have something to say. I always aim to give you something to come here for, and it's nice to know I'm not just shouting into the void (though I don't think I usually shout).

Speaking of that, early this morning, i.e., at the stroke of midnight, the Catbird and I continued what was a long tradition in my household. After saying "Happy New Year" and giving hugs and kisses, we stepped outside with a couple of pots and wooden spoons and bashed away. When my family did this back when I was a kid, we weren't the only ones to do it: we had a lot of Brooklyn and Queens people who had moved out to Long Island living around us, and it was fun to hear banging and clanging coming from up and down the block. I *think* I heard someone up hear do it once, some years ago, but it might have been the echo from me. Fun to do, even if it was really effing cold.

Took the dog out at 6 am into a morning that was like crystal. Navy blue sky. Lots of stars. Big, just-past-full moon low in the west. It was beautiful. I judged it to be about -14. The thermometer on the back of my house said -24. The National Weathe Service says -10, but their station is 20 miles away, and is at a lower elevation. Either way, it's effing cold. But still beautiful.

I've been off for the last week and a half, courtesy of excess vacation time, a holiday, and a boss who recognizes all the extra hours we put in throughout the year. It's been really nice to be home so much--and I've been hard at work on the WiP. I failed in my goal to have this draft done by Christmas, and I failed at having it done by the end of the year (holiday shopping/prep got in the way, as did a section or two that needed more work than I had initially thought). Right now, I stand at about 52 pages from the end. I don't know if I can make it today, but it should certainly be done by the end of the week. That's a good way to start off a new year!


And now, because this post is already longer than I expected, old business: I give to you the Reading List, Part IV:

Beauty Queens (2011), Libba Bray. Inspired to read this by the news of the all-female remake of Lord of the Flies. Fun at times, but a little heavy-handed in its messaging, and I'm not a fan of books that work at being overly-clever. Then again, I'm not the target audience. It was enjoyable.

Gerald's Game (1992), Stephen King. I haven't read this in a long time. Better than I remembered, though the link between it and Dolores Claiborne was just weird, man.

The Time Traveler's Wife (2003), Audrey Niefenegger. I wish I'd written that!

On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (1995), Lt. Col. Dave Grossman. Research for the WiP. Probably should have picked something a little newer, but it was an impulse selection at the library.

Sleeping Beauties (2017), Stephen and Owen King. Heavy-handed in its messaging, overly-long, and I'm not sure it really did what the Kings wanted it to do...though, then again, maybe it did. I may have more to say on this in an upcoming post.

All Backs Were Turned (1965), Marek Hlasko, translated by Tomasz Mirkowicz. I think I came across this on some list like "20 Novels Everyone Should Read." Not sure I would agree with that assessment.

So, for the fourth quarter of 2017, I only read 6 books, which is a little low for me, but I was busy with revisions (RiP and WiP), holidays, etc. The total for the year: 31 books, total, down from 42 last year, and there were a lot of re-reads in there. I'll break down the list a little more in a future post, but it's safe to say, I'd like to up my reading.

That's it for me, hope you had a safe start to 2018 and that the year brings you good things!

Ringing In The New

I remember my first New Year's Eve party. Rather, I remember the idea of it more than the actual event. I was in either ninth or tenth grade and a friend of mine had a bunch of us over for a party, and it was a sleepover, too. There were no parents that I remember, because we had the run of the house and we had beer and booze, too; however, in the morning, my friend's mother made us all breakfast.

Being a teenager who was just getting into that period of experimenting with substances of a controlled nature, and who likely felt like he had something to prove, I made Johnnie Walker Black my drink of choice. Yeah, this would be why I remember the idea of the party more so than the actual party itself.

I might have thrown up. If I did, I was fortunate that it wasn't an all-night heaving session. I did struggle through the breakfast. Later, when I was home, I somehow managed to act normal through a New Year's Day at home which included a big afternoon dinner of fresh ham, when my stomach really wanted to reject anything coming into it. If my parents knew about my condition, they didn't say anything.

Thus began a period of life where New Year's Eve found me out and about at parties or bars, and subsequent New Year's Days found me in much worse condition than that first one. The upset stomach I had after that first party was child's play compared to the headaches, shakes, queasiness and all around horrible hangovers I regularly experienced over the next fifteen years or so. Hazy nights, hungover mornings.

The whole New Year's celebration thing here in the US is kind of crazy. We make resolutions--I'll be nicer. Spend more time with the kids. Exercise. Eat right. Stop drinking. Get that book published. The good intentions are always there, but then what do we do? We binge drink away the old year and start the new one off by lying on the couch, unable to move with sending the room spinning. Kind of hard to go on a five mile jog with a killer hangover, right?

Over in Japan, the Magpie celebrated New Year by going out to a park with some of her friends to watch the sun rise on the new day. There were a lot of people there. It seems like this is the thing to do in Japan. It was quiet time, reflective time, and while she ended up sleeping half the day away, she woke up in the afternoon fully functional, no hangover, no shakes, and not having to ask her friends if she did something really embarrassing--or having to wash marker off her face. Seems like a much better way to start things off, don't you think?

Passed out guy photo by R4vi, used under creative commons license.

And Another New Year

Happy New Year to all of you, whether you've already celebrated because you're on the other side of the world or not. I hope 2013 is good to you and brings you all you hope for in life.

This is, of course, the time when we reflect on what we've done, set our goals for the coming year, and, quite often, make a series of predictions about what's going to happen in the world. I'm not much for the latter; I have no crystal ball, and I honestly don't understand enough about how the world works to have even a hope of a shred of accuracy over where we're going to end up as a society. And if I try to narrow down and focus on something like, say, publishing, I'm equally in the dark. About all I do know is that paper books aren't going away any time soon. Beyond that? Call me clueless.

But Bonnee Crawford fired the first shot across the bow of writerly resolutions (appropriate enough, given that she's one of those people who is already in the wild, wild world of 2013) when she asked in her blog last week: What is everyone else aiming for? And I thought about it and realize that my goals for this year (as a writer) are pretty much the same. So I took a look back to my first post of 2012, and here is what I found:

• Get an Agent.
• Write a New Book. 
• Improve, Improve, Improve.

Well, the sad thing is I still don't have an agent. But I've also backed off the query process a bit lately. The overwhelming silence from agents since the first round went out in April is significant. I believe in Parallel Lives, but I think I'm still pretty bad at the querying thing. So I spent most of NaNoReviMo pounding away at my query. Sent out a newer version at the beginning of December, got some rejects, got some more silence, and I'm back in the query workshop. I'd have asked Santa for a new query for Christmas, but let's face it, this has got to come from me. I realize that an inability to create an articulate query could point up to troubles in the manuscript, but I don't believe that's the case with PL. I would not, however, be surprised to find myself querying some of the same agents who rejected PL with Barton's Women.

And speaking of which, that was one goal I definitively met. At the time I wrote my goals for 2012, Barton's Women was still just a glimmer of an idea born of a hurricane. Six days later, in my writer's group, I wrote the first paragraphs. I finished an first draft in August, read and revised, and have it out with some excellent critters. My wife has read it and given me invaluable feedback. So my list for 2013 includes doing another revise round on that one and getting it out in front of agents, too.

As for the new, new book, I mentioned a while back that I had an idea that was floating in my head. Though I've not had that crystallizing "Ah ha!" moment with it, I've decided to try to write my way into it and have made some headway. It's definitely proceeding slowly so far, but it is proceeding. I certainly hope to be able to finish a draft of it in 2013.

Finally, we should always strive to keep improving. This is a tough one, since I am the Doubting Writer, after all, and I'm always going to find my work...not as good as I want it to be. On the other hand, I"m pretty sure that Barton's Women was in better shape when I sent it out for critting than Parallel Lives at the same stage of its life. But I've kept reading, I think when I read, and I'm trying to crit where I can. I haven't read many books on the craft this year, but I'll be honest, a couple of the ones that everyone cites as being Godly have left me kind of flat. I'll have to look into some others and see how they strike me.

And now I've rambled on too long. I wish you all a very happy new year, with good things for you and your family.

And just for fun, here's the Grateful Dead New Year from 1980/81. I cut out about two minutes of the late Bill Graham riding on top of a giant skull to the stage. Happy New Year, all!