The Edge of Nowhere

ideas are brewing

2011-07-27T21:23:00.001-06:00

I'm happy to report that ideas are brewing for a new novel. Maybe this fall and winter I'll start again.

It's the second half of 2011

2011-07-13T21:26:00.003-06:00

Plus about 12 days.

Happy New Year

2011-01-03T19:34:00.001-07:00

It's 2011.

Question?

2010-08-02T21:46:00.002-06:00

What is the lifespan of a personal blog? Six years? Three years? 19 weeks?

No no NaNo

2009-11-26T09:36:00.001-07:00

Well, there's still a few days left in this year's novel writing contest, but as I've not typed a word of fiction in two plus weeks, and my word total sits at 11,000 or so, it's safe to say my efforts are over for this year. Oh well.

I have been writing a lot of poems lately. Maybe I'll post a few here in the coming weeks....

NaNo update

2009-11-08T12:34:00.002-07:00

I had two very good NaNoWriMo days back on the first and second of November, but then I haven't done much since then, so I'm quickly falling behind pace. I've got a couple of characters, but they're still searching for a plot. That happens....

Holy cow!

2009-10-30T20:12:00.002-06:00

It's been a long time. I noticed I had a link to here from my NaNo 'author' page, and when I clicked it. Empty.

Whew.

Want a quick recap of the past four months? Graduation. Summer. Lawn mowing. Some guitar strumming. Kid went to college, moving to Denver. Other kid started senior year here on the edge of nowhere. More lawn mowing. Ran the dog a bunch of times. Watched Flight of the Conchords. A lot. Not much writing. No writing,in fact. Sometimes now I think I'm over it, ready to move on with my life.

Then other times, not so much.

And so we -- and by we I mean I -- start National Novel Writing Month again in about 28 hours. I have a couple of characters in mind, but no idea what plot will happen. So, I guess, I'll just start typing for a few days and see what, if anything, happens.

September

2009-09-05T12:07:00.003-06:00

Autumn is coming. Cooler nights. Green color draining out of the leaves. Summer is slipping away.

Lost

2009-05-21T22:05:00.003-06:00

I've been lost in life this year, not posting much here on the edge, obviously, fooling around a bit with Twitter and Facebook, not working on the novel at all, preparing for a high school graduation in the family.

Nothing else to report.

Goals, goals, goals

2009-04-07T17:58:00.002-06:00

Had lunch with my writing pal Jared today, and he found out about a local writer's conference with agents, workshops, etc. So we shook on a deal to have a book ready for next year's conference in Fort Collins in fifty weeks.

Goals can't hurt, can they?

Death of the Rocky

2009-02-28T11:11:00.002-07:00

I'm not a highly religious person, but I still consider the morning newspaper a miracle. Even with all the instant wireless net stuff and Tweeting this and Facebooking that and blogging everything else -- and don't forget good ol' TV! -- the coordination required to report, write, edit and manufacture a several-dozen-page daily printed newspaper and have it delivered to my doorstep each morning for about 50 cents a pop is still something worth appreciating.

Long ago, I worked for several newspapers from tiny ones to small weeklies to medium-sized dailies owned-by-the-NY-Times, and it never ceased to amaze me that I could be up at midnight typing frantically to beat a deadline, go home, eat a bowl of cereal, watch Letterman, sleep and wake up a few hours later and have a newspaper on my driveway, waiting for me, with my words in it.

I bring this up simply because Denver lost its Rocky Mountain News on Friday, after nearly 150 years of turning out a paper. It's gone. Newspapers seem doomed, which is a shame.

Maybe some genius will figure out a way for all those editors and pressmen and writers and photographers to find a way to get paid and be employed in the digital future. I sure hope so.

Motivational Posters of the Year

2009-01-26T21:42:00.001-07:00

I know it's still early in the year, but nothing will top motivational posters featuring our hero, Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite is still "Purpose."

Harry Potter and the long cold winter

2009-01-12T20:50:00.002-07:00

So I started re-reading all the Harry Potter books on the first day of winter, thinking, 'reading all the Harry Potter books again will be a fine way to pass the winter.' Three weeks in, and I'm through the first four books and yesterday started year five, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It's a pretty fun way to spend these long cold dark (sometimes snowy) winter nights, speed reading about Harry, Ron, Hermoine and their many adventures with Hagrid, Dumbledore, Malfoy, Snape, He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named and the others.

I've read the books before, of course, and seen the five movies too. (In fact, over New Year's, we watched the first four again, two each night, back to back.) Then again, the first time I read them I was reading them aloud to my then-little children, and to my then mid-sized children. K and I took turns reading the books at night to the kids, so parts I read, parts I listened to, parts I missed, and parts I had to re-read alone to catch-up, and then too there was a year or two between books, waiting for Ms. Rowling to write them.

This time, I'm just racing through them (well, as fast as I can, which admittedly isn't that fast). And while it's pretty fun to read them like this, it's also a bit bittersweet, since, y'know, my children aren't listening this time, they're no longer little, and they're both likely to be out of the house and off to college in 18 months.

Sigh.

Keep pushing

2009-01-06T17:58:00.001-07:00

Advice to myself:

"I write a lot about "keep pushing" and the notion that simple perseverance will see us all through hardship, competition and just plain life. Gladwell and his 10,000 hours show the data behind that notion. So as we launch into the New Year, I will not be doing flashy workouts that are different just for the sake of being different. I will write, I will run, and I will ride my bike on a somewhat continuous loop throughout the year. I will get better, just a little, every day. And I think that's one of life's great elations, that daily progression to a better version of ourselves. "
-- Martin Dugard, in a blog post on life -- and on writing

Booksellers list

2008-12-11T07:01:00.002-07:00

NPR's Morning Edition also has its bookseller's list for 2008 published.

Books we love

2008-12-10T20:23:00.002-07:00

Well, books that Salon's favorite authors love, at least. And Salon's 2008 book awards. More '08 best-of lists.

Best of 2008

2008-11-30T17:34:00.002-07:00

I haven't been looking closely for other best-of lists yet (it's still [barely] November), but the New York Times has checked in (first?) with their 100 Notable Books of 2008. Turns out I've read none of them. Fine.

My favorite new book this year: Neal Stephenson's Anathem.

End of November

2008-11-29T15:32:00.002-07:00

It's nearly the end of November and I can barely type a word without making a mistake. Seriously, that first sentence started out like this: I't snealry the end of novemrber and Ic an barely type a word withou making a mitsake.

Blame it on the thousands and thousands of words I've typed this month in my pointless quest to type 50,000 words in 30 days. Right now, with 24 and about 7 hours to go, I'm at 47,820. One more sit-down, and I should be there.

The story I'm working on isn't done yet, though. I had about 25,000 words on the novel before the month started, and now I've tacked on another 50k, of which I hope 30,000 are useable/keepable after I get done editing it. And I'd say I'm about two-thirds of the way done with the actual plot, such as it is.

It's hard to say, though, since it meanders so much. I worked for about three hours today at the library, and thought back to the beginning. I've started and created abandonment on about four different plot directions. My guess this is not good, at least not for a traditional story telling point of view.

But, after one more hour tonight, I should be a fifth-time winner at the big NaNoWriMo game. So there you go.

In which your blogger plays a tag game of Seven

2008-11-21T18:48:00.004-07:00

I'll play, Jonathan, but only because you did. And I'll raise you one by saying this is the first and last tag/meme game I'll ever do here on the edge of nowhere. The rules: 

1. Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog. Dr. Jonathan B of Dial M for Musicology tagged me with this, the Meme of Seven.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog - some random, some weird. 
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blog. 
4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog. 
5. If you don't have 7 blog friends, or if someone else already took dibs, then tag some unsuspecting strangers.

Here goes: seven random facts about me:

1. I competed in the 1983 World Grape Stomping Championship finals. I did not place.

2. I loathe the Los Angeles Dodgers. Growing up in Northern California, I was naturally a fan of the Great San Francisco Giants and the good players like Willie Mays and Juan Marichal and Willie McCovey and Gaylord Perry, not the evil bums like Wes Parker, Don Drysdale, Tommy Davis and those idiots of the '70s: Garvey, Lopes, Cey, Sutton, Russell and Tommy Freakin Lasorda. Now, as an adoptive fan of the Colorado Rockies, I still hate the Dodgers, mostly because aside from one glorious season, we can't beat them.

3. I once rode my bicycle 212 miles in a single day. I ate a lot of bananas that day, and then didn't touch them again for about six years.

4. The band I've seen live the most times (aside from school bands involving my children) is the now obsolete Oingo Boingo, which band I've seen five times in both sold out monster 12,000 seat venues in California and empty hockey arenas and the Glenn Miller Ballroom in Colorado. I know, five isn't very many. Then again, I wasn't a Deadhead.

5. I had a bit acting part as a zombie in "The Darkness," a small independent film which won the award for best action/suspense film at the 2008 Silver Spoon Film Festival.

6. I ghostwrite a blog for my dog. (OK, this one isn't so much a random fact as a dorky, embarrassing fact. On second thought, maybe it's just sad and pathetic.)

7. As this blog proves, I write a lot of unpublishable novels. I believe my current project is novel number seven. Or maybe eight? But: a guy's gotta dream. And have a hobby. And he has to keep at it, because one of these days.... I'll be happy with the finished product.

My part of these tag game is now complete, so I'll tag Jared, England, Jeff (attention visiting Dial M readers: check out Jeff's band and help spread the word about 100 Year Picnic) photoblogger Tom and.... uh... uhm, I guess they're the only bloggers I know (and in Dan's case, I only sort of know). 3.5 is nearly seven, and point-five more than Jonathan pulled off.

Fictionalizing Google's street view

2008-11-11T17:15:00.004-07:00

I love it: A couple of artists have created several fictional scenes in a short section of street in Pittsburgh, PA, viewable via Google's Streetview. For example, escaping out a window. And mad scientists.

PS: My own current fiction project has hit 21,000+ words for the month of November, and more than 45k overall.

NaNo's back

2008-11-08T07:38:00.004-07:00

I'm a week into this year's NaNoWriMo, and I guess I should report an update as supporting/reporting my fiction writing efforts is/was the nominal point of this four-year-old blog.

Yes, I'm making an effort this year, after going through the motions last year. I'm writing the middle section (I assume, since I don't really know how it comes out, and nothing is outlined or plotted) of the book I've been working on since January.

Through yesterday, I was at 17,002 words. At a bit over 2400 words per day, I'm pretty much right on pace, which is good because I'm going to take a two-day mini-road trip to New Mexico tomorrow.

I should also note I've taken two weeks vacation to give me plenty of time to get off to a great start. And it's working.

RS on DFW

2008-10-29T17:14:00.000-06:00

When he died on September 12th, readers crowded the Web with tributes to his generosity, his intelligence. "But he wasn't Saint Dave," says Jonathan Franzen, Wallace's best friend and the author of The Corrections. "This is the paradox of Dave: The closer you get, the darker the picture, but the more genuinely lovable he was. It was only when you knew him better that you had a true appreciation of what a heroic struggle it was for him not merely to get along in the world, but to produce wonderful writing." - Rolling Stone: The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace

Zen debris

2008-10-14T20:17:00.001-06:00

Be.

The definition of epic

2008-10-13T21:17:00.002-06:00

This is truly epic: Two guys do El Capitan in Yosemite in under three hours. Freaking un-believable (says the one-time super-amateur climber).

Video of the day

2008-10-06T21:39:00.001-06:00

Oh man, this cracks me up. If you ever wondered what the lyrics should've been to match the classic A-ha video, here you go.

Memories of Dave

2008-09-27T10:17:00.001-06:00

I knew he was about the same age as me, but I didn't realize he was only 5 days older than me. Ouch. Some other memories of David Foster Wallace. Salon: Ito and Miller, and from Baltimore, the Guardian and Toronto.

Goodbye, Paul Newman

2008-09-27T10:15:00.000-06:00

He got his start in theater and on television during the 1950s, and went on to become one of the world's most enduring and popular film stars, a legend held in awe by his peers. He was nominated for Oscars 10 times, winning one regular award and two honorary ones, and had major roles in more than 50 motion pictures, including "Exodus," "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "The Verdict," "The Sting" and "Absence of Malice." Rest in peace, Paul Newman.

50 greatest villians in literature

2008-09-23T18:12:00.002-06:00

The Telegraph picks the 50 greatest villains in literature. The question is: where does Heart of Darkness's Kurtz rank? I know, but you'll have to go see for yourself.

And DFW is gone

2008-09-14T10:38:00.000-06:00

D'oh. Arrgh.

Neal is back

2008-09-02T20:10:00.002-06:00

If forced to pick a favorite author right this second, I'd pick Neal Stephenson. And the brainiac's got a new novel coming out next week. And he's coming to Denver at the end of the month. See you there?

Ben's blogging the DNC

2008-08-27T18:10:00.001-06:00

Our young friend Ben is blogging the Dem's National Convention for one of Denver's TV stations. It's fun to see a young person's views from inside the Pepsi Center. Check it out.

Work, work, work

2008-08-06T17:31:00.002-06:00

Ira Glass the radio host has a few videos up on storytelling. I'll direct you creative types to the first half of part 3, in which he talks about the need to be prolific and to (essentially) work through the crap. Good advice, which I should take more often and more seriously. If you want to see all four parts, I believe you can find them here. The tip of the cap goes to the smart/amusing guys at Dial M for Musicology.

Idea

2008-07-11T22:05:00.002-06:00

So it IS nearly mid-July. I'm not wrong about that. One reason there's been so few posts here lately is that this blog is supposedly about me writing, me writing novels, me writing stuff. And I haven't been doing any of that. So I guess there's no point to posting then, is there.

I'm "working" on a story, as we know, but, well, seems I've been stuck. Since about late February, I suspect, I've been hung up. I've been doing a lot of diligent reading, a lot, and been proof-reading and copy editing and making changes to the e-copy and so on, but I haven't written any new words on the story since then. I know it was the end of February because Jared and I met for lunch on Leap Year Day to share progress. And I was rolling along through the winter. But I hit this plot flaw wall. Left my hero literally standing in a field. Didn't know what to do with him. Four months he's been standing there where I dink around, pondering, working it out in my subconscious.

Anyhoo, long story short, I think it solved itself today. Which is good.

Very good, in fact. Happily good.

So: onward again!

Whiffleball

2008-07-10T18:52:00.002-06:00

Is it nearly mid-July already? Sheeesh.

This story reminds me of my teen-aged years, when I spent a LOT of time playing Whiffleball in a variety of neighbor's front and yards. Each of us had our own stadium or field -- sometimes two different parks -- some with gray monsters ala Fenway, some with short porches. I mostly faced off against one of my best friends, Shaw, a crafty lefty who threw all kinds of slow junk. I didn't get many hits, but when I did, was I was known to hit it over a roof or two. On the mound, I was the fire-balling righty; he singled and tripled me into oblivion most days. Only in our field of dreams, the lawyers didn't show up.

Literary slackers unite!

2008-06-23T16:55:00.002-06:00

Bored at work? Like to read? The ReadAtWork.com website simulates a Windows XP desktop and loads a selection of literary works disguised as technical PowerPoint presentations. Pretty nifty, eh? Slick way to kill that last half hour in the cubicle... not that I'm advocating it, of course.

Writing with Music

2008-06-13T17:20:00.000-06:00

Nick shares a blog of writer's playlists.

A writer's quote about writing every day

2008-06-13T17:18:00.000-06:00

"One of the things I've noticed about writing every day is that there are days when writing that page feels like flying. Like the hand of God reached down and touched my keyboard, and every word is just pure gold. And then there are days that I feel I'm writing absolute, totally forgettable junk that shouldn't have been committed to phosphors, let alone saved to disc. The thing is, a month later, you can't tell the difference. The difference between a day when it feels like you're writing brilliantly and a day when it feels like you're writing terribly is entirely in your head, it's not in the prose."
--Cory Doctorow

Bonnaroo Music Fest

2008-06-12T18:40:00.002-06:00

No, I'm not in Tennessee. I'm here on the Edge of Nowhere. But my nephew Nick is blogging Bonnaroo for the Village Voice. Not a bad gig, for a young guy. He has his first post up earlier today, and I expect him to have others in that space all through the weekend.

Summertime

2008-06-10T18:38:00.003-06:00

We're on the summer schedule here at the Edge of Nowhere, taking advantage of high gas prices to stay home and hang out. My nephew Nick has been in and out of town; we went up to the top of Mount Evans one day and saw REM, Modest Mouse and The National at Red Rocks another. I have a new car: a Honda Civic, replacing the tornado-destroyed Element.

Our garage is slowing being transformed into a movie set for the interior castle shots of my son's new movie/senior project, a remake/update of his award-winning Braveheart: The Musical, which he's hoping to film here in the next few weeks. What else? I run the dog, strum the guitar, watch the X-Files and sit in my cubicle during the days. Keep my eyes peeled for near-by "UFOs". I'm reading about the CIA now, after finishing the book version of Charlie Wilson's War. Loved Iron Man. Liked a lot the new Indiana Jones.

My novel? Eh. The 55 pages I've written are pretty clean, heavily edited and printed. Now I just need to get back to writing the story. But not now. Not today.

Life is good. And slow.

Tales about Tales of a Modern Splash

2008-05-30T22:16:00.003-06:00

So I've written a record review. A couple of them, actually. Anything to help out the guys in 100 Year Picnic.

Goodbye, Honda Element

2008-05-30T22:11:00.005-06:00

Up until Thursday, May 22, this is the car I've been driving around the edge of nowhere for the past two-plus years.

As you can see, it's missing all its windows now. Glass in embedded in all the upholstery. There's hail dents all over the top and at least two of the sides. That's what happens when a tornado rolls right over it.

The insurance company tells me it's totaled. So I'll be selling it to them, and trying to buy some other used car. So, good-bye, Honda Element.

Lost

2008-05-20T17:51:00.002-06:00

Do you feel neglected?

It's because you are. For what it's worth, I feel bad about it. OK, slightly bad. Twelve percent bad.

And no, I don't have a good excuse. I've been flirting with my YouTube account a lot lately. The instant feedback of views is addicting. I need to get over it. And I will.

Someday.

Today, however, is not that day.

Three days

2008-04-28T17:05:00.004-06:00

On the road for three days starting in the morning, and of course I have big plans and ambitious hopes for plotting out the next big section of my future-based novel on the airplane, holed up in the hotel room. Thanks to Krell for point me to this artifact "found from the future," to which I'll direct you for a taste of what I'm working on. Behave yourselves.

50 cult books

2008-04-26T12:04:00.003-06:00

England's Daily Telegraph lists its top 50 "cult books" -- an odd, eclectic, Brit-skewed list of crap and classics, "the sort of book that people wear like a leather jacket or carry around like a totem. The book that rewires your head... makes you a pacifist." I'd say I've read about 20 of them, but I might only admit to 10. So enjoy, I guess.

At work

2008-04-24T19:32:00.002-06:00

So, an update I guess is in order, since that's the nominal point of this whole blog. I continue to work on the novel, at a turtle's pace. An hour or two a week is not very fast. But, it is progress. I've got about 55 pages that I finished editing last night, and I'd like to get all those changes made to the e-copy in the next few weeks. I also have to travel for a few days next week for my daytime job, so I'm looking forward to using airplane time and the silence of the hotel room at night to start plotting out the next big section. Might even start typing on it. You never know. Thus ends the update.

Sweded!

2008-04-23T20:04:00.002-06:00

My son has discovered my new all-time favorite YouTube video: Jurassic Park Sweded (as in Be Kind, Rewind). It's a perfect, fast-paced, cleverly edited and costumed piece of cinematic fun. It moves ahead of those Weird Al vids I posted a few months back.

Back to nonfiction

2008-04-02T22:29:00.002-06:00

I finished reading Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," and it's a very good book in many ways. Tight. Brutal and powerful. And yet in the end, hopeful too. Now I'm on to some related nonfiction, Jared Diamond's two books about how societies collapse and the short history of everyone. The Pulitzer-winning first one is "Guns, Germs and Steel" and the second, seemingly more environmentally-related one, is "Collapse." I've had my eyes on them for a few years and, justifying them as research for my current project, got them on the buy-one-get-half-price-free table at Borders tonight (where I'm also happy to report I worked for 75 minutes on the novel).

Speaking of writers, word to my nephew Nick for getting his first piece published in The Village Voice. Straight to the big-time for the kid. I'm proud. Go read it: it's a good story.

Ask a philosopher

2008-03-31T19:04:00.002-06:00

Got a question? Ask a philosopher dot com.

I finished reading the Updike book set in a post US-Sino war, and I'm glad I read it. I picked up a couple of tips on what to do and not to do on my current futurecast novel, as in: don't be too specific about the technology, because it'll be distractedly wrong. Vague, I think, is better. On the to-do side: stick to the story, and don't get bogged down in writing the future history in too much detail. Understand it, but I don't go around life today explaining things that happen to me in terms of the history of the past 50 years, I just live in the aftermath. So my characters don't need to 'explain' stuff; they just need to live.

Now I'm reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road, also set in a post-apocalyptic future. So far, it's bleak and brutal, much more than what I'm working on. And so far he's been focused on the story and has spent very little time explaining the history. Very powerful method.

Onward

2008-03-28T20:50:00.003-06:00

I worked for about 90 minutes today on the novel, and I feel oddly optimistic about it at the moment. Which is very nice. Onward, weekend soldiers!

Life

2008-03-26T23:00:00.008-06:00

So life has been busy. Two weeks ago I was in Arizona for work (and some sneaking off to see baseball). And last weekend we took a great four-day, 1300-mile road trip down to south central New Mexico, with stops at the UFO museum in Roswell and the White Sands Film Festival in Alamogordo, where my son had a couple of movies being screened in the high school competition.

And I thought I lived on the edge of nowhere. If that's true, then southern New Mexico might be the dead center of nowhere. We drove by a lot of beautiful, empty desert. It has been a few years since we went on a long car trip, which is something I love to do but is hard when the kids get older and less willing to endure what I think is a blast: driving across the huge empty areas of the west with the windows open and the radio blasting. So it was good to get out on the road, even with four teen-agers in tow. And to stand barefoot in sand, after a long, cold winter.

The point is I've been busy. I've been reading an Updike novel, set in the postwar future of 2020, recommended by friend Krell at our shop talk lunch earlier this month, and I'm learning some good things from it in regards to my story, some dos and don'ts about writing about the imagined future. And tonight I spent about an hour copy editing the novel, which is the first I've touched it in a few weeks. It always feels good to work on it, even if I'm at the daunting stage where it just seems too big and hopeless. But, you know, an hour here, three pages there, eventually, with luck and some -- a lot of -- effort, it'll get done.

Catching up

2008-03-16T17:16:00.009-06:00

It's been quiet here on the Edge of Nowhere. Not much writing work getting done, but I've been busy with normal life. And I'm not worrying about the lack of work. I'm in a good place on my current project.

Had a swell lunch with my friend Krell yesterday, after his family stopped by our family's house for some bonding time on Friday night. He's up here from Austin, showing his oldest daughter where she was born, taking the family up snowboarding. It was good to catch up and a have nice lunch conversation about our writing projects. Talking about my book, and hearing him talk about his work and his novel, motivated me to get back on a regular schedule. As Krell said (paraphrasing here), "I'm happier when I work on it." And I agree. It's so true. So back to work.

Also, I finally got my hands on a copy of Jeff's new 100 Year Picnic album, "Tales of a Modern Splash." It's been a long time since I really listened to a whole album, what with iTunes and XM radio, it's really been about the songs. But I've been listening to Jeff's work very closely, and I'm very impressed. It is also very motivating for me. He and I made some deal about two years ago about completing something each month -- for him it was to be a song, for me a short story or chapter -- and here I am two years later pretty much still in the same place with one big exception: I'm listening to a complete album written, performed and recorded by Jeff and his buddy Edwin (and each song is called a chapter -- nice touch.) So, the old competitive juicies are kicking in a bit, as in 'I better catch up.' (You can go hear a couple of tracks on their MySpace page, too [check out "Come On" or "I Don't Know What To Tell You," and my favorite song on the album, "We Were Not The Same."])

Finally, I'm just back from a few days down in Arizona for work, the clear highlight of which was trips to a couple more spring training parks. Last year (or was it two years ago?) I was able to catch games at the Giants park in Scottsdale and the Angels park in Tempe. This year, I got down to Tucson to see our National League Champion Rockies host Seattle, and then over to Mesa (see photo above) to see the Cubs host the Padres (stayed for seven innings before I needed to run to Sky Harbor to catch a flight back home).

This coming weekend, we're back on the road for a few days to attend a film festival down in New Mexico, where my son has a couple of films entered in this high school competition.

Book nerds rejoice

2008-03-05T18:52:00.002-07:00

MetaFilter notes book nerds everywhere will enjoy these scans of cover art from the works of Beat Generation authors. Jack and Bill, for two.

Leaplings

2008-02-29T23:16:00.001-07:00

As planned, met Fumbling Father for lunch today to debut our finished novels. Well, we've been going slower than we hoped or planned, so we're going to meet again in another five or six weeks to see where we are. I would estimate I'm 29.756 percent of the way to end. You be sure that's accurate: I only believe in the most precise science.

I will say I'm happy with my work so far, even if I feel like I'm crawling. I'm writing, editing on screen, printing it out and doing a hard copy edit, printing it out and doing a proof-reading, and then setting it aside and moving on. I'm up around 28,000 words, about 55 printed pages so far. So while I'm not done, when and if I do finish for once I'll have a clean draft ready to share with any willing, ahem, volunteers.

Detroit: The Missing Year

2008-02-27T23:05:00.002-07:00

Yo, check out the vintage band photos from my pal Tom's Detroit: The Missing Years photo album.

I put in two more hours on the novel tonight. I'm still liking it. A long way to go.

Tales of a Modern Splash

2008-02-26T18:56:00.002-07:00

Jeff has released his new album. Go buy one! Or two!

The Poetry of Roger Clemens

2008-02-18T18:04:00.004-07:00

Ah, it's not quite the Cosmic Baseball Association, but Slate has The Poetry of Roger Clemens. My favorite:

"Headaches"
Kids come to my house and work out.
I invite them to come work out.
The littler kids,
I try to get them to sign a waiver
In case a bat comes out of my hand, or a ball.
We've experienced that.
That's headaches.

-Feb. 5, 2008, Roger Clemens deposition

Zombies and novels

2008-02-18T17:42:00.004-07:00

Well, it's Monday night, so let's see how I did with my four-day weekend on the novel writing front (he pantomimes licking a digit and thumbing through a notebook for the statistics). Well, says here I penned a couple thousand words on Friday afternoon. But then, nothing. I did, however, spend some time this morning wandering around the neighborhood streets in a torn-up blue suit jacket and tie splattered with fake blood as "Zombie Number 1" in my son's current film project, "The Darkness." So I got that going for me.

Which is nice.

Slower

2008-02-14T18:55:00.002-07:00

I've slowed down a bit the past couple of weeks on my history of the future novel, hung up on a plot point, I suppose, if forced to confess what's stopped me. And/or, just unable to find* time to write. But I've taken a couple of days off work for a four-day weekend and I hope/plan to get back on pace. Or track. Or just to get several thousand words further. Who knows? We'll see.

* find = make

It's coming

2008-02-07T20:05:00.000-07:00

Five days and thirteen hours to go...

Blip

2008-02-06T23:07:00.000-07:00

What I'm reading now, what I'm reading next, and what I just read (and the one before that, for good measure.)

Music appreciation

2008-02-01T19:23:00.001-07:00

OK kids, time for some pure Friday night music apprecation fun. I've been enjoying Weird Al on YouTube, so I'm going to force you to do the same. Let's start with the cleverly perfect "White & Nerdy" (and don't forget the amusing alternate "first take" with dancing Donnie Osmond), move to the shot-for-shot hillbilly cover of "Money For Nothing," the funky Presidents of The United States of America's lump-like "Gump" and then the gangster-friendly "Amish Paradise." Finish up with the beautiful space opera of "The Saga Begins." And, just because, Ben Folds' middle-class-white-boy angst "Rockin' The Suburbs," directed by Weird Al.

eba out.

Mutants unite!

2008-01-31T19:09:00.000-07:00

Turns out I'm a blue-eyed genetic mutant!

15,000

2008-01-28T23:19:00.001-07:00

I believe it was Albert Einstein who said the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results. So this time, with my current project, I'm doing it differently. First, instead of just cranking out 75,000 words in a Kerouac-spree and then never going back to clean it up, I'm going slower. I'm printing out pages, I'm copy editing pages, and I'm going back in and cleaning and fixing my e-copy and then printing it out again.

Instead of being insane, the goal is to finish the writing with a fairly clean first draft (rather than the sketchy ones filling my drawer). Not sure I'll get done by my leap year day goal of Feb. 29, but I do think I'll be pretty far along.

So, using this method, I topped the 15,000 word mark last night, and when I printed the clean copy out today I was up around 45 pages.

Fun fact of the day

2008-01-27T19:03:00.000-07:00

Did you know they teach student drivers to hold the wheel at eight-and-four these days, instead of the ten-and-two my friends learned? They do. It's so when the air bag blows in a collision, your arms won't fly up and break on your face. Or break your face. So there you go: fun fact of the day.

Video of the day

2008-01-24T18:12:00.001-07:00

Nick checks in with a YouTube video he shot in Turkey of what can only be described as a camel-wrestling tailgate party from his trip to Canakkale. Dig the music. Go. Go.

PS, check out Nick's story in Time-Out Istanbul about an Iraqi heavy metal band.

Boom

2008-01-24T18:08:00.000-07:00

Pranks amuse me.

Cell phone novels?

2008-01-23T17:45:00.000-07:00

Believe it. Japan's cell phone generation has created its own popular culture by tapping out novels, written by thumb on their cell phones. Seems they're taking over the best seller lists, too. NY Times has the story. Thanks to Jeff for the tip.

Thing a Day

2008-01-22T17:50:00.000-07:00

Need a kick in the pants to do your (creative) thing? Sign-up for "Thing-a-Day" and create a new habit in February.

Andy

2008-01-16T18:33:00.001-07:00

I've lost another friend. Last summer, it was Frank. And we're still hurting about Emma. This time it's Andy Prouty. Andy was 47.

I was a childhood friend of Andy's. I grew up in the Proctor Heights in California; our family moved to the hillside neighborhood when I was seven, and we lived around the corner from the Prouty family, six or seven houses away. Andy and I quickly became friends even though he was a bit older.

We spent a lot of time playing together and having sleep-overs throughout my years at Rincon Valley Elementary, playing games and sports with the neighborhood boys (mainly boys like Shaw Kobre, Chris Neumann, Jimmy Panting, Mike Hassen, Marc Coudeyre, and sometimes the Wallrich boys or Tommy Morales). We were in Boy Scouts together for a while, too, until I quit [I see in his obituary he stayed with it]. As kids do, we went our own ways in junior high, and I didn't see him at all after high school.

One of my favorite childhood memories about Andy is this: As kids we frequently played "Emergency," which was our own recreation of the then-popular Saturday night television drama about Los Angeles paramedics and firefighters. Andy created a whole set of "pretend" first aid kits, portable CPR units, oxygen tanks and boxes of other gear for us to play with. It was very cool.

We'd run around his house or yard, or my house or yard, and rescue people trapped in various places. Andy and I would help someone who we would pretend had fallen off a back deck, for example, or who got stuck in a tree, or trapped under a truck [the piano bench, I recall, served as a wide variety of vehicles], or wrapped inside a bicycle, buried under a tumble of boxes, wedged under a ping pong table, and so on. Sometimes our older sisters would let us bandage an arm, or splint an ankle, or wrap an ace bandage around a head. He always played John Gage, and I was always Roy DeSoto. I think the roles were assigned to us due to our hair color. Those were good times.

Most of all, I love the fact that Andy grew up to be a firefighter. Go hug your loved ones.

Here we are together, on our front lawn, in 1970:

Protagonize

2008-01-09T19:32:00.000-07:00

"Protagonize is a creative writing community dedicated to the (nearly) lost art of the add-venture, a type of collaborative interactive fiction. One author writes a story, and others post branches to it in different directions. The result is an organic, evolving story where everyone can participate."

Kind of simple, but sometimes amusing.

10,000

2008-01-07T17:15:00.000-07:00

I'm more than 10,000 words into my current project, or about 36 pages. It's going well. I still don't want to jinx it too much by writing about it, but I will say this: it's a history of the future.

Happy

2008-01-01T16:23:00.000-07:00

May all your dreams come true this year. Remember, you may have to work for them.

Working

2007-12-25T12:08:00.000-07:00

Ssshush: I've been working on a new novel, quietly, silently, under the radar. NaNoWriMo was a bust this year for me, only about 7,000 or so words. I wasn't motivated, wasn't having much fun, and wasn't trying too hard. But one of the NaNo pep talk e-mails noted that the best part of NaNo was if you were bored (as I was), to remember to have fun with it and to skip to the next part. If what you were writing wasn't fun, just move on. So I've taken that advice, and am fairly deep into a new novel that is fun. I'll write more about it later, when I get a little further along. Jared and I have a pact to finish our current books by Feb. 29, printed on the table at lunch. Jared's finishing a clean draft of his NaNo novel by then.It's going to be tight, but I think I can get a draft printed by then. I'll try to keep you posted.

Fixed

2007-12-08T16:03:00.000-07:00

We have our kitchen computer back, so once again I can post and surf the net and watch the weather radar to see how many more inches of snow will fall here on the Edge of Nowhere today. About four and counting as of now...

Dead computer?

2007-12-03T20:45:00.000-07:00

We have a dead computer. Going on two weeks now. All work ceases. The Geek Squad currently has it. Keep your fingers crossed.

-eba, posting from the Farr Branch of the Weld Public Library.

Half-way day plus one

2007-11-16T23:37:00.000-07:00

I wrote for two hours tonight. Up to 7101 words. Way behind pace. Way behind schedule. Never gonna finish in time. But: 7101. It's something.

Mailer's Legos

2007-11-16T20:07:00.000-07:00

I've never knowingly read anything by Norman Mailer, who died last week. And yet, I'll admit I don't have a particularly favorable impression of him, due, I suppose, to stuff I've read about him being what they used to call 'a man's man.' I haven't even bothered to read any of his obits, or other's memories of him. And then I stumbled across this post about his Legos. And everything changed: now I want to know more.

NanoWriMo returns

2007-11-09T17:37:00.000-07:00

So, my brother asked me about two weeks ago if I was "doing" NaNo this year. Paul got me started in 2002, and he does it "unofficially" each year, aiming for 25,000 words. Jared's been after me this year, too, as I talked him into doing it in 2003, and he's doing it again too.

So, what about me?

Last year I did it for the fifth time, but just barely. And it wasn't much fun, really. It was hard. And I probably only got about half-way into a very rambling novel. It was a struggle. And I thought, at the end, well, I won't do that again.

And I've pretty much had that thought all year. Won't do that again.

Yeah, doing NaNo is no way to write a novel. No way to write a good one, at laest. Not the novel I want to write, the one I keep trying to write. And I guess I was just tired of breaking my fingers to type 50,000 words in a month, and then noodling around with it a little bit in the months after, just to let it sit mostly unfinished on my hard drive. I haven't even printed out the last three of 'em, they're so far from being finished (in my mind). [What a sec: fifth time? Geez, that's more than a quarter million words.... whoa.]

So I thought, that's it. No more. Time to retire from that. Won't do it again. It no longer works for me.

And I still feel that way.

However. As I was trying to explain to my brother and Jared why I didn't feel like doing it this year, I realized that the best thing about NaNo is the fact it makes me write. And I really don't write as much fiction as I would like to write [not counting what I write for work, which is fiction of a whole different time]. And NaNoWriMo forces me to write. Even if it's not good, or not what I'm aiming for, it does make me write. And writing makes me happy.

So: Yes, I guess I am sort of doing NaNo this year. I have an idea for a novel that I've been thinking of since about last June. I outlined large parts of it on airplanes flying back and forth to Phoenix in September. And last Saturday I wrote my first 3,518 words. I didn't touch it all week, but here I am facing another weekend, and I plan to write some more.

And I'm way behind on my word count.

Sunday night news

2007-11-04T22:20:00.001-07:00

So I've added my pal Tom's photo page to the rightside blog roll. Go check 'em out. Took down Nick's old Lit Show site, since he's moved on to Istanbul. Took down my brother's nonused blog, too. If he'd post, I'll put it back up. Yes, that's a dare.

It's been perfect leaf raking weather here on the Edge of Nowhere for early November, 75 degrees, blue skies, sunshine, warm.

Just back from the big city where R and I watched los Nuggets lose their first game of the season.

OK, so there isn' t much news.

Oh yeah, National Novel Writing Month has begun. My two long-time readers will know I do this every year, and I've been not very excited to do it this year. I did write for about three hours on Saturday, got up to about 3,500 words, but my heart's really not it in this year.

Baseball stadiums

2007-11-02T20:48:00.001-06:00

OK, one more/last baseball-related post before we get back to whatever this blog is normally about. Check out the ballpark photos from my friend Tom Hagerty. Tom's finally got around to putting them up on the web, and I think they're great. Although we've never lived closer than about 800 miles from each other, and today's its closer to 2,000 miles, we've been to six ball parks together [new Comiskey, Coors Field, Kansas City and Wrigley (in winter) as well as minor league parks in Peoria and Colorado Springs]. He and I have talked via e-mail nearly every day since early in '92. Enjoy his photos.

The end

2007-10-26T20:44:00.000-06:00

So, I guess I should mention the Rockies got swept in the World Seires. The 9 day layoff didn't help them, nor did playing a very good Red Sox team. But it was a great end to a pretty good season. Plus, we can mean it when we say "Wait 'til next year!"

Fall Classic coming to the Edge of Nowhere

2007-10-16T16:42:00.000-06:00

So the Colorado Rockies, cinderella story, out of nowhere, are going to the World Series. They've won seven straight playoff games, 10 in a row overall including that amazing play-in game versus the Padres two weeks ago, and 21 of 22. It's historically, magically absurd. And it's been very fun to watch. Bring on someone from the American League!

Bike riding Head

2007-10-15T17:02:00.001-06:00

David Byrne rides a bike across New York City, with narration and the occasional ding of his bicycle bell. Watch the video.

Across the Universe

2007-10-14T21:03:00.000-06:00

Across The Universe. It might not be for everyone, but I loved it. Brilliant.

(By the way, our catcher just hit a three-run shot to give the Rockies a solid lead in game three....)

Rockies fever

2007-10-07T10:16:00.000-06:00

It's a full-fledged case now. The Colorado Rockies can't seem to lose, and I can't seem to focus on much of anything else.

Impossible.

2007-10-01T22:49:00.000-06:00

The Rockies just finished the season winning 13 out of 14 to rocket from fourth place to a tie for second in the NL West, and tonight they just eeeked past the Padres in a scary/thrilling one-game, 13-inning playoff to claim the last National League playoff spot.

Baseball fever

2007-09-24T20:13:00.001-06:00

Actually, I've been calling it a rash, but with 8 wins in a row and a game or two out of a playoff spot, maybe it's become a fever. Six games to go. We can hope.

Wake me when September comes

2007-09-07T16:46:00.000-06:00

Jeez, is it September already?

Indeed. And we're in full fall mode around here. Kids in full action from early Zero Hour music classes to after school dance and play rehearsals, K back to work, the leaves starting to hint like they're tired of being green (we know it's not easy being green, but getting tired of it? I think not). Even the mornings are a bit cooler now than they were just a week ago.

This weekend is packed with Daughter R auditioning for the the town's annual ballet production of The Nutcracker, and Son C has one of his silent film comedies selected and showing over at the TriMedia Festival over in Fort Collins tomorrow afternoon. Both happen at exactly the same time, of course, and K is at a retreat for her school board so I'll be driving all over the Edge of Nowhere tomorrow, forth and back and forth, and back again, chauffering but not seeing the actual events. Bummer. But that's OK. I've seen the movie many times, and I'm sure my 15-year-old daughter would prefer I WASN'T in the room for her audition.

And, yes, I'm working on a novel, as noted lamentably (a word?) below. I'm excited about it, in the major note-building and outline-expanding phase right now, where it's all possibility and hope. And tomorrow, while I wait for kids here and there, I'll be working on it again.

Letterpress

2007-08-23T22:15:00.000-06:00

Letterpress. A short YouTube movie. Worth the six beautiful minutes it takes to see.

The next project

2007-08-21T18:49:00.001-06:00

It turns out I'm working on another novel. Don't ask me why, I just am. I can't produce clean copies of any of the others. But I start another.

That's just the way it is, I guess. Accept it.

[That last sentence is mostly directed at me, I suppose.]

Breaking code

2007-08-20T17:07:00.000-06:00

An Adobe office building in downtown San Jose has been broadcasting a coded message in rotating disks of light as public art for more than a year, and two programmers have used brute force to finally break it. My favorite part? The message of "San Jose Semaphore" (created by New York artist Ben Rubin) is the entire text of the Thomas Pynchon book, "The Crying of Lot 49." Here's a Mercury News story, Rubin's solution and the story of how the code breakers did it.

What ho!

2007-08-12T20:22:00.000-06:00

What ho, readers! We're back down off the mountain from our week of music at Rocky Mountain Fiddle Camp, and gearing up for end of summer life. The best thing I did during our week in the mountains was take a songwriting class, something I've been toying with/meaning to/thinking of/trying to do for the last couple of years.

Success has been lacking because I'm not a musican or even musically-inclined. But last week I learned some of the fundamental "rules" of songwriting to match up with my lyric writing and my ever-growing stable of a dozen guitar chords. Combine this with the fact I've been listening to pop music for nearly 40 years now, I'm going to write a couple of songs and see what happens. I'll keep you posted.

Frank

2007-07-25T21:24:00.000-06:00

My friend Frank died suddenly on Monday. Out of nowhere. May have been his heart -- I haven't heard for sure yet. Words can't describe the sense of loss, for him of course, and mostly for his family and hundreds of friends. And for ourselves. People are trying, and they're doing a great job capturing in a few hundred words what Frank was like.

But still. He was just a few years older than me, and we met after our wives met in a park because our kids found each other. Our kids are the same age, born three days apart in 1990. We were both pretty much new to town, and our families spent a lot of time together between about 1993 and 2001, and then we moved west and we started new jobs and our kids started running in different school circles and, y'know, we get busy. Frank and I served on boards and committees together, share the presidency of a church of all things, and our families went camping together and sailing in his hand-built boat, we helped each other move a number of times, we drank a lot of beer in his backyard and so on and so on. We planned a series of fishing movies featuring him as the Pharaoh of Evans. He dreamed of retiring to a sailboat in the Caribbean.

He was for sure the smartest guy I've ever known, about everything and anything. He knew his philosophy, and baseball, and fly fishing and pretty much everything else. At his house yesterday I saw on his desk a book on how to write a screenplay. And he had tremendous joy in sticking it to the authorities of any shape or stripe.

I can't believe he's gone, but I'm so glad we ran into him in the grocery store about two weeks ago, in the vegetable aisle. He was talking to two or three other people, and while we visited two others came up to pat him on the back and exchange pleasantries. Seems like everyone knew him, and was friends was him.

Anyway. Life goes on, perhaps, but not nearly as joyously. See ya, Frank.

How to watch the Tour de France

2007-07-19T20:39:00.001-06:00

The best week of Le Tour de France is about to start, and I'm in heaven. It's been a wide open race so far, with some great racing, and it's only going to get better. There's still a half-dozen guys with a legitimate chance to win the overall title.

There's one more supposedly "easy' stage Friday, then the first long time trial -- the race of truth -- comes on Saturday, then three massive stages in the Pyrenees, then a couple of transition stages to next Saturday when there's another long time trial to sort out the final standings.

I've mastered the routine on how to watch, and I'm ready to share. First, get up early to watch the live coverage on the Versus network. It begins at 6 or 6:30 a.m. here on the Edge of Nowhere, and typically I've been able to watch about an hour of mid-race coverage before I have to go sit in my cubicle for money. On the weekend, I'll just stay in front of the tube til race end, but on weekdays I have to pull away.

So, the next best option is to read live coverage. I prefer the guys and gals on CyclingNews.com because they're amusing and insightful, and give great play-by-play. Each day they have real-time live blogging of what's happening (here's a sample from today's stage), and if I can sneak peaks at work I will, or I'll wait til I know the race is over then copy/paste the whole live coverage and avoid seeing who won and go read it at lunch. Sometimes I'll also read the live play-by-play (in real time, or after the fact) on the official Le Tour site. Be sure to click the British flag if you prefer to read it in English.

Once I know what's happened and who's won, then I'll go read the main stories. CyclingNews.com has great coverage, with their main wrap-up stories both have a feature angle, and a "how it unfolded" version. Then you have to look through the standings, the overall, the King of the Mountain, the points jerseys and so on. Then I'll go read Edward Wyatt's NY Times coverage, which is typically pretty good and posted by early afternoon, and then it's over to the BBC version, which tends to be short and to the point with a focus on the few British riders left but sometimes they have good color.

Then, when I get home, I read Martin DuGard's blog. He's covering the race for Active.com this year, but I'm really enjoying his behind-the-scenes work. So much that I went to the library and over the past two days read his blog-like book about Lance Armstrong's 7th title, called Chasing Lance, which was good enough to keep me up to 1 a.m. this morning finishing it. I've read a few of the posts on the BBC's "Adventures of Van Ullrich" course-side blog, too.

Then, to wrap it all up, I tape the recap television coverage from 6-9 p.m. on Versus, so I can watch the last 90 minutes or so after the family's gone to bed. After that, I dig out my paper copy of Cycle Sport America magazine's Tour Preview issue to read about the next day's stage, and check the profile and map on Google Earth.

Heaven, I tell you. That's where I've been the past 10 days, and where I'll be for the next 10 days. It's the greatest race on earth. And there's a compelling, exciting week left. I'm looking foward to it.

Up, up and...

2007-07-10T17:09:00.000-06:00

One lawn chair, a bunch of large size helium balloons, and 193 miles. Sweet.

Two weeks

2007-07-10T17:01:00.001-06:00

Has it really been two weeks already? Wow.

Jack Kerouac's batting averages

2007-06-27T20:26:00.000-06:00

In 1948 Jack Kerouac came up with a formula, now lost to history, that he called a "batting average" to calculate his productivity while working on his first novel. I wish I knew the formula, because I'd love to track my efforts. Perhaps I should just come up with my own equation. )The link also mentions the 'On the Road' scroll, which I saw about three months ago down in Denver.)

Space

2007-06-23T09:15:00.001-06:00

There might be a place for space in the question of the week, or at least the answer to it. And speaking of space, we saw the International Space Station and the Shuttle Atlantis fly over the Edge of Nowhere two nights in a row, Wednesday and Thursday. Two bright lights, seemingly the same size as Venus (which has been huge in the evening twilight the past few weeks), tracking across the dome of the night sky from northwest to southeast.

I like seeing the space station, knowing its up there, and I remember consciously getting up at 5 a.m. and going out into our front yard and walking up the street a little bit on the morning of Sept. 12, 2001, to see the space station fly over in the pinkblue dawn, and thinking that despite the tragedy and outrageousness of the attacks of the previous day, in the end peace and cooperation would win out. I still believe it, even if..... well, anyway. Someday.

Or perhaps ...

2007-06-20T22:53:00.000-06:00

It has to do with dynamics. Or probability.

Another clue

2007-06-19T13:19:00.000-06:00

This might factor into your answer to the previous post: Equations for a Falling Body