Not sure if anyone still reads here; I've been quiet for a few months.

Hugo Duarte is playing at the Hog's Breath Inn (live webcam for those of you so inclined).

Wish I was there but I'll listen for now and go down when I can.

And even more books... and some coffee too.

So in last week's mail, I received You Suck: A Love Story by Christopher Moore. Haven't read it yet.

In tomorrow's mail, I expect to receive the ahead-of-revised-postponed-schedule Hurricane Punch by Tim Dorsey. I think it was 1/23, then 2/01, and now again 1/23. UPS tried to deliver it today, a bit past 6pm, to my company's offices.

I did get my shipment of Boca Java coffee. It's good stuff, available in flavored and unflavored, decaf and caf, beans and ground beans. They roast it pretty close to the time you order it--the half pound packs I got today are dated 1/15/07. They even have "Hound Dog Heaven" coffee, flavored of peanut butter and banana.

I also subscribe to Java City's coffee service. I haven't had as much of theirs, but it's pretty good. And they give Delta SkyMiles with your purchases.

More books...

I picked up Janet Evanovich's How I Write: Secrets of a Bestselling Author over the holidays. She talks about her Stephanie Plum series, of which I have a couple of volumes on the pile. I'll let you know how it works out.

I also picked up Novel & Short Story Writer's Market 2007 (Novel and Short Story Writer's Market) in case I get around to cold call shopping.

I think I have a year of Writers Market Online left too. Yep, had to create a new account on the site to use it, but it's good through 02/01/2008 so I'm happy. For those of you considering the "Deluxe" version of Writer's Market 2007 (Writer's Market Online) with the one year membership... you can only renew 60 or fewer days before the expiration of the previous year's subscription. It took me seven months to get an explanation of this last year--it just said "Your account has already been renewed" when I tried in August 2005; a followup inquiry near the end of October 2005 was also not responded to, but in March 2006 I finally got a response.

And amusingly, the front page "dashboard" (once logged in) says:

Marketplace expert Debbie Ridpath Ohi keeps you up-to-date on news that matters for working writers.

Some of you may remember her from 1000 Words, the comic series on Nanowrimo.org this year. Turns out, unremembered by me, she writes the Market Watch column for writersmarket.com.

Well, I have real work to do now, but I'll be posting more during 2007 in theory.

Drama Queen: A Love Story

Had a strange dream last night. I wish I could remember the Drama Queen's name. I can picture her very clearly. I have not yet dreamed or figured out how, or if, she ties into the Caslon brothers' dynasty, or Burl's life, or Jeremy J's.

I think she would either fit into Burl's scene, or Jeremy J's. I think I may be putting some butcher paper up on the wall and charting everyone's lives and loves. I was not expecting to hear from Jason Caslon again.

Xavier's Epiphany (from Sporting Wood)

It was a dank and starry night, as the wind flew across the curves of the
city like the breath of a sweaty desperate boy who'd climbed the twenty
half-flights of stairs to the penthouse level of the Imperial Hotel in
downtown San Francisco, given to believe he would find the woman of his
dreams, a woman his friends said was "like no woman you've ever
experienced before," a woman whose reputation preceded her in accurate but
imprecise fashion, much to his dismay, in that she was in fact beyond his
dreams but in the wrong way, her four feet and five inches of stature (if
you can call it that) terminating in a mop of orange curls that fell
around the smile formed of six randomly misplaced teeth just wrong for
oral gratitude, not that he minded that, never having received oral or any
other sort of gratitude, and later as he wandered off to hope the free
clinic would take his insurance he would quietly ponder why he had to run
for shelter when the promise of a brave new world unfurled beneath a clear
blue sky.

I'll wait for you to do the doot-doot-doot-doot-doo. You know the song.

The wind curled gently around Xavier Holland's temples, in much the same
way as the professional's creaky thighs had not, the scrapes of antique
stilettos on his shoulders proving he'd not been in the right place at the
right time, and the squawk of the Night Owl Line bus startling him back
into reality showing that once again he was like a fish on a bicycle in
the scales of justice, weighed and found wanting, or at least waddling a
bit.

He remembered catching the billowing redolence of her, um,
professionalism. He had read fifteen years of Penthouse Letters and
watched every porno video his brother had stolen from the Sticky Wicket
Video and Intimate Grocery, and had expected a floral experience when he
first dived between the creamy fjords of a lover's thighs. He was bitterly
disappointed, though, and swore never to expect to get what he paid for,
except in the luck of having waxed his mustache earlier for part of a
costume for a fancy ball at which his "gift" had been given him in an
envelope in the form of a short stack of grotesque dead presidents
(appropriate to have a short stack for this particular gift) and an
address on the back of a maxi-pad wrapper.

Xavier stepped into the crosswind of Market Street as the F Castro
streetcar passed, splashing a gray mist on his city pigeon gray Bugle Boy
slacks that nearly failed to absorb a day's oil and grime. He felt clean,
oddly enough, drenched but refreshed.

(C)2003

No plot? no burial!

I realize that I write scenes very well. Moments. Just another moment in the woods.

And unlike the Sondheim/Lapine lyric, even though the life in my stories were only made of moments, and even now and then a bad one, you definitely know when you had one.

It might be that more of my adult life has been moments and scenes than plots and progressions. It is a critical flaw in "write what you know," although I know more from reading than I would from watching. So I imagine I will have moments aplenty, and just need some florist wire to tie them together.


I think if I'm good today, I will look around for some of the cover photos I had from a few trips ago. I have some shots from the top of the lighthouse tower; I also have a 1971 map that would make a good cover for stories.

Scenes From An Exhibition, or, Stories That Should Have Been True

I am working on scenes for a new project. I am not convinced that I know where that book is going, although I am convinced that after five years I should get something polished and shiny and out the door. It may be time to use up the laser printer's introductory cartridge and start tearing stuff out and organizing it.

And I should note that the folks I read to the left are not necessarily associated with "cocaine by the kilo, ganja by the ton."