Ping-pong ball

Bounced back to NYC, today...on a plane that was scheduled to leave at 7:05 am but didn't take off till 8:15 am due to "technical issues." Didn't stop Jet Blue from loading the plane, however, and letting us sit there for nearly an hour and a half. So I got here late and got started on everything late and busted butt to try and get caught up...and now I'm dog tired.

BUT...I did have a nice long conversation with Kyle Cicero, who wrote the "Mark Julian" series of vampire detective novels with a gay twist. I'd call them gay detective novels but while Mark is gay and has a husband, so many of the other characters are straight it seems like it'd be false advertising. I was supposed to meet him for lunch at noon but I ditzed and didn't notice the time till after 1pm.

Kyle's a hoot to talk with, and he's convinced me to make an homage of a visit to The G Lounge down in Chelsea to have both a frozen Cosmo AND a frozen Appletini...and maybe flirt a little with Patrick and/or Pedro. We'll have to see how this goes over. I don't drink a lot -- maybe a beer at dinner -- so this may be a bad idea. BUT...I'm in NYC, the place for bad ideas to happen (unless you're in Vegas, but then try to find anyone to have those bad ideas with; it's all family-oriented).

We chatted about writing and it's nice to know he's having the same troubles as me -- focused on a story and then some other thing slams into your brain to take over and make your life scatter in a hundred different directions. (I love being able to commiserate with a fellow author about the horrors of writing.)

I mean, I want to finish POS now. I'm so close I can taste it. I've finished Bobby Sands' book, "A Day in My Life" and it's given me ideas on what to do with Brendan's troubles with the RUC and British. I know how to write his part in a couple of the major moments in The Troubles. I just need to buckle down and do it.

But even plotting out "Mr. Lucky" and assigning the story its own folder hasn't shut the damned thing up. Maybe I'll work it out as a novella and see if that will let it be. But I don't know if that'll be all right. When I wrote "Desert Land" under a similar circumstance, it sent me into blankness for weeks. Don't think I want to risk it, again. I'll never get POS done if I succumb to that.

So my obnoxious story is being deliberately placed on a back burner as I tend to the slow-cooking stew that's just about ready to eat. Some say it's the best way to cook a stew -- slowly, over the course of 36 hours (or months or years, as the case may be) because everything blends together in a new flavor.

Wait -- am I using the right analogy for POS? Maybe I should refer to T-Bills or reconstructing an antique car. Hmm, I like the last one...especially since Brendan's into car repair.

My room is near the overhead Metro tracks and trains can be heard passing every few minutes. Ahh, New York.