The end of an era

Sydney Lumet died, today.  He's the director behind a huge number of seminal films -- Network, Dog Day Afternoon, Twelve Angry Men, Fail Safe, Prince of the City -- as well as some real misfires -- The Wiz, and enough said about that.  But this guy was working as a director from the early 50's in TV, when it was live and just getting started.  He helped 17 actors and actresses gain Academy Award nominations, he was so good at working with them, and four won - Ingrid Bergman, Beatrice Straight, Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway.  He was TV and film history, and "Network" is more relevant today than it was 35 years ago.  He will be missed.

I finished "The Lyons' Den" and sent it off to the publisher.  It wound up being 276 pages long and very nearly 60K in words.  I went through my usual, "Let's put it aside for a little while and see how it reads, then" and realized if I do that, I'll never finish it.  I could easily tweak this story for the next year and not be 100% on it, but the fact is, I never SHOULD be.  When the day comes that I'm satisfied with my writing, that'll be the day my creativity has died...well, what little creativity I have.

Besides, I was falling in love with Van and that's not a good thing.  I could easily make this a gooey love story instead of the farcical-psychotic-break it really is.  I never knew I could go as far as I did with this story.  Here's hoping this publisher likes it.

Now I can get to my reading and prepping for "Place of Safety."

On a side note -- Obama let the country get raped by the GOP and he's calling it a victory because they agreed to use a condom.  I may talk to some of the people I know in England and see if anyone will sponsor me for a job over there, since I'm not winning the lottery and I'm incapable of writing a script that will sell.  I'm not above applying for citizenship.  The UK doesn't require I give up my US passport, nor does the US.  But this ludicrous dance in Washington is just plain pathetic, and the scum on the Right are only going to get worse, thanks to this capitulation by our power elite and the asinine pundits who support them.

Where's an FDR or Harry Truman when you need one?

Selling like hotcakes...sort of

I just checked the sales figures on my books (according to Amazon's tracking system, which supposedly includes B&N and Borders) and in March I sold 31 copies, just in paperback.  Six of them are HTRASG, bouncing it back up to the top 5 of the publisher's bestsellers (right now I'm at #4 but I was #2 for a week).  RIHC6v1 is also selling steadily, and PM and BCv1 have begun to sell, as well.

I don't get specific figures on the Kindle sales, just a graph that shows them all staying in the top 20% of overall sales...and that does not include Nook or any other electronic edition of the book.  Too bad this doesn't translate into actual money; I could use it, right now since my taxes wiped me out.  And I wish I could trust the figures I get from the publisher, but I'm at the point where if he tells me the sky is blue and grass is green, I'll think he's lying.

As for the IRS, I'm 95% sure I'll get audited, because H&R Block REALLY did not make me comfortable with their incompetence.  But it's too late to get them redone by a real CPA and besides, I couldn't afford to pay someone else to do it.  I'm still in the mindset of having withholding done on a paycheck, and I've never paid estimated taxes through the year.  And I am not at ALL used to paying so damn much in self-employment tax...so I got hit good.  Yet billionaires get tax breaks out the wazoo from the scum in Washington.  I'm thinking more and more along the lines of pitchforks and torches and guillotines, with Donald Trump and the Koch brothers first in line.

I'm rather enjoying the spectacle of Paul Ryan being raked over the coals thanks to his ludicrous budget proposal.  Even The Heritage Foundation's been stung by his stupidity...and that is SUCH a good thing, because they love to make up their own figures.  Problem is, this fiasco hasn't changed anyone's mindset, at all.  The GOP still thinks they can cut taxes by a couple trillion bucks and it will all magically even out once they cut the waste in government spending.  That was shown to be nonsense back as far as Ronnie Ray-gun, who tripled our debt using that very same math.  But nobody on the right seems to give a damn.

It used to be that Americans knew the best way to take care of themselves was to take care of those around them.  Businesses gave people long-term jobs and in exchange got experienced employees who stayed with them throughout their working lives.  Even Henry Ford, who was rabidly anti-union, knew that if he wanted his workers to be able to buy his cars, he had to pay them a decent wage.  We don't have that in business, anymore.  Not since the likes of Carl Icahn became heroes for slashing jobs and decimating unions and raiding pensions all to enrich themselves.  We may HAVE to have a full-fledged depression that wipes out the fortunes of scum like the Kochs and the Trumps and the Chiafes before we can return to some semblance of honest Capitalism, again, instead of this robber baron crap.

End of soapbox.  Time for tea...and working on LD.

Damn that lottery!

The fates have failed me, again.  I bought lottery tickets and didn't get one damned number right.  How am I ever going to be able to break this cycle of work, work, work, write if I don't catch a break with something that's damn near impossible to win?  I think the most I ever got out of a lottery ticket was $5...after I'd put in $20.  NOT a good return.  Makes you want to give up on the idea of luck.

Which I will need a lot of to get everything done that I want to get done.  Which is something I've never had much of.  *Sigh*

So I wiped myself out paying my taxes, today.  And H&R Block asked me to refer people to them.  I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing in their faces.  I'm never going back to them, let alone suggesting people use them.  Jeez.  Today the woman helping me couldn't even get my NY State Voucher to print out unless I filed electronically.

Enough whining.  I'm turning into the Tad of LD, albeit without the cash.  Or looks.  Or absolute certainty that I'm perfect.

I'm at the point where LD is as close as I can get to it being done, short some feedback that points out a logic flaw that I'm not seeing and that makes me go into meltdown and that...that...uh, keeps me from accepting that I'm now going through to determine whether to use "an" or "the" as the article.  Which is normally my break-off point.

God, it took me nearly six months to get to this point with a 270 page story; how long'll it take to get POS done if I go through the same nonsense?  I DEFINITELY need to win the lottery -- at least SOME of it -- just so I'll have the time to finish the book before I'm 90!

Anybody got some good numbers?  I'll cut you in for 10%.

Requiem For The Departed

I've begun reading an anthology of short crime stories written by authors from Northern Ireland and the Republic, all based on Irish legends.  It's an interesting take and the stories do get dark and gritty, but I'm having this weird sensation of reading work that was written in the 70's and 80's, even though all are based in modern times.  I honestly don't know why...unless it's the fact that back then I was heavy into mysteries -- Agatha Christie, Earl Stanley Gardener, Earl Derr Biggers, Ellery Queen -- mixed with Steven King and Peter Straub (and the stories do seem a bit like a cross between King and Queen...sorry, couldn't resist that) -- and they seem to be about as inventive as books of that time.

One is based on "the hound of Culain," which was killed by Cú Chulainn, one of Ireland's ancient heroes...but I don't really see that story in the modern short.  In the legend, as a child, Cú Chulainn kills the guard dog of Culann in self defense then offers to take its place until one can be trained to replace it.  In the story, only half the legend is used and the Cú Chulainn character is made into a scumbag version of Clive Owen's transporter in the BMW commercials, ten years back.  Seems a bit disrespectful.

The opening story is based on the legend of Queen Macha, who dominates her men and supposedly won a race she was forced to run against some horses, even though pregnant with twins.  She went into labor at the finish line and cursed the men of Ulster to suffer her pains whenever they most needed their strength.  In the story, she's a drug-dealing whore who's one step ahead of all the men she knows because she knows how to use sex against them.  Hell, that could be Scarlett O'Hara of Belfast.

I can't say much about the liberties taken with the legends, in these stories, because of what I did with "Darian's Point"...using harpies formed from the Dagda's sins and Morriggan's witchcraft to build a new branch to the myths...though I do think I stayed close to the mythology of the times.  And the writing is good.  I'm just...I dunno...not impressed with the directions taken, so far.  It's like they went the easiest route to build their stories.  Nothing really fresh or exciting in them, just...typical.

For example, why did the Macha character have to be evil as well as smart?  She's not really that way in the legends.  Why couldn't she have been a judge or a barrister or a reporter or a cop or just a housewife who doesn't want her kids exposed to drugs or a tourist who's inadvertently caused trouble?  Any of these would have fit much better with the story, even keeping it basically as is (a guy is being paid to kill her, even though he was once involved with her).

I dunno, I guess I was hoping for something more fresh.  Now I'm hoping they'll get better as I go along.

Is this self-defeating?

I have a new idea for a mystery starring Jake and Tone...well, "Antony"...from RIHC6.  It came to me as I was packing the last of the books, today, and I started writing it down...and now it's got me excited.  Because this one would be told by Jake and would also explain why he sticks with Antony even though the guy is a near nutcase.  Plus it takes place in Palm Springs, for the most part.

Jake's Uncle Owen disappears after having a run-in with the police, so he tries to find out what happened and winds up caught in a murder conspiracy.  Tone joins him and things get dangerous for them both.  I've got several points plotted out and even know the beginning and ending and a new character, Enid, a lesbian friend of Owen's whom I may base on Georgia O'Keefe.  We shall see.

Problem is, my focus should be on "Place of Safety."  But brain is being difficult, again.

On top of this, yesterday I had an idea on changes I should make to a script I wrote years ago that could make it sellable.  Meaning, yes...I'm still locked into that frame of mind, even though it's not really getting me anywhere and means doing only a sketch of a story.  I've been trying to get away from it...but this is my history.  And I can't seem to just drop it.

I halfway think the main reason I feel that way is because my father dropped me after he and my mother divorced.  I went through a long period where I refused to care about anything...but at the same time I was obsessive about my art and I would re-read books I'd liked over and over.  I'm still a bit like that -- torn between not caring and not letting go, watching movies I love over and over while refusing to care about new films until I make myself do it...and the new book about Jake and Tone might help me work through that, a little.

I think.  I dunno.  Reality is, I never know what I'm going to do until I do it.  End of story.  Be interesting to see where this leads.

Bone tired

So not much to say.  Except something I'd been able to forget about the south done got me, again -- mosquitos.  I got one in my room that's fat with my blood, and when I catch and kill it, we're gonna have a Jackson Pollack on the wall or bed or wherever.

Nothing else done.  Being good hosts, the people whose books I'm packing insisted on taking me out to dinner, and I didn't get done till after 9pm.  Some damn nice books, tho.

I'm still thinking up changes for LD.  Little details here and there -- like describing Tad's Cadillac SUV as one that looks like an icebreaker and trying to figure out how to work in a comment to explain why Daniel's dad isn't around...if I really need to.  I may not.

As usual, my La Quinta room has issues.  One being the plug by the internet connection only half works, so I can't have a lamp while I'm working at my laptop.  Another -- I have to go to the desk to ask for sugar for my tea because the maid didn't leave any.  I'd say you get what you pay for, but I've been in rooms that cost 3 times as much and had to get the AC fixed or a toilet repaired.  Seems preemptive repairs are no longer how the hotel business works, these days.

I'm beat.  Time to sit in a tub.

Pretty but vapid

That's Birmingham...at least on the end of town I'm staying in.  Lots of hills thick with trees.  A downtown that Buffalo puts to shame.  Huge numbers of empty retail buildings and those big, blank, hideous parking lots in front of stores that make you walk as much as a quarter mile to get inside.  And mosquitoes.  Ah...the South.  How I've never missed it.

My plane ride was the bumpiest I've had in some time, but I got a seat between me and the aisle-guy on the Baltimore-Birmingham leg, so I worked on my red pen version of LD and got it done.  Now I just need to input the changes.

I brought a copy of a crime anthology with me to read, full of crime writers from Northern Ireland.  Should be interesting...and I can see how they write about life in the NI.

Now to focus on something that shocked me -- just how archaic my grammar is.  I bought a copy of Strunk & White's "Elements of Style" and after reading the just first few pages, I can see where the approach to American grammar has changed.  I was taught to NEVER put a comma before "and" when it's used as a conjunction -- as in "Tom, Dick and Harry."  BUT...it's now acceptable practice to do it like this -- "Tom, Dick, and Harry."  Which does not even begin to look right to me.

Another one -- when words like Charles and Burns become possessive; I was taught to just add an apostrophe at the end, like this -- Charles' and Burns'.  Strunk and White says you still add an "S" after them...but NOT if there are two "S's" already at the end of the word, like with a phrase such as "for righteousness' sake."

Damn, and I thought I was so good and up to date.  Guess it's never to late to learn a new method, is it?

But they STILL do not look right, to me.

Technology sux!

I just logged on and every blog I'm following is gone-gone, and Blogger is asking me if I would like to start following some blogs.  I have no idea why.  They were all there, yesterday; today, it's like I'd never done it.

I've had this happen with the program we use at work.  It's a world-wide shipping set-up that lets you do everything from issue a pickup order to file for and AES Export to Delivery orders of multiple kinds.  But every now and then it just vanishes things.  Makes the work you did go bye-bye and won't tell you where it went.  That also happened on our server so much during the California Book Fair, I got to where I'd save a copy of anything I did to my desktop as well as the server.  And that saved our butt on a few occasions.

On top of this, I'm hearing a bit of non-stop swearing at QuickBooks since it was updated.  And Microsoft Office is just as quirky.

I think a lot of it has to do with how complex the damned programs are becoming.  How much we're demanding from them.  The more crap you've got to work with, the more crap you've got to go wrong.  My little Honda Civic is a hundred times more complex than my old Volvo 122S, to the point where it's hard to even change a light that's gone out.  And don't get me started on the tire jack.  But some of the rental cars I've driven lately look like trouble seeking a chance to screw your world.

But it's not just technology that's pulling this crap.  A co-worker has a 7 year old daughter, and that girl is scheduled down to when she can read, when she can watch TV, when she goes to soccer and dance and religion class (they're Catholic) on TOP of school and play dates.  Same for some friends of mine with their daughter -- gymnastics, belly dancing and god knows what else.  When do kids get to just hang out and be kids, these days?  Hell, I always thought part of growing up was being bored for spaces of time...and not realizing that what you're really doing is giving your brain a respite from the strife of life.

My life shouldn't have much strife, when it comes down to it.  I work about 40 hours a week...sometimes 50.  I travel some...but I enjoy that, to an extent.  And I write and read.  I used to watch movies a lot -- 3-4 a week -- but for that I haven't much time, anymore.  I'm looking at how many books I have to write and can't justify wasting 2-3 hours on a movie that I'm far more likely to not like than to enjoy.  I still crash for a few days at a time, but looking back over my time since leaving Heritage, I've done a shitload of work.  Published 7 books and a novella.  Written another one.  Written most of yet two more.  And I also wrote 5 screenplays -- 2 for me and 3 for other people...not to mention the rewrites I did.  And that's on top of two major moves -- from LA to SA to Buffalo.  No wonder I zone, at times.

But I'm an adult on the downhill side of his life.  Kids...they ought to be given a chance to just kick back and have nothing to do and be bored, at times, just so they don't jump into the rat race so keyed up they fall apart by the age of 30.  I had that.  And more often than not I filled it by reading books or sketching.  But sometimes I just did not know what to do with myself...and I now see that as a blessing.  Because the way we're going, we're going to be as prone to screw ups as technology now is.

Such is life in the big city.

Too beautiful not to share

This was posted on a news blog I follow called Soup (it puts CNN and MSNBC and AP and Reuters to shame).

"Now that we have tasted hope"

Now that we have come out of hiding,
Why would we live again in the tombs we’d made out of our souls?
And the sundered bodies that we’ve reassembled with prayers and consolations,
What would their torn parts be other than flesh?
Now that we have tasted hope
And dressed each other’s wounds with the legends of our oneness
Would we not prefer to close our mouths forever shut on the wine
That swilled inside them?
Having dreamed the same dream,
Having found the water that gushed behind a thousand mirages,
Why would we hide from the sun again
Or fear the night sky after we’ve reached the ends of darkness,
Live in death again after all the life our dead have given us?
Listen to me Zow’ya, Beida, Ajdabya, Tobruk, Nalut, Derna, Musrata, Benghazi, Zintan,
Listen to me houses, alleys, courtyards, and streets that throng my veins,
Some day soon
In your freed light and in the shade of your proud trees,
Your excavated heroes will return to their thrones in your martyrs’ squares,
Lovers will hold each other’s hands.
I need not look far to imagine the nerves dying rejecting the life that blood sends them.
I need not look deep into my past to seek a thousand hopeless vistas.
But now that I have tasted hope
I have fallen into the embrace of my own rugged innocence.
How long were my ancient days? I no longer care to count.
How high were the mountains in my ocean’s fathoms?
I no longer care to measure.
How bitter was the bread of bitterness?
I no longer care to recall.
Now that we have tasted hope,
Now that we have lived on this hard-earned crust,
We would sooner die than seek any other taste to life,
Any other way of being human.
- Libyan writer Khaled Mattawa

Much better

Today I slept till 11 am.  And I think I will, tomorrow, as well.  And why does that matter?  It doesn't, really, except it made me feel good all day.

So...I input the last corrections to LD and printed up a copy to do my red pen on.  And when that's done and smoothed over, off it goes to the publishing house to see if they want it.  What's especially fun is, it's now over 58,000 words.  And I could work on it and work on it and wind up with a 75K word opus, at the rate I edit down, so it's probably best to end it here.

Sunday I'm off to Birmingham and won't be back till Wednesday night, if all goes well.  I can just see me winding up packing the library of a couple of "Birthers" or Tea-Party-Republicans.  I had a hard time holding my tongue with that old lady Tea-freak in Maryland, six months back, and that was just for an afternoon.

Anyway..I feel good when I don't have to get up at a ridiculous hour -- like 8am.  I really am NOT a morning person in any way form or fashion.  I can be civil at 9 but I ain't interested in being nice till noon, so having a job makes it hard on me, sometimes.  Conversely, I don't have any trouble staying up till 2 in the morning.

Now to be honest, something else that makes me feel...well, not good so much as vindicated is how the right wing religious nuts have finally taken things too far.  A fanatic of a "Christian" minister named Wayne Sapp (how appropriate) sponsored the "trial and burning" of a Koran in Florida, about 10 days back.  He got help from a similar cretin named Terry Jones.  Word got around to the Afghan people and some fanatical Muslim Imams used it to bring about an attack on the UN mission in Mazar-e Sharif, a city near Kabul.  As many as 20 people were killed, including 7 UN personnel.  Now that fucking preacher is saying, "Ain't my fault."

It's scum like this who make me wonder if God really exists, because if he did, he wouldn't put up with their crap.  But they keep doing it and causing chaos and leading their flocks closer and closer to hell, all in his name and in complete contradiction to the teachings of Christ.  It's diseased.

At the same time, nearly a thousand people have been killed in Duekoue, The Ivory Coast by supporters of President Gbagbo, who was voted out of office but is refusing to give up control.  There are strong indications Gbagbo's supporters plan to massacre those who supported his opponent, which could number from the tens of thousands up to a million...which, considering what happened in Rwanda, is not inconceivable.  So...is our president planning to intervene in The Ivory Coast on humanitarian grounds, like he says he did in Libya?  Nope.  Why not?  Ivory Coast has no oil and just a bunch of French speaking black people, so who cares?

Rumor has it, Obama's the second best Republican president, ever, after Ronnie Ray-gun.

I wonder if I could emigrate to Vancouver?