Happy Halloween/Samhain/New Year!

Honor your dead and rejoice in the love they gave you. Honor your gods for the bounty you've been blessed with. And honor Danny Elfman for his wicked songwriting skills. I dare you not to sing along.

Happy 2010 Birthday to Me!

Currently reading - Small Jobs by Jim Butcher

As I was re-reading last year's birthday post, I had to laugh at the goal for this year.  Both the pies and the lasagna had been baked two days before because I knew I'd be working the day job the entire weekend.  Unfortunately, I paid for my forward thinking with a stomach bug yesterday.  Blech!

On the bright side, I did much better on my writing accomplishments since the last b-day.

-  One first draft completed
-  Another completed manuscript edited
-  Added 10+K to last year's aborted NaNo attempt
- Came up with too many ideas which are now sitting in various files
- Sent out 13 queries
- Personally pitched 3 agents (1 full & 2 partials requested)

Goal I'm hoping to accomplish for the next year?  Finding an agent!

Bitch Stabbed Me in the Back!

Who is the bitch, you might ask?

My own fucking subconscious, that's who.

I sing her praises, tell others how often she gotten me out of plot scrapes, rely on her to flesh out my characters, and what does she do?

She throws all my insecurities in my face.

The other night I dreamed I'm in a store, perusing the magazine rack.  I'm thumbing through a dream version of Entertainment Weekly when I stumble across an article about two people I know.  There's matching full-page spreads about the movies coming out based on books written by these two.  The article goes on to describe their rise to the NYT list, and how their next book contracts are estimated to be the seven figure range.

[Now, I know these two people in real life.  They've both worked their asses off to get where they are and are very successful authors, but in reality, it's nowhere near the level described in my dream magazine.]

As I'm reading the article, Bruce Campbell, in his Coach Boomer persona, leaps into the room.  He aims the blade of his hand at me and yells, "Sidekick!"

Thanks, Subconscious.  Thanks a lot.

[If you don't get the movie reference, download, rent or buy Sky High.  A little formulaic, but funny as hell.]

If You Missed Neil Gaiman on Arthur. . .

. . . the episode has been posted on PBS.  If you have school-age children, I suggest watching it with your kids.  The show has some wonderful pointers on creativity.

And Now For Something You'll Really Like. . .

Since I'm on a Queen kick this week while meeting deadlines. . .

Queen: Muppets Style

Why, oh, why didn't Jim Henson ever have Freddie and the boys on the Muppet Show?

Neil Gaimain Alert!

The magnificent and prolific Neil Gaiman will appear tomorrow on PBS's Arthur.

As a cat.

Check your local listings for channel and time.

For the Houston metro area, our local PBS station is KUHT-TV, Channel 8. Arthur airs at 2:30PM CDT.

(Image: ©2010 WGBH / Cookie Jar Entertainment Inc. )

For more info, check out Geekdad at Wired.com.

Old Spice Mockery with Grover

If Cthulu and Grover both wear Old Spice, will the guy from the commercial ever find his shirt?

The Latest $h*! at Dorchester

If you haven't heard the latest about the Dorchester fiasco, go read Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.  Publishers Weekly picked up the story and tweeted it yesterday.

All I can say is please, PLEASE do not buy Dorchester books or even download them for free.  I've got friends who've published with these pirates who will not see a dime you spend.

Piracy is a crime.  And yes, that is exactly what Time DeYoung is--a pirate. Not the cute Johnny Depp version, but the slit-your-throat and piss-on-you-body kind.  Don't add to the vicims' injury by buying books from him.

Little Lies We Tell Ourselves

This post started out as a response to QueryFairy's comment on last week's post Publishing Subjectivity the Retail Way.  But then I read Neil Gaiman's blog, which led to his fiancee Amanda Palmer's blog, which led to . . .

Well, I'm not sure what.

Originally, I wanted to say to QueryFairy and to other writers not to sell yourself by doing art that makes you uncomfortable.  QueryFairy is a friend who writes erotica for a particular publisher.  The thing is she's fabulous at erotica, but writing erotica makes her uncomfortable with herself, which makes me sad.

Then Neil commented in an interview how Amanda was censoring herself (my words, not his) because of their different concepts of privacy, and it made him a little sad that she felt she needed to change.  Amanda answered in her blog about how different it was pre-Neil because her boyfriend was some anonymous person as far as the blogosphere was concerned, and she could say things and only she would suffer the ramifications.

Which takes me back to QueryFairy.  She wants a writing career and can make money writing erotica.  But she still wants to protect her family by not revealing this aspect of herself.  Amanda also curtails her writing in order to protect her fiance.

Here's the paradox.  True art means exposing ourselves to the world.  So what happens when we write (or draw or paint or play) something that makes us not truly ourselves?

Life's too fucking short doing crap that makes you unhappy or uncomfortable or something you're not.  I almost died learning that lesson the hard way, and I turned to writing in order to preserve my identity and sanity.  This does not mean I'm advocating that you expose your loved ones to something potentially dangerous or damaging.  But it's a very thin line.

Anybody out there have tips on staying on that tightrope?