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So, after taking a while to figure out exactly how to do it, my webmistress has my site up and running. Right now, we have the Duckon reading listed and when I get more information on Worldcon and GenCon, I'll fill it in. Here's the current plan: Riding the Hell-Bound Train should be ready for sales on July 21st. It is long. I figure that it's around 285 pages in a 6x9 edition. I am going to try to figure out a way to sell it for the lowest price I can and still make enough to make it worth my while. I'm going to work in tandem with John to keep it low. This may mean forgoing putting it on Amazon completely and just making it purchasable through the Peregrination Press website--I'll know more after he gets back in the office on the 20th. If it's going to be a lot--more than $30, for instance, I'm going to cut it into two equal-sized volumes that'll be individually priced, so that people have the option to choose either my factual articles or my fiction (there's four completely new fiction pieces in the book). On the site, on the story page, are four older stories from the book that are free for you to read. They've all seen print before in either Urbanagora or my story blogs. They're now in their final form--straight from the manuscript. Once I have the book in print or perhaps a little before, I am going to be putting up new, original short stories on the website for purchase using PayPal. I'll have a sliding scale depending on how long the story is. The maximum I plan on charging for any story up through novella length is $5, with most stories ending up in the $3 or $4 range instead. Once a story's been up for sale for three months, I will move it to the "giving it away" column, so no matter whether you have money or not, you can read my stuff. People have asked me, "aren't you afraid of someone stealing your stuff?" Come on, now. If some poor son of a bitch wants to claim my stories as his, let him. I've got the orignals with Mitzi's footprints on them. The only problem would be if someone tried to sue me, claiming that the story he stole was his. In that case, I have a very protective young man that looks upon me as his father-figure. He works for DLA PIper. 'Nuff said. Oh, and the cover art will be available on the website after the 20th. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. I am real. I am real. Tom Tags: book, hooray, life, webpage
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I imagine that some of you are wondering how things are going on the book right now. I have to say that I made a lot of progress today--16,000 words worth of final rewrite. I've been stuck trying to figure out the perfect endings for the first two Margee and Jerry stories and I have finally got something I can live with. I still have to do the rewrites for the Heinlein Centennial, my futurist posts, and the two Titan stories (one of which is a short-short). I figure that if I keep going at this rate, I should be ready for the final pre-book readthrough around the end of the first week in June.
I have a new short-story (Ed Morgan's Ride) finished and I think that I am going to include it in the book, since it's in the Iona universe that the M&J stories are in. It's better than the third M&J story so may substitute it. In any case, writing it did interesting things to me.
I started the story writing about someone else, and somewhere in the first third, it became about me. I've spent a lot of my life dealing with the results of being an alcoholic--I've had to wall up an entire side of my life, keeping my good angel as my advisor and imprisoning my bad angel.
All that changed while I was writing the story. I needed the feelings, the desires, the hopes of the bad angel. I fought hard and long trying just to sit with him in the visitor's center in my brain, discussing all of this through the bullet-proof glass, without having to invite him back into my life. Finally, I realized that the story would never be finished without him, so I let him out.
He changed me when he integrated back. My obsession with sameness and safety shrank. I remembered what it was like to take risks when the prize was worth it, so I did. I told a truth to someone despite the fact that doing so would make me more vulnerable than I had been, perhaps ever. I was rewarded for doing so more than I ever hoped or dreamed and got something beautiful and precious that will last me for the rest of my lifetime.
I had a conversation last week about my angels. The woman I was talking to asked me, " of all the relationships that you've ever had that have ended well, what incited them, the good or the bad in you?"
I was taken aback for a moment, never having considered the question. I looked back on my life and realized that the good angel had always been in the wings, watching and waiting for women who needed help, who needed saving, who became projects that would be able to live better lives if I were to help them--they just needed my sacrifice.
Not one of those relationships ever turned out good for me. Time and again, I would help my projects to get back on their feet, to overcome their obstacles, to finally become the person that they wanted to be. Each time that worked, I watched them go off into the sunset with the man they found after I was done with them. Each time.
The good relationships, the ones that lasted, were never based upon such things.
I looked over at my good angel, who was trying to seem innocent. "Is that the case?" I said. The good angel smiled and said something about virtue being its own reward.
Fuck that. It's time for the bad angel to come back. I have time left, I need to pursue the things that I still want, the people that I need, the life and love that I desire. Nothing that I fear is strong enough to kill me. If I must wait for something, the gamble of waiting is worth the chance of the payoff. I am alive. I know this because I can be hurt. I had forgotten how important that was.
TC Tags: life, love, personal angels and demons, writing
Current Location: halfway between heaven and hell
Current Mood:  exhausted
Current Music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h13WA8XY9ws
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Simulaneously posted in Urbanagora
I just returned home from a wonderful brunch sponsored by two of our Best Friends, Heather and Doug. I put on Carmina Burana cranked it on my headphones and got to thinking about the holiday. It's not just about that big, silly rodent. The second of February, the astronomical center of winter, has been celebrated for a long time. In our common European culture, it began as Imbolc in Ireland, then was transferred first to the Celtic Goddess, Brigid. Then, when the Irish converted to Catholicism (and incidentally, saved Western Civilization) the name was altered to Bridget. The Catholic Church nowadays celebrates it as Candlemas. The Sun is halfway to the equator now. Despite the foot of snow outside the window of the ManCave, I know that the green sleeps beneath. The dying of the light, which was arrested six weeks ago, has proven to be averted once more. In Europe tonight, women will parade with headdresses made of rows of candles to celebrate this victory. To a certain extent, I think that this holiday works as confirmation of little rebirths, of little resurrections. Human beings don't usually change very much from the person that they are at twenty years old or so. When they do, it's generally the result of metaprogramming changes from a traumatic or inspiring event. These are called epiphanies, and can be profound. I've got a buddy, Bill Taylor, who was a progressive for years. He had gotten tired of life, had become set in his ways living out on his farm near Monticello. One day, he cut his left forearm off with a chainsaw. He managed to get the stump tied off with a bicyle inner tube and the EMTs got to his farm and got him to the hospital--too late to save his arm. He said that it was one of the best things that ever happened to him. It made him realize that his life was precious and he could still make a big difference in the world. He increased his involvement with a program to built radio stations for the native people in Central America. Another old friend, Doug Jones, was the CEO of a tech company. He journeyed to Mexico and, while he was down there, contracted an infection similar to meningitis that came close to killing him. Soon afterwards, he left his position to work on a similar kind of project. He had been raised Unitarian-Universalist and he decided to promote a project to build fifty UU student foundations around the country at universities. I also reference my story (once more--old-time readers, sorry): In November of 2005, I suffered a heart attack that permanently disrupted my heart rhythm. The doctors have no idea why my heart is still beating, yet it does. I was dying of oxygen-deprivation until they found the mostly-blocked main artery. When I recovered, I found that I could now write fiction, at the cost of my scratch-pad memory. I decided to drop out of college for the second time in my life (the first time, I was merely a student) and become a professional philosopher and writer. After my first month at doing this, I can assure you, it was the best decision I have ever made in my life. My God, but I feel young. Nothing focuses a person like the imminent threat of death. Ultimately, our mortality is a gift, rather than a curse. I hope that humanity finds something that will continue to capture our attention in this manner when a generation or two down the road death becomes an option or an accident, rather than a sure thing. I leave you with a 2005 column written by Jonah Goldberg of National Review about the philosophical meaning of the day and the wonderful movie with Bill Murray. Live each day as if will never end. Live each day as if you'll be judged by what you do during it. "Suddenly before my eyes
Hues of indigo arise
With them how my spirit sighs
Paint the sky with stars
Only night will ever know
Why the heavens never show
All the dreams there are to know
Paint the sky with stars
Who has paced the midnight sky?
So a spirit has to fly
As the heavens seem so far
Now who will paint the midnight star?
Night has brought to those who sleep
Only dreams they cannot keep
I have legends in the deep
Paint the sky with stars
Who has paced the midnight sky?
So a spirit has to fly
As the heavens seem so far
Now who will paint the midnight star?
Place a name upon the night
One to set your heart alight
And to make the darkness bright
Paint the sky with stars."--Enya, Paint the Sky with Stars
TC Trumpinski Tags: holidays, i wrote it now i'm crying, life, philosophy
Current Location: ManCave
Current Mood: artistic
Current Music: Enya, of course
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It's my third short story and by far the hardest to put to paper, since it wasn't SF but--I'm not quite sure what it is, you'll be able to decide for yourself tonight. The gestation period was very, very short, less than three minutes from first concept to complete plot, an hour to outline (two notebook pages.)
Actual writing took about six hours for 7000 words. Had to quit after the first 4000 from exhaustion and got stuck making the transition from the mundane to the not. Obviously, I got unstuck.
Having troubles with the printer at home--it seems to be out of alignment on every fourth line. Ran out of ink, too, just as I printed my first hardcopy. We'll have to look into that. I'm getting used to Windows 2007, but it is incompatible with the earlier versions. This means that I can't transfer works in progress from one computer to another. It also means it's harder to send friends finished stories as attachments, since they can't open them easily.
In any case, when I get home tonight, I'll upload it to the WordPress site that kitten's established for my fiction and link to it from LiveJournal. I hope you enjoy it.
TC Tags: fiction, life, writing mechanics
Current Location: work
Current Mood: drained
Current Music: The Moody Blues--Om from In Search of the Lost Chord
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tcgtrf's journal
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