Author. Writer. Editor. Fool.
Driving home from work the other evening and ideas are rolling through my head. Sitting at a traffic light and it occurs to me, “Say, I should self-publish a science fiction anthology next year, maybe something with a Mars theme. Invite writers to submit stories, do it via CreateSpace and list it at Amazon. Yeah, that would be fun.” What the bloody hell is WRONG with me?
So here’s a problem I still haven’t learned to cope with: Idea overload. Whatever I happen to be working on at any given moment, well, I’d rather be working on the next thing instead. Sometimes even the thing after that thing. There are always too many projects that appeal to me; too many stories I want to write; too many things I want to try. At times it’s a little overwhelming. It’s overwhelming RIGHT NOW because there are a solid half-dozen big writing projects I’d like to be working on … but I don’t, because attempting that juggling act is a Bad Idea. I handle it by doing my best to stay focused on just one or two major projects at once. Otherwise, I’d be…
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Waaaaaay back in February, I breathlessly posted about my desire to begin the second draft of a science fiction novel I’ve been kicking around. First draft was done. Readable. But needed work. First I planned to start the second draft early in the year and wrap it up by late spring. Then I pushed it back to March in order to slam out some other, shorter projects. Then Stuff Every Husband Should Know came up and took priority. Then I had to finish scripting Pitched! 2 so we could get it out in 2010. Then I took the rest of the summer off from writing because damn did I need a breather. So now, many endless months later, I finally start on Ye Olde Second…
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It’s the final few loose ends of a major project that are the most frustrating, not because they’re particularly difficult or troublesome, but because the finish line is right freakin’ there, just out of your reach, teasing you like the chicken nugget that slips from of your grasp and under the passenger side seat. I’m talking about Pitched! 2: Seven More Stories, which is the follow-up to my self-published comic anthology of 2009, Pitched!: Nine Stories. It is, I hope, an eclectic and entertaining batch of stories made 100 percent better by a talented bunch of artists and collaborators. The good news is, I’ll be sending the final pages to our printer in the super duper immediate future. The bad news is that it will…
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What the title of this post says is true and good and quite factual to the best of my knowledge — which admittedly isn’t particularly deep, but I think I can speak on this subject with at least some authority. Last week, two weeks ago, something like that — time is largely a blur to me — I took a gander at the edited-and-laid-out-and-made-pretty version of Stuff Every Husband Should Know (due out April 5, 2011 from the fine folks at Quirk Books). It looked pretty darn swell, if I may say so myself. (I may.) The illustrations are spiffy, the topics that made the final cut are wide-ranging and interesting (wrote more than we needed, so maybe ten chapters or so are sitting on…
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