Web Presence

A Friday update!

In the last month, I have really kicked my Internet profile into high gear. There's this blog right here. Plus I'm a twitterer now. Or a tweeter. Or I tweet. Whatever the hell it is.

I've also got my bloglines account up and running, finally. I had the account for ages but never added any subscriptions. But watch out, 'cause my list is growin' like, um, something that grows fairly slowly!

I also dropped this blog onto Google Analytics, which is a pretty fun little tool, but it leaves me with one question: Who the hell is checking my blog on a daily+ basis from Sterling, Virginia?? I get Maine. I get NY. I certainly get Minnesota. But Sterling, Virginia?

I wouldn't ask, but (A) it's been driving me crazy, and (B) it's very close to DC, so it makes me a little paranoid, and (C) I use lettered lists instead of numbered lists in running text nowadays because I feel like John Green should enjoy a monopoly on numbered lists for the time being.

Enjoy your weekend.

An Abundance of Footnotes

I finally finished reading An Abundance of Katherines, by John Green, besides the math appendix, which I will read. I just fell asleep before I did. But I will.

This YA novel is an achievement the likes of which I have never before read, in or out of YA lit. The work that went into this book . . . it boggles the mind. I can only imagine the behemoth effort it must have been, even for a lifelong nerd like Mr. Green, to work not only with math, an obvious enemy to English majors the world over, but with obsessive palindroming, several languages, plot intricacies so deep and unexpected . . . Mr. Green either had to go back and fit these pieces together as they occurred to him, thereby requiring draft after draft and revision after revision and research upon research, or else he is a man who should play a lot of chess, seeing dozens of moves ahead when most of us struggle to see two.

The story itself, though a bit contrived (it would have to be to let the pieces Mr. Green built fit so seamlessly together), is delightful, and the voice is unexpected in YA, kind of an intelligent and American Arthur Dent. But most impressive is the utmost respect the book has for its readers.

I hope I develop some of the traits he's already mastered. Now I'm on to Looking for Alaska, I think.

So this is what Mondays are like.

Well, today has been one crazy ride. Samster the Hamster was a whirlwind of fussing, grumping, and shrieking his little tonsils out, and, get this, all without any discernible cause! I know! How rude.

(I hear him stirring from his afternoon nap, but I really want him to hold out until Beth gets home in about 30 minutes. It might happen.)

So yeah. Rough Monday. So it's an especially good thing that I had a fairly rejuvenating weekend. I spent much of Sunday at Bruegger's, getting some freelance writing done, and working a bit on the ol' YA Ms. I think I might have finished a chapter of one of the new novellas. It's kind of . . . I don't know, lewd? But I think it's fairly appropriate to the character. Digressing.

Anyway, post Bruegger's, I was off to Menard's, which is one of the classiest places to buy plastic sheets to cover your windows for the winter. They have a live pianist between the moving sidewalks. Super, super swanky.

I also investigated that paint that turns any wall into a chalkboard. Did you know they can tint it any color you want?! We're going with black. We're that crazy. (For those wondering, this is for the tiny section of wall in the kitchen just as you enter. It will be a chalkboard, corkboard, to-do list, grocery list, coupon board, menu type of thing. I think in a few years, Sam will get a kick out of drawing on the wall, too -- in nice, eraseable chalk.)

Mmhm. He's waking up for reals. Wish me luck.

Sylar as Spock=Awesome

Pretty much.

This is the winter of MY discontent

Now it's really winter in Saint Paul, and it's just how I remember it: terrifying.

Not like "Oh it's so cold I might die." Not at all. That comes in February, when Harry's paws nearly freeze to the sidewalk on his nighttime walk, and I have to carry him home lest he suffer permanent foot damage. This is the terrifying one might feel before walking into a conference room for a production meeting, let's say; or maybe right before a Kevin Costner movie starts.

Today, the earth is a grayish white: the combined colors of the muddy grass and light dusting of snow. The sky, too, is grayish white, nearly the exact same tone. These are the days I dread most. Complete and total sensory flatness. Flatitude. It makes my eyes go numb. (See above, Kevin Costner movie reference.)

Meanwhile, I can't get any work done. I'm not blaming Sam at all this time, either. This is strictly the numb-eyes thing. Everything has a sheen over it, and not in a pleasant way. More like a window covered in Vaseline.

The good news is PE Obama has set some very nice (albeit not strict enough) rules against lobbyist involvement in the transition.

Is it winter? The conference and snow say, "Yes."

It's a new day in America! But we know this.

What is exciting today is registration for the SCBWI Winter Conference in New York. Just think: I get to take a long weekend trip to NYC, and write the whole thing off! I'm flipped with joy over the prospect.

This weekend, I hope to get done a big chunk of work on the YA MS, take two. Beth will let me escape from fatherhood for a few hours on Saturday afternoon to get some work done at a coffee shop, I expect. I do my best deadline writing at such places.

It's snowing here today. First substantial snow of the winter, which, I'll grant you, hasn't actually started yet. Which brings to mind the little-known fact that our accepted meteorological start dates for the four seasons are fairly new ideas, and not remotely internationally accepted truths. There's a great Straight Dope column on it.

Beth is working from home today, so we can split time with Sam. She'll be doing this every Friday thanks to an excellent deal she worked out with her employer. I am relieved.

That's Entertainment!

Sam likes his mobile to a degree I never could have predicted. Seriously. He's as close as he knows how to get to hysterical with laughter, which at this point is mostly smiling and going "Unnnh!"

Pss . . . my secret identity:

Now this is pretty cool.

Of course, being me, I am also worried about it, since I'm fairly sure none of my Impact titles are even on shelves yet. Won't the students pick up the newest Impact titles, start reading, and be all, "Um, this is a totally different vibe. I'm not interested in reading this at all"?

Nothing is scarier than a blank Word doc

Beth's working from home today, which is nice. My cold, however, is no better, and maybe slightly worse. I was up a couple of hours in the middle of the night coughing.

The bright side? I think I may have figured out where to go with this YA MS, and if it's not completely a rip-off of As I Lay Dying and/or Shortcuts, I think it might work. And of course the solution came to me in the middle of the night. I hastened to my laptop to get down a quick outline.

Now, in the clear light of day, the real work begins. And staring back at yet another blank Word document always makes me run right to Facebook. Or NYTimes.com. Or Jacketflap. Or anywhere I can alt-tab real easy.

Oh, also happy Halloween.

Sam's up from his nap. I'll see what His Lordship needs.

Home Alone 4: Pig in the City

Not much to report, as usual.

Today was the Fourth Day Alone with Sam. It went fairly well, I think. It was a long day, certainly, but I am getting better at picking up Sam's signals; I can identify hungry, tired, and post-evacuation pretty easily--almost always before the deafening high-pitched streaking begins. It doesn't usually last long, though, if it does start; my throat starts to hurt, you see.

I'll be alone with Sam again tomorrow, and Thursday. Beginning in two weeks, it will be every day when B starts her normal work-at-the-office-every-day schedule. Shame. Why aren't we more Canadianesque?

I haven't touched my YA MS since the meeting last Friday. I just don't know where to start fixing this thing. I mean, I can pad it; padding I know. But I don't feel like that's what it wants. A few ideas I've had include an opening passage that completely breaks the fourth wall and sets up the piece a little better; opening with a poem is fine, but the scene at the clothing store feels a little in-the-middle of things. B suggested adding another, shorter novella, connected but not, a la Franny and Zooey. I don't know what to do!

Also we went to BN last night and I picked up two books by John Green: Finding Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines. I'll read them in my normal slow fashion and get back to you.

Debriefing

Well, I had my meeting (over Two-Hearted Ales, I'm happy to say) with the aforementioned editor last night. I wish I had something concrete to report, but I really don't. Not that I expected to walk out of there with a book deal, contract in hand, whistling my way home. But I guess I was hoping for something along the lines of an if-then statement.

Instead, I learned he definitely loved the book as it is, but thinks of it as not quite a novel . . . yet. He gave me some of his notes, and promises to follow up with a full editor letter next week. I'll look forward to that, and hopefully I'll have a better idea of where he'd like to see this book go. Generally, it was pretty cool to hear that a rising star YA editor liked my YA MS. That's the biggest thing I got out of the night.

He also recommended I send the MS off to another editor, who he is sure would also love it, so I'll most likely to do that on Monday morning. I'll probably also read the book again and see if anything comes to me.

Sam the man, bein' Sam, doin' things without a plan

Sam's been a little harder to please ever since he got his shots on Tuesday. Tuesday afternoon is noted in a previous entry. Yesterday, Sam was sort of on the verge of crying or crying pretty much all day. We didn't see many smiles from him.

This morning has been a little better, but the last hour, hour and a half has been on the rough side. I think he's feeling overtired. Hopefully I can get him to sleep.

Over all, though, I'm starting to think that getting any writing done when Beth isn't home might be a pipe dream.

Today, Idaho; tomorrow, Wyoming!

Okay, it ain't the New York Times, but at least for this book I used my real name.

(Scroll down a short way.)

718

Interesting article in today's Times, and it mentions my original home town in paragraph one.

Shots and hopes

First, some Sam news.

His two-month birthday was yesterday, which means two-month well visit. Sam had his at 10:30 this morning, and now he is one very unhappy little boy. Three shots in his two legs, and now the violent fits of crying come every 2 minutes or so and last about ten or twenty seconds each. Shrill, painful crying. Truly difficult to be around. My heart is breaking constantly. But the reaction is normal, unless it goes on for three hours in a row. So for now I'll just be glad that he hasn't had a severe reaction.

I can't wait for next month for some more shots!

The stats: 23 inches long (nearly two feet!) and 11 pounds.

In other news, one of the editors to whom I sent my YA MS yesterday has already read the whole thing. Apparently he just couldn't put it down. Naturally, I'm buggin'. We're meeting Friday to discuss the book. I might not sleep until then. Which will be fine, since Sam, it feels like right now, might be crying until then.

Done

I finished my first full-length (if you can call it that at under 35k words) young adult novel this morning. This is a project that began as a 7-page short story in my college Creative Writing for Children class. I was inspired to augment it years later, and finally feel like it's a finished book now, 14 years after first sitting down to bang out a final project. Even more ironic is how many books I've started and finished since then. What, like twenty, twenty-five?

Right, so, I've sent it off to two editors, one who enjoyed a draft a couple of years back, and one I met recently and who must have been impressed enough with my resume and a summary of the MS to ask for it.

Now I guess I'll wait six months and continue to toil away at my chapter books.

In Sam news, he's a regular smiler the last week or so, which is nice. Caring for an infant before he can give you any real reactions -- smiles, gurgly attempts at speech -- can be a little frustrating. Now that I can pretty much always get a smile if I try, it's still frustrating, but less so.

Discrimination is A-OK, as long as it's good, clean, Christian discrimination

The Bush administration has decided that taxpayers' money can go to groups that practice discriminatory hiring.

What have we got left, like 3 months of this clown?

SAHD

Today is my first day as a full-time stay-at-home dad. It's so far not very difficult. As a matter of fact, most of the stress I'm feeling comes not from Sam, but from this sense of foreboding in my chest: Things might get very difficult any second now.

Like when Harry wakes up and needs to go for a walk. That might be complicated.

Or there's the writing deadlines I set for myself; one to finish by end of day Friday, the other to finish by end of day next Friday.

But mostly Sam's been a picture of easy baby. Right now he's asleep. The two fusses he's busted today were easy fixes: eat, and change. That's easy. It's not like he's screaming in my ear and exploding diapers.

For now, I'll just be thankful he can't walk yet.

Which reminds me. The Times says I better stop forgetting to add the vitamin D to his bottle.

Good morning.

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of attending my first ever SCBWI conference; it was only about two miles away at the U of M St. Paul campus, so excuses were hard to come by. But it was definitely a good experience. I met some good people and was socially not too terribly uncomfortable.

And they served lunch! With cookies!

I mention this because it inspired me to finally post something on this cobweb-covered blog, which I opened who knows how long ago and, after creating a few images in the sidebar, never posted on.

Now I've done things like this before, and then never showed up again. You should see the journal I kept after college. And, with my still fairly new son at my side, it may be harder than I think to update this thing--while caring for the boy and keeping up with house work and my writing contracts. But I maintain hope.

The focus here will be writing, of course, and reading, but I tend to ramble and digress, so expect some personal beeswax, ranting about the state of the nation, and complaining that the best we can do is Al Franken.