So I'm Writing A Book

So like the title says, a book, I am writing one. A novel. Fiction. There, I said it. It's on the blog, so it's official. I started it about ten months ago and have carried on with it with increasing levels of seriousness ever since then. It started out as the thing I dabbled with here and there and gradually -- wait, back that shit up. It actually started out as a play, a thing to put on a stage with lines for actors to speak, mangle, forget, or ask me to cut, and stage directions for them to interpret, ignore, rewrite, or ask me to cut. But it seemed like every time I sat down and tried to make something happen on paper, it was like I was trying to walk through a brick wall. I'd try taking a run at it, only to be knocked back on my ass with maybe a few pages of crap to show for it.

"I don't remember this being so hard," I kept mumbling to myself.

"You should write it as a book," my wife kept telling me.

"Yeah! A book! Make it a book!" my gut said, echoing my wife.

"Don't you dare write a book! It'll be terrible! A huge disgusting failure! They're all going to laugh at you!" said that mean little voice in my head. Yeah, you know the one. He's a dick.

Why does it feel weird to be writing a post about this particular project? I post about plenty of the other shit I do, so why should this be any different? I don't know why, but it does, like it'll come across as  bragging, which is silly since I hardly have anything to brag about. But anyway, there it is. Weirdness acknowledged. Moving on...

So I started this novel about ten months ago, and I've now reached the point where I write more days than I don't. I lay awake nights thinking about it, trying to fit the pieces together, to understand the  connections that aren't immediately apparent. Which is kind of cool. Here are a few more cool things about it:

• Seeing faith pay off. The idea for this book started with just a few words. Three words, in fact. Sure, I churned on it a lot before I started, but I hardly knew where it was going to lead. Even now, while I can say with certainty that I know what the last moment of the book will be and I know a few of the big milestones between here and there, I hardly know every twist and turn. But I'm growing increasingly comfortable with that feeling of not-knowing. Coming to relish it in fact, because without that feeling, I couldn't experience the moments of epiphany when things become clear, the next few yards of the path are revealed, and I get a glimpse of another pixel in the big picture. 
• Research! The idea of doing research to write fiction used to make me bristle. "I'm an artist! I make things up!" But what is fiction but fact with the names changed, a few details rearranged and, in some cases, the rules bent a wee bit? So it became clear pretty early on that some research would be in order if I was to get certain elements of this book right. This meant reading a lot about slavery, researching the nuts and bolts of dogfighting, listening to a lot of hip-hop (gosh, how awful), reading up on Austin history, etc. My knowledge: it has increased. 
• Writing a lot is a good way to learn about writing. 
• Werewolves. Motherfucking werewolves. 

And here are a few things that are not so cool about writing a book:

• It brings out the asshole in me. I'm a busy guy, so my writing time is sacred. But there are times when something else has to take priority over it and it just can't be helped. And when that happens, Captain Dickhead emerges. 
• It kind of cuts into the blogging time. 

You know, I had a few more bullet points to add to that second list, but they all sounded like whiney bullshit, so I'm gonna leave it at that. Two lovely complaints. Ah ha ha ha.

So that's what I've been up to, aside from the work and the family and the chickens and the beer consumption. Provided that I don't die in the next couple of years, I have a pretty good feeling I'll finish the damn thing. Then y'all can read it. Sound good? Cool. 

Me At Indie Ink

My wife had surgery on her poor shoulder back in the first week of January. And since she was somewhat down for the count in the weeks to follow, and since we provide shelter and care-taking for the two hellions that we conspired to bring into this world, I spent a couple of weeks or so working from home. The thing is, I ran into a few technical difficulties, and I was unable to get either my MacBook or my Windows laptop to connect to my work machine. To do that, I had to bring the old dinosaur desktop out of retirement. Though it be slow and clunky and in great need of updates, it still manages to handle the job of connecting to my office's network and allowing me to remote desktop in relatively well.

If any of you IT folks care to give me an assist so that I don't have to do that again, that'd be awesome.

Anyway, while I was puttering around on the old beast, I ran across some of my old files, particularly, some old pieces of writing that I had forgotten about. Most were scripts, some of which dated back as far as 1999. But aside from pieces meant for the stage, there were also a few short stories, one of which I had completely forgotten about. If I remember right, it came about because of a writing prompt that asked you to start a story with "Where Were You Last Night?" Or something like that. I fixed a couple of typos and was about to pop it up here when I remembered something about the Indie Ink folks looking for submissions. I sent it their way and they were kind enough to put it up. So pop on over, if you would, and give it a read. Hope you enjoy it.

Interview With A Werewolf

Preventative Measures

The best part of having a little brother is that he’s slower than me because I’m faster than him because I’m bigger because I’m five and he’s only three. I was born before he was. He came out of my mommy’s tummy after I did, when I was three, and then I turned four, but now I’m five. Simie is three.

I can run faster than him because I’m bigger and I have superfast shoes. Simie has Spider Man on his shoes, but mine are still faster. They’re superfast.

When Daddy chases us, he can catch Simie easier than he can catch me because Simie is slower than me, so Daddy can catch him first. Sometimes Daddy does The Monster and he chases us. When I’m big, I’m going to be faster than Daddy and he won’t be able to pick me up anymore and I’ll be able to pick him up because I’ll be bigger than him. I’ll be able to pick up Simie too.

Ack-shoo-uh-lee, I can already pick up Simie. The other day I picked him up and put him on the potty so he could go poop but then Daddy had to come wipe him because I can’t do that yet.

Sometimes people that are not as old as you can be bigger than you and that’s okay. Like my friend Bella. She was born after I was, so she’s not as many as me yet. She was born in April. She’s four. But she’s a little bit bigger than me, but I’m faster because I’m superfast.

I used to be four, but now I’m five.

I’m really good at Legos. For Christmas, Santa Claus brought me a whole bunch of Legos that were still in their boxes and they came with restructions. I got a castle and a spaceship from Star Wars. It’s Luke’s spaceship with R2-D2. He says bee-boop bop-boo-beep flurp!

Luke Skywalker has a lightsaber. It goes ggzzzzhhhh.

When I was little I used to drink milk out of bottles like a baby but now I drink milk out of a mug because I’m a big boy. Mommy and Daddy use mugs to drink coffee but I drink milk.

Luke is a Jedi. Obi-wan Kenobi is his daddy.

Sometimes I help Mommy in the garden. I like to do that. We grew tomatoes and broccoli. And kale. And we grew a watermelon in the summer but the chickens ate the other watermelon and we ate, uh, we ate the big watermelon. It was like the ones you buy in the store except we grew it in our yard.

The other day when we were working in the garden, um, Simie hit me in the head with a shovel and it made me drop my shovel and I was crying. I thew a rake at him but it missed so I threw a rock and it hit him in the face and he started crying and then we were both crying so Mommy took us inside and gave us a snack and we watched a Spongebob.

We had to put a fence around the garden so the chickens wouldn’t eat it all. Some of the chickens lay blue eggs but they taste the same.

I made the Luke Skywalker spaceship all by myself with my Daddy’s help. He helps me find the pieces and I put them together like it says in the restructions. We made the wings and then put them all together so they looked like a X. That’s why it’s called a X-wing.

The wings shoot lasers at the bad guys. The Death Star shoots big lasers.

We didn’t have a garden at our old house. Simie was born when we were living in our new house so he came from that garden and then he was in Mommy’s belly and then he came out, but I must have been in another garden, and then I was in Mommy’s belly because I was teeny-tiny. But now I’m big.

The castle is big too! My Mommy helped me make it. And Daddy, but first it was Mommy, but then Mommy had to go run some errands so it was me and Daddy and Simie. Simie was playing with his trains in his room while me and Daddy made the castle. He was in his underwear because he took his pants off. Simie sometimes pees his pants and runs around with his pee-pee out. And his butt! Hahahahahahahahahahaha!

Simie broke the train track that we made in our room. Me and Daddy made it together and Simie helped but then while we were making the castle, Simie broke the train tracks and we could hear him throwing the pieces in the box and if he breaks them there won’t be anymore and we won’t have them to play with because they cost a lot of pennies.

I think there were some babies in the garden by where the watermelon used to be. Mommy said that babies come from gardens like the garden we have, so first they’re in the garden and then they’re in their Mommy’s tummies. So I had to get rid of them.

Simie came downstairs and he picked up my Luke Skywalker spaceship and he went zhhooom zhhoom! And then he threw it and it hit the floor and broke into a hundred million pieces. They went everywhere. Daddy yelled and Simie ran back upstairs. Daddy said Simie probably thought the spaceship could really fly.

If I had a spaceship, I would shoot lasers at the bad guys. They’d go pee-ew pee-ew pee-ew! Darth Vader is a bad guy. He lives at the Death Star. He says hhhhoooohhh hhhhaaaaahhh. The Death Star is his house.

Daddy mostly fixed the spaceship, but there was a piece we couldn’t find, but it’ll probably turn up because it has to be around here somewhere. It didn’t just walk off by itself.

Then Simie came downstairs and he took a piece off of my castle and I told him to stop but he wouldn’t stop because he wasn’t listening.

Aren’t you listening, Simie? How is that helping? Do you hear me?

Spongebob has a snail named Gary. He says meow because he thinks he’s a cat.

Sometimes the chickens get in the garden and Mommy and Daddy have to get them out before they eat all of our food. They’ll eat all of it because they like everything. I like broccoli. It’s good for you. It gives you muscles and makes you superfast. Like me.

I always eat all my dinner. You have to eat a good dinner or you’ll shrink and turn back into a baby. Sometimes Simie doesn’t eat a good dinner and Mommy and Daddy tell him that he needs to eat his dinner or he’ll turn back into a baby and have to go back into Mommy’s tummy. Or maybe he’ll have to go back to the garden.

Simie likes to pick up the chickens and Mommy always yells at him because she says he’s going to break their little chicken necks and then they won’t be able to lay eggs for us anymore because they’ll be dead.

Put the chicken down, Simie. Put it down. Aren’t you listening?

I don’t know if any of the chickens ate any of the babies in the garden. If a chicken ate a baby, then it would have the baby in its tummy. And then it would have a baby in an egg.

Simie broke my favorite mug. It had a picture of an owl on it and I used it to drink my milk out of before bed. He threw it from the top of the stairs and it hit the ground and broke into a million pieces and Mommy said we couldn’t fix it because it was broken into too many pieces. Simie said he was sorry but I’m not sorry. Mommy said they would get me another one but that one was my favorite so I’m not sorry.

Mommy and Daddy were still asleep this morning when I came downstairs and Simie was at the Lego table and he had broken my castle because he breaks everything. Mommy and Daddy told him not to mess with the castle but he did anyway so I went outside to the garden and pulled up all the plants so there wouldn’t be anymore babies because babies break everything.

There were keys in the door so I just turned it like Mommy and Daddy do and it unlocked the door so I could go outside. The gate to the garden was already open but I know how to open it. I’m not sure which plants were the babies so I just pulled them all up and threw them on the ground for the chickens. Mommy said the ones by the fence were tomatoes, but tomatoes are red and these had green balls on them, so I pulled them up out of the ground because they might be babies.

I pulled up the ones that Mommy said were broccoli because I didn’t see any broccoli on them because we have broccoli in the freezer so I know what it looks like.

I let the chickens out of their coop so they could come into the garden and eat it up. They came in and started eating it aaaall up.

Then Mommy came outside and she saw me and she yelled at me to stop, but there was another plant that I needed to pull up so I pulled it up and threw it to the chickens and she yelled at me to stop again and then she ran after me and I ran out the gate. The other gate that goes to the front yard. I’m big enough to open it now. She yelled at me to stop, but I kept running because I’m fast.

I’m superfast.

Badass Ice Chest of Badassery

Normally when I think about a badass ice chest, I think of the one that my friends Bill and Aaron bring with them to parties. These guys are serious beer drinkers. They don't like to worry about the selection and quantity of beer that will be at the party or whether there will be enough room in the fridge to store their stash, so they just take care of both problems themselves. Whenever these guys come rolling in, you can be sure that one of them will be pulling their badass ice chest along behind them (it's got wheels, yo) and that it will be packed with an ice cold assortment. Theirs is a badass ice chest indeed.

But that's not the badass ice chest I'm talking about here.

My wife started out the new year by letting some doctor cut open her shoulder and saw on her bones. Her shoulder had been hurting her for well over a year or something, and it's still hurting her now, except  now it's hurting because it's recovering from surgery and not because her shit's all fucked up. At least that's the hope. That's what we're paying you for, Dr. Shoulder Scraper.

To help manage the pain of her recovery, our insurance was kind enough to pay for this neat little ice chest contraption that, while not wheeled or filled with beer or even very large, is pretty badass in its own way. Its sole purpose is to pump ice cold water into a pad that can be placed atop an injured area of a person's body. Check it out in action:

"The fuck are you doing?" was the question I had to answer of my wife right before I took this picture. "Don't worry, I won't include your head," I assured her. It's not that my wife is not beautiful because she is, but a period of surgery recovery is not a person's most attractive time. You're all tired and drugged and worn-out and slow-moving. An attitude of "fuck it" pervades all but the most essential hygiene-oriented tasks. You're doing good to get a shower. Flannel becomes like, the most wonderful fabric ever.

As you can see, this ice chest would not hold a lot of beer, but it does hold significant powers of pain relief. For the first few days after surgery, I was filling it and refilling it with a fresh load of ice and water several times a day, along with fetching pills, keeping everybody fed, reasonably clean, clothed, entertained. Oh, and trying to get some work-work done. Yay for working from home. Lucky for us, we've gotten a lot of help from family. Somewhere in there I turned 35. I had a brief episode of depression inspired by feeling like I haven't accomplished enough with my life, got mostly over it, then went and made dinner.

Here's hoping this is the most pain we suffer all year.

Simie Likes It

This morning, I caught my youngest at the tail-end of a waffle, and I realized that he needs to play the central role in the remake of a classic commercial.

Chicken Business

Happy New Year everybody! Hey, let's skip the part about how I've barely touched this blog thing here lately and jump right into a discussion of chicken business! Exclamation points!

What is chicken business, you ask? Well for starters, it's fun as fuck to say. Go ahead, give it a shot. Say it out loud. If anyone in earshot of you asks what you're doing, just look them in the eye and say it again. 

Chicken business.

Chicken business.

Chickennnnn. Bizzznessss.

That's nice, isn't it? Perhaps it evoked certain images in your head, hmmm? Chickens exchanging currency for goods or services? Little chickens in little business suits squawking over their little deals? A rooster in a limo pulling up to a corner where stands a fake-fur-clear-heel-clad hen of the night? 

Well, you're wrong, dirty and wrong. Chicken business is nothing of the sort. Except, I suppose, when it is.

Here be a picture of a hen:

This is one of our hens. She is of the breed known as Barred Rocks, and she sits at the top of the pecking order among our little flock. She doesn't have a name, but an apt one for her would probably be Busy since she conducts the aforementioned but as yet undefined chicken business.

Here is a picture of a backyard playset:

Ignore the snow. It never snows in Austin except for this one time last winter when it did, so I went around taking pictures of everything with snow all over it. Otherwise I would never just take a picture of a kid's playset, which is why I don't have any non-snow pictures of our playset, which is why you have to look at this one with snow all over it. AHEM!

So every now and then, the Barred Rock hen pictured above, who may be named Busy or Business Time or some such, likes to flap her little wings and transport herself up, up, up into the clubhouse section of the playset. It's amazing, really, the way she navigates herself through the little doorway. None of the other chickens do this trick. It's hers and hers alone. Perhaps it's this kind of initiative that propelled her to the top of the pecking order in the first place.

The boys took note of this little feat one day and asked their mom why the chicken was getting into their clubhouse.

"Oh, she's just doing her chicken business," my wife told them.

But wait, that's not all of it. There's more to chicken business than just that. Because you see, whenever Busy flaps up into the clubhouse and the boys are around to see it, they sound the alarm with a cry of "CHICKEN BUSINESS!" and spring into action. They race up to the clubhouse where one of them scoops the poor girl up in their arms and then, well, from there she meets one of two fates. Either she's thrown out the door that she originally flew in through and has to flap her wings furiously in order to prevent an unpleasant reunion with the ground, or else she gets to take a ride down the slide in the lap of whichever boy picked her up.

And that's what Chicken Business is all about, Charlie Brown.