letters to you

Letter to You

2012-01-02T12:57:00.000-08:00

It is January second, 2012. Welcome to the first letter of a brand new year. How are all three of you doing?

I can tell when I need to write, because I'll look down and see writing on my hand. In today's case, the scrawling looks like this:

B
-- = ! :)
E

I also wrote this in my email today, when I was half asleep. I want to remember it so much that I am keeping it here as well, where I will remember sharing it with you:

You can't see the building blocks, but you can feel them, and that's what makes a story well told.

I used to be a novelist. All three of you readers may recall. I finished my novel in an apocalyptic crescendo last April. Twenty months of writing. And when I was done, I did what artists do when they finish something important to them.

I put it away.

The summer hit like an elemental fury, like a metaphor unfair to survivors of Haiti.
My life washed away. And I clung to my ideas, and the driftwood of scattered friendships.

One day, months after finishing the novel, I found myself alone, and bored.

And I read the whole thing.
Front to back.
Cringing and smiling in equal measure.

And then, I read it again.

...A stack of index cards beside me.The story so far is seven hundred pages, printed, and I needed help seeing the building blocks. Something to help my mind physically separate the moments as they occurred.

Writing the story was a lot like listening to a badly tuned radio, and hastily scribbling down what I thought I could hear. After getting to read it through, I find many of the voices and moments have become much clearer.

So I broke the writing down into what I think it should look like after a second draft. This took weeks. Mostly because I was just dipping my toes into the shimmering pool of writing. And That shit was cold.

When I was done I was delighted--DELIGHTED--to find everything broke down into a perfect three acts.

Next, I went through all the notes.

Even before I started writing the book, I started writing notes for it. I had one email account and about three phones filled with ideas. Countless moleskine notebooks as well. Most of the notes went into the story or were mutated or discarded.

The notes I had left over were mostly things I had heard through the tin radio when I wasn't writing. little clips and glitches of speech and narration. Skip-static news reports from three parallel worlds away.

So I took these notes, fifty or so pages of them, and put them in the order of the story. Figuring out which chapter they belonged in. Then, I worked on whittling (widowing? no that's dumb) the notes until I had pushed a 70 page document into 30 pages of very small font type.

It looks beautiful. Like little telegrams about another world.

It is January second, 2012.

Last year was the best year of my life. I finished a novel, created a game, and met the most beautiful person. Created the most amazing thing.

But now the days grow dark with winter. And the cold is coming closer with every fresh breath of wind. it is time to write again. And tick my fingers through a mess and make it beautiful.

Pray for me. To invisible fathers, and stone gods. To carved gourds, and the whispers in your heart. I have not a weapon but my wits, and God knows I'll reach their end.

-mE.

In a Cave Somewhere with The Prince of Time

2011-10-27T11:40:00.001-07:00

"I see you've grown a beard!"

"Yeah..for the winter. My winter of discontent...

"Aren't you just a clever dandy. Have a seat, let's have a chat."

...Have you been watching me?"

"I'm the Prince of Time, I don't just watch people. Life isn't a television show."

"But I mean--"

"Now, now I know what you mean!--but just because I am the Prince of Time does not make me the physical embodiment of a concept...I'm the prince of moments, and memories. I don't watch you. Or anyone. I miss shit, quite often actually."

"..."

"You'll notice I do not keep a watch on my wrist. (I actually do keep a pocket watch, for sentimental reasons of course. It was a wedding gift, it stopped working around the time we did."

"If I open my eyes, do you go away?"

"No. but you won't be able to see me, and you won't be able to get back here, not without some serious drugs. The Prince of Dreams and I have a bit of an understanding, but we've never agreed on how he ordered events and how my kingdom seems to manipulate them--tea?"

"it's cold..."

"But it used to be warm. Things like that happen a lot. ( a bit theatrical on my part, I know!)...oh fine then, cold tea?"

"yes please...do you visit people often?"

"Not if I can help it, which is almost never...so yes. I do. But let's have a chat. Time hasn't been kind to you, judging by the beard and shitty haircut."

"I'm fine. I think. Most days."

"listen, this is going to sound like a joke, but I don't actually have much time with you...so I'll try to cut all the camp and bullshit and get straight to it. I like you."

"haha thanks. I like you to."

"Well then I wish we had more time!--look at me, getting all flirty with only moments left. Story of my life..a very long life, mind you.--This tea is disgusting, don't drink it love, it was supposed to be more of a metaphor."

"I don't mind it, actually."

"Suit yourself...what we were saying? Ah--yes. Right. You've been pretty hurt, haven't ya, love? The ebb of flow of the shore eroding your little feet and rusting your little heart."

"I'm fine."

"I know that. But people who are fine don't have to keep reminding other people, or supernatural princes, in this case. (sigh)I'm afraid you don't understand the nature of my domain, and so I've come here to help you."

"What's that sound?"

"The shores of the waking. Rising to drown us out of of this little darkness and take you away from here."

"So what don't I understand? About time, I mean?"

"Well the truth is darling, most humans don't really get it. You make calendars, and celebrate birthdays and anniversaries and what not. It's pointless."

"That's a point of view, I suppose."

"I'm the fucking Prince of Time, my love! Perhaps my points should be minded."

"Right..."

"Time is not cyclical. You have seasons, and decades and days and all that but it's useless. It's more painful to think of it that way."

"Then...I don't understand what..."

"The tide is getting higher, can you hear it?"

"Yes. I can barely hear you."

"You going to wake soon. Look, it's simple. Time is one line. And it didn't start at your birth, and it doesn't end at your death, or anyone's really. It started at the dawn of time, and it will go on forever. It's like this...if you were to cut yourself, it heals. Blood seeps out, you call your friends and you show them the scar. It doesn't just reopen of its own accord...the cut isn't echoed throughout the rest of your life. Say you cut yourself on a Wednesday, it doesn't magically happen again the next Wednesday."

"I know that, but.."

"Time is nothing more than memories telling us we've already experienced something else. That is what I'm trying to say, I think. You know this tea isn't half bad..."

"I can't...I can barely hear you..."

"Well it's perfectly fine, as I'm barely making a point! Just try to remember dear, there is no such thing as days, or nights or weeks or anything. The importance we put on moments is myth and magic. It's going to help you."

"What do you mean?"

"...I'm very sorry. It's time to wake up..."

Letter to You --The Missing Summer of 2011

2011-08-10T08:13:00.000-07:00

Part One: Cry Agony! Cry Dreams!

I'm sure at least one of my regular three readers might be interested in game design, so here is a tidal wave of typos, a glacial wall of English glyphs: here is a very long letter about what I've done, and where I've been for the last three months.

When I was growing up, there was one company that shone above the others: Wizards of the Coast. A start up by a guy named Peter Adkison, they published Magic:The Gathering, and eventually they bought the rights to Dungeons & Dragons. I looked up to this company almost more than any other entity when I was a kid.

Now that I have pretended to grow up, I don't find as much time to play games. mostly because I'm obsessed with making my own. To quickly recap the last few years of my life: I invented something extraordinary, and I haven't had the time, inclination, or resources to do something with the idea. I have stacks of index cards and lots of scary notes kept safely in several moleskine notebooks...but I've never been really sure what you do with a game after you make it. How the fuck do you publish a game?

I knew who I needed. Or what sort of person would point me in the right path. I needed Peter Adkison: Mr. The Warlock himself, the guy who had founded Wizards of the Coast. I found his new company on the internet... Hidden City Entertainment. I checked the web page a lot. Too much, in fact. it was obvious they weren't taking on new projects, in fact the entire page seemed to be set up to publish the worldwide right for some Norwegian pony game. So I spent a few more months thinking of my game, wandering around vacant lots, just thinking about my game. Driving myself insane.

And then one day, I wrote a nice long letter to Mr. The Warlock, and guessed his email address on the sixth try. We decided to meet at Gen Con...which was three months away.

And then, I realized I didn't actually have a game to show him. I had a concept, and some papers and index cards.

Part 2: How I spent my Summer Vacation

The problem, of course, is when I sent my email...I didn't actually have a game to show anyone. I mean, I DID...but it was...well, it wasn't the Sort of Thing you showed to other people. I've seen war photos that looked a bit more proper.

So I set to work. I took out all my notes (mourning the ones I had lost over the years) and I began to pick my way through the terrible prototypes I had already made.

Woe to those who saw me in those first feral weeks! Unshaven, eyes wide, and fingers covered in ink from writing and rewriting notes. I looked insane. I felt insane. Time was ticking and my game needed a lot of work to be assembled.

After about a week I began to photoshop. It took a straight week of laptop design to get everything looking moderately not scary. I wanted to impress this bastard, not just hand him something functional. So I began creating something you could publish. I contacted almost anyone I knew who could draw, including my cousin Lauren, who I liked a lot, and had a deviant art page, so why not?

Like I said, it took a week, which culminated in me, driving to my buddy Sakroka's house, out in the middle of shit-nowhere, and attempting to teach him the game. it was all very impressive looking, and superbly clever in its mechanics.

Tragedy struck when Sakroka told me it wasn't actually very fun.

I drove home and nursed a beer in the living room while I chatted with him over the phone. "It's not bad!" he kept saying, "it's got some great ideas, it just needs work..it's not bad"
I cringed every time he said it. It felt like someone trying to cheer me up after particularly bad sex. "Nah, that would have been great, if not for that bit in the middle"

By the time he got off the phone, I knew I was fucked. fucked. fucked. fucked.

So.

My pride wounded, shattered, and abandoned, I began to Photoshop. I began to write notes. I taped a calendar to my wall and managed not to fuck that up too. I had two months left to start over from scratch and create something that shone with the light of the north star.

The game had four parts at that point. Four separate things I had to create which all shared ideas and mechanics. And I hadn't even figured out how the first part worked.

I was so fucked.

I slogged through another week of photoshopping. Building an entirely new version of the game. And then, all of a sudden...

--An errant thought, loosed from perhaps the bow of providence itself: "YOU KNOW HOW TO DO THIS"--I dropped everything. I stopped the version was working on, and immediately starting scribbling notes and rough pieces for something special. A fifth part of the game. Something to pull all the possibilities together and give it a strong and proper SPINE.

My heart shone with a new luster, my fingers danced on a rhythm of wonder. God had put me on earth to draw the ideas I was drawing. Every new thought was a seed that I scattered into a field of wooden tabletop.

Weeks went by. I made another play-date with Sakroka. I printed the game at Kinko's and spent a very long time cutting it at the library--once a haunt for this very novelist, now a shining fortress of game design--Sakroka and I ate a wonderful lunch of Chinese (our usual) and invited his brother-in-law John to come over and play the New! Fun! Amazing! version of The Game.

...I had created a masterpiece.

Sakroka sat us down at an abandoned pool table in the middle of his mother's home. A very old house you would only find in the South. The best memory of that day is John's son watching us, and then retreating to the dining room to draw his own game.

After I watched them play, we retreated to the porch and smoked cigarettes (at this point, five weeks into game design, I had picked up smoking and ran with it like I was winning a relay race with cancer)We talked about what worked, and what didn't. And how amazed we all were at how much fun the game was...We had seen a possible future, glimpsed in the kinko printed cards in our hands...I sat there shaking and taking wide-eyed drags at my cigarette, like a small boy who had just seen breasts and couldn't stop talking about the possibilities of them.

More time passed. Days and calendars winking and waving as they ran away from me.

I went back and forth from Kinko's to the library. I listened to music. A lot of music.

I scoured Michael's craft-store for things I can turn into mock-up packaging. And I kept working on the game. On the second part. And the third part. I played it myself, and was amazed that i had not entirely fucked this up. It was fun. it was a fun. fucking. game.

And then, something incredible happened: None of the artists could help. none of them.

Except, my eighteen year old cousin Lauren.

She began to send me pictures, ideas, and sketches. each new picture was better than the last.

And finally she drew me, (quite by honest accident) a cover for the box:

Beautiful. Gorgeous. Perfect. Any good part of any adjective belonged on a gold plaque underneath her pictures, which belonged, in my humble opinion, in a god-damn museum.

More days passed. More nights passed. Exhaustion became my only living. I remember eating dinner by myself in the middle of the night, because I had to wait for Kinko's to finish printing all my crazy shit. Shout out to the guy who works third shift and looks like a wizard, his understanding of double-sided cardstock printing was nothing more than magic.

Sakroka and I spent one last Saturday playing the game for a full five hours straight. We needed to make sure all the pieces worked. And yes, they certainly did!

I finished my final list (sharpied onto a piece of errant styrofoam) and finally, my calendar had filled up with black X marks, and I found myself at the end of July, staring straight ahead into the yellow eyes of Gen Con.

Part 3: Gen Con, Seat of the Gods

Two days before the con I had the worst night of my life. I can't talk about it here. And I wouldn't, regardless. Someone sat me down, and told me news that broke my heart. I spent the night sleeping across from my finished game, and awoke bawling my eyes out.

It was the worst night of my life, until the rest of the week hit.

Thursday evening I stopped by Sakroka's and showed everyone there (they have D & D night every Thursday) the final packaging and everything. I can't really put into words how nice everyone was, or how much I needed it.

The next morning, Sakroka and I drove to Indianapolis. It didn't take as long as I would have imagined. Though I think each other's taste in music might have made it longer. On the way up we talked about the terrible thing happening in my life. And we talked of other things too; always circling the dark storm that caused my eyes to look bloodshot and watering the entire trip.

At the hotel I kept checking the bag to make sure my game was safe and not somehow ripped, or on fire. My meeting was the very next day, at 10 in the morning, so Sakroka and I decided to go ahead and check out the con...get a lay of the land and etc.

Imagine the biggest thing ever, and then imagine something bigger. Now fill it with lots of people who are just like you. That is what a con is. The best part of the entire day was when he ripped his pants in half while sword fighting a bunch of other dudes.

That night he made me drive to the nearest (and I use the term loosely) Wal-Mart just so he could buy what I think he thought was a decent pair of jeans. On the way there (it was a long drive) we listened to different songs from Final Fantasy, on the way back, which took a lot longer (we got very lost) we talked about what I was going through, as we drove through the dark of foreign highways, the tragedy now at the center of my thoughts.

We eventually fond a gas station, and a very nonreputable looking (and tasting) Denny's. At this point it was probably well past midnight. I scarfed down something that almost looked like food, and we retired to our hotel across the street.

And then it happened.

Sakroka couldn't stop snoring. And coughing. Did I mention he was sick? Yep. He looked (for the most part) like he was about to die at any given moment. I kept telling him he was going to be patient zero at the con. And we would laugh. oh, how we would laugh!

No one was laughing anymore. It was 2 AM, my life was falling apart (the tragedy) and I had to get up in five hours for my meeting. My mind just stopped working at that point. This isn't happening. Satan, can you hear me? Strike my friend down with your dark power...

I woke up with three hours of sleep. At one point, I had tried to sleep in the bathtub, but to no avail. Sakroka said good morning, and I told him I was going to kill him.

We drove into town and parked at the con. I was meeting Peter at the Starbucks in the Westin, so Sakroka and I split apart and he waved to me as he walked toward the convention center. I decided I best get a coffee, and accidentally stood in line behind--of course--Mr. The Warlock himself, the man I was meeting with in an hour. He was very cordial, in a sleepy I had a drink last night but hello, sort of way. He invited me to meet him up in his penthouse suite (did I mention he owned the convention?) in about an hour. I gave him a nod, said a few dumb jokes I don't remember, and set to work sipping my coffee while trying not to freak the fuck out.

...but it was at that point, at 9:15ish in the morning, that my mind just broke.

It wasn't the meeting. Or the sleep. Or my life falling apart just two night before. It was everything. It was my whole life culminating up to this sick and single moment. The nervous, fat, socially shut-in game designer who was clicking a button to go up the elevator and have a MEETING with the guy who created his childhood.

But I found that god damn door, the penthouse entrance, tucked away in the corner of the top floor. And I knocked on it, and I did NOT throw-up. Or shit myself, or explode in a cloud of nervous bats.

Mr. The Warlock answered the door and was funny, and charming, and excited. I showed him my game right away, and pretended that I hadn't forgotten half the rules. He thanked me for taking the time to work on not just a game, but the look of it as well, and said some other nice stuff I would only tell you in person. We played the game for a few minutes, and he took the time to look at the art, and read the words I had written on certain pieces.

The entire event was capsized when he told me he would be interested in publishing the game, if his company had not just closed its doors, perhaps only days earlier.

He gave me a list of companies and publishers I should meet with, shooed me out the door, and I spent the rest of the day hustling, attempting to pitch my game to any company I could find.

Sakroka and I drove home, the weight of everything upon us. As we got closer to Nashville, the game faded from memory, and the tragedy my life had become enveloped the last two hours of the car and left us in silence.

When I got home, the bad news had progressed, and I cried harder that night then I ever had in my life.

-mE.

Postscript:

Sorry about that, I had to go pull a cigarette after getting through that last part. It took me two weeks just to make myself write it. (I hope you didn't read the entire entry in a sitting--my apologies!--Life since Gen Con, the tragedy, and Kinko's expensive printing has been strange.

Good and bad mixed in with a lot of blood and terror. (Metaphorical on most account, I can assure you). My life has fallen apart. I am as anxious and confused as ever, and find myself scratching off moments of my life, like Edmund trying to scratch off his scales.

My life is different now. And not for nothing but I have the best Aunt any sad little boy could ask for. Her name is Cindy. Almost everyone I know has been very kind during my ongoing period of grief. I even found a possible publisher for my game, but is another story, for another night, when the stars shine bright and the black clouds are gone past the horizon.

Letter to You

2011-04-30T14:44:00.000-07:00

I finished the novel last night. Fourteen minutes into the last day of April.
It took the better part of two years, but its done.

Wellll, I say its done. It's a first draft. The rough draft. The backwards echo of what it will be.

I finished it at the same library where I started it. Just down the way, actually, as the library decided to close while I was typing my furious fingers though the last chapter. So when the closing bell dinged, I begrudgingly packed up my laptop, and walked away in the darkness.

There was a place, up the path from the library. something between an alcove and a breezeway, I don't know the proper word is for it--probably something french, like Adiem-d'jmour or something--I had walked past it before, I knew there were tables, and electrical outlets. But it was open to the elements, open against the trees and the night. A lone tower of electric power in the courtyards of the library grounds.

It was here that I finished twenty-one months of endless writing.

It took me over an hour to finish that last chapter. I was surprised when I heard the clock tower striking midnight through my little Adiem-d'jmour. But when it was done, I took the two chapters I had written, and type-set them into the rest of the manuscript as best as possible.
(the manuscript is so long, that when I previously tried to stitch it together, it crashed my word processor.)

When I saved the last lines of the book I felt a swell of emotion. It was love, and grief,and beauty and other things...I don't have a proper word for it, probably something French as well. How about: L'apr,ras9iouz, is that a word?

As I copied and pasted it together into two documents, I added up the number of pages I thought it might be, and laughed aloud at the sheer weight of the numbers. I called Sarah first, and then I twittered about it, and wrote a quick little "i did it" entry on my website.

Then Sarah picked me up, took my picture, made me take her picture, and then took us out for some One AM pizza & coke.

*

I printed it out this morning.

I had bought two reams of paper in preparation. Two! It was more than one giant fucking bag of paper. I had to keep feeding the printer, like some sort of gluttonous friend in a pie eating contest. Is that a bad metaphor, fuck I don't even care. I just wrote a god damned novel. I can write whatever I want now.

Speaking of the writing, I got to sample a few of my earlier pastem de'quars (another fake French word) as I printed the damn thing out. Just pages and pages of writing. Some of it terrible, pieces of it shining like I was printing mythril ink on tissues of pearl.

First drafts are shit, so who cares? It's done. The second draft can shine down to the roots. For now, its a story, and its sitting on my coffee table, and its the size of something bigger than a story. Which of course, it is. At least to me.

I would like to thank Joey, for letting me borrow his computer charger for a month that turned out to be almost two years...Also everyone who read the first few (terrible) chapters, and lied to me enough to keep me going...And Matt, and Robin, for being enthusiastic.

And of course, the Marquis St. Pepe do'quastumar, for teaching me everything I know about the French language.

-Me!

1 Year, 266 Days of Writing a Novel

2011-04-29T22:26:00.000-07:00

And it's done.

I just finished my novel.

@12:14 am

Outside, In a dimly lit alcove behind the Library, which closed over an hour ago.

I am done.

1 Year, 243 Days of Writing a Novel

2011-04-07T13:28:00.000-07:00

By my count, anyway...and God knows I've been wrong before.

cut to:

Int. The Count from Sesame Streets castle
Todd, holding up two apples and looking confused.

The Count

Get out--Get out!

cut to:

I haven't written you in awhile. I shouldn't have started with a snap-cut to a fantasy involving me and a Muppet. Apologies.

Almost finished with the novel. I think it should be done this month, actually.

I know the ending. Even the unexpected pieces. The final bits and moments have all arrived in this very last month of writing. Like animals to an ark.

To watch it unfold in my mind, like a special play, only for me...is pure fucking magic. S this what it feels like when your kid walks? When they kiss their first love? Should parents be watching that short of thing?

cut to:

Ext. Todd's future house, his son on the porch with a girl.

He leans in to kiss her...

Todd is behind them, watching through a screen door.

Future Dad Todd

What's it feel like?!

cut to:

Every new thing I see comes with a strange twinge of nostalgia. Nostalgia for the story I've been telling.

And that's just what a good ending should do.

the next time I write you, it will be to tell all three of you I am done. I will peel off my armor. And let the helmet crack on the ground. My hair will be matted. And my face will have the stains of dragon blood. But his tail will be in my hand. And I will smile.

Because tonight, Darling, you'll be wearing dragonhide.

-mE!

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Letter to You

2011-03-07T11:18:00.000-08:00

I am still writing. the book is almost done. I think.

You know. Writing a letter to someone is such an intimate affair. Isn't it? You are imagining me...and I am imagining you. There are three of you. I never imagine more than three. More than three people is a crowd. And God knows I don't have the flourish to entertain a hall.

Let's see, I have been writing the three of you now since sometime in 2006. Our first communiques probably going back another two years before that. it is good to write you again. It has been too long. And there is a reason for that... An almost imperceptible flicker on the edge of the horizon. A shadow of doubt, resting in the eaves.

You know, I once met a young lady in a coffee shop. She asked me if my name was Todd, and then shook my hand. And then she told me she read my blog. I don't know what I said after that...I probably stammered and said something condescending. But she told me she was a writer too. And to this day that makes me blush. The very idea that someone thought of me as a writer. It is wonderful. It is one thing to think of yourself as something that you made up in your head. It is QUITE another to have someone walk up and tell you the same.

Three cheers and all that stuff: ~ ~ ~

(I do not know which key on this board means "cheer", so I've gone with an old favorite. You will forgive me.)

There is a shift. I am not the first to notice it. There is a change in the air. On the digital winds. Blogging has become micro-blogging. Purpose has become confused.

I used to write you letters, and not I can't seem to find the point. My writing desk is closed and locked. The inkwell is dry. have so much to share with you. So many memories and delightful fantasies. But I don't have to anymore. No one writes letters thee days--It's all this telepathic nonsense with twitter, and tumblr and...every thought is laid bare. And I love it. And I can't seem to compose a thought without it flying away straight into your hands. Like a rare and wonderful bird. I used to have a menagerie. And you sued to come and visit. But now everyone has a menagerie, and all the animals are out and about. Set loose as messengers along the world.

I don't know what to share. Don't know what I want out of this. out of us.
--No, don't cry...I'm still here.
My writing desk is still of good use. It has yet to be seen as a means of tinder.
But my friends--my three favorite people in the world.
I don't know what to write anymore. These letters have become increasingly pointless.
--don't look at me like that, they are!

My mother reads this. Did you know that? She does. And my little brother (occasionally, I think)...I don't think it would shock you to find my wife has been known to peruse these troubled words. And my friends as well. "So I read on your blog" or other such variations are a common beginning of a conversation between us.

I started writing blogs when I was young, and scared of being forgotten. Just a caveman scratching on a wall in the dark. Please. Please remember me.
But I'm not young anymore. And I'm not scared of the same things. I was twenty-two. And maybe, so were you. Every thought felt important, every letter was a cry, and it was justified.

We were young. And we shared our thoughts. Arranged them carefully like petals in a bouquet. But now we're standing in the fields of every flower imaginable. And we don't have to present our thoughts as gifts. We have telepathy. And with older age comes a loss of feeling. A loss of arranging things in pretty lettering.

I am here, and I will write to you. But the Halcyon days of our letters may be gone.

-mE.

9 j44r 708;

1 Year, 184 Days of Writing a Novel

2011-02-08T09:10:00.000-08:00

Back to full health, it seems. And maybe an extra piece or two from a fairy ring of rest and medicine.

In fact, my mind is working SO well, thats I just scribbled down pieces of a conversation that should have happened about four chapters ago.

The current chapter is almost done. I thought I had finished it in December, but I was wrong. As usual.--But its good!--(Honestly, it needed the time. It seems to me, that maybe stories just need time to ferment. Even when you know what's happening.) I could tell you everything that happens right now, I think, until the end of the book. A few things I'm unsure of...But I could tell you most of the big stuff. And yet, it will still take me another 4 months or so of writing--I almost winced, typing that. But it's true. The novel will be done when it's done. And even then it will need reading, and thinking, and another draft, before it makes any damn sense to anyone other than me.

Sort of exciting though, huh?

Who are you, reading this? My wife? My mother? A fellow writer, drowning in fear? Are you someone from the future? Who read this book and liked it? Or someone from another future, where it was never published, and you wonder what I was doing with all my time?

I suppose it doesn't matter. Some days are barren wastelands, and these words I put down in front of me are the train tracks to get me through them. Read them fast. Shovel the coal with me.

I remember reading an interview with J.K. Rowling, where she described killing a certain character. And how, even though she knew it was going to happen, she started crying. And how she had really 'felt it'.

I never understood that.

Until, of course, it happened. Last Sunday. When I wrote the end of a Character's life, and felt a sudden--if not quick, stab of emotion. I felt water in my eyes. Blinked and it was gone. But I still felt a weight. A loss. Mostly in my chest. A momentous sparkle of grief. Like I had swallowed a stone.

I rarely cry these days. I lost all my tears to my early twenties. Even at movies, or books: I'm always surprised when I feel something extra from them. But it happens. From time to time. When things are done right. When the magic of good storytelling is there.

And I think about that. About what makes me feel something for imaginary people.

I think it might be getting lost in the words when your writing. Not faking it. Just really writing. Plans are necessary too, of course. But just typing and letting the words go where they need to... think that's where the magic comes from.

I have a project I did sometime last year. It's all the photos from my first year with Sarah. From courting, to kissing, to planning a wedding. And everything in-between. It wasn't that long ago...about three years. But it was amazing to see how lost I was. How desperate for purpose. Pictures taking in lonely coffee shops. Struggling daily to figure out who the fuck I was. Twenty-four years old, may you rest in peace, your strangle-hold on nothing is done.

I'll be twenty-seven next month.

How lovely it is to know; to know everything I want. To know what I am doing. To know that want to write. And have stories worth writing. How exciting it is to know that 10% of everything I do is going to be talent, and 90% of it is going to be hard, horrible, and heart breaking work.

Seeing those pictures. Me, at twenty-four. God bless you for hanging in there. Sorry I got fat.

I had coffee with Mr. Matthew Elam. We have now managed to have coffee together the first Saturday of February two years in a row. I'm already trying to remember to set the date aside for next year.

We talked about writing, and comedy. (you DO know we're doing comedy again, don't you?) We made a lot of plans.

I told him my novel. Nearly everything, from the beginning to what I had last written--I paused every few minutes: "stop me if you're bored" (but he was never bored)--and when it was done he was very kind, and enthusiastic about it. And just going through the whole story like that...It felt good.

I hadn't done that since I was finishing act 1, a year ago, and having coffee at the very same shop with Mr. Robin Moore.

...That second act took me a year.
If I had known that when I had started...

I am happy, and healthy. The novel is getting closer to the finish. My friends and I are filming comedy. And if my stomach keeps grumbling, I might just lose some weight.

Cheers to you, Todd of twenty-four. You made it.

-mE.

#4 kwr4 96;

1 Year, and 171 Days of Writing a Novel

2011-01-26T08:10:00.000-08:00

I have a sinus infection, the antibiotics make my head lost and fuzzy. If I see a thought, and race toward it, it buzzes like a hornet's nest before disappearing altogether.

I have been sick during this novel probably more times than any other section of my life.

It is almost as if I were under attack by external forces: the enemy in my novel is far more powerful than I have written him. perhaps he is trying to kill me. To stop his ending from appearing.

May he die trying, and choke on his own magic fingers. The novel will be finished. Eventually. Certainly not in the haze of spells and sickness my body has so willfully succumbed to. But eventually. Soon.

I know where the treasure is. I know the route out of the cave. You may begin preparations for my victory parade.

-mE!

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1 Year, and 157 Days of Writing a Novel

2011-01-12T09:44:00.000-08:00

Everything else is a campfire. Keeping me warm.

Outside of this small circle of light is a darkness. A vast and dangerous cold. I try to ignore it. I keep my fingers warm, and draw things in the dirt beside me. Little plans and maps of what I'll do when the fire dies. Sometimes I turn my back to the fire, and face the endless night. This is when I feel the most alarmed.

My torch is on the ground, unlit. Soon my fire will die, and I'll have to transfer the last of it carefully onto my little stick. and then I'll run into the darkness; afraid; a little trail of flame traveling behind me like a comet.

There is nothing out there. Just more ground to cover. More night to chase me.

The edge of the darkness is a curtain, and that is where this journey ends. When I run outside into the lights and take a bow. I need to get up. And start running again. Or that curtain is never going to find me.

-mE.

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(pronounced [ˌhɔɡməˈneː])

2010-12-31T13:26:00.000-08:00

It is the last day of the year.

At least, in the terms of how my people reckon time. That's a funny word, reckon. Maybe I should open a business, called the Reckon Crew, where we show up to demolition sites and just sit around giving our opinions.

But I digress.

This is the end of the year. When we celebrate putting the Beast of midwinter to rest. It's twin carcasses, November and December, laying before us, gasping for more of our time. The blood of our moments are drenched in it's fur. The last of the celebrations are trodden under his dying hooves. May he rise to laugh once more.

Again, I digress.

I have not written anything for nearly three weeks. Instead my life has been spent at home; doing nothing. Just learning to relax is terrifying. Something...something needs to be done. The dishes need washing, the laundry is piling up, there's a fucking baby on fire outside the window...but no, those are unimportant. I ignore them. Instead my mind wanders, and worries. I thin about the novel, until I realize I've been holding my breath long enough to feel chest pain. I breathe out, slowly. Sitting on my couch. Or laying in my bed. Wondering what it must be like to have nothing, and want nothing. My mind spinning like a zoetrope in a tornado, I can hear my thoughts creaking, screaming, begging to have something done with them.

But I wait. And slowly, the madness begins to lift. And I realize I've been sick. That I have some sort of creator's poisoning, and that life is around me, moving in the opposite direction of my thoughts..and that this terrible funnel is the storm I've been running from. The black clouds of my moos can be lifted, given time and enough rest.

So I haven't written anything in about three weeks. but it's okay. I needed the rest.
And, when you're not writing, other things happen.
Last December, I started working on tabletop games.
And this December was no different.

With the black tar of my story ebbing away, the thoughts and mechanics of my games came flooding back. So far I've stayed above them, hopping up a rickety golden staircase, step by step, as the waters of my creations rise.

I keep drawing things by accident. Diagrams, and designs, pieces of paper filled with scribbles of ink and sharpie. i send some of them to my friends; like some senseless wizard, begging them to see the future he can already taste upon his lips.

May I digress once again?

Boy Friends is back. Last December this would have been an impossible LINK to give you. Or maybe it just seemed so at the time. Can any of us really predict the future? Or is it some sort of alchemical mathematics...Our hopes and dreams pitted against our fears.

Maybe that wasn't really a digression at all.

Maybe nothing really is.

-mE.

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dream

2010-12-20T10:06:00.000-08:00

Stopped off at home for Christmas with my roaming converted cargo truck filled with fellow wizards in training. My estranged brother accidentally said hello.

Parents out. Sniffers show up. Like 6 foot badgers with quills. They can't see you, but if you get close enough for them to smell you, they kill. One gets inside the house.

We have to leave someone chases it outside. I run to front door. But someone warns me the second one will be waiting for me. I jump back in house when I see it waiting just outside.

I start filling trash bags with supplies. "we need to go before something worse shows up" says someone. I ignore them, stuffing the bag with Christmas presents from under the tree. We need clothing, food, and anything we can use as a weapon. We're short on supplies, and now we have to bring my siblings.

People scrabble outside of the house, while I duck into laundry room and fill another bag.

Outside on the porch there's a standoff with more monsters. I kneel down and clothe my youngest brother with extra layers and my over-sized leather jacket, for protection.

We defeat the monsters with a few magical objects and well swung household objects and run off into the darkest lane between the houses. Trying to find our friends in our truck-bus.

The lane is dark, trees and fencing to either side. A low rent suburban trail. We are running. My estranged brother and I.

Don't get lost. It's important you don't get lost. Keep running in the right direction, our enemies can change the right direction with magic. We stop, cut off from others and lost. We run backwards, arguing the direction and then bolt sideways through the Trees.

We arrive at a grocery store. Our bus is parked outside. Everyone is shopping for supplies. It looks like Trader Joes. We have to escape. Most of the checkout people are enemies in disguise.

We are on the bus. Sunrise. The highway. Driving nowhere and everywhere. only we know the truth of the world. That magical enemies are everywhere. The back seats have been ripped out to provide enough space for the dozen of us. Some ride on roof. Everyone smokes.

I think of something and make up my mind. I decide to tell the driver, our leader, and a much more powerful wizard. " I think we need to go west, or east." Those are the magical directions. I warn them one is probably more evil then the other.

"probably West is more evil" I say, and everyone laughs. Driver says we're in Daytona. "Oh, so I guess we have to go West" I reply. He shakes his head. "no, we can still go East a little further"

I ask friend for cigarette. I take two, one is a joint, you can tell by the bent end. They razz me as I put it behind my ear. I point to Alex, who has done the same. "I think it looks cool" I explain.

We arrive at a strip mall. I and several others follow fearless leader inside. There are two shops, first is just comics and cards, but the second is more. Set up as a shrine. Several white lace handkerchiefs are sitting on table. Each intricately detailed and with reminders woven into them: "given to me by man in taxi" reads one.

In walks old Chinese lady. She will teach us further magic.
Later that afternoon I walk into her shop with an idea: " I'm a blue wizard, er, Mage." I tell her. "so I have ideas" she nods her head. I explain a plan to keep us safe for the night. "yes, we need to keep a lookout" she agrees.

Later that night, there is a feast. Our fearless leader is in the backyard, mingling with other wizards and warlocks. Our ragtag group is sitting in the front yard, snacking on chips and pretzels and waiting to eat dinner.

After arguing over who is making a bigger mess of spilled chips in the witch's front yard, we walk into the kitchen and I take a heavy plate. It's time to get our food, and eat with all the important warlocks.

I awoke.

1 Year, and 129 Days of Writing a Novel

2010-12-15T09:22:00.000-08:00

It is now December, and the month is half over.

I am still sitting at the end of this latest chapter. My progress is now a terrifying death march forward, with the last of the white page shrinking in terror as the drum taps push me further into their empty territory.

I have two scenes left, I think...each of them already hastily scribbled down like a blind seer glimpsing into Hell. My typing splattered onto the page in haphazard splotches. Words and ideas sticking out of the white screen like pieces of land after snowfall.

I march forward to claim them. My story is legion.

Everything is pulling together. I won't bore you with another fantastical wordplay. (but finishing this story is like seeing the strings of a corset pulled so tight you know it's about to pop and spill candy like a pinata.) Was that confusing? it doesn't matter. I put it in parentheses. And nothing between those reflected C's will mean anything to you. Words written in parentheses feel like the musings of a crazy friend, who grabs you aside and tells you his opinions of the earth you both can't believe you share. (would you have sex with a cat-lady? six tits and a tail? I would.)

Where was I?

Oh, right. The end of the book is just past the horizon. An island on the back of a turtle. I have chased that fucker, seen it disappear, and now I know it's dead. Because We're gettin' closer, and I'm the only one moving.

The next chapter is building itself in front of me like some sort of sentient Puzzle God. And yeah, we could sit here and chit-chat about the idea of whether you write a story, or a story writes you, but honestly even just typing that sentence was boring for me. But I will say this, I am very surprised at some of the stuff I see happening in the next chapter. Certainly there are things I never expected.

In French Toast news, I spent two hours with Sakroka last night. Since our first project is almost in it's final stages of development, he asked me to explain the mechanics of our next game. So I flipped packets of sugar around on the table and laughed at how crazy the entire idea was.

I think we're making something that's never been made before, and it's so exciting I smile now, just thinking about it.

2011 is going to be busy.

-mE!

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1 Year, and 114 Days of Writing a Novel

2010-11-30T11:14:00.000-08:00

Hello.

It is the last day of November, our blades stuck straight in the burning heart of the beast of End-Year. Tomorrow it will be December--(December!) and the thing beneath our weapon will look down upon us and glare.

The Mrs. and I have had a rough month, filled with fear, and grief. I would say more, but it's not really my place. And besides, the last thing any of us wants, is to feel the need to spill the word "condolences".

No one gives a good god-damn about condolences. Keep them. Place them in jars, and bury them in the backyard. If someone finds them, say the jars are empty.

Move away from that house forever.

I'm about two, or maybe three scenes from the end of this current chapter. The work is good. It's getting better. I'm concentrating on different things than I did when I started.

Now I think about scenes. And characters. I don't concentrate as much on the building blocks. In fact, the first half of the book is so...it's not good, but it's still polished, and perfected. I filled the cracks with copper and caulk. You could dance on those paragraphs, you could roller-skate without a bump.

But now it's better. Now everything is fun, and dangerous, and exciting. Like a mer-girl, dating an electric eel.

Now I"m past the middle, and--not only is it easier to write things after the second act--but now I'm looking at the cracks in my writing, and pulling them farther apart. Instead of covering the ground in a polished glaze, I'm taking a pick-axe and swinging it with conviction.

So instead of attempting to make the pages look right, I'm making sure they FEEL right, before moving quickly to the next amazing scene. (Because they're all amazing now.)There are bits of this last chapter that look like Swiss-cheese and cancer. But it's some of the more exciting bits. I'm at the end of the book, and everything that's happening is easier, quicker, love-drunk, and terrific.

Three more chapters to go.

I sketched out a few characters that show up in this next chapter*, and before I knew it, I had written dialog all over the page. Now it looks like a Sanskrit doodle, and I can't wait to turn it into a page of writing.

*Normally, I don't think you would introduce a whole handful of new people in a third act, but, and I didn't realize this right away, I already mentioned them. in the middle of act 2. And I didn't' realize how important they were when I did it.

That's one of the most amazing things about writing...when you get to the end, and everything you wrote down without knowing why becomes so important all of a sudden. As if you were a genius, or not really making it up. Like it's happening, somewhere, someplace else, and it's up to you to tell everyone about it.

-mE.

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1 Year, and 87 Days of Writing a Novel or "Just Write What Happens"

2010-11-03T13:01:00.000-07:00

Sarah mumbled in her sleep.
About a hole in November.
But even without the mumble I knew it was there.

&

We drove five hours somewhere, and five hours back.
I stood just outside the door. Helpless to be helpful.

&

I remembered how to write.
I don't know when I forgot.
Or how often I've remembered before.

&

I finished another chapter last night.
At this rate I'll be done by March.

-mE.

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1 Year, and 80 Days of Writing a Novel

2010-10-27T13:49:00.000-07:00

This is when the madness sets in.

Now is the maelstrom in the path.

I wrote last night. I write whenever I can. But if this were a race, I'd have one foot in front of the other, and the finish line would be a horizon, frozen in the distance.

It is October. In all it's candy-colored-cold-snap glory. The leaves are changing. The hours are falling away from my limbs, and I'll never get them back. Pretty wasted things on the ground that crunch under the slow pace of my progression.

This is the start of the end of the year. When everything rushes toward the last moment.

You don't go back, when your writing a story. Anything you wrote before is lost, and you leave it for dead. You run towards the end, trying to throw down enough words behind you to keep the beast from catching up. I don't know what the beast is. But I know it is there. The monster in the closet. The witch outside the window. Waiting for me to make a mistake, to put my pretty little feet outside the blanket. So I run, and I run, and I hide, and I type everything that happens and try to keep myself from remembering what I'm doing. Because it's like sex, or knife throwing, or god-damn magical espionage: You can't think about it too much. think about it too much and you'll fuck up.

So you don't go back, you don't touch up the story behind you. You forge on, tip-tapping your little snow-shoe fingers through the blizzard. Unless your stupid. Unless you forget, and get lost.

Go forward, don't stop. If you stop, you'll see what you did, and you won't be able to stomach the rest. it's like murder. Hide the body,and then start crying. Don't go back to the beginning.

I got lost. I went back to the beginning.

I spent a whole evening rewriting chapter one. Changing, and playing, and brandishing the sword of revision at those pages. And god damn, but they did SHINE.

and I left them, naked and wanting more. It took some effort but I forced myself away from that bedroom. "Lay with us" said chapter one. "Chapter two is here as well, she'd fancy some attention"

"No, no," says I, doffing my top hat and tying my cravat, "I have things that must be doing, and a Mrs. of my own. (but in this case it was more of a MSS. as the manuscript was the only Mrs. that I spoke of) "I'll be back again, some day, be sure of it!"

"But what of chapter two?! She has all the bits you like!" Chapter one sat up on the mattress, parting her legs enough to keep her robe open. "I've got wonderful parts as well"

"I really must be going..." I told her, turning away toward the door. I knew I would have to get out quickly, or I'd fall helplessly back into those arms.

"And chapter three!" she cried, her voice growing despondent, "she--she has big, milky breasts!" (and it was at this point I realized her metaphors were beginning to break down).

"I said: good DAY!" I cried, launching myself away from her first chapter arms and running back to the end of the manuscript. It is true, chapter 2 does have my favorite bits, and chapter three may have the breasts of a elven queen, but if I keep working on the beginning of the book I am sure to drown there.

A sailor in a whirlpool, a boy in a boudoir.

It the air of October. When everything is a thousand possibilities, and the veil between each seems thin and lifted. The end of the year is all downhill, and so is the rest of this manuscript. I fI don't get lost. If I stay the fuck on the path. Writing words and erasing words, and pushing ever onward through the storm. Those first few chapter will still be there, waiting for me to finish. A desperate whorehouse waiting for a writer's touch.

-mE.

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1 Year, and 71 days of Writing a Novel

2010-10-18T12:55:00.000-07:00

I dreamed that I could sled.
That I could travel anywhere,
using only my body.

As long as I held one arm in front of me
and pointed two fingers toward my destination.

and then I dreamed
that it made you mad.

I awoke.

I wrote yesterday. Life has been very busy, and Writing just wasn't allowed.
But I wrote yesterday, because Sarah told me too.
And it was so much fun.
I think everything is going to be alright.

I have a beard now. Everyday it grows longer, and darker.
Pulling the strings out of my stitching.
Roots, searching for anything solid.

Comedy seems to be going well. The card game is farther along than it feels.
But the novel is the ruby. The uncut jewel burning brightly in my eyes.
Holding the darkness at bay.

The hounds are just outside, and I fear the sash was left open.

Sarah piled all our books in a corner, and decorated the mantle with candles.
Now we have pumpkins as well. And homemade pie.
The weather is growing colder all the while.

Everything is going to be just fine.

-mE.

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(From a novel I may never write)

2010-10-16T08:05:00.001-07:00

I pray for days

when silence was golden

back before your time

when sunlight shone

on fields of heather

and men were paid for rhyme

-Wivenhoe & Chalkridge

(From "Chalkhills and Brothels")

TEAM EGNIUS

2010-10-04T10:02:00.000-07:00

It's growing colder everyday. I could walk outside right now with a scarf and mittens without looking completely insane.

My allergies are just awful. Even now, my nose is running like a faucet--or tap, for a our British readers. I just sneezed. It's so bad that I can barely think of words to type. The allergic fog has pushed all my words out from my brain.

A few remain:

Orestes
Quetzalcoatl
Cinnamosaurus...

Of the three, two are mythological, and one isn't really a word at all.

So a brief history of life since the last blog post:
I sat down to wrote on Saturday, but couldn't. Instead, Sarah and I accidentally ended up at a cultural festival of "things that end with O", and this is not a euphemism. There were tents, trinkets, dancing, food. I had a churro and a gyro.
Delicious.

Then I drove to the hospital to see a friend, who just so happened be having emergency surgery, and I just so happened to text him before hand and hear about it.
I hear he's doing fine.

Sunday morning Sarah and I woke up late and watched cartoons. After a quick bit of grocery shopping I parted ways with my wife and met Team Genius over at Paul and Robin's house.

We edited together a Lost EpIsOdE of Boy Friends, which you can now view here:

After this, our new "2nd camera man/assistant director/I don't know what to call him please do not ask me but I think he is great" Chris came over, and helped us film the first episode of Boy Friends: Season 2

Sarah came over to watch us edit, and we stitched it together over pizza and beer, and laughed over, and over again. By the time we had finished, a crowd had gathered in the house, and it felt almost like old times; except now it was better, because Matt and I have wives to laugh with us.

The new season starts soon. Stay tuned.
Why not subscribe to our new Twitter, so you know just when it starts?

-mE!

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1 Year, and 54 Days of Writing a Novel

2010-10-01T13:38:00.000-07:00

or,

Welcome to October

Dear Reader,
it was exactly a year ago today that I asked you to join me on a train. We talked, had drinks, and watched the seasons change through the windows.
It was October first, and I had just decided to NOT serial my serialized novel--to take my time instead, and write it the way I thought the story deserved. It was definitely the right choice, and I'm all the happier for it.

I've just finished the middle bit, and now I'm running down the other side of the mountain, racing toward the end.

Everything is different now. Everything just clicks. The novel is really starting to take shape. It's not just something being built..it's something being finished. The body is there, and it's much harder to not know what to do now.

You could imagine me writing a very clever metaphor, about a full bodied ale, or a girl, grown into womanhood. But I won't bother writing it out for you.

The novel is well on it's way to being finished by Christmas.

French Toast (my game design group) has been progressing silently throughout the last month. We have a fifth member now, I don't know if I mentioned that. His name is John.
We also hired an artist, and I'm in talks with another for the second game. which we haven't even worked on yet so hush, hush and don't mention that I told you about it.

I think this first game (formerly called Epic, now possibly called something else) is just a few very short months away from being published and played by anyone with a lust for glory. We just need a few more get-togethers and photoshop sessions.

Team Genius is alive and breathing again. Which means I now have three things to juggle around in the air. We're supposed to film this weekend, I think. or maybe next weekend. Either way, new Boy Friends coming soon. The first episode has a bit that could technically hospitalize me. Stay tuned.

-mE.

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1 Year & 45 Days of Writing a Novel

2010-09-22T08:01:00.000-07:00

I found this last night in my manuscript:

--------------------------HERE ARE THE RULES/TH LAYOUT FOR THE REST OF THE CHAPTER. ANYTHING BELOW THE NEXT SET OF DASHES IS A GODDAMN LIE AND NEEDS TO BE KINCKED AND CRUNCHED INTO THE RULES OF THIS LAYOUT
-YOU. 8/21/2010

I was struck by the fact that it had been exactly one month since I had really worked on the chapter. I've written since then, to be sure...but not a lot. Only pulled a few weeds..I haven't pushed my fingers in the earth...haven't grown anything for the harvest.

This piece of the story is a driftwood shipwreck of paragraphs and possibilities. It's amazing to me how many times I thought I was going to be done with it "tomorrow" or "Saturday".

But I'm writing again, later today, and I'll probably be done with it by this weekend...

-mE.

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1 Year 43 Days of Writing a Novel

2010-09-20T07:05:00.001-07:00

Lately, I'm obsessed with the theory of familiarity.

...The idea that certain paragraphs could be written as touchstones: magical emblems with memories locked inside, like insects buried in amber.

You could imagine a reader, rereading a favorite book...each paragraph could be something more than just an arrangement of words...they could be these touchstones,
so that when a reader touches one...they remember all the other times they've read this moment....And it adds this lovely sort of nostalgia. The unlocked memory would add add another moment, another layer to the one you're reading.

A sense of familiarity. It's taken me weeks to put this into words..and years to uncover. how many times will I read Neverwhere? or the Half-Blood Prince? Why? What is it about those two books...The Hobbit is another...

And maybe I'm not just talking about rereading. Maybe you can feel something familiar the first time you pick up a book. Arranging the words, the moments, the EVERYTHING of the story in such a way that it becomes something more than a story

The idea that Those characters and moments can be written in such a way as to feel like family, or memories. Does that make sense? Writing each chapter, each paragraph and sentence with a purposeful sense of the Familiar? Almost as if I were lacing the words with a flavor, or a spell

vanilla and puppy dog tails...

This is alchemical thinking, this is magic. Doesn't it all sound so very exciting?

-mE.

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Oh My God.

2010-09-18T19:28:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, there was a crack, a shatter,
and the long-lost Lords of Space & Time brought together five boys
at the right time, and right place in their lives.
We called it Team Genius, but most people called it funny.

Then, the moment faded, as moments often do,
and the boys pursued other interests;
music, money, matrimony.
one or two of them even graduated from college.

I stopped doing comedy when I realized how much I missed Team Genius, and that I would probably never tumble headfirst into such a moment again.

Two very long years went by.

....Then, (just a few weeks ago), the crack opened again. And Team Genius began to talk about comedy...
in a language as quiet as trees, in a rumble as low as mountain grumbles.

Today we spent three hours running all over the house and filming.

Team Genius is back
Boy Friends is back
comedy is back from the dead.

RIP Team Genius

-mE!

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Not to Put too Fine a Point on it

2010-09-17T07:16:00.001-07:00

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Chains and Anchors

2010-09-12T09:49:00.000-07:00

I am at the Library.

This cold has finally left my bones; the last of it's vaporous breath is dying in my chest. This is the clearest my head has been in nearly two weeks. It feels wonderful. Between loved ones at the Hospital, and this damnable virus (probably caught from said hospital) I haven't had a chance to do much of anything besides play video games and eat Greek Soup.

But now, here I am. Sitting at the library, the National playing in my headphones, as if I never left.

Which is good, because I have a lot to get done. By my count, and in no particular order:

*)Continue eternally finishing this Novel
*)Finish the French Toast's first game.
*)talk to Joseph Paul Padgett about composing some stuff for us.
*)Help knock together a website for said group and game
*)---SECRET RIPTG MEETING----
*)Finish Todd & Matt's first screenplay
*)finish my first draft of Comedy Teleplay episode 2
*)Beat Lego Harry Potter with Sarah

I just wanted to drop you three a line, and let you know we're still friends. I better go though, I have to meet Sarah for bubble tea in about ...oh, well, now.

-mE!

( p0g4 708; wjr 7085 e08-;

Not Even Everything

2010-09-07T08:06:00.000-07:00

Travel exhaustion has settled into my chest like a ghost. I spent yesterday in a haze, sitting on the couch and--to mix thing up--laying down on the couch. Sarah sat on the other end of the seat. And the hours passed like an endless montage of nothing.

My thoughts floated above my head, dying, just out of reach. Like flies above a funeral pyre.

The novel is coming along. Slowly, as it seems, but I'm having fun. I can't just finish the chapter; I like the molding, the clay, making it right.

I write scenes, and wait, and rewrite them, and repeat it, until it vaguely resembles something I'm looking for.

Then I rewrite it and rewrite it again. I don't know when I'll be done, but I think I'll like the book when I am.

Actually, Sarah had me print out said novel. She had bought me a printer for our first Christmas together, and so I watched as it cursed and screamed; as a novel was born into the world. A vast white cliff of story. A year of my life and mind, made whole.

Sitting next to this pile of typos and grandeur? Another stack of writing: Matt and I have written a screenplay together. It's good. Really good. One more draft and it'll be amazing.

French Toast is picking up steam. Epic (our first and extremely terrific game) is about to hit it's next development cycle. More art, more cards, more mechanics, more thinking, and photoshopping, and redoing.

This next cycle is going to have a drastic effect on the game though. It's so important that i haven't even played a round of cards since I thought of it...it wouldn't be right. The game feels unfinished now.

I hope to start cracking the chisel against it sometime this week.

I mentioned travel exhaustion. Sarah and I drove 5 hours away from home on Saturday, and 5 hours back the next day. Long drives can be a boon to the seeds of an idea.

French Toast's next game is a hound at the door, howling, and begging to come in.
...to eat up all my time and maul me.

-mE.

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eighteen million days of writing a novel

2010-08-23T08:18:00.000-07:00

Help me, dear reader. Help me balance along the thin beam of your interests and my own self indulgence. ...Never should they cross and kill us all.

My thoughts are dark, and jangly. If I can match them with the right music, I might be able to overtake them. Keep them from consuming me.

Ten forty-six in the morning is too early...to think, or drink, or carry on a written conversation. It is an ill time, not meant for vast tapestries of thought, but half-formed metaphors and similes. Such as:

--like a child, wearing gloves, where their fingers don't reach.

See? What the fuck does that even mean? it just came out--I don't know what it refers to. Besides the moods of my black & grey heart. Maybe we'll find out together. If I keep typing.

The very best writer's are the ones who combine a need to escape with a need to be understood clearly.

I've been writing. Saturday was spent in the only way which makes my heart sing--(eating cake for breakfast)--but afterward! After breakfast, I went to the library, and wrote my fucking ass off.

If I knew what I was doing before, I was a fool. Such as it always is in life. The more time I spend chasing letters and stringing them together, the better I get at it.

I used to read about how writer's could sit at a computer, or a notebook, and just Write for six hours. Bullshit.--I thought...

I figured out what they meant. I found the secret I was looking for.
The God Damned keys of El Dorado are sitting under my fingers now, and I will rape and pillage their city of all it's spoils.

Sometimes when I listen to break-up songs, I think of my family.

Have you ever been driving? And suddenly, you don't know how you got from one point to the other? Your pulling up to your house, and you just realize you've blanked out?

I'm learning how to do that with my Writing.

I spent so long carving each word into perfection. Placing them like gemstones. Now I'm learning...I can throw them down, and let them scatter.

Letting things happen and watching with delight, as everything makes sense in some orgasmic understanding of knowledge.

You don't have to feel like your playing along in a world that doesn't make sense, like a child, wearing gloves, where their fingers don't reach, because you have your own world, underneath those fingers, where you can figure out everything. How like a God.

-mE.

O44- k4 ewj4;

Magicians at the Table

2010-08-10T14:14:00.000-07:00

French Toast is my gaming group, and last Saturday was the first day of Play-testing our new card game. This is version three of the game, as the last two (2006 and 2009 respectively) were too rough to hold up to more than a few games.

But this version...this is version III.

100 cards, new rules, original artwork AND nice looking boxes to keep our decks safe and pretty.

We spent the afternoon casting Spells across the table, watching them glitter and spit whenever they collided.
I raised a Lich, his head crowned with flame, from the eternal abyss of death itself. But Paxson stole it from me, with the help of a seductive Queen.

Sakroka won the last battle, as he always does, with a well placed timing of Spells. Fireworks, popping and shattering against each other, forging them in a phalanxic bolt of doom.

We played for hours, on a table long enough for a medieval feasting hall. Most of the time I was standing up, pacing the room in excitement. I could play this game all day, every day, until I died, without realizing I had wasted any time.

God Damn, it feels good to be playing again.

Matt is back from his extended Honeymoon in Africa. We're having dinner tonight, with long talks about Comedy, Writing, and Game Design sure to follow.

Tomorrow I resume the novel. I'm sure I shall find it creeping out of the laptop, growing like kudzu across the house. Affecting all the other properly finished books of people I admire; strangling the published words for some form of written nourishment.

-mE.

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Happy Birthday Novel

2010-08-09T13:21:00.000-07:00

As I just posted on Twitter:

According to Twitter: I have been writing this novel for 1 whole year, as of yesterday. #Writing #ohmygod #missed anniversary #proud&whatnot

I feel an overwhelming sense of ...sense. An eyes opened, slow breathing Chorus-Swell of excitement.

I am listening to The National's "Terrible Love", accordingly.

@2@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

(That was me, just then, typing along to the final piano hits in the song.)

I think taking this last three weeks off to to work on the card game was a God Send. Not being able to think of my Writing has caused it to sort of grow, in a chrysalis sort of state. As if it were hanging upside down from my thoughts, forgotten, in a sticky silk cocoon.

And now, this...the knowledge that I've been Writing the same story for a year. Never before in my life have a I felt--it's overwhelming. I feel like a Father, talking about his kid. So I'll stop just now.

I feel good. I feel really, really good and lovely.

-mE.

wjr 708 39pp h4 k7 fuwk-wjyj4;

Two Weeks of Game Design

2010-08-06T07:16:00.000-07:00

I was up 'til midnight last night. Finishing the Spells.

I have a full beard now, the end product of two weeks of nothing but thoughts about magic and mechanics. My novel is orphaned across a sea of despair, my eyes are burned with glyphs and numbers.

It feels like I have not seen my friends in weeks. I miss them. Especially Paul Padgett, mostly because he reads this blog.

Nor have I shut my eyes long enough for it to matter. Or had enough time to ponder the merits of using a word like "nor".

I was married, once. Before this card game took my life and hid it away from prying eyes. I still hear my Wife in the next room, asking where I've gone. Mounting an expedition to find me in the Mountains of Photoshop doom.

But there's only 5 cards left, and then, tomorrow, I will print them out.
I will print out the special artwork Blueberry Jones did for the boxes (on sticker paper!), and I will drive the forty minutes to the Bread Forge (our headquarters), and French Toast will have it's first proper gaming session.

I am exhausted, sore, and ecstatic. Let the games begin.

-mE.

tw64 j9yu6;

French Toast

2010-07-29T11:39:00.000-07:00

My game design group, French Toast, is just about ready to start.

I've lost yet another week-or-so of Writing.
But I've gained an unholy design document.

100 Index cards with scribbles and scrabbles of cheap ink grapheme.
This great white stack of cards is a 3x5 altar to lost time and possibilities.
A sacrificial tribute to childish machinations.

The game takes up everything.
I forget where I'm driving, or what I was doing.
I forget to eat.

I am exhausted.

I fall asleep at night, and my body shakes on the inside. Like an old engine. Shutting down. Sometimes there are blinding flashes. Or loud bangs.
I can feel the roots of my body, searching for soil. Searching for purchase.
As if my subconscious was trying to root itself into the mattress.

But next week the game will be ready to playtest again.
The novel will be there too. waiting.
And I will weep in it's arms.

-mE.

( j44r 708;

334 days of Writing a Novel

2010-07-20T14:25:00.000-07:00

I was sick for about two weeks.
So the novel retreated under a porch, where I couldn't fix any of its wounds.

I worked on a teleplay instead
typing in dialog and scene settings
using Final Draft as a sort of Writer's morphine.

This novel is a furnace. It's the engine, keeping me alive.
Some days, I pile in everything
words
thoughts
time
opportunities
relationships

the blue colored yarns of fate,
shoveled in to keep the furnace burning.

I haven't had any espresso in almost two weeks. I have what may or may not be an ulcer. I also had a tooth pulled.

The ulcer medicine is bad. But it's not as bad as the Penicillin they gave me for my tooth. Because I am allergic to Penicillin.

I am becoming very interested in Names. And the power they give to a person.
I know, for instance, that if I were to find myself traveling the Endless Realms as a magician, and if I were to meet a creature, goblin, or fairy, I would not give them my birth name. That's common knowledge. Names are powerful.

I never liked Jr's and Sr's and so-and-so the III's. Names are so important. In marriage, when you choose to take a man's last name, or when you choose to keep your own, when two people decide to merge their names into something new. That just feels important.

So I know what happens,if a brooding man in a traveler's cloak shows up to my door. Or if I think I spot a woman, yes, far off in the trees. She's too tall, and naked. Something beautiful, but something wrong. Her eyes perhaps...
I know what happens, when they ask me my name. I know something bad will happen when they get it.

...But I did not know the power of naming a fictional character. Not until now. I had always just taken it for granted.

And now that I know a certain character's true name, I know who he is. I know who he's loved, and I'm sure, if I tried, if I was just that type of person, I could find out how he died.

The true meaning of Character. Exciting...Sobering. Worthy of some exceptionally strong thoughts by yours truly.

-mE.

Toothaches and Vinegar

2010-07-06T13:39:00.000-07:00

Another Fourth has come and gone.
Sarah and I watched them from a rooftop.

She asked why I was standing backwards.
I told her I was watching the reflections of the show,
in the windows of a building across from us.

Because it looked like Wizards, fighting with spells
in the empty offices.

Sarah has been painting in our bedroom.
I've never smelled oil paints before. Certainly not as an adult.
It smells important. Almost regal.

I wrote. Wrote. Wrote a whole bunch.
I'm starting to figure out that I don't have to push myself; that as long as I finish the scene (or at least, a moment) don't have to write until I pass out.

This whole last week was spent under the alchemy of terror.
I was stuck on a scene.
And dark clouds began to bristle overhead.
Like wet dogs, growling a warning.

So the holiday weekend was spent writing my way through it, which is the only way, of course. You can think, and think, and think, but until you fuck-up for about two pages you don't know what the fuck you're doing.

Now, it's good. It's better than good. I moved on to the next part of the chapter, which had it's own distinct and ridiculous problems, and solved them over the next two days.

I don't think I'll get a chance to look at it again until Saturday (today is Tuesday) as I have other commitments, but I'm alright with that. The story is burning strong in the back of my head. Red-hot coals keeping me warm, pushing me forward, keeping me alive.

Matt is in Africa, doing a second draft of a screenplay I wrote. Now we're co-writers, and the script is on another continent. That's amazing.

Last month one of my teeth crumbled into pieces.
The marbled pillars of my childhood falling to ruin.
A smile is always the first thing to be attacked
by the act of growing older.

It has left my whole body racked with pain. Migraines and back-pain and gut rot.
I feel the way vinegar smells.
Aching like the heart of a poet.

Still, I wrote. I am happy.

-mE.

&08 w54 54k35owh4p;

The Opposite

2010-06-30T13:20:00.000-07:00

If I could write a poem, or lyrics I would.
I don't feel like paragraphs

It is the last day of June
the last day
of the first half of the year

Or at least,
that's what it feels like.

Sarah made snicker-doodle chicken last night.
Dinner which tasted like dessert.

I feel like
today is an anchor.
pulling down
on both halves of the year
like a magic rock
dropped in the middle of your life
pinning it in place
like a butterfly

Everything feels right,
and overwhelming.

like a birth.
or resurrection.

Christmas is coming
and Halloween
and July

If I was a poet, or a songwriter,
I would break your heart with laughter

-mE

&08 w54 6u4 k9rrp4 0t k7 p9t4; &08 w54 k7 wjfu05;

Last Night

2010-06-28T14:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I printed out the last bit of the story I had written. I thought I might like to review before starting the next chapter.

(I decided against it. The last thing I need before the start of a chapter is a well earned shake in confidence.)

Then I spent the afternoon writing in my living room. Trying to get it right, one word and one thought at a time. Or sometimes with many words and many thoughts, all jumbled up in a violent bang.

I'm a few pages in. Learning. Worrying. Happy. Wondering. The usual start of a chapter feelings I seem to succumb to.

I stayed up late, reading Tolkien's The Return of the King by the light of my cell phone. When I was done, I placed the book on the floor beside me, on top of my printed chapter from earlier. My words, under his words.

I fell asleep thinking about how good that made me feel.

Last Week

2010-06-28T13:54:00.000-07:00

It's so fucking hot here. And by here, I mean "Earth".

I went for a walk, but it was too hot outside. And I was too exhausted. Too dehydrated from champagne.

I grew up in the desert. Or at least, I spent a few formulation years playing outside in the sort of heat that cactus's write erotic poetry about.

But it was so hot that day.

My brain--it started to shake.
It felt like a witch, with Bugle Chips on her fingers, had reached inside my scalp and rattled my brain. Violently.
I began to black out.

I didn't black out. But beginning to black out is scary enough.

I spent the rest of the week hiding in shadowy alcoves. I took cold showers. I held ziploc bags of ice against my skin.

I stayed out of step from rays of sunshine on linoleum floors.
I began to grow afraid of the sun, and it's fuck buddies, heat and brightness.

I refused hot meals. Drank water too cold for my throat.
I knew if I didn't stay freezing, my head would explode.
That the sun would finally get what it wanted,
my cold dark heart n it's fiery clutches.

I spent Friday in the Emergency room,
being stuck with an IV that tasted like liquid glass.

-mE.

&08 r4e45g4 w k4rwp t05 -8669jy 8- 396u k7 h8ppeu96;

Two Days

2010-06-11T13:26:00.000-07:00

I don't know if it's the Espresso machine my Aunt gave us, or the Hallelujah Violence of Spring and Summer, but this last month has been crazy un-blog-able.

I mean, things happened. Sure.
Great, tremendous, life shaking-changing-bedazzling events.
The things my memories will rest upon in dying days.

But it's nothing to put into Writing. Not yet. It's mostly thoughts, really.
I've been reading. And I've been writing. And something just clicked.

It's...as if...I've been drawing pictures in a booklet, and one day, someone walked up and flipped the pages, and showed me that my drawings can move.

I have never been more excited about words.
If they were single, I think I would want to fuck them.

Do you see what I mean? I don't even have to put the fuck-word there, but I did. Because I knew it would be exciting.
(Do not fuck letters, for they have edges, and can spell out everything you did to them.)

Sunday is my One Year Anniversary with Sarah, two nights ago I finished another chapter of this novel,
and last week I think I had as close to a religious experience
as a clear head and an iPod can give you.

I am halfway through with this novel. I think. At the very least. maybe even more so.
How can you measure something that is growing?

Math, probably. But I've never done well with that sort of learning.
(Number have a lot of edges, to be sure, but their purpose changes too easily)

So I don't know what else to say. I would love to talk of my love for my wife, and how she keeps me sane. How waking up beside her keeps me alive. Like a Constant in a math problem. How she is an anchor and that Christians and Catholics believe that an anchor represents hope, and that without that hope I would have drowned, and so I married her.

But then, I would just have a jumbled paragraph of things that are mine to know.

I love you, Sarah. Now, when your reading this.
And even Now, when your read it again, sometime in the future.
When you've forgotten all these things I've said.

-mE!

T054g45;

Drafting

2010-05-26T09:28:00.000-07:00

I think I might be past the halfway mark on this latest chapter.

Matt and I have finished a pilot script, and are all set to film as soon as he gets back from extended Honeymoon. Unless he dies, of course. In which case I'll have to rewrite the entire thing as a one man show. Maybe puppets?

The writing was fun, I would finish a draft,and send it to him, and back and forth. Each new draft made us laugh even harder, and when it was done, it felt really done. We had a few friends read it, and so far, no one has died from the typos.

I think we might even film it. But you didn't hear that from me.

We're almost ready to start work on the second episode, now that we've had about three weeks to talk about ideas. I'm going to start the first draft as soon as I finish this latest chapter, which could be any day now.

Or, 3,000 years later.

Actually, writing with Matt has caused me to realize something very important about my own Writing.

Which, ironically, ...I can't seem to put into words.

Let me see.

I'm a self-editing type of Writer. I can't move on from a scene unless it's perfect. or (Matt Berry voice) "as damn near close as this cat can handle."

What I've realized, very recently, is that the farther I get into the end of the story, the more it brings the beginning into focus. And it's not just with the book...it's with the paragraphs, with the chapters...

Every new scene I write, I got back to the beginning of the chapter, and the shit is just in auto-focus...Everything that doesn't belong, I can see. Like lint on film. I can even hear the characters better, it makes the first draft look like I was listening to people with a cup through a wall. Now theirs motives are clearer. now their speeches have grown and shrunk.

Every fucking moment I write, every scene that gets me closer to the end fo the chapter, helps me fix everything I've written before.

Now, having said that, I only change the chapter until I reach the end. As soon as I reach the next chapter, the previous one because almost locked in place until I reach the end of the book, in which case I will start a brand new draft of the entire thing.

this is done for sanity's sake, as if you keep going back and changing things, studies have shown you will kill yourself with a steak knife to the eye.

Do vegetarians own steak knifes?

But I digress. Where was I?
Ah.

I have known for awhile now, that the first few chapters of this book don't work. And how did I know? because the more I wrote, the more the beginning seemed rough and unclear. It was as f I was guessing at what was happening, with second hand knowledge, or (God forbid) as if I was making it all up.

But now. just--fucking--today, I saw the beginning clearly. And now I know what to do when start that second draft.

Sometime in the next 3,000 years.

-mE.

( fwjj06 3w96 t05 708 60 54wr 6u9e e6057!

9 Months, 3 Weeks, 1 Day

2010-05-04T14:00:00.000-07:00

...since I started Writing this novel.

At 2:00 am on Sunday, I had an epiphany.

The scene I was stuck on in this chapter just wrote itself, there, in my head. It was one of those unexpected very magical moments which only happen at 2:00 AM

As a child, this would have been a dream about falling. As a young man, it would have been a kiss from a stranger. Now, as an adult, it's little stories connecting when I least expect it.

Little moments which make the back of your mouth taste like stars and pixie dust.
Also pixie sticks. Because they used to be pretty great, and I'll bet some of those flavors still hold up.

***

Sunday morning, Sarah and I awoke to the sound of our alarm, screaming a high pitched and unfamiliar whistle. My first thought was born of panic, sleepiness, and pitch-perfect reasoning: Our house had been built with some sort of tornado alarm.

Sarah won't admit it, but I could see it in her eyes, she had reached the same conclusion.

When the alarm died, it took with it the power, and plunged us into silence. We both agreed a tornado might still be prowling just outside. Possibly hiding beneath our porch, waiting for us to go outside and check.

Grade-school logic continued to overcome us, and we decided to open a window. (Looking back, I'm a bit surprised we didn't just hang a mirror outside of our home, to scare the tornado off with its own reflection)

In reaching for just the right sort of box to hold up a window (not just any box would do) I slipped on the dust behind our television, and tore a gash through the bottom of my foot as thick as a banana peel.

When the bleeding stopped, we pushed our bed into the middle of the room,(Where the storms couldn't get us) and I feel asleep next to my wife, who was adamant about wearing her boots to bed.

Hours later, we awoke. Nashville was out of power, and flooding.

***

It's been two days. I hope Everyone is alright.

***

Last night I stayed out late, writing at the Library. It was brilliant. The whole chapter and the next one began to stitch themselves together quickly.
I even deleted four previously written pages, happily, to make room for the new things going on.

Today, I wrote a few more notes for myself, and realized just how close this story is to being finished.

Incredible.

-mE!

( p0g4 6u4 k0k4j6e 0jp7 708 wjr ( y46 60 euw54;

Just a Catch-Up

2010-04-26T11:16:00.000-07:00

Hello,

I spent the last week working on a comedy pilot, co-writing with an old friend. I don't know if we'll actually film the damn thing, but that is the idea for now. Comedy writing is something I haven't tried in a long time, so who knows how it will end up.

I'm in St. Louis now, sitting at my Father-in Laws kitchen table. It's a little hard to concentrate, as I just overheard his television teaching the viewer how to make a soup from beaver meat. And my brain can only handle so many ridiculous thoughts at once.

To wrap up those last two paragraphs, a quick story: Sarah and I were in a local Gamestop, (ew, ew, I know. Enemy of gaming blah, blah, they have used PSPs.) and I'm just perusing the store, when one of the employees asked me, "this may sound weird, but are you in a web-series? Called Boy Friends?"

Oh, ..yea. That was me.

...

My novel is still sitting around, being completed at the glacial pace of thought and finger. I took a walk today, and some stuff came up I think I'll be putting in the story. That's just how it is. I can type and type all I want, but it won't be done until it's done. A lesson I think I'll be learning for the rest of my life.

I think I'll really enjoy writing the second draft; in the same way a hunter enjoys eating the coney, and not so much skinning the animal and boiling it. Or whatever the fuck you do with rabbits.

-mE.

^u4 6586u 9el 08 p00o -54667 9j WJ7 r54ee

My Goodness, Victory.

2010-04-16T10:21:00.000-07:00

Looking back over the last few months of entries I think we'll find that I was drowning under the black skies of the middle of a novel.

But I made it. Here I am.

Not a week after finishing up the last few chapters, (the two that took five god damn months) My body was wracked withe sort of stress that happens after Five Months of worry.

At first i wasn't sure what I was experiencing. It felt like the exact opposite of super-hero gamma rays. Spring Allergies? to be sure, but something else. i was falling asleep in the middle of the day, waking up angry, and falling asleep to the most dreadful sort of nightmares. Little movies that lasted too long, where everything was about saving things I couldn't save, and trying to help things I couldn't help.

Now that the waves are subsiding, I see them for what they were. All the terrible emotions I was holding back, all the air I was holding in my lungs while I drowned.

But I'm alive, with a small amount of new pages held under me like a driftwood raft, and I'm well on my way to dry land.

Victory.

-mE!

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8 months, 3 Weeks, and 3 Days

2010-04-08T08:40:00.000-07:00

Let's see, Last Saturday, I finished (yes!) the latest chapter of my novel, and nearly five months of toil and despair is over.

It's good. better than good, really. it's the best chapter in the book so far.

It makes earliest parts of the book seem dreadful, which means that either I'm getting a lot better at this whole novelist thing, or my standards are lowering at an alarming rate.

It really is sort of magical though, now that I'm reaching the middle of the story, everything I type seems to alter the beginning, and maybe even the ending.

But, oh my goodness. that last bit was so hard. I'm looking back now, at some vile peak of terrain. Wondering how the fuck I'm still alive.

Pure magic of course, pure magic.

Last night, at the library, I began the next chapter. I took a green ink pen, and wrote down everything that I wanted to happen, in what I felt might be the correct order.

Now, I've left it, all typed out on my computer; where hopefully, it will act as a lightning rod, and help me gather the rest of the story.

-mE!

( p0g4 708l 708 oj03;

8 Months, 2 Weeks, and 3 Days

2010-03-29T13:45:00.000-07:00

Tonight, I think this chapter will be done.

I want you to imagine a needle, laced with a silver thread.
Now, imagine several different pieces of metal. These are thin; you can tell each piece has been heated, and hammered, and folded, again, and again. They do not bend in your hand, they are strong. they have to be.

They look like patches, such as those you might find on a quilt. Part of you imagines a robot, taking two pieces and making a sandwich with them.

It is an errant thought, and you forget it rather quickly.

You can see me, sitting on a battlefield, a slight breeze pulling at my air, dragging the sent of the corpses to your attention. I am sitting on the ground, needle and silver thread in hand, the various metals stacked together in front of my knees.

Together, we watch as I sew the pieces together. The needle cuts through each piece quickly, hungrily, as if made for this very purpose.

When I reach the last piece of armor, I pull the needle taught--quickly!--tightly!-- syncing up every last piece, until an impenetrable wall of armor stands before us, like the shields of a Roman Phalanx.

I hold the armor up, and grimace in fear.

Now, comes my enemy, marching down the battlefield. He looks just like me, except for the darkness, sweeping off his shoulders like a cape. He carries quivers, filled with arrows. Catapults follow in his wake. From where he walks, the dead rise up and follow.

You look at me, and I smile from behind my new shield.

If the pieces hold, the chapter is done. But if it breaks, if the enemy finds the chink in the armor, then the thread comes undone, and the shield will fall.

And if that happens...

I will pick up the pieces, and hammer and fold them again, hammer and fold them again.

-mE!

( u0-4 708 p9o4 96 3u4j 96]e r0j4;

Now We Are (twenty)Six

2010-03-25T14:16:00.000-07:00

(...because you didn't get the reference)

I turned older again. I am now twenty-six years old. Married. Writing.

Or am I?

When I started this book, I was finishing two chapters a week. I've now been stuck on this current chapter for the better part of five months. Jesus H. Christ.

It was the mono.

Maybe.

Pehaps.

Merhaps. (underwater perhaps)

*

I have not written in almost two weeks.

*

Yesterday i went to eat some chicken noodle soup at Panera. There an old man next to me, the type of guy who grew up in the forties and fifties, when people smiled with a twinkle in their eyes.

He asked me if I knew how to spell Sticht, ("A Yiddish word actually," he told me, "did you know they came within one vote of choosing Yiddish over Hebrew?") So I told him my thought on the spelling process, and it turned out I was right. This got us to talking, and it turned out his name was Harold, and he was writing a novel.

"I'm on my second," I told him.

Harold had come to the café to work on the very last chapter of his book. He told me had been writing since the Sixties, when he wrote screenplays.

I loved him almost immediately.

As he went on about his writing, my eyes flicked down to his fingers, and I felt an overwhelming sadness that he was not married. It's not an emotion I expected, and even writing about it seems weird.

*

I don't know what I would do without Sarah. She is an anchor. And before we bring out the ball and chain jokes, did you know the anchor is a symbol of hope? it's true. Google it. Did you know Manta Rays are allergic to cinnamon? Google that too. I'd love to see the results.

The other day I was talking with Sarah about how much I've slowed down with writing lately, and she pointed out that I've been off-course ever since the mono.

Children need parents, and writers need spouses. You could not convince me otherwise.

*

How many times have I revisited this damn song since the Remember Me trailer?

*

So I'm Twenty-Six now. It's nice. I feel like I got Twenty-Five so right that there's not a lot of pressure.

Sarah and my Aunt pitched in to buy me a Playstation 3 for my birthday. With Final Fantasy 13. My last week has been spent here:

I spent over forty-hours getting to know these people, and I think it's one of the best games I've ever played. It's certainly right up there with Final Fantasy VIII, for me anyway.

*

Today I started writing again.

-mE.

( j44r 708;

7 Months, 3 Weeks, and 6 Days

2010-03-11T15:19:00.000-08:00

I am a rainbow maker.
I am in a room.

A diamond the size of my fist is spinning atop my finger like a basketball;
casting colors along the drywall.

The diamond stops. Finally.

With one hand I inch it, forwards and backwards;
watching the prisms along the walls.

Aligning it just right,
to make something new.

-mE.

H86 e0k4rw7e ( wk f0l05hp9jr

I can't think of a title, oh wait, muffins.

2010-03-09T20:45:00.000-08:00

I am writing. and designing cards.

It feels like drowning.
and reaching for little strings of colored yarn
and hoping they'll save you.
but each time you grab for one, another drifts away.
and the sun is melting above the waves,
it is getting harder to see.
and the water is growing cold.

but sometimes, the yarn is so pretty
that you smile.

*

Sarah is sick in bed, watching Spirited Away for the hundredth time. It is her Star Wars.

Tonight we watched LOST. Afterward, she supervised as I made us muffins in the kitchen.
I have a French brand of butter that I can't wait to place upon each crinkled crown.

*

I found myself with a copy of Vampire Weekend's latest release. One day later, I can't wait to listen to it over, and over again. I can't explain what it is about it--it's not the sort of thing I necessarily crave in my particular iPod diet. But it makes me smile. Happy wonderful smiles that have no purchase or meaning.

*

I'm off to find adventure; just past my fingertips, or just a few steps into the kitchen.

Adventure or muffins.

I hope you are well.

-mE.

Y46 h46645 -p4we4!

Wednesday & Thursday & Etc.

2010-03-05T14:12:00.000-08:00

Hello.

I'm still shrugging off this cold, so you'll forgive these thin worded ramblings.
No matter my inability to communicate with a flourish, life presses on, and I continue to keep pieces of it here like a scrapbook filled with jagged symbols.

Wednesday night I left for the library. It was exciting, since it had been over a week since I had written.

Fifteen minutes later I was violently ill. I packed up my writing, and destroyed not only a scholar's restroom, and my current streak of public decency.

So,

I went home, drank a glass of water, took a baby-doll's handful of aspirin and sat down to write. I had lost over a week to illness, and I would be good-and-damned if I was going to lose another minute.

I stayed up late. The chapter is almost done.

Thursday I sat at our dining room (art room) table, and did nothing but work on The Card Game.

Blueberry Jones has been knocking out art left and right, and the time of table-top testing quickly approaches. I don't know if I have any photos, I'll check after I post this blog.

And add one here.

Or here.

While I worked on the game, Sarah sat across from me, working on a painting we started together. Sharing a table between two artists is a dangerous and intimate gift, so much more so between lovers.

We must be perfect together, because we always seem to have a lovely time.
We listened to the Twilight Sad, and danced to Bump of Chicken.

My life is considerably better than I remember it being.

-mE.

Wjr 708]54 6u4 54we0j 3u7

Nightmares, Despondency, et alia

2010-03-02T14:50:00.000-08:00

It is the second day of March, and I can already hear the polished footsteps of these years shuffling past.

Onward, ever onward, and away.

*

The sickness has begun to excise itself from my body, leaving behind fever dreams and nightmares. I do not often dream, and I find the whole thing vaguely uncomfortable.

I remember pulling my gun too late. My kidnappers were quicker. Watching his bullet hit me in the shoulder.

I was trying to propose to Sarah, on a bed nearly as big as our room. My teeth falling out in chunks of porcelain.

I was a little black boy, and the kidnappers returned. Had invaded my home. There was a little girl, who had been violated with a sword. She was bleeding and mumbling that she wasn't old enough.

It was horrible. As horrible as you would imagine.
But with one last bang of fear and terror, the nightmares tumbled away and escaped into the night.

They left me one last dream.

I was in our bedroom. There was a campfire, crackling upon the bed, and sitting around it were the characters from my novel, chatting amongst each other, trying to make their next move. passing around forks and tin cans of beans.

They did not look like characters. They looked real. I can still remember the fire light, and the shadows, playing against their clothing.

They were trying to figure out what to do next, where to go..because I hadn't written it yet.

*

I woke up.

6 Months, 2 Weeks, and 3 Days

2010-02-25T13:09:00.000-08:00

...Have passed since I began this novel.

to the dream the fires the furnace
give all your heart and soul

I have a cold. It will not go away. I have not written a word in nearly a week. It's like being possessed by some sort of literacy ghost. I cannot fucking type more than a few words before ending it with a period--or, deleting the entire string of conjungulated thought patterns and drippaloptic mish-mash.

I have been more sick since starting this novel then any other time in my cheap and drink-soaked memory. I fear I may be allergic to words. Or, worse still, bad writing.

But one thing I can do when I'm sick, is knock the silly shit out of this card game. Progress marches ever onward toward the launch of French Toast Gaming.

Every day has been filled with wonderful thoughts and mechanics. The best part being when Blueberry Jones sends everyone new art for the cards.

Having a novel just sit in my periphery is driving me insane. Not being able to write when I want is like...Well, I can't think of a simile without offending any paraplegic former track-stars.

I can still think about it though. I can still fix the pieces while I rot between the sheets of my bedroom.

Last Friday, I think...that was my last real day of progress. There wasn't much writing done (mostly deleting) but I had a few "ah-ha!" moments that I wasn't expecting, which always catches you by surprise.

-(very sick)mE.

( 308pr h4 305e4l 9t j06 t05 708;

Drops

2010-02-18T09:43:00.000-08:00

I'm still trying to find the right way to do this. I don't really see a reason to post more than one lengthy blog a week, and yet I hate diluting my adventures in a past tense (oh, and this happened as well) sort of way.

Blogger: The Eternal Struggle.

The middle of February has come and gone, leaving me with gifts and seasonal celebrations, before cracking it's whip and dashing off into the night once again.

Saturday was my nine month wedding anniversary, Sunday was our first we-are-married-on-St. Valentine's, and, merely three days later, Wednesday the 17th marked two very full years of dating each other.

I tend to be much more giddy about these things than Sarah. (Though to be fair, she tends to put holidays at a higher place than I care to.) I have been known to spring any number of occasions on her, on any given day.

Don't you remember, it's the year of Bal-mai-Sing!...I got you this chocolate radio.

Dates and memories are important to me. They mark the passing of time. Some days I feel as though all the moments of my life are precious stones that I'm dropping down a bottomless well.

Emeralds, diamonds, sapphires, rubies...
Birthdays, kisses, pleasure, pain...

sometimes I hear them crackling down the bricks in the darkness. Long forgotten moments echoing back up towards me.

Most of Saturday was spent with Sarah sewing her very own St. Valentine's day dress, and I would urge those of you with appreciation toward that sort of thing to check it out here. It was lovely.

I don't think a day has gone by lately that I haven't listened to all, or nearly all of The Crossing. Of course, that is an album by my favorite band. For more Scottish wonder, might I refer you to this? An item I would definitely search the whole world over for, had I not already found it safe in my own possession.

Look! here is the first track to get you started: ***All in all in all is all*** I promise, you will listen to it many, many times over.

I mentioned last time we spoke, that I was about to finish a bit of writing, and indeed I have. I cut the chapter in half where it needed to be--where it begged to be. The very space between paragraphs crying out to me, as I stared at that vast white space like a confused King Solomon.

If I cut my son in half...I would have two sons...

So I finished a chapter. Technically. (Though, can I just say: going back and ending something in the middle like that stripped away that pulse pounding orgasm I've become accustomed to?)

Finishing chapters is a body-jangling-high that I can't fucking go without for more than a month's time.

I'll even find myself walking into bookstores, dressed conspicuously, ...cracking other people's books open and pawing at their endings. Whimpering as I pretend those last sentences are mine.

There's one more scene left in the next chapter, and the it's on to greener pastures I have only dreamed of.

-mE!

( u0-4r 708 p9o4r k7 ekwpp r9wk0jr -04k;

Me, of all People

2010-02-11T09:51:00.000-08:00

I was going to wait until i had finished this latest chapter until I posted again. But, as I suspect that will happen tonight (tonight!), and things have happened worth posting, I might as well sit down and greet you, My Dear Readers Three.

Sometime in the Year of Our Lord 2008, Team Genius had just about stopped working. One of the last things we shot was a clip for our friend Olga's tribute to XKCD.

Imagine my delight, when it magically appeared in my email last Sunday.

So, there I am. Nearly buck-ass naked with a blanket full of puppets, singing poorly, along with several other people worth mentioning. That's a lot of geek cred.

PS Sarah (my now wife, and then girlfriend, is the brown puppet to my right.)

Look, here I am on the front of a blog I read almost daily. Strange.

EDIT: Sarah seems to have been writing about this at the exact moment I was, how strange.

Matt and I got together for coffee on Saturday, and talked until we remembered we had other places to be, which was hours, and hours later. We talked about writing, and comedy, and I told him about the Boy Friends episode I had written in my head earlier that week. (My head being the only place where many of my favorite episodes have been screened.) We even talked about our favorite writers, and why we liked them. It's always interesting to talk to somebody else about the love of the craft.

My Brother Sam is also writing a novel, and he's been sending me pieces of it as he goes along. How exciting, to have friends and relatives who do what you do, and want to talk about it with you.

Being a writer is a lot like being a murderer. No 0ne fucking wants to hear about it unless they've done it too.

Wouldn't that be terrible? A Murder club where murderers got together for coffee, and argued about process, and art-over-form?

I can already imagine a tentative young novelist, meeting the wrong group in the same coffee house. A man with a scar on his face and a dead parrot on his shoulder, growling about the use of hammers and trap doors, while the young novelist murmurs something about the merits of the letters of C.S. Lewis.

Let's talk about French Toast.

For those of you three who don't recall, French Toast is my game design group I started with a few close friends. Over the last few weeks, I've made some definite leaps and bounds in the game's overall design, but my my time spent novel is definitely causing a sort of Dangerous See-Saw of Progress; whenever the novel is working, the game becomes some fat kid, stuck on the end of the board and crying that it wants a proper turn.

Even so, Blueberry Jones had been showing us the artwork as it magically appears beneath her deft and nimble fingers. So progress continues, even if at a random and frenetic pace. It's kind of alike a glacier, with a giant, sputtering jet pack attached tot he back of it. Kind of...

Look! Here is a picture of some arts!

Well, it's about time I wrap this up. I'll log back in and do a victory post when I finally manage to finish this chapter.

The exciting part, is not only do I think I'll finish it tonight, but I think I might actually have two chapters instead of one. Which is fucking amazing. I haven't finished a piece of this book in months. It's been so long since I've done something like that I wonder if I even remember how to end something properly. I'll probably--

-mE.

( 6u08yu6 96 3we g457 f864 708 600o w -9f6854 0t 8e 0j J49p Yw9kwj]e hp0y { )

The Long Weekend

2010-02-01T11:59:00.000-08:00

Friday morning it began to snow. The flakes were thick, like dandelion seeds, and the the sky was white as owl-down.

We arrived at Cadence and Jordan's house; trembling and giggling up an ironwork staircase the likes of which I had last seen, as a plastic-blue replica in a box of Mouse Trap.

Sarah helped Jordan with the hot cocoa (which, incidentally, is an incredibly hard word to spell). Cadence and I were chatted as he set up a board game between us. He asked me about my novel, and where it was going.

I don't believe in Writer's Block, it's not real. Writer's write. Still, not believing in it hasn't stopped me from having it for about two months. I've been writing, yea, but the words have been bad. And stagnant. And deleted.

I told Cadence there were too many possibilities; and he reminded me, that artists love limitation.

We spent the next two hours being taught how to play Settlers of Catan, a board game where the players harvest various rocks, wheat, and animals, building cities in some sort of verdant volcano.

It is a game where Cadence can win for having the longest road, and I can pretend to win by gathering the most amount of "sheep", and telling everyone to refer to me as "the shepherd".

We sat around a cozy living room, talking about comedy, and writing; letting a vinyl record die in the midst of our smiling speeches. The sort of things old friends will do when it's snowing outside, and the light is fading.

We left, and the snow found he snow had covered everything into blank white mountains. Sarah slid halfway into a ditch, and I laughed.

We trundled along the road, and stopped for pizza and Beer with Paul & Ashlee, who seem to have become friendly regulars on this blog. Maybe they should be a drinking game.

The bar was playing Foo Fighters, and Coldplay; and somewhere between the last air guitar chords of My Hero, and the Galactic Synth Organs of "White Shadows", Paul--(half a shot!) and I both agreed, that maybe he should be the French Toast Business Manager.

The night ended with falling snow, and Sarah, laughing on our porch while I smiled.

Saturday was so perfect I have barely any recollection of it. It was a blinding white memory filled with sights and sounds I can't seem to fully recall.

I awoke to a world of white sheets and castles. I sat in bed with a ink pen and moleskine notebook, and wrote down everything that was going to happen in the chapter I'm writing.

Every god-damned and god-blessed thing I could ever want. And when I ran out of things that needed to happen? I laid there, waiting for the right ending to come to me.

And fuck-me, but it did.

That night, I turned that page of rune-like notes into a five page outline, and all was Good in the World.

Sunday morning, The now had finally stopped, and sunk the world into a foamy sea. Sarah and I met Paul and Ashlee--(take a shot!) for a raucous morning of sledding. we brought an old air mattress, and the four us took turns rocketing down the icy hill of a park, filled with laughing people.

And that is fucking marriage.

Sunday evening, I packed up our laptop and drove to the library. I put "Over the Border" playing on repeat, and wrote for something close to four hours. At the end of this time warped festival, I found myself ten pages into the best writing, and the best chapter, of my life.

The words were bricks, and the paragraphs were walls. And as I built them further, I walked along the top of my borderland.

It felt like I was there, in my story, experiencing it with my characters in a way I never could have imagined. I did not know that writing could be like this. I have watched my words play out like movies for so long, I did not know I could be there too.

The night ended with Sarah, and smiles, and Macaroni & Cheese.
I am happy.

...Paul & Ashlee. Paul & Ashlee. Paul & Ashlee.

-mE!

T4h58w57 9e e8fu w y00r k0j6u t05 8e;

French Toast

2010-01-28T13:34:00.000-08:00

...My friends and I started a gaming group. We design tabletop games, and we're just a few months from launching our first game out into the world of Other People.

Paxson of Ashgarden, Sakroka, and myself have been working on our card game for about well, four years now.

I used to show up at their house, a stack of index cards and a spark of insanity in my eyes. "Let me show you this game" I would say to them, placing blank cards on the table and flipping them around like a hobo trying to win money.

Paxson, a dear friend and former blacksmith, would look at the blank cards and sculpt them into spells and characters. You should see his eyes dart back and forth when some new mechanic starts to fiddle with his thoughts.

Sakroka was the first to use the cards, and break them into stallions; combining various stacks of paper from his hand and throwing them down like commandments.

It wasn't long before we were battling once a week, in hour and half long marathon sessions rivaling the sound and thunder of the trivia contest on the other side of the Mexican Restaurant we played in.

***

Years passed. The game was put away while we got on with other things. It needed art, for one. And none of us could draw. It needed refinement and precision. I started doing comedy, Paxson bought a house, Sakroka started constructing a weapon he called the sex ray. I don't know if that last one ever worked, but I think he tried it on me once, from across the room...when I stared into his eyes and felt something...

More life happened, I met Sarah, and would find myself talking about the game, as if it had been some part of my life she had missed out on. It's gonna be great, I would tell her. You should have seen us, before we flared out and died. She would say "cool," and go back to being productive, and beautiful, and worried about me.

I would take the cards out, staring at them as an aging gunslinger might stare at the cannons racked above his fireplace. I used to kill with these I would whisper.

It was years before we touched the game again, but all three of my regular readers might remember that my bachelor party was spent playing an overhauled verison of the game (now with graphics by Google search and photoshop!)

Quick side note, if you're going to pick out magic hand gestures for card art, try not to accidentally pick one you're friends will recognize as "the shocker".

***

In December, I started bothering the three of them with emails addressed as: "Dear Future Group" (as we had not picked out a name just yet).

By the middle of January, we had, (what I would certainly consider) a revolutionary plan of gaming production, someone to help us code a site, an artist by the title of Blueberry Jones, and a name to call ourselves: French Toast.

We met last Sunday for a marathon session of Chinese food and game design, which ended with hope, excitement, and the promise to meet again this weekend. In the mean time, I have to overhaul the game for a (photoshopandfuckingespresso) third time, as we get closer and closer to a final product. We hope to play a game on Sunday. I could not be more excited. I would add some sort of shaking, glittering .gif, if I thought it would seem appropriate. Oh, let's just pick the first one google comes up with:

Oh, for fuck's sake...

-mE!

U0-4 708 p9o4 k7 P8k9454!

Bacchnovel

2010-01-25T10:53:00.000-08:00

I was told it was snowing outside. That it was really coming down, according to the woman. Excited, I ran outside, only to find that she had somehow mistaken "really coming down" with "Unseasonable mid-winter Spring". A mythical bird of fire landed down the street from me, drinking a bottle of Gatorade. He muttered something about it being a scorcher.

So here, I write to you, a blog entry from the snowless lands of mid-spring-winter.

Friday was fun. Sarah and I went out with X & Y, a couple we decided to rename based on my very sad theory that friends come and go, but you'll always have a married couple to have dinner with.

In this case, very happily, it was Paul & Ashlee, or, as my wife calls them: Ashlee & Paul.

We met for dinner, and rinks, and then another round of drinks. And then topped it off with a smidgen of rum. The rest of the night is a blur of good, and bad physical memory. I remember donuts, cigars, more rum. The rest of the bacchanal ended with a late night game of Pictionary I was forced to play--and win! Don't fuck with me. i will draw a damn picture.

Saturday I awoke with a hangover fit for a rum brave and the very real fear that I had maybe half a dozen donuts, sitting in my stomach like cream filled stones.

Could we just pause for a moment, and think of a world where common rocks were filled with candy cream. It's a dentist's dream. Specifically a dentist anywhere int he Southern/midwest region, where insulin shots follow morning cola in a ritual I like to call "body hazing".

After chores, and other things I have to do besides writing, I went to the library and booted up the laptop for an hour or so of pure fucking gold. Writing the first draft of a manuscript is a lot like mining (in this particular and shallow metaphor that you're too smart for me to have to finish).

The chapter--nay, the BOOK, is beginning to really work. And I think I'm doing better than ever before.

That night I went to work on the card game, and it went well. Very well.
(I would write more, but it deserves it's own post).

Sunday I did even more chores, getting things tip-top with every spare moment having been an on-again-off-again goal ever since my OCD kicked in like an X gene around age 12.

After chores, I left Sarah to her sewing and had another go at the chapter growing in my laptop. Words sprung like leaves, twisting into a dense forest of progress. I finished by leaving myself notes at the bottom of the page. Actual "Todd do this directions" so I wouldn't forget and get lost when next sat down to enter the woods.

After writing, I came home and helped Sarah pin the new dress around her. (fun fact: pinning fabric around a beautiful woman is something I decided to enjoy). After which I smoked a clove cigarillo and went to work on the card game once again.

Around Five, I left Sarah with a kiss to take my designs and drive the forty minutes and two towns over to my friend and fellow card conspirator Paxson of Ashgarden's castle. Our good pal Sakroka met us for Chinese, and the rest of the night was spent talking of cards, and deciding on some terribly fantastic things indeed.

We decided, officially, to name ourselves French Toast, which dovetails right into...

-mE.

( f08pr -9j 708 wpp j9yu6 p0jy;

A Very Bloggish Sort of Blog

2010-01-19T08:26:00.000-08:00

A Very Bloggish Sort of Blog

Let's see, Saturday afternoon was spent mainly in the arms of a passionate manuscript, as it writhed and shivered beneath me.(In this analogy, the manuscript is a mechanical snowman, and my probing hands are merely that of the artist, fucking a mechanical snow man.)

No, the writing goes well. (As well as a very unfinished manuscript can go.)
I suppose it could be going terrible, now that I think on it. But if progress, and cold--yet fanciful!--calculation is any measure of success, than I can say with all honesty I'm moving along, at a quickened trot of mediocrity.

After writing, I ran home and picked up Sarah, who had been sequestered in our home, being a seamstress with her new Christmas sewing machine.

We got ready, dolled up, and etc. and met Paul and Ashlee (out somewhat exclusive 'other couple' for a night of comedy and mountain ballads at the local coffee shop of choice.

The former rest of Team Genius were there as well: Robin, Joey, Paul, and my previous co-star Cadence, along with his new wife Jordan. They were married the day after New Years, and I had yet to see them with rings, and smiles, and newness all about them.

(By celestial machination, and because I was playing Donkey Kong Country 2, I actually spent most of his wedding day not only missing him, but stuck on Bramble Scramble.)

We spent the evening laughing and singing, and all was well. Cadence and I even got on stage with several others to sing along with Paul's band.

Sunday, Sarah and I celebrated 23 months of kissing each other. She very nearly finished her dress, and I wrote for about an hour, and mucked about with The Card Game--Of which I'll tell you more of later.

At the start of a new week, my eyes are getting worse, and the siren call of glass and wire, was never far from my mind.

So Monday was almost a loss of productivity, until I ran across a quote by Stuart Adamson from Steel Town's liner notes. I've known for a few weeks now what my next novel is going to be, and I've even started a few lines of it in a sort of scribbly-scrobbly handwriting. I also knew, that I wanted to start it with a quote from one of Stuart's lyrics, so this liner note is a God send.

I imagine it will be so much easier finishing this second novel, knowing the next one is beginning to do something more than just simmer.

No, I won't tell you the quote.

The day was further pro-duct-i-fied, when Weshoyot herself decided to hop online and share with me a page of inks for our first to-be-published comic book story. We had a nice chat as well, further solidifying the dual hope that our collaborations will continue well into the Brand New Year.

Actually, what made it twice, and even dare I say it thrice as interesting, for me, was that this month also marked the one year fail-i-versary of our last comic book project together. So spending this January with hope and wonder is a fine way to feel as though I'm already w ell ahead of the year of our Lord, Two-Thousand-and-Nine.

That night, my eyes and head throbbing, and vision growing dim, I laid down on our Couch of Doom and closed my eyes to think about the chapter I'm most currently stuck upon.

Thoughts began to flitter, and wander, and soon I was asleep.

I awoke to a bang, a gunshot, and typhoon--and opened my eyes in a panic until I realized it was just Sarah, calling to me from the doorway, as wives so often do.

For the second time this month, an adrenaline boost knocked my thoughts out of order, and I realized what happened next in the story. Which--even without writing a damn word of fiction, made this the most productive Monday so far this year.

-mE!

^uwjoe t05 3wo9jy k4 { )

Life in Technicolor

2010-01-16T14:31:00.000-08:00

The sky is grey with mist and rain.

I think I'm suffering from both a cold and a "bitchin" day-long mai tai hangover. Still, here I am, sitting in the middle of a library, listening to Coldplay and warming my fingers up to write a novel.

Sarah is at home, teaching herself how to sew. She's already finished the front part of a new dress, which I would refer to as the boob part, which also happens to be one of the best parts of any dress.

This being a writer's blog, about mainly, of all things, Writing...let me take a moment to relate my current adventures in the craft:

Two days ago was the best night of writing I have ever had in my life. It was an hour and-a-half long orgasm, of god-like platinum word-birth. Something from beyond the veil of space and time must have spilled out and tumbled into my brain, because for one time in life everything in my little world made some god-damn sense.

Every fucking sentence was like a crowd of beautiful women, applauding as I demonstrated how to breathe.

Every paragraph was a swarm of golden fireflies, leading me through a murky swamp and into caves of treasure. Over and over again.

It was a good night.

So I am here, at the library, again. With a cold and a hangover, to do it all over again...

-mE!

(p9o4 96 3u4j 708 fwpp t05 j0 54we0j;

Inwards

2010-01-14T15:06:00.000-08:00

I'm still in the middle of this chapter. I feel a bit less lost, each and every day. Is there a better way to write that sentence? It seems so. Thank-God this is only a blog, and not something important, like a novel, or sorry-for-your-loss text-message.

You'll excuse my lack of concentration, my eyes are blurred and squinting, the result of me probably being nearsighted and just realizing it last month--fun! I told Sarah I might need glasses, and bless her, the first thing she said was "yeaaaa! Sexy!" ...and then she just leered at me from across the room for three or so hours, with the patience of a pedophile moonlighting as a daycare instructor. And now you know the gist of my failed HBO pilot.

(Speaking of Sarah, yesterday was our seven month anniversary,I don't know if we're supposed to count that, but I maxxed out our credit cards regardless, on what ebay describes as: "Monkeys who that dance good well"

I expect a crate of simian extravagance to appear at the doorstep any day now.

So, anyway, God only knows where I'm going with all this, but I do try to stop by and click-a-clack you three a wee bit of a telegraph every now and then.

As I said, the chapter continues, I think I've finally clicked into the right sort of thinking with it. It's definitely--and maybe this is because I'm so new at this, but it's definitely been the first chapter I've started a few different times, unsure of what the fuck I'm doing. I suppose it's the middle of the book though, and maybe that's common. In jumping from a first act, to a second act, I've fallen down and scattered my knapsack of tricks and baubles. I suppose the last few pages of shit-type were me just finding my compass.

A funny thing though, a few night ago (a week?) I was completely at a loss for why something happened in the book. I mean, I knew it happened, it had to happen. There was no damn reason WHY it should happen, but I knew that it did. And I just went with it.

but that night--it was snowing--and that night, hopped up on caffeine, and annoyance--I was driving home because I had forgotten my computer chord--that night, my car slipped on a patch of ice in the road.

At first I was like, "Hey, I'm fine..and then, when the car wouldn't' stop..and I slid into the next lane...a thick white sheet of TERROR fell upon me.

I eventually stopped, cars drove past me and along on their way, and I went home to retrieve my--(Joey's)--computer chord. But suddenly, due to a sever combination of caffeine, annoyance, and sheer terror--my brain clicked and spun it's gears--like some ancient clockwork horror--and I suddenly exactly what I was doing, and what scene I was missing.

Crazy, right?

I tried to recreate the accident a week later, and hit a cathedral filled with laughing children.

-mE!

uw--7 8jj9g45ew567!

Pixies.

2010-01-06T11:18:00.000-08:00

After a long break from word-working, I'm back to tip-tapping my typos. The novel chugs along. Sometimes the ideas work together in harmony, a beautiful marriage. Sometimes they have nasty sex and break up, leaving behind their illegitimate children.

When I started writing this thing, I would finish each chapter and hand it out to friends, hoping their possible enthusiasm would spur me on in the right direction. For some reason that idea did not backfire and I relished the opportunity to write the next piece of the story, just to see what people might say about it.

Which is interesting--at least to me--as when I sat down to write it, I thought it was going to be published in a serialized form, on the web. (Some of you may remember I changed my mind, once I realized how much effort I really wanted to put into it) But regardless of what I wanted, it sort of did become a serialized novel, at least for a few of my friends.

Not so, these days.

I stopped sending it out once I got deeper and deeper into the thing. It's not quite a quagmire, the middle of a novel, but it's certainly a swampy door to woodland, filled with twinkling Will-o-wisps. They are the light5s which beg to guide you, the brilliant glare which blinds your rusty compass.

Do not follow the lights!--They are pixies, here to lead you to your doom. Use them wisely; Myself, I will them crush them between my palms for food.

I have so much more to say...perhaps another time?

-mE!

Y89r4 k4;

Hallaforth and Trobogan

2009-12-31T13:29:00.000-08:00

It is the last day of the year. Possibly the decade, if you believe in that sort of thing.

Could we agree, dear reader, that if this were really the end, we might start afresh with a new beginning?

I'm talking about changing the months! Change the names. Time travel is lovely, but I've had enough Januaries; I've had enough Janvieres, Januars and eneros!

I want to celebrate New Year's day int he month of Hallaforth! I want to kiss my lover in Trobogan. I want the last month of the year to be named Muenster...(Just for a year!)

I am tired of Mondays, of Sundays and Wednesdays.
I want Habos, gieros, and Frummmdays.

***

In a palatial fortress at the edge of Space and Time, in a room where people believe in nothing, some sort of elderly man is clicking stones together along the floor in a game of rainbow colored marbles.

He and I will agree, without portential clacks or wondering, this was the best year of my life.

***

This was the best year of my life.

***

I remember when I met Sarah. We met three times actually, which is as good a start as any. But when talks led to longer talks, and messages started becoming letters, I drove to see her for the first time as a lover and a not a friend.

I remember standing at the gas station, nervous, and excited and...I saw a car pull up, and there was no reason to think it was hers....but I knew it was hers. And I knew, right then and and there. I was going to marry this person. It was just...Knowledge. Fate. Everything I don't believe in was calling out from the heavens, and magical wardrobes. And I knew.

I remember the first time we embraced in her living room. And it was like..time travel. In an instant I wasn't her friend, or nervous, or anything. We were married, and it was the future, and it felt right.

Fifteen months later it was June 2009, and we were standing at an altar. Holding hands and shaking with happiness and nerves.

I got married this year.

***

Fuck.

***

I remember it was March, and I found myself at a Bookstore, tearing through a biography of Stephen King.

I had never been much of a King reader, but I was enraptured. It was biblical moment which changed the course of my life.

I had spent a year --more!-- Trying to pull together a screenwriting/ comic book writer career. I had stayed up late, toiling and worrying, writing three screenplays and God knows how many comic books. I chanced my jobs and people's patience to take meetings with people who could never have helped me in the first place.

I took extra breaks from terrible jobs, and shivered out in the freezing snow, just so my cell phone would get enough reception to message people who I thought would pull me up and away from the worry and the toil.

But in march of 2009, everything changed, when I found that book in my hands. And I remember realizing, with an electric and startling clarity, that I wanted to be a novelist, and that I had wanted to be a novelist since middle school.

Years of worry and self doubt were erased. Like the fat baggage of a cracking glacier, everything I wasn't sloughed off into nothing. I quit comedy. I quit screenwriting. I stopped worrying about comics (even if I still wanted to write them someday)and I just decided to do what made me happy.

I wrote a novel. I stayed up later, sent more emails, got burned and destroyed and let down more than any other moment of my life. And I fucking loved it.

Running through a bramble when it's on the way home just doesn't seem as bad as when you're lost.

i put the novel away, I started another one. It died on the page. My baby. And I fucking loved it.

Now I'm working on my true, second novel, and It's over a hundred pages of fucked up typos, shitty writing, and poor choices of character.

And I love it.

***

So the old man clicks his rocks in a chalk circle in a place of nowhere, smiling at my good fortunes.

The Fine makers of calendar Incorporated miss out on lucrative opportunities and print another Page of Januarys.

I am sitting at a keyboard, smiling. Because I just had the best year of my life.

-mE!

( f08pr j4g45 uwg4 t08jr k7e4pr 396u086 708;

Like a Lover's voice, misquoting the mountainside, stay in line

2009-12-21T12:34:00.000-08:00

Listen, this is my Holiday, and my blog. And I will name my entries as I well please!
..As I WELL PLEASE!

hello, hello, hello. It's Christmas Break for those of us who count it, and Sarah and I have been in St. Louis long enough for it to feel right and comfortable.

I wish this could be a long, well written and magical endeavor for the both of us, but I have been away from my words too long, and --alas!--I'm sure you see right through me. I can barely string together a sentence. I am but a jeweler, with a handful of pearls and crippled fingers.

(Do not worry, I am not without my tricks and whispers, I will guide you through these halls of broken thought)

Still, I write to you with purpose and splendor, though my words flash like backfired fireworks and half sunken sparklers. I can still rock it, as they say at the grammar hall of Rock n Roll.

Look at that last sentence, even. It's like a fucking lightning bug parade.

See? I'm also sayin' shit like that. ~~Shit like smart shit.~~

***

My novel sits in it's resting place, awaiting my jibs and jabs and curses. I have left it alone for the Holidays...FOR IMPORTANT SHIT IS AFOOT.

***

I will tell you more later when I'm ready. WHEN I CAN TYPE A COMPLETE THOUGHT WITHOUT CAPS OR ASTERISKS. Just know that I am excited. Important things are being done. Things with index cards and newborn mechanics. Things of ink and magic.

A tabletop game to rival the unknown God of such things is being built and broken into a life of slavery before my fingers. I have toiled over it's scribbles and white fields of index card blankness every day, and every night.

It is a shambling, rasping, motherfucker who stares up from beneath my hands. I am a surgeon of index cards, and he is a newborn King.

***

These words are a time capsule, and you're eyes are the shovel.

-mE!

( ^uwjo Y0r t05 708;

Possibly the Second to Last Post Before Christmas

2009-12-10T12:14:00.000-08:00

Welcome, welcome, welcome. It's been long enough since the last entry that I'm bursting with words to scribble down and show you. I'm so overwhelmed by the many choices of tone that I've started, erased, restarted, erased again, and restarted one last time the last three fucking sentences.

Your eyes are nothing less, than a boon (or a bone!) and I am nothing short of full of wishes, (or a small and hungry beast)...

We got our Christmas tree up. It's gorgeous. Every year we pick out an ornament together, and this year was a TALKING, Muppet Swedish Chef. God Bless you Hallmark store in the nearest mall.

I mentioned to Sarah that it was a shame we didn't have more colored lights on the tree, as we both grew up in the eighties, were everything was the color of Every Color Invented. (See Rainbow Bright)

When I came home last night, it was to find our tree strung up with an extra two set of rainbow lights, and the feeling that a sneaky wife is a fun thing to have indeed.

***

I'm a few rough pages into the next chapter of my novel, and things are going well, I think. It's weird not being too sick to write. It's even weirder being too busy to write, as December is a month of vagabonds and villains, time traveling Snidely Whiplash motherfuckers who appear just behind you, stealing time out from under your stumbling sneakers.

But all goes well.

I spent Saturday stuck in bed with the worst possible headache imaginable (I'm almost certain I need glasses, thank you Nintendo DS and Aunt Cindy's knowledge of the human body); and in between passing out and wishing I was passing out, I had a lot of time to think.

Mostly of pain.

But sometimes that pain would ebb, and flow, like tidewaters of pure psychic horror. And with this horror (as with all horror) came knowledge.

(I could write to you about sandcastle thoughts, on a flooding beach, but I won't bore you.)

Suffice it say, something about the pain awakened a very important train of thought--of knowledge! A steam powered freight of Author's Necessity (Which I suppose is some sort of drinkable elixir they sell to Authors in Metaphors. Are trains really the best way to ship some a product? IS such a notion for a metaphor even feasible?)

--I'm sorry. I've lost you. I switched bands on my iPod, and that's my fault...

What I am trying to say is that, lying in bed, suffering in waves of terror, I came across a thought I never knew I would get to. And this is thought was about writing, specifically, about how I will write better. And it's very exciting for me.

Thank you for reading this.

..I love you.

--See?! The song changed AGAIN! And so did my prose. Christ, I'm sorry. I'll try to be more professional next time.

Oh Dammit! We're almost out of TIME, and I forgot to tell you all about my exciting plan for next year. (I told you, December is a beast on the prowl, and he will eat up every piece of time I find in my hands) Lemme see if I can tell you quickly, before--

-mE!

T9re6 kw5594r Fu59e6kwe!

Fossils

2009-11-30T17:50:00.000-08:00

I am so bone tired. There is nothing but a restless wonder, buzzing though my head.

We could say that I'm in a desert, and maybe you're here too. I can't tell. I'm tired. You could be a shadow, or a well formed dune for all I care.

There is an old wooden sign, and at first i think it's drawing closer to us, until I remember that we're walking. That we've always been walking. The sand below is blue, and dark. It reminds me of shaved crayons, int he bottom of a crayola box. It reminds you of eyeshadow, spilled on the bottom of a familiar purse.

You ask if it's nighttime here, or if we're maybe dreaming.

"No" I tell you. "This is dusk."

We keep walking. The sign draws closer. Something's written on it, but it's hard to look at. It looks magical, and I could never read this sort of thing. You tell me that it's beautiful, but I look away. This is followed by a great deal of remorse, as if I'm missing out on something and I don't have a choice.

We walk past the sign. Strange shadows swoop and twirl along the landscape, as if great winged creatures are dancing above us.

"What are those?" I ask, glancing up at the sky.

"I don't really know," you reply without looking. "...It's the last day of November."

"Oh." I say. And it's around this time I notice the bones, sticking up out of the blue sand. Maybe this is the end of the desert, I think.

As the fossils begin to grow into extravagant and unfamiliar designs, I drift off ahead of you, just a little. But enough to feel alone, and wonder if we should be holding hands.

"Where are we?" I hear you ask from behind me.

"Dusk," I reply. "We should keep walking."

-mE!

( 308pr h4 8e4p4ee 396u086 708;

Home

2009-11-25T15:07:00.000-08:00

It's just a few moments until Sarah and I will start the long drive to my Father-in-Law's--I have a father in law!--for our first Thanksgiving as a married couple. I like Andy's house. It feels like home. It smells like home too. I don't know why.

Perhaps the years of home cooking have left the air bereft of anything but white flour and coffee. It's wonderful. I even like the drive up there too, since I listen to my iPod and think of stories.

Last time we drove up there it was the end of July, and I can't even tell you, how much that drive helped write the novel I'm working on.

I can't believe Thanksgiving is tomorrow. And it's only one month until Christmas.
Time moves a lot faster, the older you get.

I remember when I was a kid, my brother and I had these plastic white & rainbow colored pipes, that you could snap together. On some weekends, my father, who was young enough to enjoy the pipes just as much as we did--(if not more)--would snap together a wagon for us, and take me and my brother on a ride to the park.

Barely Breathing by Duncan Sheik just shuffled up on my iPod. I just wanted you to know that.

My father would spend what felt like hours pulling us up the highest hills of the park. These were staggering heights where Saurumon would attack us with wind and whispers. Uncomfotable journeys where people hunted deer, and died of dysentary. Then, after days of travle, he would give us a push, and we would rocket to our doom.

I think, once you hit a certain age, you're just screaming down the hill, and laughing, crashing to your death in one last burst of speed.

I laughed all the way to my death as a child, and I'm fuckin' laughin' now.

In one month it will be Chrismtas. ONE MONTH. And then it will be another year, another set of familiar holidays. I am Twenty-five. Everything feels like a downhill run...Like I'm trying to keep my footing--and laughing--and screaming--and slipping--and laughing some more.

It will be another year of perfectly grouping of words, slipping through my head like eels in a lake bed. Another year of moments passing as I try to keep from falling on my ass.

In November, everythign feels downhill.

-mE.

F0k9jy u0k4!

Celebration

2009-11-23T13:47:00.000-08:00

A post, for you, and for me, in rancorous celebration of my good health. It seems that Sarah and I have finally shrugged off the dark cloak of mononucleosis.

If you have a drink in hand, you may clink it against your screen, and say a toast, or favorite line of lyric.

But make sure it's appropriate, I can't tell you how many Proper Functions I've ruined with a line from In A Big Country.

For those without a drink, but eating a hasty breakfast, it's alright to just whisper a "cheers', or clink that cinnamon toast against the screen in good spirit.

The novel has reached a Good Place, and as such, I feel like talking about it. Perhaps, if we are careful, it will not hear about this,
...Will not rear its ugly face and kill us all.

I spent nearly all day yesterday holed up in a library, and then my living room, finishing the SHIT out of a chapter. It took me weeks. And of course--it's still shit.

It's a first draft, it has to be rough and awful. The problem is not finishing it fast enough...if you take too long, the thing seems to get worse and worse as you think about it...and before long your knee deep in a mire of rewrites and terror.

There's a Marvel comic where Mr. Fantastic (he's the guy who can stretch his shape, remember?) Stretches his god damned MIND, in order to use psychic powers.

I feel like that's a good description of me, trying to finish these last two chapters while stuck in the throes of a passionate Kissing Disease.

So, there's another chapter done. And it's better than it was, and different than I planned, and I am happy.

-mE.

^uwjo Y0r ( uwg4 708 60 uwjy 086 396u;

I should be writing a novel

2009-11-21T19:26:00.001-08:00

-mE.

( 6u9jo 34 w54 6u4 y54w64e6 f08-p4 4g45;

Words

2009-11-19T09:43:00.000-08:00

So yesterday Sarah and I rushed home from our Respective Places We Were At, dashing around the house and the yard (and, in my case, through a quick change of clothing) for our Ten Minute Photoshoot.

The results of which you will see, up above you, depending on if you are reading this in November of 2009. If not, than you missed out. it was the greatest picture ever taken of all time. Your eyes will never miss a greater chance of purpose, and seppuku may be your only chance for an honorable death.

Last night I hopped out of the shower, in what must have appeared to be a wretched sight for anyone watching, and began to knife through my computer bag to for a piece of paper and a pen.

I had stumbled upon the correct threads of a story and, already, before I even reached the bedroom, these ideas were fraying and drifting into other things. Miasmic tendrils of forgotten nothingness. As ideas so often do.

I wrote them down, as best I could, and came up with sort of a half-scratched map of words and phrases. Just the sort of thing Nicholas Cage would have to help me with. Which reminds me of a pick up line you could use:

"You must be Nicholas Cage,
starring in a series of family oriented,
action-adventure films.

...Because you are a National Treasure."

Well, maybe you shouldn't use it. Tell you what, if you're hitting on Nicholas Cage, go for it.

So my good friend, Weshoyot and I, are doing a story for a graphic novel anthology coming out next year. I wrote the story in about a day, (it was only fourteen pages) after spending a week thinking about it.

Today she sent me thumbnail sketches of a few of the pages, as well as a sketch of the main character.

I would try to find the right words to describe how this makes me feel;
But those would be strange words, foreign to my tongue. They would hide in crooks of slippery rocks, deep down, where I couldn't reach them.

I think they would sound remarkably like: happy, thankful, and bemused.

-mE.

Autumnal

2009-11-18T10:03:00.000-08:00

A year ago today, Sarah and I were engaged. We woke up and skipped work, and went walking around a very cold park together. Sarah bought her last box of Polaroid film, and together we shot the pictures and chronicled the day at random moments. The last photo was her, standing in front of a golden tree, in our now yard, which had burst into Autumnal fire.

I can't walk past that tree without thinking about it.

Today we're busy, past any ability to see each other for more than ten minutes. But still, we're rushing back to the house and take another photo together by the golden tree.The leaves are nearly gone, but I don't mind. It's seeing Sarah that I'm excited about; it's knowing we've been together for over a year, tangled in the lines of longitude and latitude we've traveled as lovers.

I'll be leaving to meet her in about 20 minutes, I don't know how much I'll get typed here, but I'll keep going:

The novel is fine. I won't say anything more. I think all long form stories get to a middle place where it is terrible and dangerous to talk too much about them; and this one is important to me, so I won't.

As I said, a few weeks ago I wrote a comic book in nearly two days. OF course, that's not really something that would--or should!--happen often, and already their are things I would change before it got published.

The odd thing, is that these characters (and the many more I haven't even written about yet) won't ...well, Go Away. I cannot stop thinking about them, even when I try. Just the other day I had to get off the phone with Sarah, as every few moments I would forget what either of us were saying; Scenes from the story kept playing in my head, showing up for not really any reason at all, and they drowned out everything else around me. I was walking around in a parking lot, and I'm lucky I wasn't hit by a car.

Ten minutes until I leave...

I wasn't going to bother mentioning this, but, on merely a whim, my character Lord Malachai decided to show up on Twitter, last night, and has even begun to blog once more at Pagan Barista, which, much like his exalted Pumpkin Spice Latte, I would assume is only going to be for a lmited time engagement.

I mention this here, most only because of this:

-mE!

(]pp e44 708 9j t085 k9j864e l3

Hello, world.

2009-11-13T11:52:00.000-08:00

It's Sarah's and my five month wedding anniversary today; so many, many silver bells and cockleshells to us! I am assuming, within the confines of this paragraph, that silver bells and cockle-whats are not flowers, but fantasticK fireworks which are set off in regards to five month wedding anniversaries, as per the magic of typing.

What's new? Let's see:

The novel is still being written, though I haven't touched a word of it since last weekend. (And well, you know, these things take time.) I think getting sick for so long was both a curse and a boon, in regards to the writing; it forced me to slow down, which knocked me off balance, but also forced me to take time away; when I returned to the story's shallow banks, I found them to be much deeper than I remembered. I crept in at a loss, but found I had become a much better swimmer.
Still, there's that terrible current...
and a sea monster.

And I'm not sure but it seems as though there's no small amount of pale hands reaching toward my feet.

What else? Oh. I spent last Saturday night thinking of a story, and when I woke up the next day I began to type it. Hours and hours later it was apparent I had the rough swiss-holed-draft of a comic book. Then--

Tuesday I was sick--

But THEN, on Wednesday, I stayed up far past my bedtime and finished the first issue of something I am really All Smiles about. It's a comic book, yes, but it's not one I've read before.

And now, of course, it's Friday, and I'll be spending the evening with my lovely, lovely, wife. (I have a wife!) for our five month anniversary; and if I could, I'd spend the next five centuries doing exactly the same thing.

-mE!

708 w54 6u4 h4e6 6u9jy 6ue6 f08pr 4g45 uw--4j 60 k4;

Well Met.

2009-11-04T20:03:00.000-08:00

Well met.

I'll tell you what. I have now started this blog with three separate sentences, and it is only now--right now--that I ..am ..not...resisting every urge to delete everything and start over again. I'm almost sure that if I stop typing, I will.

...There. Sometimes you just have to let things stick.

I'm tired, sick and etc. But (and I'm already deleting and rewriting again) things have happened which I wish to chronicle, and chronicable things don't chronicalize themselves, or so we said back in Confusing Academy (our school motto was: "wait, no--look! Behind you! just...There. The time? Blue!)

Mozilla is helpfully trying to remind me that chronicable and chronicalize are not actual human words.

God. See. I just wrote a bunch and then deleted again. I"M SO TIRED! I can't even get the words right. It's like a bad dream. Everything I write is just...exceedingly deletable.

I'm tired. Last night was the first in nearly forever that I felt good enough to stay up writing. So I did. And it worked. I finished a chapter, something which I haven't done in a long time. (It turns out all I had to do was cut what I was working on in half, and all of a sudden it worked, and I had a chapter and half just about finished).

The night before, Sarah made us a delicious dinner, while Weshoyot sent me a few sketches of the comic we're doing together.

-mE!

*6-19-2010 THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY AN UNFINISHED DRAFT I FOUND WAITING IN BLOGGER. I READ THE FIRST PARAGRAPH, AND IT MADE ME LAUGH ENOUGH (WELL, SMILE...NO ONE REALLY LAUGHS ANYMORE..NOT SINCE WE INVENTED LOL...) THAT I DECIDED TO POST IT HERE.

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Talk

2009-10-28T14:28:00.000-07:00

Has it been so long?

Ten days gone between lovers is the end of a tryst, so thank God we're merely friends--Writer and reader; tongue and ears, the oldest relation in history, or so this teller would have you hear.

I am here to comfort your lonely mind, sit and palaver. I don't know how many words I have left today, or much of them you'd like to hear, but maybe we'll surprise each other.

I'm so tired. You should know this, before we continue. Lest my weary words be judged by the lonely likes of you.

I can't believe it's almost November. This has been the most important year in my life since I was born. And it's almost over.

why do we restart on January? Did the world start on January? I'm sorry--I don't want this to become a rhetorical question fest. Though I suppose the T-shirts would look good.

Rhetorical Question fest!
October 28th 2009
...Where You There?
(Don't answer)

I gave up comedy this year, at least for a little while. I say "gave up" because I never really went after it. I piddled around on a keyboard and shot some videos with my friends. It was never my intention to be a comedian. not until I was making my friends laugh, and I found myself in the middle of a comedy group. getting attention from people. Then, yes, I thought, maybe I want to be a comedian.

But I gave it up, after a year. It wasn't fulfilling, and--they say, life's too short, but their wrong, it's much too much too long.--I couldn't waste any more time not spending that long life pursuing the things which I loved. Dreams, I suppose we'll call them. But I don't really want to get all Lisa Frank, here.

I'm tired, so I'm typing. It feels good. It feels like I'm swimming, but kind of drunk, do you know that feeling?

--That's why I married Sarah, I realized life was happening, and I couldn't bear to have it happen without her any longer. That's why I quit comedy too..I wanted to be a writer...and life is so short...so long....Why wouldn't I want to spend the rest of my days with this girl and a handful of stories? Why put effort towards anything else?

Here we are, back at Rhetorical Fest.

So I spent this year turning 25, marrying Sarah, and writing novels. I don't know how I would have gotten as far as I have without marrying Sarah first, come to think of it. Everything happened this year in just the right order. It almost killed me, but maybe I was only drowning so the flames wouldn't get me, I dunno.

I've been sick for like three months now, it actually slowed me down. I'd been on overdrive since--well, I don't know. Since I met Sarah, maybe? Perhaps she was that missing thing--the puzzle piece I needed to see the rest of the picture. I certainly think so. And once I saw the picture...

Everything else just sort of fell apart. All the wrong directions were suddenly fallen and overgrown. Once bright paths of glittering sugar, now grown foul and repulsive. There was a new path, an old one I'd been glancing at through the trees. Mana from heaven and gingerbread crumbs--helpful signs with funny slogans.

I never felt lost. After I met Sarah. I guess that's what all these words are pushing toward.

I had no idea, but then again, I'm tired.
Just swimming drunk in a pool of words.
Because it's fun.

-mE.

&08]54 p9o4 w kwy9f 50fo ( fwj e6wjr 0j 05 8e4 we w f0k-wee;

Cold Water

2009-10-18T09:17:00.000-07:00

And so now I realize why I haven't written as steadfastedly as I used to, why I haven't felt much like going out, and Why I add the suffix -edly to various words without thinking.

I have The mono.

I have spent the majority of the majority of this past week upon a couch of illness, half asleep in a gondola on the most boring river of Hades.

I cannot write. I have tried. In evidence I present to you that last paragraph, or, alternately, this blog entry which was started--no joke,--nine hours ago.

I do have ideas though, little fireworks which fly up into the sky, brilliant and bright...only to flare behind clouds of rumbling and impenetrable darkness.

But I have a Moleskine notebook with me, and I wrote some of them down with a maniacal and wavering Sanskrit. Jotting them down like rare and confusing words of prophecy.

I also drew pictures.

-mE!

J03 34 w54 e9fo;

An Update From The Front Lines

2009-10-13T16:17:00.000-07:00

I just woke up, Sarah just fell asleep.

It's six O'clock on our four month anniversary. The White Plague of Illness has spread across our lands like waves of sea foam. It seems now, that I must have been sick for almost two months. The fever rising and falling, like the tide of some damnable ocean.

Let's see, I have been meaning to write for some time.

I'm still in the middle of the same chapter I was a month ago. A miserable place bereft of kindness or sunlight. I tried to explain it to Sarah just last night: It feels as though I have "leveled up", as a Reader and Writer. That I have reached a new standard height of abilities. Words look different to me now, sentences seem constructed in a deeper and yet simpler fashion than I ever noticed before.

I was reading The Two Towers, and it felt as though, only a week before, chapters which were obviously delicious sticks of clear radish are now--quite obviously!--Building materials which I have been tearing apart and mashing for no specific reason but gluttony.

I wonder if such a Fraggle-lish metaphor makes sense to you; what I'm trying to say is...whatever sort of reader/writer person I was before, I am that much better, seemingly overnight, and it has effected my work. In a good way; yes, of course. But it has slowed me down.

Such is the way of learning, I suppose...

That, and the aforementioned mystery illness which climbs through my guts and lungs as if it were a Prince and my body were Persia.

***

A few weeks ago, I was asked by a friend to write a comic for her to draw. Two days ago it was Sunday, and I decided to sit down and Write It. It is the first comic I have written since last February, and so it was somewhat nervously that I finished the thing and sent it off for the judgment of another.
Later, as we drove around town on a Oh My Gosh We're Married This is Awesome date, Sarah read me aloud (for I was the one driving) an email from the artist telling me that she loved it. which was, a very huge relief.

She sent it to the publisher, and I wondered what would happen next. After all, if he said yes, I would almost and probably assuredly have written a real, living, breathing comic.

The next morning the publisher agreed to publish it, and so now the artist (Weshoyot Alvitre) and I have a comic which will be featured in some unknown-to-me-as-of-yet anthology.

Yes, it is exciting.

-mE.

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On a Train

2009-10-01T21:19:00.000-07:00

Oh God.

Where were we? It doesn't matter, I suppose. It's been days, and in future-internet-skip time that's literal ages.

Do you remember our previous correspondence? Our adventures together? They are much the same. All that's changed is everything. Perhaps a new setting for this, my latest letter to you?

A train, I think. yes. Let's be traveling on a train. There is a window behind us, and I think something must be wrong with the train, or the world, or the rate that we're travelling across it. Sometimes it seems like Spring, other times I fear the snow will kill us all. We've only been on the train a few minutes, yet the seasons have changed so quickly. I must have spent years looking out this window.

A bottle of something, perhaps?

The waiter is dark, and unsettling. His mustache is nothing less then vile, and his smile is sinister. He holds a chain, and along the chain are various bottles.

"I'll have the typo champagne" I tell him.

"That's champsne, Sir." he says.

"Yes--of course." I reply, "and my friend here will have the..." (at this point, I motion toward you, and you say:

"I'll have the umm, er--uh ________"

"excellent choice," he sneers, and it seems as if he's making fun of you.

I shoot you a glance and you respond with a smile. The waiter pours out my champagne, (a glass of bubbling water and various misspelled letters) and then produces a dusty glass and sets it before you.

"And for you, of course..." he says, pouring out a full glass of ________ , and not bothering to wipe the dust out of the glass, as is the custom of such a choice in beverage.

As the waiter leaves, we smile and nod, pretending to clink our glasses in a cheer. I stare at the words floating in my champagne, and give your glass a quick look of envy. As I sip, the bubbles tingle, the words catch and scratch in my throat. You laugh and tell me typos are never god on the palate. I smile.

"Theyr'e my signature."

Many seasons have passed the window by now, and I sigh and put down my glass, though to be true, I don't know why I sighed. It's one of those social germs you catch and show off like a compulsive tic, like a talent in a competition no one's really judging.

"I have news." I tell you, and you look interested, raising your eyebrows in your own show of social talent. "I have decided not to serialize my serialized novel."

You nod your head, wondering if this is going to be boring.

"I'm going to finish it and get it published...its just grown so much, and I really like it--and I just think I should try and get it published." You nod again, and say something nice. "...I'm on part four right now," I add, as if somehow this is important to my decision. "...it gets crazy."

You smile and say "cool."

I take one last sip as I stare out the window. The sharp edge of typos hit my lips as Spring blossoms in green grass and rainbow everything. By the time I swallow the first snows are erasing everything.

-mE.

#uw6 r9r 708 r59jo"

Upon a White Horse

2009-09-18T14:58:00.000-07:00

Small scraps and pieces of writing were accomplished. Half formed sculptures of sentences, bereft of grammar and structure now stand frozen along blank pages of manila snow. They are landmarks, twisted screaming statues pointing me in the right direction.

The sickness had spread from my limbs to my head, where it nestled in like a wyrm in a treasure horde. Bathing itself on a heap of golden thoughts. While the sickness held my thoughts captive--pouring my greatest collection of jewels into its mouth and spitting them back out like bathwater--I laid upon the couch, wondering what life was like for the healthy.

I rode a horse of white flakes, and heard tell his name was Pox. Together we callivanted (his term, not my own, I assure you) throughout the house. From room to room. Breathing out the spores which attacked us, before sucking them back in with a decaying hiss. I remember--vaguely--lying upon the bed, stroking the hair as it felt out of his neck in great clumps.

"we must depart" he whispered. His eyes rheumy with pink scabs.

"Why?"

"Into the living room. Quick" he hissed, "the sickness is spreading!"

Together we walked along the fields of my home. Passing unfamiliar walls and decor. A slow clip and clop from beneath me as the horse wheezed and whinnied. The stillness of the once familiar abode was broken only by the horse.

"These are the lands of Plague.." he would say aloud, as if talking to himself.

***

I feel better, today. Slightly. I have moments of life like tenacity.

A new idea was born today, a new story--well, stories. I created something with thoughts, and pen, and paper that I had never thought of before; and it astounded me.

I think it will require a lot of research, for instance: I don't know a damn thing about the Industrial revolution. And how if effected Russia.

But I do know this, I haven't been this excited about an idea in...well, since my last one. That's it. My mind is spent, I shall see you in better days, in better health.

-mE.

T05y9g4 k4; _p4we4;

Am I Dying?

2009-09-15T12:22:00.000-07:00

It is apparent--apparent!--That my body is suffering through its own epic influenza. A disease we probably have no Latin name for. Is three weeks to long to be the flu? I would check Wikipedia, but my symptoms prevent me from the extraneous and damning exercise of clicking open another tab. Though, I think its fair to judge "being too tired to check Wikipedia for symptoms" is symptom of the flu itself.

My body is wracked with phantom pains and aches, and memories of other places I have never been. I wrote down a fictional memoir last night, well into the throws of my debilitated passion. Realizing I was nothing but a medium for the sickness, I wrote about a page of foreign language before realizing I had no pen, no paper, and that my desk was nothing but a bed sheet and a finger.

Not much of that is true. What is true is that i have felt like shit for the last few weeks, and my casual but firm grip on the English language has been thrown off course into the horse-bucked storm of "I don't feel good."

Still...

I write. When possible, if not altogether plausible, I string words and thoughts together like strands of foreign pearls. Some of them glisten, others are tangled. My pearl stringing workshop is, certainly, in disarray, but I still sit here and tinker. Smiling at moments no one else will ever know.

Did you know Disarray is spelled with one "s" and two "r's"?
Fascinating.

I've made progress actually. Whether it was the brine choked influenza I was drowning in or my own meager learning so the accursed craft, I had a scene that just didn't feel right. I had yet to transcribe more than the basic brushstrokes of the moments, but I knew what happened next had to happen, even though it felt forced. So, after a week--a week!--of silent worry and wonder, (and reading, God, I love reading) I went back to the manuscript and forced a heavy weekend of pushing and toiling the word strewn soils of my mind and half-writ-screen.

I was very VERY excited when it worked. When it clicked. when it flowed quite natural like water bumping over rocks in a stream. This is how this scene happens. These are the words that tell you the picture.

I will never tell you of which scene it was, or what pieces had changed. I will show you the blueprints--gladly!--but translating the Russian notes int he margin would only teach you the components, and I don't want you to know how the rocket works. I want you to watch it pass the moon in silent wonder.

Unless it explodes. In that case, I am sorry. I will write another story.

-mE.

( 39pp 64pp 708 wj76u9jyl wjr ypwrp7;

Cracks and Premonitions

2009-09-03T14:52:00.000-07:00

Thunder.

And I am not, dear friends, quoting AC/DC, nor the lyrics of Fleetwood Mac; and above all else, I am certainly not referring to a fictional mashup of the two.

"Thundah!/Only happens when it's raining/nananananana")

No.

This morning, we awoke to thunder. Like a beast of the earth had jumped the Atlantic and landed outside our window. The house shuddered, and my eyes shot open, wondering why I had left the backyard, and the people, and everything else of the dreams. Everything was wide away and my emotions were flickering.

***

Yesterday I took all the notes related to the Serialized Story and gathered them together like the bones of an animal. My fervent belief is that if I cast them across a table with a pen in hand, I (yes!) will be able to transcribe the plot holes and mysterious bits down into one clairvoyant document.

I had started the story in a moleskine notebook during our honeymoon, and of course these are the types of super secret notebooks which, if you have a clever wife, who is wise and kind, will show you there is a special pocket in the back of them--readily made for loose leaf notes about Serialized Stories to be kept!

So yesterday I took the notes, and the drawings and placed the in the back of the notebook, (along with a green pen I've been using whenever possible as a sort of good luck charm) and found myself rather happy to find a had a special and secret notebook.

Yes, much like Ryuk the Shinigami.

...Go ahead, click the link. You KNOW you don't get the reference.

***

for those of yous till here, wandering around int he ashes of my bad grammar, you'll be delighted to find I'm almost done typing.

The Serialized Story is two chapters completed, and I'll be going to the library today (today!) to look through my notes and make sure the story is behaving itself. You never know with these things, stories....I heard tell that one time Ernest Hemingway wrote a story that, when left alone in the kitchen, burned his house down and knifed several of his cats for--and this is all hearsay: "meow money".
I'm talking of course of Hills for White Elephants, which has gone on to settle down in several textbooks and essays on literary criticism.

The Serialized Story is called Merry Men. It's about Robin Hood(s).

The next blog post will be all about it, including the supposed date of publication as well as the unveiling of the premise and title. I just thought I should say something about it here, for just the two of us still reading...So that we can laugh at everyone together when I "unveil" it in a future post.

Fools.

-mE!

&4el 6uw6 54t454jf4 3we t05 708 L3

Offline Gummi Sharks

2009-08-27T19:54:00.000-07:00

I'm at the library, listening to Offline PK on repeat for the last hour and a half.

I've just finished the probably hardest part of this second chapter of the Serialized Story. I really like how its turning out. I spent a few days away from it, and was surprised to find how much I liked it upon returning.

Being a story told in several parts, things keep shifting and solidifying, like a bowl of blue Jell-O filled with gummi fish. Did you ever make one of those? A murky blue ocean of gummi sharks and other creatures--DeLIGHTful.

I have several hand-scribbled pages of notes for chapters three and four. I took pictures of each, but dare not post them on this mortal plane.

For handwriting this bad is spell craft, and once uttered, invites a curving, looping, unreadable Ragnarok.

-mE.

( wk f0k9jy u0k4 60 ej8yyp4 6u4 (f854305r) 086 0t 708!

Update From The Front Lines

2009-08-24T21:18:00.001-07:00

It is Elven at night, the caffeine is surging through my bloodstream, and The Album Leaf is blaring from the tin can speakers of our MacBook.

I've been working on Part Two of the Serialized Story, I'm about seven or so pages in, and I know where it's going.

Some of it is good, some of it needs work, but I spent a happy few moments today planning out the next chapter, and I am so excited to reach it now that any problems with part two seem small and trivial. I would make an F-Zero metaphor, but I can't think of one. Indulge me though, and imagine how brilliant and witty it would have seemed.

-mE!

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News About Robots!

2008-12-24T13:40:00.000-08:00

So here are the Christmas cards that Sarah and I made. We stayed up late and listened to Christmas music (thanks Last.fm) and I didn't plan too much ahead other than a scrap of paper I was scribbling on as I went along. Sarah colored and wrote on the insides!

Below each I've transcribed my hieroglyphics for you good people.
Happy Christmas.

For you...
A Christmas Card
With a Christmas Tree
And A Christmas Star
(Oh, and an inside too)

We'll kiss beneath the mistle crows
CAW!
They cry,
and why?
no one knows...

Humbugs ruin my Christmas sweaters every year!
humming Christmas carols until they bring friends to tears
So here is my gift to you my friends, my holiday cheer
I SHANT be wearing a sweater this year.

A snowflake machine
is a WONDEROUS thing!
(...though, it can't dance,
make cookies, can't boogie
drink milk and can't sing)
BUT! It makes snowflakes
for ME-
Well how does it work?!!
Why, you just wait 'till it's
SNOWING and press THIS button,
you jerk!

Silver Sidewalks!
children laugh-
no wait...
city sidewalks
silver laughing
children-
no wait...
er, umm
Silver bells! Silver Bells!
(silver bells)
SILVER BELLLLLS!

In the WINTER
we can build a SNOWMAAAAAAN
(Did I leave the oven on, oh well?)
We'll have lots of fun with Mr. Snowman!
(seriously is that my house I smell? burning down?-
WALKIN' IN
A WINTERRRR
WONDERLAAAAAND!

Christ-mas-tree
hands!
Christ-mas-tree
hands!
What. I. Have here!
Are INSTRUMENTS!
for MASSIVE!
SEASONAL!
PLANS!

Hey! A poem!
About Christmas!
for YOU!
snowflakes are pretty
x-mas trees are too
here is a poem just for you.
Well, it was a BIT short..
but what can you do?

There's no such thing
as a Christmas snake...
There's no such thing
as a Christmas snake...
Its probably just wrapping paper...
I've probably just been up too late...
but still...
GOD I hope there's no such thing
as a Christmas snake!

Gingerbread cookies!
$1 dollar each!
I..uh...
I didn't have any ginger,
just, no cookie mix either, really
umm lets see...I had cinnamon,
milk, eggnog, salt and a peach...
...uh.
..Terrible cookies
$1 dollar each!
but them or I'll feed them
to ORPHANS as TREATS!

Santa BABYYYY-
(oh, wait...I'm not a girl...)
(erm, uh...)
Hey...Santa frieeendly
how 'bought I buy
you a beer...
...cause I'm mannnnly
no feminine caroleeeers heeere...

My Christmas mustache
is PERFECT you see?
why, no better seasonal 'stache could be!
I see the way you judge
..the way you look at me...
the WAY you want
to HANG THIS
MUSTACHE on
your TREE!

Why a candy-cane beard
is a wondrous thing to have
this time of year
red and white striped
DELICIOUS facial hair.
It's the best way to celebrate,
I'd like to have you know
Except when it's long...
and you trip...
and you,
...land in the snow...

There's no greater gift
to give than a Christmas poncho
It really lets everyone know
who's the head Christmas honcho.
But also I really like this
fantastic snowflake spitting wand
Though I think it may be broken...
Cause sometimes it backfires
and makes Christmas look wrong...

X marks the spot
for a Christmas PIRATE such as I
with buried seasonal treasure
YES! stocking! eggnog!
and pecan pie!
If ANYONE
has gotten into it
FIRST they shall be CRYIN'!
I-
Oh wait,...this isn't
the islands...

-uS!

#uw6 w y54w6 3w7 60 e-4jr wj769k4
(wjr 6u9e ( ew7 6584)
#uw6 w y54w6 3w7 60 e-4jr Fu59e6kwe
(i8e6 k4 wjr i8e6 708!)

News About A Secret

2008-12-04T15:23:00.001-08:00

Sarah and I are engaged.

Wjr ( 39pp p0g4 708 t054g45!

Guest Post

2008-11-24T10:52:00.000-08:00

Do to eldritch sorcery, toddmichaelrogers.com is now back online.

EDIT: No it is NOT.

Unfortunately, Todd Michael is too busy to write you; and so has employed I, myself, a lonely and decrepit ole ghost.

I could tell you all about Todd Michael's marvellous and amazing news, or the terrible time he had attempting to write last ngiht, or even the secret notes he keeps locked within his iPhone of doom.

But why waste time with a mere mortal? I am a ghost. I haunt nooks and crannies, shadows and bedrooms.

I dare say, you would care for my story, had you the time or ear to hear it.

I was born St. Lucian Macabee, on the twenty first of Septembre, in the Year of The Glow. I was born under a light bulb, the first of my family, and therefore they say, am the brightest. You'll brooke no argument from me, though I do have my fair share of troubles.

Though born a poor Christian boy, I soon cast off my dead God and became a man of the sciences.

That is, until, the death of my son in the Year of The Darkness. He was drowned upon the lake I made myself with machines, following the adventures of a little boy in thunderstorm, on a fragile man-made dock.

The sciences had killed my son, and, I was sure, faith would bring him back. Dredging the lake I devoted my claims to the faith, and my services to the cloth, but your goode lord had not the courage to bring my son back to me.

Upon the death of my wife, from the grief of her son's death and the negligence of her Christian husband, I cursed my Heavenly Father a second and final time, and burned the robes the church had prepared for me.

I soon took up with occultists, witches and demons. After some time my body rotted away in my house, my home beside the lake.

But you're God is a vengeful God, and all must pay their wages. I never saw my son again, thought I am told he waits at the pearlescent gates, waving, awaiting his Father. My wife moved on and waits for no one but on her Lord, The son of God, Christ, and bless her for it. I wait here, walking through a fallen world, awaiting an end that never comes.

I would sign my name but for the fact that I have none, and no signature to give.

( u0-4 708 4ji074r k7 e6057;