... from the basement

Always thrilling when someone reads your work, but...

2011-12-26T09:43:00.003-05:00

... nothing has been as personally gratifying as the response to my book on Lakehurst. I've written about legendary film directors, relationships, geek culture and more, but this is something special to me -- and it's made even more special by the fact that old friends, teachers, people I knew in my youth, their parents, and many others are getting it and are interested in it and are reading it. I've gotten random calls at home, emails from people I've never met, invitations to do presentations and interviews, requests to sign books for the holidays, and more.

Considering I just sort of quietly slipped it out there at the last minute, no adverting or promotion outside this blog and Facebook, the positive response has been both surprising and thrilling. I mean, heck, look at how things looked for the book on Christmas Eve (click to embiggen):

Wait, #2 in its category and #10 for all history books? How did that happen?

Granted, those rankings suggest much higher numbers than reality. Maybe one of these days I'll do a "business" post and break down actual sales figures for people. They're not nearly what #10 would imply. But still ... pretty cool.

More important to me, though, has been the response from people with a personal connection to Lakehurst. People seem genuinely eager to dive in and see what their town is all about. That's amazing and wonderful and awesome and makes all the work to write this book worthwhile.

Because ultimately, neither bylines nor money nor praise are worth a damn if people aren't reading and appreciating what you do. And if they are, you've already accomplished everything worth accomplishing.

A new record of ambiance for your sleeping pleasure

2011-12-16T13:00:00.000-05:00

If you follow my music blog/archive (which you can add on Facebook here) you may have already seen this, but if not, here is an experiment in sleepy, late-night music I recorded a few months ago but have only just gotten around to tossing out there for people to hear.

This album is guitar-free and vocal-free. It's a sparse record of simple piano, canyon echo drums, cavern bass, and other sounds. Very slow. Methodical. Lots of empty space on this one. Put it on late at night and fall asleep, or early in the morning before you're ready for music or talk radio. The tracks all flow into one another, so it presents itself as one long piece.

(song titles are download links)

Tape Theory
Day of Turmoil, Night of Regret

1) Start of a Day (6:27)
2) Impending Failure (12:12)
3) Weight of Night (8:37)
4) Healing Dawn (8:55)
5) Fog Rolls Off the Mind (6:31)
6) Waiting for a Hopeful Night (6:20)
7) The Sound of Regret (7:49)
8) Generational Patterns (10:05)

This was recorded in FL Studio 9. The cover photo was taken at Cattus Island Park in Toms River, NJ. Others notes here. All songs (c) Eric San Juan 2011.

Art does not require pain; joy is worth celebrating

2011-12-13T10:30:00.000-05:00

I'm not much for the whole posting quotes thing, but this quote from Ursula le Guin's award-winning 'Those Who Walked Away From Omelas,' which can be read in full here, strikes me as worth sharing:

"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain ... But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy."

In the world of art and expression -- literature, film, music, or whatever, take your pick -- how many times have we seen the notion, whether expressed explicitly or by implication, that suffering is needed to create art? That pain is a spark, a trigger, needed for "real" art?

How many times have we seen the idea that unbridled happiness, joy, contentment, that these things are anathema to real, true, moving art?

The great songs are expressions of troubled times and pain. Joyful, happy songs are mere guilty pleasures.

Films that make us smile or laugh or bask in the warm glow of contentment are banal and boring. Films about oppression, suffering, abuse, genocide, and the emotional wreckage of broken human beings are films that win awards.

Happy literature is not good literature. True literature delves into the depths of the human condition ... and the real, true human condition can only be negative. Bleak. Painful.

But that's all a load of crap, really, which le Guin expresses with a beauty I can only hope to one day near. We can squeeze just as much art -- moving art, important art -- out of joy as we can from suffering. Delight is no less a part of the human condition than despair, nor is it less important. The Beatles were no less real artists than their contemporary, Bob Dylan, for dealing in love rather than social ills. It's A Wonderful Life is no less a film for celebrating the joy of being surrounded by loved ones than The Hurt Locker is for its uncompromising look at the psychology of war. And so on.

I'm not an optimist by nature. People who know me know I've a deeply cynical side. I tend to be a grump. Yet that doesn't mean I embrace the idea that you have to suffer for you art. Screw that. Reject that idea. Turn it on its head and kick it to the curb.

Because if you've got beauty in your heart rather than ugliness, well dammit, let it out, call it art, and don't let anyone tell you different.

The Ghosts of Hangar No. 1

2011-12-10T09:53:00.000-05:00

The following is a brief excerpt from Lakehurst: Barrens, Blimps & Barons, available now at Amazon and Lulu, as well as at the headquarters of the Lakehurst Historical Society. It recounts one of the many ghost stories that still haunt Navy Lakehurst's famous Hangar No. 1.

As Navy veteran Don Adams recalls, Hangar No. 1 briefly served as a morgue, the results of a disaster that still cannot be explained. Do the ghosts of Hangar No. 1 originate from the now unassuming rooms once used to house those who fell like angels in flame? Some believe they do. Maybe a clue lies with the ghosts.

A long passage once spanned the length of the over eight hundred-foot-long hangar. To this day the doors of what’s left of the passage are still prone to sudden and violent slamming as if restless and angry. A Navy man once walked along this passage in the late evening, at first alone. Then in the distance he saw a fellow Navy man walking towards him. The stranger was in archaic dress blues. A set of half-wings was pinned to the uniform, signifying a certified balloon pilot.

But the last Navy blimp was decommissioned in 1962. There were no more Navy balloon pilots.

The man in the old dress blues approached. He was offered a “hello.” No response. Kept walking. And passed through the startled onlooker, who turned and saw that the balloon pilot was gone.

The full story, along with others, is available in Lakehurst: Barrens, Blimps & Barons. My thanks to the Navy Lakehurst Historical Society for the tour, interviews, and information they provided while I worked on this piece.

A very Wise interview on Geekdom

2011-12-08T09:31:00.006-05:00

When Stephen Segal tapped me to take part in writing Geek Wisdom with his team of geeks, there really wasn't any other answer but, "Yes." After all, Stephen isn't just a guy who was my editor on a previous book (Stuff Every Husband Should Know), he's also a friend. Philosophically we come from very similar places, especially with regard to creativity, the human spirit, and our inner geekness.

But better to let Stephen himself explain. In this interview with Wired, he lays out the spark that became the book, the philosophy we plunged into it with, and the great geekdom we left on the cutting room floor.

I especially like this bit of insight:

Whether in a religious or a scientific framework, knowledge and wisdom are two different things. You can be very well educated in the smartest smarts of the day, and still be a careless, thoughtless fool. That’s why Geek Wisdom doesn’t just look for the wisdom IN geek culture, it also looks for the wisdom ABOUT the perils of geekdom that we need to be wary of romanticizing: arrogance, isolation, condescension.

So check out Stephen's interview here, and check out the book, available in hardcover and for Kindle, here.

My Lakehurst book is here, so that's pretty cool

2011-11-29T17:11:00.000-05:00

Even though the real work now begins -- I frickin' hate promotion -- I feel like I've come to the end of a long road. See, Lakehurst: Barrens, Blimps & Barons, my book on the history of the Pine Barrens town best known for the Hindenburg disaster, is finally ready for public consumption. I've been pecking away at this book since 2002, first as a short series of articles for a local newspaper, later as an expanded series of more in-depth stories on local history, and finally as this book. It is not only comprehensive and (I hope) engaging to read, it's also a very personal project for me.

It'd been hard to let the project go and just call it DONE. When I lasted posted about the book I said "next week." Ended up pushing that back by a week for some last-minute additions -- and with my luck probably introduced some typos and grammatical errors when I did -- because I had stumbled across some cool information I just had to squeeze into the book.

But now it's here. Out. Ready for reading.

There are way too many people to thank, but right now the folks I want to thank more than any are the people of Lakehurst past and present, especially those I grew up with. I hope they'll read this and realize that our little town was actually pretty damn cool.

Lakehurst: Barrens, Blimps & Barons is available on Amazon and Lulu. I hope you'll consider getting a copy or three.

Hitchcock podcast in the final stretch

2011-11-17T13:15:00.000-05:00

Well, we're almost there.

Way back in April 2009, Jim McDevitt and I started podcasting about Alfred Hitchcock. This should come as no surprise. We're the coauthors of an awesome book, A Year of Hitchcock, which is, like, pretty good and stuff. The book was a serious but accessible look at the full body of work of legendary director Alfred Hitchcock. I like it. I hope you get it and like it, too. (Honestly, at this point I assume you all follow us on Facebook, anyway.)

To accompany the book, we decided to do a series of light-hearted, casual podcasts that followed the book chapter-for-chapter, and sometimes veered off into interview shows, topical shows, and so on. To be honest, we started off kind of stiff and awkward. We weren't very good. But as we hit our stride I think we did okay. We had a chance to interview great directors like Norman Buckley, chat with fantastic Hitchcock geeks, discuss other great directors, and sometimes got drunk along the way.

It's been a fun ride. A ride soon to end. Starting next week(ish), our final stretch of shows begins. We have five movies to cover, plus a wrap-up show. I can't lie and say I'm sorry to see this project go. It has been a lot of work, and if you read this blog you know I kind of keep my plate a bit full. Couple that with a miserable existence in the world of journalism and yeah, I don't need more projects.

But I loved doing this. It was great fun. Hell, I'm almost as proud of it as I am of the book. I especially urge you to listen to the last five or six shows, not because you love the movies -- you don't; this is not a good period for Hitchcock -- but because Jim and I have a ton of fun. We know it's the end and we revel in it. We think you'll enjoy it.

If you've been listening these last two years, THANK YOU. If you've been reading, too, THANK YOU EVEN MORE. And if not ... now is a good time to start! ;)

So I have this book coming out next week...

2011-11-15T21:25:00.001-05:00

After three books I've authored or coauthored, each released by traditional publishers, Lakehurst: Barrens, Blimps & Barons will be my first self-published book (not counting the Pitched! comics, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2). That means with a little help from my friends, I had to do it all, from writing to editing to layout to cover design...

Looks pretty cool, no? This book will officially be available by December 1, but if you read this blog or follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you'll have first crack at it. I expect it to be ready for sale in a week or so.

Honestly? I think it's my best so far. If you're from the area I write about or not, check it out. This is how I've always felt local history books should read. This isn't dry bullshit, it's a story, and a good one at that. I did dozens of hours of interviews with a load of interesting people (including people who actually SAW that cover image happen right in front of their eyes), read a slew of other great books, and much more to bring this story together. A little bit of me is in this book, too. I lived there, after all. Grew up there. This place and its people are important to me.

So when it officially goes on sale next week, remember that it's awesome and you should get it, and also that it will stop hunger and bring about world peace.

MUSIC: Jeff Mangum, Paramount Theater, Asbury Park, Oct. 3, 2011

2011-11-12T10:39:00.002-05:00

Thirteen years ago, Jeff Mangum and his band, Neutral Milk Hotel, released In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, quietly one of the most powerful albums of the last 20 years.

A year later, he walked away from the music business and disappeared.

In the 12 years since Neutral Milk Hotel went on hiatus, he has rarely done interviews. In one revealing interview, he alluded to a nervous breakdown and talked about how emotionally draining his music could be.

All this time, though, fans -- myself included -- have waited and waited and waited to just hear some damn music. Not because we feel we're owed, but because few musicians have been able to tap into a subconscious mess of pain and hurt and dream images that we never knew we had as Neutral Milk Hotel. They created a ridiculous kaleidoscope of Holocaust fever dreams and morning shakes and fragile teenage beauty, all of it driven by Mangum's manic, imperfect genius.

Years later, after a few sporadic shows, Jeff Mangum decided he's going to start playing again. So on October 3, 2011, as the capper of 2011's All Tomorrow's Parties festival, he played in Asbury Park. I was there. And it went like this:

Mangum walks out onto stage looking not so much an indie icon making a triumphant return to stage as he does a Depression-era street urchin swaggering his way to the front of the bread line. He’s tall and lanky, or at least appears that way thanks to ill-fitting clothes and a flop of hair kept out of his face only by a tiny brown cabbie hat.

The stage is unadorned save for a semi-circle of acoustic guitars.

The audience at Asbury's paramount theater, an aged, intimate venue that feels somehow appropriate thanks to its rustic, yesteryear flavor, goes so wild you can barely hear his humble thanks.

Then he starts playing.

You'd not think he would still be in touch with this music after so many years, but he is. Tales of Siamese twins and child abuse and lost loves, howled onto the stage over manically strummed guitar. His voice maybe doesn't have the reach it did before. Not that he was ever an extraordinary vocal talent, but at his best he bled passion in a way even the most well-trained singers rarely can. Now, he struggled here and there to reach the painful heights of his records -- yet still he laid bare on the stage. You feel like he is still connected to his cast of nightmare characters, and in turn, so are we.

At one point he asks the audience to sing along, then immediately launches into "The King of Carrot Flowers pt. 1," which confronts the confusion of adolescence, a fractured family led by a father who wants to die, and Mangum's usual dream-like imagery. The audience sings, bashful at first, but quickly emboldened by Mangum's encouragement they're soon letting loose. Yet it's not an arena rock moment. It's somehow personal. He's touched these people, allowing them a little piece of himself, and now you get the sense they're offering the same in return.

You don't get moving moments like these at rock shows.

He also, for the first time in some 13 years and only the second time ever, plays his darkest ever song. A song that almost hurts. A song so grim and surreal that even at the time it made clear that he'd spiraled over some edge and was channeling something maybe even he didn't understand. As of this writing, it has never been released. This is what that very first performance more than a decade ago looked like:

These days the (slightly changed) song is still dark and beautiful, but it no longer feels like he is falling apart on stage. (You can watch the Asbury performance here.) The audience thanks him for sharing it with us, just one of the many intimate back-and-forths between he and us, us and he.

After a set containing just about every track from the cult landmark In The Aeroplane Over The Sea and fully half his first album, On Avery Island (not to mention the aforementioned "Little Birds" and Mangum favorite "Engine"), he leaves. Audience demands his return. He complies. Comes back for "Two-Headed Boy." Near the end of the song, the opening act, A Hawk and a Hacksaw, stroll onto the stage. The audience is going mad. They know what is going to happen. And as "Two-Headed Boy" ends, they, Mangum and a full band of oddball horns and percussion and accordions, roll into "The Fool."

It's a beautiful, unexpected moment. And if we cheered until long after the house lights came on, well, who could blame us?

You can download and listen to the entire show at this link. Enjoy.

FICTION: The Symphony

2011-10-31T11:13:00.001-04:00

You may recall that I've started posting very short fiction. Today's foray into flash fiction falls into the "experimental" category. Though it's not a horror story, it's weird enough so that Halloween seems as good a time as any to post it. This story was prompted by my friend Chris Campagna. It's a brief story about war and madness. Make of it what you will:

THE SYMPHONY

By Eric San Juan

In the room where the water-logged carpet lay strewn with the rubble of yesterday’s bombing, he poked at the keys of his grandmother’s piano. Ting, tung, ting.

“I … I can play this whole song. All of it, without … god, my eyes. My goddamn eyes.”

He wasn’t sure why he could no longer see. Maybe it was the flash of the bombs outside, ten thousand cameras that turned the world into death instead of capturing its image. Maybe it was the stress of their incessant thump. Maybe so many things. He could no longer see.

“I can play the whole song.”

His captive didn’t care. Strung up there, tied tight, mounted to the ceiling, sitting on the piano with hood over his head and gag in his mouth and, the piano player remembered with a shudder, a plug to stop up his captive’s bowels. If his captive did care, he’d never know. He’d only hear the song, muffled pleading he had been listening to since last night when he first dragged him inside.

“Did you know that if you close your eyes during the bombings and breathe, just breathe real slow like you’re going to sleep in the summer sun, that the sound becomes almost like a symphony? I think if Mozart had been here he would have … he would have conducted them, I guess. The bombs, I mean. I – I bet one of the generals is a musician. That must be how he made it so beautiful and terrible. He … he conducted those bombs. Like a symphony.”

No response.

He poked at the keys, ting, ting. His feet were wet. They stank. A chunk of plaster fell from the ceiling. And then a low hum began to rise outside like the swarming of a million bees, coming from some great distance at first but soon growing louder. The planes were returning. With them would come the bombs. Ting, ting, tung.

“The conductor is going to play us another song. I wish I could see it. But I can’t see anything anymore. I can only hear the music.”

Ting, tung, ting.

Year of Hitchcock softcover = RELEASED

2011-10-13T15:48:00.000-04:00

I know, I know, you're probably as sick of hearing about this book as I am of posting about it! But the long-awaited softcover edition of the book I coauthored with Jim McDevitt is finally out and ready for purchase. If you passed on the hardcover -- and no hard feelings if you did, because it wasn't cheap -- this is for you. It comes in at under 20 clams. Nice price for a nice book by some nice guys, yeah?

So check it out and I'll finally shut up about it. Not about my other projects, mind you. But about this one, sure. For now.

You can order it from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Books-a-Million, and other fine retailers. It should soon start showing up in your local bookstore, too. Check the film/entertainment section. If you spot it out in the wild please let me know. Jim and I would like to know where the book is turning up.

Complaining about things I shouldn't complain about, aka Writing can be boring

2011-10-11T14:15:00.000-04:00

Leaning forward with a glass of bourbon and ice next to me, hair frazzled. A human drama plays itself out in the background, all loud voices and chaos, but I can't pay attention because I'm under the spell of inspiration, and as those words hit the page each sparkles like a shiny gold coin. Each sentence is a hundred dollar bill constructed with the power of my words. The keyboard is on fire with the rush of my work. It's invigorating.

Nah. The above scene is bullshit. Writing for pay is not always interesting. In fact, sometimes it's downright boring.

Hell, it usually is.

I can still remember a time when that thought would have seemed preposterous. Get paid to write? Like, money and stuff? For writing? Hell, I'd have written the phone book just to have a crack at that.

But the truth is, writing is a job like any other. It's work. And yes, often it's hard work. When I do side work it's a supplement to my day job as a Newspapering Man Doing Newspapering Stuff. Brief freelance gigs here and there. Writing up PR material and the like. Product reviews. Whatever might put a little spending cash in my pocket.

To say such work is unexciting would be an understatement. It's an exciting as stocking shelves.

Yet I shouldn't complain. There are scores of people who'd cut off a finger for a chance to write photo captions for $3 each. Not that I've ever written photo captions for $3 each, but you get my point. Getting paid for a set of skills you've worked hard to develop is gratifying, even if the work itself isn't. It means that in some small way -- and rest assured, it is in a small way -- I've been able to accomplish a goal I've had since my youth. If people want to pay me to clack on the keyboard, I won't argue with 'em.

I just wish I got to write about nekkid ladies and beer and stuff. That would be cool.

FICTION: Storms

2011-10-07T11:24:00.004-04:00

As I blogged previously, this story first appeared in Boston Literary Magazine. Now you can read it here. It's called Storms, and like a piece I'll be posting on Halloween called The Symphony, it's about war. I don't know why I have two flash fiction pieces about war, but I do. I had just got done reading Cormac McCarthy's brilliant The Road, and wanted to see if I could steal elements of its style and make them my own, purely to challenge myself. This is the result. Enjoy. (This also appears in a previously mentioned but as yet unpublished collection of short fiction I've put together.)

STORMS

By Eric San Juan

A week in a trench. Mud. Every little while a machine gun barked. Chattering teeth that killed. Lieutenant strolled the line sometimes, reminding the men of why they were here. Why people were dying and about the line.

Six months ago it was an English sunrise, gold veiled by grey, and her blonde hair. Blanket. Apples on the hillock. The fragrance of her.

“Must you go?” she said.

“I must.”

“But why?”

“It is my duty,” I said. “For the good of the country, the world, of all.”

“But what about the good of me?”

“All I do is for the good of you. Do not fear. I’ll be back for you.”

“You are never coming back.”

That morning making love. Tears at the train station. Then all was cramped and sweaty, men pressed together and into a ship and from there into lands savaged by whatever machines of death man could imagine. Rains were a tide. Shovels bit into wet earth and long holes were bored into her. From train to ship to trench, they crowded. The stench of them unnoticed. Eyes without hope. She was left behind.

It’s late June now, and he wants to go home. Doesn’t even know why he’s here. To draw the Germans away from Verdun-sur-Meuse, they say. Hard to know what that even means. It has been a week, maybe more. The trench is cold. He plays cards in the morning. When the sun climbs he’s on watch. The fields are a sea of fading brown. They struggle for green but man denies them. When afternoon comes the green is washed away as the batteries open fire. Men make thunder. Eighteen-pounders to cut wire. Howitzers to cut men. More than a thousand of them scream. He does not quail only because those around him do not quail. They all wish to. But if one breaks they all break. They all know this, and so their world is orders.

Rawlinson wants to hold. Haig wants to break through.

The men want home.

The thunder comes and it is relentless. The green cannot last in this storm.

By the third day he has had enough. Thoom. An endless storm. Thoom thoom. Heaven has not known this since the fall. Thoom thoom thoom.

He waits for the storm to end, knowing another shall follow.

One year ago. Word had come. He was going. Form letter by post, his name within. She wept. He did not. Took it in stride. What else to do? His duty as a citizen, but she would not listen. She saw only withered flesh.

“How many are already dead?” she wondered. “How many are still to die?”

“Many. There are many, but I will not be one of them.”

“How can you know?”

“I just know.”

She did not see me talking. She saw only a corpse. “What about the gas?”

“What about it?”

“They say they used gas at Ypres. It ... it chokes you.”

“We will have masks. I do not fear the gas.”

Her eyes were distant that day. They changed, and did not again smile, even on that morning six months later when we made love after the bleak English sunrise.

Thoom. The thunder still came. It is the end of June. A sort of madness has come over him. Eyes in a perpetual state of alertness. The storm has crept forward and turned the struggling green fields into a stew of mud and debris and, sometimes, but not often enough, men. Thoom thoom. How could men abide such a cacophony? Thoom. How could they bear such a song? Thoom thoom. Tomorrow the storm would break. A new storm would begin.

The night is long and cold and he shivers and somewhere in the shuddering murk a man weeps for his mother, dreaming, and the other men know the taste of despair.

Dawn. It’s July and there is a smell in the air. New weather. He fixes his gear and looks upon his companions. They are empty. Their eyes fight to see. At 7:20 there is a faint rumble, different than that of the storm. The mine. It has been blown. The first step. Ten minutes later there is silence. Seven days without and now comes silence, but it is not freeing, it is heavy. It presses down on his shoulders and he sees from their slump that it presses on them all. Everyone. And then the order comes. Whispered rush or shouted at them. Hard to tell. Doesn’t matter. The order comes. Up. Onto the parapet. Climb up, out, into the open. Over the top. Beneath the torn sky. No Man’s Land lays before them. The order has come. Break the line. Move forward.

A new storm sweeps in.

Do Golden Age sci-fi authors still matter?

2011-10-04T13:12:00.004-04:00

Science fiction is great, a genre associated with lasers and spaceships by the general populace but which historically has done a remarkable job of exploring big questions about who we are, why we're here, and what we can accomplish as a species. The "science" part of the equation can be pesky, though. As our scientific understanding of the universe advances, stories that once seemed rooted in a potential reality -- say, the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in our solar system -- can now seem dated, quaint, or downright silly.

So with that in mind, this blog post poses an interesting question: Are 'Golden Age' stories too dated and is it worth it to recommend Heinlein, Asimov, etc. to the new SF reader?

The answer is an unequivocal yes. Here's why.

Dated science or not, what ultimately matters is if the works of Golden Age masters like Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Jack Vance, Robert Heinlein and others are great stories that still pose important questions, explore the human condition, and still have something noteworthy to say. Or hell, even merely that they still entertain, which is a more important quality in art than we sometimes acknowledge.

Science fiction is often about (and among ardent fans is arguably best known for), duh, the science. For imagining what the future will look like, exploring the ramifications of technology and discovery, and so on. Entire book series have been based around taking theoretical technology and exploring what would happen if it was reality.

But science fiction is about more than that. The science can be outright bad and yet the work can still be essential reading. Look at legendary genre writers like Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury (though he denied being a SF author, and I agree), Kurt Vonnegut (who certainly had a foot firmly planted in the genre), and Ursula le Guin. Hard to find four better writers.

And their hard science was largely awful. Dick's musings on identity and perception had as firm a grip on science as he did on reality. Bradury wrote about spacecraft but insisted he wrote fantasy (and he did). And so on.

Didn't matter. Their stories moved. They compelled. They entertained. They informed. They explored. They fascinated.

And this is why their work will endure.

The works of Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein and others may have had a stronger basis in science than the four authors mentioned above, but even they were focused on exploring ideas and answering questions rather than playing with fictional technology. When Clarke explores leaps in human evolution (2001: A Space Odyssey) or the varied ways in which human societies can evolve, and ultimately clash (Songs of a Distant Earth), he's venturing into territory more important than the science that is his bread and butter. Asimov's robot stories may have been about robots, but they were about more than that. They were logic puzzles turned into fiction, and beyond that, explorations of just how complicated the human mind can be.

Sure, not all of the early SF has held up over the years. Much of it is outright bad, especially those stories that were really only ever (bad) science lessons in disguise, a popular approach during the pulp era. Yet even then there are things to learn from them. Some works of the so-called "Golden Age" may endure as lessons about what came before. Lessons about the roots of the genre that anyone aspiring to write in the genre should at least experience. Others will endure as escapist entertainment and pulpy good times. And still others -- many, many others -- will be deservedly forgotten and/or scorned by readers of the future.

In other words, Golden Age writers will be as essential for readers of the future as they were decades ago ... provided their work was strong. And for the best of the best, it was and remains exactly that. Strong. Worth reading.

Always.

If you enjoyed this blog post, check out Geek Wisdom: The Sacred Teachings of Nerd Culture, a book I was proud to be a part of writing.

J.R.R. Tolkien is the reason why I write

2011-09-30T09:23:00.002-04:00

I've no interest in writing epic fantasy, have gotten past the days when I wanted to construct a complex mythology, and hell, haven't even rolled a 20-sided die in many years.

Yet I would not be writing today in any capacity were it not for the work of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Middle-Earth first entered my consciousness in the sixth grade or so. The Hobbit was assigned reading. Unlike most students, I didn't consider assigned reading a form of torture. (Well, except when the books sucked -- which they often did.) I liked reading, and the books we had to read were often excellent. The Outsiders, Lord of the Flies, The Pigman, 1984, and many other books I still cherish today were introduced to me through school assignments.

The Hobbit, though, was something different. I'm sure I devoured it in a day or three. Noticed a classmate reading more books by J.R.R. Tolkien, this Fellowship of the Ring thing, and naturally dove in myself. (The classmate was Jason Dixon, our elementary school's best cartoonist. I don't know what he's doing today, but I hope he's still drawing.) Like millions before me, I was swept up in Tolkien's saga about hobbits and rings and orcs. Yet there was something more here. A profound sense that this work was somehow different. That this place existed in a way fictional places aren't supposed to exist. That someone "discovered" it, in a way, and set it down on the page. It wasn't merely a story, it was a grand, majestic construction intricate beyond imagining.

I'd been hit by a bolt from the heavens. Reading would again again be the same.

Something about Tolkien's work opened my eyes to what the act of writing could be. It showed me that writing wasn't merely putting words on paper, it was a powerful act of creation. You built entire worlds when you wrote. You constructed dreams. You invented places for other people to explore. You etched out other realities and invited people to enter them.

I wanted to do what he did. I wanted to create other realities. Wanted people to get lost in my worlds. Wanted to build a vast and wonderful and mysterious landscape and say, "Look. You can go here." And I wanted these creations to be my life's work. To be my legacy. To be a piece of me left behind after I died, living on, engaging people long after I'd rotted away.

Like so many others inspired to write by fantasy literature (and by Tolkien in particular), my earliest "I'm serious about writing now" works were feverish fanboyish imitations. Semi-elaborate knock-offs with one-dimensional characters, cliche-riddled plots, and stunningly poor writing. They were horrible. That's not false modesty talking. They were and remain awful.

That was in part because I hadn't developed the skills needed to write well, but even more it was because I had yet to find my voice. I had yet to discover the kind of stories I wanted to tell.

It took a lot of years of pecking away at the keyboard before I realized that I didn't need to write like Tolkien to be deeply inspired by him. Turns out I didn't really want to tell Tolkienesque stories. He inspired me. Still does. But he is not the writer I want to be, his stories are not the stories I want to tell, and his legacy is not the legacy I want to leave behind. I've got my own voice and my own stories to tell.

Yet I still dream of sweeping people away. Of placing them in other worlds, albeit briefly, and giving them an experience. And regardless of my waning desire to write fantasy literature, I owe that to J.R.R. Tolkien.

Oddly, despite his influence on my desire to pursue writing, over the years I haven't written much about Tolkien. Not formally, at least. A two-part essay contrasting it with Alan Moore's Watchmen and this blog post about J.R.R. Tolkien and beer, but that's it.

Maybe one day I'll rectify that. Maybe this post is a start.

Some essays about the work of J.R.R. Tolkien penned by yours truly can be found in Geek Wisdom: The Sacred Teachings of Nerd Culture. Check it out. It's a good book.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Pitched! 3

2011-09-26T13:46:00.002-04:00

In my head, at least.

After two comic anthologies, both of which I'm very proud -- thanks to my collaborators, Pitched! and Pitched! 2 were quite awesome -- it would be natural to assume a third is on its way. And in fact, as I've posted, Pitched! 3 was at one time in progress.

Key words being "at one time." Life happens. A host of factors (none of which are necessary to go into here) ground it to a halt this spring. Though there were brief moments throughout the late spring and summer when I thought maybe I could light a fire under it and get things cooking again, that never materialized. Not the time. Not the energy. Not the people.

And most importantly, I came to the realization that for now I was okay with that.

Portions of Pitched! 3 do exist. There is some unfinished material kicking around. Some scripts and plots and sketches and ideas. Quite a bit, actually. A whole mess of stuff that could turn into two new anthologies. A fully storyboarded and scripted science fiction story, a fully thumbnailed and scripted crime story, some concept sketches and plot for a mythology-meets-noir tale, and more.

But the fact is, projects like this take time, energy, and a whole lot of management. For me the tough part wasn't the writing. To be honest, that came pretty easily. The tough part was juggling the work of upwards of a dozen people from across the country, keeping them energized and eager to work despite it taking a whole lot of their precious time (without pay, no less), making sure everyone stayed on task and stayed on schedule, and seeing the whole damn through to the end ... not to mention getting word out about it, formatting for the printer, and all that other crap that isn't writing.

It's a lot of work, and life -- both mine and my collaborators' -- didn't want it to happen right now.

Maybe some day. But not right now. So Pitched! 3 will just have to wait.

FICTION: Frank Saxon's Last Call

2011-09-23T11:19:00.002-04:00

Just for the hell of it I've decided I'll post occasional fiction here. It will almost always be short, and it will often be experimental. Brief writing exercises designed to challenge myself. Bursts of fiction that allow me to dabble with different styles, approaches, and so on.

Today's first foray into posting some (very) short fiction was an attempt to write in a "hard-boiled" style. Wrote it a few years ago. It began as satire, but ended as something I like.

Oh, and Frank Saxon is a real person. This story is not about him. But he is real. This work appears in a not-yet-publicly-available collection self-published fiction called The Place of Dreaming, and is, in fact, the shortest work in it.

FRANK SAXON'S

LAST CALL

By Eric San Juan

Met Frank Saxon in a dirty gin joint on Eleventh Avenue, the light bulbs burned out and the toilets backed up. Stink rose from the corners like steam from a manhole cover. The bartender’s name was Ted. Three times divorced, a four-day beard and a mouth that never turned upwards into a smile, Ted poured his gin and tonics without the tonic. I liked that.

I slouched next to Saxon at the bar. He tried to bum a cigarette. Asked, but I wouldn’t answer. I carry cigarettes, yeah, but Saxon’s no woman, and my smokes are only for the fairer sex. He asked again, and grunted a curse when I wouldn’t respond. Man was frustrated. He had every right to be.

Downed the first drink and Ted slung me another. He had a scar above his right eye, pale white. I always wondered what that scar was all about. Never did find out.

Saxon turned to me, his face red, probably insulted by my silence. He pointed a long finger at me, accusing. Lurched a bit. Bastard was drunk. He slurred out a long stream of profanity and started to get up, looking like he wanted a fight.

So I turned away from him – disrespected him, really - and downed my second gin (no tonic) in a swallow. Man wants to fight, he’ll have to show me he means it.

“Talkin’ to you,” Saxon spit, swaying in a wind that wasn’t there, his shirt stained with lunchtime spaghetti and his left shoe untied. “Day in a fookin’ life, man. Read da news ta day!”

“Sit down, Frank,” I said into my drink. Beatles. It figured. “You and me ain’t got time for this.”

“Wiff a little help from da friends!” The old drunk seemed suddenly happy. Quick mood changes. I always liked that about the guy. Frank, he could go from loving you to hating you in a minute, then right back again. “Tay ... take sad songs an’ make ‘em better. Let ‘er inna yer heart!”

“Just sit.”

Put my finger in the air and before I could put it back down Ted had another drink in front of me. It was gone before Saxon was able to get his ass back on his stool. I wheeled about. Faced him.

“It’s time, Frank. It’s time.”

Looked at him long and hard. Real hard. He knew what I meant. The booze passed from his eyes, sober arrived, and he straightened himself out as best he could.

“So,” Frank said, “I ... I guess I should say my goodbyes, then?”

“Yeah, say your goodbyes, Frank. This job isn’t going to be an easy one. Your goodbyes? This time, you’re gonna mean them.”

END

WRITING: Blank books, book sales, and expectations

2011-09-21T10:05:00.004-04:00

A blank book reaching #44 on Amazon? Yep. It happened. A blank book -- blank -- became a top seller.

They spend years writing a book, then even more years trying to get a literary agent and publisher to back it and then, when their book finally comes out, the author breathes a huge sigh of relief and assumes that their book will be discovered, widely read and will sell around the world in bucketloads.

Well, any new author needs to wake up and smell the rankings. Most books, however well written, hardly sell many copies at all.

And that's the reality most people don't see (including, sadly, many aspiring authors). For most folks, the world of books and publishing and authors and the like is an alien one. It's the stuff of movies, where we see alcohol- and coffee-fueled writers banging away at typewriters and raking in the dollars for their efforts. They struggle, they finally get published, and all is well with the world. People hear you have a book on the shelves and they think you're swimming in extra dough.

For the vast majority of published authors, that is a fantasy and little more.

The reality is, most books sell very little and most authors make close to squat on their work. Even when you do hear about authors getting a big advance -- and those stories are more scarce than ever these days as publishers are increasingly gunshy about dishing 'em out -- you're hearing about it because it's Man Bites Dog. It's unusual. It's news.

I'll avoid specifics because I've always thought it rude to talk about pay, but take A Year of Hitchcock, the book I coauthored with Jim McDevitt. We earn royalties on the sale of that book. Those royalties are in line with typical industry numbers. It's a niche book by a small academic publisher, and it's also pricey (the upcoming paperback will thankfully be very affordable), but hey, it's a great book and it did fairly well for its niche, so we did okay, right?

Not really. Last year earned us each about enough to make a car payment, based on 2009 sales. This year, based on 2010 sales, enough for a couple of nice dinners out with your significant other.

Not exactly the great windfall of cash people expect when they hear you're a published author.

So back to the blank book. How do you take that? How do you accept the idea that a book filled with blank pages can outsell 99.9% of the others books out there? Well, you just do. The truth is, when it comes to getting paid your marketing strategy and potential audience is more important than the actual work. That's neither a good thing nor a bad thing. It's just reality. Authors should know that. They should know they're doing the work for love of the work. Any money that comes of it is gravy.

Because rest assured, in most of our cases there won't be much money coming from it at all.

Why punctuation matters

2011-09-02T11:40:00.001-04:00

A panda walks into a restaurant and takes a table. The waiter thinks it's a bid odd, a panda walking into a restaurant , but he approaches it nonetheless. The panda grabs a menu, opens it, and points to a cheeseburger.

The panda gets his cheeseburger, savors every bite, even wipes its mouth with a napkin. Then the panda pulls out a gun and shoots every person in the restaurant. Everyone except for the waiter. Soaked in blood, he can only ask the panda, "Why?"

The panda pulls out an encyclopedia. It flips the book to the P section, places it on the bar, and points to his picture. Then he turns and walks out the door.

The bartender leans down and reads the entry next to Panda:

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

----

This is an old one that shows how a minor bit of punctuation -- in this case a comma -- can totally change the meaning of a sentence. It's so well known, in fact, that it became the title of a book on on punctuation. It's also kind of funny. So I posted it.

Have a nice day.

Breaking Bad, my new must-watch TV

2011-08-30T14:49:00.000-04:00

It hasn't been easy finding a new must-watch show. The Walking Dead didn't do it for me, Lost reached its finale (I posted several times about this show), and the excellent Game of Thrones aside, HBO's awesome television shows, well, haven't been as awesome of late as they've been historically. Even two series I hotly anticipated, The Pacific and Boardwalk Empire, were very good but did not make me feel compelled to watch every night in a marathon of viewing. (I tend to watch one show at a time, an episode a night, in a long marathon. I love TV that way.)

That's why I'm glad I discovered Breaking Bad.

Because hot damn is this show good.

If you're not familiar with Breaking Bad, it goes like this: Walter White is a high school chemistry teacher diagnosed with aggressive lung cancer. In order to make money to pay his medical bills and support his family, he starts to cook meth. That's it. That's the hook. From there you watch the slow erosion of his morals, see as he gets involved with an insane and dark cast of characters, and shake your head in dismay as his increasingly selfish decisions fracture and corrupt his family.

It sounds a bit offbeat, and it is. The show veers back and forth between black comedy and straight drama, and does so with ease. It's brilliantly written (even the most absurd turns feel totally natural), stunningly acted (Bryan Cranston, also known for playing the dad on Malcolm in the Middle, has won three straight Emmy's for his performance as Walter White), and impossibly gripping (that cut to black at the end of each episode leaves you begging for more). For Cranston alone this show is worth watching. The man is a chameleon. In addition to his role as Hal on Malcom, he was the recurring dentist on Seinfeld (watch the video, you'll remember him), Buzz Aldrin in From the Earth to the Moon, and others. And you'd never know it. He is completely immersed in the role of Walter White.

Like so many great shows -- The Wire, Rome, and others -- it takes a few episodes for it to find its footing and click with viewers. But trust me, once it does, you can't stop watching. And it never stops improving. Every season is better than the last. By the halfway point of the second season you realize you're watching some truly legendary TV. Season 2 is a comic tragedy. Season 3 is an epic ride of corruption, decay, and personal crisis. Season 4 is Walt losing control and ruining those around him.

I love this show. I'm hooked. It finds humor in darkness the way few shows outside Deadwood or The Sopranos manage. You both love and hate the characters with the passion you do the characters on The Wire or Lost. It's beautifully filmed. Impeccably directed. Tightly written. Watch this show. Start at season 1 and watch this show.

I'll post more about it later, spoiler talk and such, but for the moment I just wanted to plug this show and the brilliant writing it showcases. It's must-watch TV.

Reading/signing event = fantastic!

2011-08-07T16:20:00.003-04:00

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Geek Wisdom reading/signing event on Friday. Stephen and I not only had a great time reading from the book, talking geekery, and geeking out ourselves for the standing-room-only crowd at The Raconteur, we met a load of enthusiastic and talented fellow geeks. There were far too many to name or remember, but I do want to plug a few.

First there was Jason Grossman, who had his incredible art on display. Jason is young, driven, and very talented. I have a feeling we'll be seeing his stuff in the future. There was also animator and illustrator Jimmy Harrigan, who has a nice portfolio that is worth your time. And then there was Megan Brennan, who has a beautiful, fun, quirky style I enjoyed. But most important, they were all nice people. I'd work with any of them on the follow-up to Pitched and Pitched 2.

Thanks to all the people who came out to hear us talk, and thanks to everyone who bought the book. It sold out! Thanks so much.

Most of all, thanks to the folks at The Raconteur, which is one of the finest book shop experiences you'll find in New Jersey. And it is indeed an experience. With classic film screenings, over 100 free events a year, an oddball assortment of knickknacks, and far more than I could describe here, they make books more than mere pieces of paper. It's worth a pilgrimage.

The Year of Hitchcock podcast is back!

2011-08-05T10:16:00.000-04:00

After a long, fatigue-driven hiatus, Jim McDevitt and I finally got back behind the microphone two weekends ago and recorded all-new episodes of The Year of Hitchcock Podcast. We're excited to say that we recorded enough episodes to release them every two weeks for the next few months. We'll be discussing landmark films like Vertigo, The Birds, Psycho, and The Man Who Knew Too Much during this stretch of episodes.

We initially began doing the podcast as a weekly companion to our book, A Year of Hitchcock (which will soon be available in softcover at a much lower price). Whereas the book is approachable but serious, accessible to casual fans but also worthwhile for Hitchcock aficionados, the podcasts quickly became looser, more casual, more irreverent, and generally a place for us to have a little fun. Sometimes we veer off topic and discuss 1980s sitcoms or killer monkeys. Sometimes we offer insights not found in our book. But mostly we have fun and, hopefully, entertain once in a while.

So if you haven't checked it out, please do so. You can set it up on your favorite blog feed at this link, the show is available via iTunes, and you can even find us on Facebook (where I hope you'll "like" our page). Thanks!

Hey NJ people, Geek Wisdom event on Friday

2011-08-04T10:07:00.000-04:00

Stephen Segal, editor and coauthor of Geek Wisdom, and I will be at The Raconteur in Metuchen on Friday from 8 to 11 p.m. We'll be discussing geekery, reading from the book, and juggling flaming hamsters. It will be a sight to see.

The Raconteur is located at 431 Main Street in Metuchen, NJ. You can check out the event on Facebook. We'd love to see you there.

Unless you're a stalker or otherwise disturbed person who wants to skin us and wear our flesh, in which case the event has been moved to The Book Rodeo in Camden, NJ. See you there, crazy flesh-wearing person!

Geek Wisdom is out TODAY

2011-08-02T09:52:00.002-04:00

This may not be the day when imposing alien spacecraft park themselves over every major city on Earth and bend the human race to its will, but it's pretty close. Geek Wisdom is officially released today. Tremble in fear at the awesome geekery that will now become part of your life. Bask in its eternal glory.

In all seriousness, I like this book and was honored to be one of the coauthors. Our great editor and coauthor, Stephen Segal, put together a fantastic team. I'm humbled to be part of it.

I can confirm from my copies that it looks spectacular. It's a spiffy hardcover with a great design and, of course, killer contents. I'm astounded Quirk Books were able to bring it out at around $10.

And even better, the reviews are thus far very positive. Readers have said it's "a humorous spin on how the biggest geeks of all time have shaped history and our culture," suggesting it is "smart, insightful," and noting that "every page really is a little delight."

I sure hope they're talking about some of my pages...

Geek Wisdom is available just about everywhere. Grab one and enjoy!

A little treat in the mail yesterday ...

2011-07-20T09:19:00.003-04:00

I came home from work yesterday to find a package at my door. A box. A wonderful little box. I peeled it open, as you do with boxes -- a box can be labeled "Your Death Within" and you'd still open it; so would I -- and found inside a treat. A wonderful little treat. It was this:

click for larger image

Yes, that is Geek Wisdom, brainchild of award-winning editor Stephen Segal and a book to which I am proud to say I contributed. I and a team of other writers wrote some really great geek stuff, brief essays on video games and J.R.R. Tolkien and Star Wars and The Goonies and a million other great things -- and now here it is! In a cool as hell hardcover! For cheap! And on Kindle and other devices!

The book is officially out on August 2.

So that's pretty cool. I hope it does well. For you folks in the NJ/NY/PA area, I'll be taking part in a meet n' greet/signing in a couple of weeks to help support it. Will post details later. Hope to see you there.

WRITING: Nothing is ever truly done...

2011-05-12T10:49:00.000-04:00

... even when it's already in print. Over two years ago I did a series of posts called How I Got Published outlining the start-to-finish of how Jim McDevitt and I conceived of, wrote, and ultimately sold A Year of Hitchcock: 52 Weeks with the Master of Suspense. My hope was that those posts would help other writers understand what they might look forward to when their time comes.

Consider this a follow-up on that series of posts. Readers of this blog may recall that not too long ago, I announced that A Year of Hitchcock is coming to paperback. That's exciting news. This edition will target a wider market; with better bookstore distribution and a very attractive price, we should be able to reach a larger audience. I'm thrilled more people will be able to read the work we did.

But it also means our work is not yet done. Not merely in promoting the book -- something few authors relish, myself included -- but also in reading and correcting the text yet again. With the paperback edition set for a fall release, Jim and I are tasked with reading through the text again to give it another proofreading/editing pass, hopefully catching any stray errors that made it into print the first time around. This is not a bad thing, but it does mean we have more work to do.

So keep that in mind. Your work is never truly done. When you create something, you're going to be its caretaker for the rest of your life. It's kind of like parenthood in that respect, except books can't mow the lawn.

Husbandly news in the, errr ... news

2011-05-11T11:37:00.003-04:00

Here is a little piece about the ol' Husband book that appeared in today's Birmingham News. Check it out. Heck, ReTweet it, too.

In more exciting news, I'm just days away from wrapping up final edits on the first draft of a science fiction novel. It's an action-packed story set in a dystopian America of the near future. I still have a long way to go on it but hope to be feverishly writing the next draft by Memorial Day.

Appearing on WQKR-AM in Portland this afternoon. Tune in!

2011-05-10T14:16:00.002-04:00

This afternoon at 5 p.m. EST (4 p.m. Central) I'll be appearing on “The Women’s Roundtable” on WQKR-AM out of Portland, TN. We're going to talk about my spiffy new book, Stuff Every Husband Should Know. If you're in the area, tune in, or listen live on their website.

PLUG: The (In)Complete Adventures of Sir Chuck

2011-05-03T09:34:00.001-04:00

The (In)Complete Adventures of Sir Chuck

I've run in some comic book circles over the years, and that means I've gotten to know a lot of people who have done their own comics. Many of these folks are far too talented for their own good, annoyingly so, and their work deserves to be seen. One of them is John Mietus. John did some excellent lettering on Pitched 1 and Pitched 2, but the fact is his quirky sense of humor doesn't come out and play until you see his own work. The (In)Complete Adventures of Sir Chuck is many things, including a tome showcasing the growth and development of a comic creator -- it begins when he was first starting and finishes when he's developed into a dynamite storyteller -- but most of all it's entertaining. Purchase it here.

No more beer on this blog

2011-04-29T14:35:00.002-04:00

I've made a few posts about beer on this blog. I won't be doing that any more. I didn't begin this blog to talk about random bullshit, I began it to talk primarily about my latest projects, whether writing, music, or otherwise.

But I'm not going to not talk about beer. At the moment I feel like writing about the subject. That's why I started a new blog, Celebrating the Suds, which will be devoted entirely to beer.

So give it a look. Subscribe. Follow it on Facebook. Yada yada yada. Cheers.

Small town nitwits try to harass writer out of teaching job

2011-04-28T16:57:00.004-04:00

So here's a story that got me steamed. Two "think of the children!" nitwits, Deanna Stepp and Wendy Apple, of Middleburg, PA, are raising a stink because a high school teacher there also writes romance/erotic fantasy novels. The teacher of 33 years -- apparently well liked and respected by her students, according to a Facebook page in support of her -- writes on her own time, and does so under a pen name.

But according to these two moral crusaders:

“We are not questioning Mrs. Buranich’s teaching credentials. We are not even questioning her ability as a writer ... . What we’re questioning is that the two jobs are not compatible with one another.”

That's according to Stepp. Oh, and it gets better. According to the second member of the brain trust, Apple, what this teacher is doing “is unethical, totally unacceptable. Period. It just sort of sickens and saddens me to know everybody’s sort of looking at this like, hey, this is OK.”

Wow. I'm almost left speechless by this. And as anyone who knows me knows, I can go on and on and on and on.

I can't claim to have anything good to say about Deanna Stepp and Wendy Apple, of Middleburg, PA. I find their actions loathsome and can only assume those actions are a reflection of their overall character. Their comments are the kind of small-minded, utterly stupid thing you expect to hear only from the most low-class of people. To what extent this describes them as people I cannot say, as I don't know them, but that's certainly how I feel about their comments.

Yet that's not why I'm writing this. Instead, it's to suggest people offer their support to this teacher and writer. I'll be frank when I say I'm sure I wouldn't enjoy her work. That stuff just isn't for me. But that's not what is important. What is important is for her and her school district to know that she shouldn't be harassed out of a job she's held for more than three decades because two women have sticks lodged far up their nosy posteriors.

So spread the word. Tweet it. Go check out the Facebook page. I know it's not much, but it's something.

Because screw everything about this situation.

BEER: Rochefort Trappist beers

2011-04-20T16:51:00.008-04:00

For centuries, Trappist monks have been known for their outstanding brewing abilities. Monks in Belgium brew beer not only for their own consumption -- they are hearty, healthy beers -- but in order to pay for their way of life. Some of these beers are among the most sought after in the world, most notably beer from Westvleteren, which can only be purchased at the abby and only in small quantities. Others, like the world famous Chimay beer (brewed at Scourmont Abby), are widely available and are among the world's most praised beers.

Not too long ago, I had a chance to have the three beers of the Rochefort Brewery, one of the only seven true Trappist breweries in the world. This beer has been in production since 1595. So yeah, it's a piece (delicious) history.

Rochefort makes three beers, simply called 6, 8, and 10. They're relatively similar in style, with increasing levels of alcohol (from 7.5% ABv to 11.3%) and complexity being the major distinguishing factors. These beers are consistently among the top ranked beers in the world. Do they live up to the hype?

Absolutely.

Pouring the 6, the first thing you notice is the gorgeous color. It's closer to a deep orange brown than you see in the picture above, not unlike a forest floor in autumn. The 8 is similar, showing the brown of autumn leaves with just a faint hint of red. Not thick black like a porter, not golden brown like a brown ale. Brown like Mother Nature. It's quite beautiful. The 10 is a deep, murky brown with hints of red at the edges but otherwise totally opaque.

All three beers are bursting with carbonation, too. Even with a gentle pour they jump up with two or three fingers of head. So all in all, these beers are wonderful looking.

When I first opened the 6, though, I wondered if they'd meet expectations. I expect a world class beer to have a world class aroma, but at first I felt slightly underwhelmed by Rochefort 6. Maybe it's the big IPAs and Imperial Stouts I've been drinking this winter, almost all of which fill the nose with heady aromas, but this left me unimpressed. Smelled heavy with yeast, very sweet with hints of caramel. Not unpleasant, but also not alluring.

The 8, on the other hand, had an active and complex aroma. Hints of figs and raisins and just a touch of caramelized pears, with the damp, uplifting smell of a forest stream bank in the spring. Yeah, I'm serious. If you can imagine what a walk through old Europe would smell like, well, it smells like this.

The 10 was the most difficult to judge in the aroma department. The aroma is boozy similar to a big barleywine style ale. (Think of Sierra Nevada's Bigfoot.) If you pay close attention you get some hints of figs and caramelized apples, but the big, malty alcohol smell dominates. It's certainly a STRONG aroma. Whether or not it's a good aroma depends on your tastes. As it warms, the aroma mellows a bit, revealing wafts of malt and raisin. Much more pleasant closer to room temperature.

The taste of each was just as complex and nuanced. The 6 got better with each sip. It tasted like a rich pastry bread in beer form, all sorts of bready and malty and delicious. A little sweet but subdued; caramel flavors but in perfect balance with everything else going on in the beer; touches of raisin and the like. By the end what had started as a decent but not mind-blowing beer turned out to be a stunner.

The 8 was more complex and yet oddly more subtle, too. The taste isn't overpowering or explosive. It starts innocuous, a slight gulp of beerish liquid riding on the heady aroma, but the middle quickly broadens into Earthy, vaguely nutty flavors with malt, caramel, molasses, and touches of fig, raisin and plum.

If it's got a fault it's that the 9.2% ABV is more upfront than many crafts manage to accomplish these days. It's not an invisible alcohol. While the Rochefort 6 drinks so smooth it's frightening, you can TELL this one is a big, potent beer. In these days of 10 percenters that drink like they're 6 or 7 percent, I'm sorry to say that this is a minor setback.

With the 10 you get nutty caramel and pumpernickel and other Earthy brown breads in the taste. It starts mild, then expands into a yeasty burst of pleasingly musty flavors before finishing with an alcohol-laden shimmer of mildly sweet breads and dried fruits. Like the 8, it also has a big, strong alcohol taste. A BIG alcohol taste. Many American crafts manage to meet or even exceed this ABV without the alcohol coming to the fore. Not here. Here it wants to arm wrestle you. American craft lovers have been spoiled with easy-to-drink big beers; the Belgians aren't playing that game. This is not for the faint of heart.

(With both the 8 and the 10, I suspect they age WONDERFULLY and will taste less boozy and more complex after a year or so. I'll find out in about a year; I already have a bottle of each stashed away.)

All in all these were incredible beer experiences. They'll run you $5 to $8 a bottle, but if you love great beer it's well worth treating yourself, even if only once.

A few appearances from around the web

2011-04-15T12:00:00.002-04:00

Joe Valdez over at This Distracted Globe quoted me in his write-up of Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes. Thanks, Joe. The quote comes from my review of the Criterion Collection DVD release, which you can read here. Purchase the (awesome) DVD here.

Over on the Bibliophile Stalker blog, there is a review/overview of the issue of Weird Tales in which my "commendable piece," Whispers of the Old Hag, appeared. Thanks, Charles. The issue also has a listing at Locus Online.

Speaking of listings, Pictureshowman.com lists A Year of Hitchcock with upcoming books on the History of Motion Pictures. Looks like we're in some fine company.

While we're on A Year of Hitchcock, I found a good source for tracking down deals on the book. The book's listing at isbndb.com includes links to a number of vendors, as well as price comparisons. Very handy tool! You can also watch the book's official website for similar information. Keep in mind, a paperback edition is coming this fall.

Someone at PaperBackSwap.com decided to completely lift a quickly dashed-off book review posted to Amazon I did. Errr, thanks? She did credit me, at least -- she didn't for most of the other reviews she lifted -- but I think I may have preferred otherwise. I can't claim to take Amazon reviews with deep seriousness. They're no different than the stuff you'd post to a message board or Facebook for fun.

For you comic book fans, I contributed to the Marvel Essentials FAQ. It was so long ago I have very little recollection of what I did, but look! It's my name! (I'm sure I did nothing more than provide a tiny tidbit of nerd information.)

So there you have it. It's my "me! me! me!" post for April. I get to do that now and then, don't I?

PLUG: The Work of Rick Lundeen

2011-04-13T10:41:00.005-04:00

The Work of Rick Lundeen

Rick Lundeen has been creating comics for years and years and years. Fact is, I can't even begin to list them all. a storyboard artist by trade, Rick fills his spare time with self-published comics. He's been doing it for a long time. He does science fiction, superheroes, fantasy stories, magical realism, and much more - and they're always really damn good. He's a brilliant storyteller and I can tell you from experience that he's brimming with ideas. Forget about the fact that working with Rick has always been a pleasure (we also did this story together), I just plain like his work.

My favorite is probably We Three Kings, an excellent dystopian story of corruption and rebellion. You can see more of his work here, including a Dr. Who story. A large number of the books he's done are available at this link. I highly recommend them.

Say, that's a really good line!

2011-04-12T15:40:00.002-04:00

I'm paging through a copy of Stuff Every Husband Should Know that landed on my desk here at the office, just to see what I think of the book now that a year has passed since I wrote it, and made myself laugh with this line from the chapter What Happens in the Delivery Room:

You might cry. It's OK. Men cry, sometimes about things other than the World Series. This is as good a time as any.

That's funny. I'm allowed to say it's funny, right? Because I think it's funny.

MUSIC: walls of sound, noise, and me

2011-04-10T16:14:00.000-04:00

For most people, my m2 music project is an unlistenable collection of self-indulgent wankery. They might be right. I can't claim it's particularly musical or tuneful. For me, though, it's very personal. It's something I've been doing for a long time, but only recently for others to hear.

For years I've recorded music like this for me and me alone. There is something very cathartic about getting lost in a wall of sound. I'd been doing it since I got my first guitar in 1992 or so. Most of the time I never even recorded it. I'd just plug in and let wail. It was ear-splittingly ugly -- and I loved it.

The first recording I can remember was a 45-minute piece made up of layered feedback. I didn't have a four-track at the time (this was in 1993), but I could sorta do multi-track recording by plugging a pair of Walkman earphones into the mic jack of my cheap bookcase stereo. It was one of those dual tape decks where you could dub tapes, and if you dubbed a tape while also recording through the mic you could layer things on top of one another. It was really rough and you had no real control, but it was something.

So one afternoon I took a tape -- I remember it vividly -- which had R.E.M.'s Green on one side (written with green ink) and Document on the other (written in orange ink). Plugged in my shitty yellow guitar into my shitty Gorilla practice amp, cranked it way up, and let feedback drone and shift and swell for an entire side of the tape. Then I rewound and did it again, layering a new set of feedback on top of the old. I did this maybe four or five or six times.

It was probably unlistenable, but for me, at least, it was damn near meditation music. It was soothing. Relaxing. Think of the last few minutes of the Smashing Pumpkins "Drown," but without drums or bass. I listened to it quite a bit until I discovered this Flying Saucer Attack collaboration. (That's around when I discovered that "real bands" actually did this stuff, too, and that others actually liked it.)

I have no idea whatever became of that tape.

In fact, the vast majority of those early recordings are long since gone. I once had a shoebox filled with a few hours worth of four-track tapes that were primarily either early noise music, or recordings of me and the guy I did Slumbersigh with making walls of noise in my dad's basement. This was around 1994 and 1995. We'd go down there, drink a load of Sam Adams, and drive the neighbors crazy with wall-rumbling roars.

Sadly, Only two or three clips survive from those days. You can a very brief surviving clip in "Asshole" from Music To Trip To: The 1994 Xmas Single, the first cassette of music I ever gave out. (You can download the whole thing in this zip file, including bonus "songs.")

A track that sort of shows what kind of ear-splitting feedback I used to do is "Forgetting Prozac" from that same tape. I say "sort of" because it wasn't meant to be a bunch of layered tones, it was meant to be the abrasive, annoying, chaotic end to a "real" song. It's taken from the end of a joke song I did called "Fat Boys Need Love, Too." It was a goof (on someone who didn't deserve to be goofed), and at the end of the song I flailed around with my guitar and made a bunch of noise. This track is the end of that song. I no longer have a recording of the song itself, only a few minutes of the ending feedback.

When I finally did with the first m2 record in 1998 and sent it out to the world -- I first "released" it on cassette and CD, and years later on mp3 -- it was on a lark. Some obscure college station in Arizona actually played some tracks during its overnight experimental music show. That was cool. But I considered it a one-time thing during a time when I was doing a lot of noisy experimentation. Didn't do anything else like it for close to 10 more years.

In 2007, I decided to go ahead and release some more m2 music. The result was Eight Times Alone. Amazingly, people liked it. Not many, of course, but people who appreciate tones and drones seemed to enjoy it. I just kept on recording from there, kept putting stuff out there for people to hear, and haven't stopped since.

The thing is, for me these records are cathartic. Behind all that fuzz and the bizarre song titles and vague looking album art, they mean something to me. Some of them tell stories. Others are experiments in sound. ALL of them are an important part of the way I vent things from my system.

And yeah, I do listen to them. A lot, actually. Maybe it's weird, but I put these records on and get lost in them. They're all recorded spontaneously, always improvised, never planned out, always unexpected, always the first take, so in that respect it's pretty easy to maintain a distance from the music since it tends to pour out all on its own. Once recorded, I could not replicate these pieces if I tried. I may have created it, but in an odd way it's new to me.

So my tones, drones, and walls of sound and noise? Now you know.

Stuff Every Husband Should Know reviews are in

2011-04-08T10:20:00.003-04:00

While I enjoy receiving feedback on my work, both good and bad -- criticism can be helpful -- I don't generally make it a point to seek out reviews. However, some reviews of Stuff Every Husband Should Know have been sent my way, so I thought I'd share them.

Phillyburbs.com called it a "must-have guide" featuring "priceless practical wisdom that all wives hope their husbands possess."

Mom Central called it "the rulebook to the game that husbands have been playing for thousands of years."

A husband and wife duo from the Ledger-Enquirer bickered (playfully) over some of the tips in one chapter.

And a quirky blogger said the book is "the perfect gift for the man new to wed or this upcoming Fathers Day."

My wife would laugh hysterically at those comments, of course. She has to live with me! But it's gratifying to know the initial reception is leaning towards the positive. If you haven't picked it up yet, jump over to my website for more information and purchase links. (And yes, it is available for Kindle.)

My new book, STUFF EVERY HUSBAND SHOULD KNOW, is out today

2011-04-05T11:46:00.002-04:00

I've blogged on and off about the project I tackled last spring, and am pleased to announce that my second book, Stuff Every Husband Should Know (Quirk Books 2011), is out in stores TODAY.

Hooray!

"Husband" is a fun, pocket-sized book that will make a great gift. It's filled with all sorts of great stuff my wife wishes I actually did. :-)

The book is available at Amazon (including a Kindle edition), Barnes & Noble (including a Nook edition), Target, Borders, Booksamillion, and fine bookstores and gift shops everywhere.

Hey reddit!

BEER: Founder's KBS (Kentucky Breakfast Stout)

2011-04-01T14:22:00.000-04:00

I don't intend to use this blog to talk about beer all that often, but sometimes you've got to speak up and say, "My god, this stuff is amazing!"

And yes indeed, the beer at the focus of this post, Founder's Kentucky Breakfast Stout, aka KBS, is amazing. Hard to find because the once-a-year brew sells out so fast, but well worth the trouble of tracking it down.

There is a reason why Ratebeer rates it a world class beer and ranks it as one of the top 10 beers in the world based on thousands of reviews. It's quite simply one of the most complex, rich, and flavorful beers you'll ever have. Folks who have only experienced the usual Bud-Miller-Coors style beers are probably unaware that beer can be like this.

I was lucky to even get it. I had been bugging the guys at my local liquor store two months ahead of time. "Do you think you'll be able to get the KBS? Please set a few bottles aside for me!" Turns out my entire state only got 120 cases. Otherwise good liquor stores were #25 or #30 on their distributor's list to get a case ... and those distributors had maybe four cases to dish out. Yikes.

But my shop did get it, and they set aside two bottles for me. (Few shops sold this in the four-packs it comes in. Instead, most imposed one- or two-bottle limits on customers.) I'm glad they did. This stuff was a treat.

This is an imperial stout brewed with huge amounts of coffee and chocolate, both of which are very much a part of this heady, chewy brew's taste and aroma. It's rich and dark and very full-bodied. Founders sends the taste into the stratosphere, though, when they cave age it for a year inside oak bourbon barrels. The result is a beer loaded with flavors that all compete for center stage without crowding one another out.

KBS has atrong, up-front bourbon taste with hints of vanilla in the aroma. Give it a whiff and you'd almost think you're smelling a dense liquor. It's a beer through and through, though. After the initial burst of bourbon at the start of your sip, coffee and chocolate rise up in the middle, with hints of vanilla working to counter the mocha taste. The balance is perfect. As you finish your sip you're left with a lingering, oaky bourbon finish.

All in all, it wasn't just a beer, it was an experience. If by some amazing chance you see some, grab it. Otherwise, be ready to act fast when next year's batch is released. It's already in barrels.

WRITING: When authors have crazy meltdowns

2011-03-29T12:11:00.000-04:00

I've posted before about authors having total meltdowns, temper tantrums, and tearing apart readers/reviewers. It's just not a good practice. It's petty, it makes you look insecure, and most of all it's highly unprofessional.

On Tuesday, my friend Chris brought this amateur author meltdown to my attention. It's a doozy. The review wasn't particularly harsh, praising the story but noting that the book was full of errors that distracted from the work. This is an all too common problem with self-published work. (Despite multiple sets of eyes and multiple edits, even Pitched did not escape without typos.) Push a book out without the benefit of an editor and proofreaders and this is to be expected.

The author, however, one Jacqueline Howett, was having none of it. She insisted that the review was "unfair" and proved it by citing positive reviews on Amazon (at least one of which appears to be written by the author herself). The reviewer repeated that the story was good but that passages like this one were confusing and distracting: "Don and Katy watched hypnotically Gino place more coffees out at another table with supreme balance."

The review makes a good point. That's unreadable. I get what the author is trying to say, but she doesn't say it very well.

Didn't matter. By now the author had circled the wagons. She refused to see that this criticism was valid and constructive, instead insisting:

I'm not in the mood for playing snake with you, what I read above has no flaws. My writing is fine ... Simply remove this review as it is in error with you not downloading the fresh copy i insisted. ...This is not only discusting and unprofessional on your part, but you really don't fool me AL.

Who are you any way? Really who are you?
What do we know about you?

Besides if you want to throw crap at authors you should first ask their permission if they want it stuck up on the internet via e-mail. That debate is high among authors.

Your the target not me!
Now get this review off here!

Wow. Okay. And it continues from there, each typo-ridden post getting angrier and more irrational. She builds her way to a quick "Fuck off!" And then she does it again.

As entertaining as this was to read, Miss Howett did herself no favors with her public meltdown. It has since gone viral. It's popping up on blogs and trending in the Twitter writing community. On Amazon, her book is being bombed with bad reviews. It even made the from page of Fark.com, which means many thousands of people will now see her meltdown.

Yeah, it's not turning out well for her. That's why I say to writers who want to rebut criticism of their work, don't do it. Just don't. Part of putting your work in front of the public is dealing with criticism. You can't escape it. No one is above it. You cannot, cannot, cannot please everyone. And if the criticism is constructive, as this review was, it's best to listen and move on even if you disagree with it. The BEST thing you can do is to suck it up and do better next time. Learn from the experience, grow from it, but most of all SHUT UP ABOUT IT.

MUSIC: Some new drones & tones by Eric

2011-03-29T09:48:00.002-04:00

Last week I wrapped up my latest collection of guitar soundscapes, tones and drones. Part of my m2 project, these are long instrumental pieces made up entirely of droning guitar sounds. Sometimes they're soothing, sometimes they're abrasive. It's not for everyone. I'll be adding it to my music archive blog soon, but for those who enjoy this sort of thing you can give these swirls of sound a listen here. Thanks for listening.

m2
The Endless Twelve

1) Sunday Bliss Can't Lift, Can Only Pretend (7:05)
2) Falling Back Into It (10:38)
3) Etched On Me Is A Waiting Demon (7:38)
4) The Endless Twelve (24:54)
5) Sobriety (5:02)

WRITING: Some excellent blogs and resources

2011-03-28T12:16:00.000-04:00

In a previous post I mentioned a few blogs and resources you should consider following if you're interested not just in the craft of writing, but getting paid for it. 'Cause doing something you love is nice, but getting paid for it is even nicer.

Well, here are a few more.

The Swivet is a mixed bag of odds and ends, but it always returns to writing. It first caught my attention with an excellent piece about self promotion that all aspiring writers ought to read, ESPECIALLY if you're about to be or have just been published. Plenty of good advice in this blog. It also frequently returns to oft-asked questions such as how long your novel should be.

It's largely all about promoting itself, but the Penguin Books blog is worth watching for news on upcoming authors, contests, and what's going on in the literary world.

Not strictly about writing and instead plugged here simply because I like it is Alfred Hitchcock Geek. I'm obviously a fan of Hitchcock -- obligatory name-drop of my book, A Year of Hitchcock, goes here -- and I think this guy does a good job of not retreading the same old ground other Hitch sites tread. Plus, my coauthor, Jim McDevitt, and I interviewed him in a three-part (1, 2, 3) interview for our Year of Hitchcock podcast. So check it out.

Did you forget about Pitched 2?

2011-03-25T12:59:00.002-04:00

I may have grown up with the heavy burden of everlasting shame on my shoulders, but I'm not so full of shame that I can't remind folks about awesome things like Pitched! 2: Seven More Stories, the excellent (if I do say so myself) comic anthology my collaborators and I dropped on the world last fall. I've already done plenty of blogging about it and have posted lots of early samples. Plus, if you surf over to my website you can see finished pages from great stories like Voice of the Universe (done in collaboration with Rick Lundeen) and Some Time With The Family (featuring artists Logan Reilly and James Pipik, and letterer John Mietus), just two stories created in collaboration with a group of highly talented artists.

Now that all my collaborators have their comp copies (and thus all expenses are taken care of), proceeds from the sale of Pitched! 2 will go towards the Hero Initiative.

BUY IT NOW!!!

via LULU
via INDYPLANET (Ka-Blam.com)
via COMICSMONKEY! (Ka-Blam.com)

Pay it forward

2011-03-23T14:41:00.000-04:00

I don't normally use my blog for this sort of thing but felt like this was something I wanted to share: A little real life story about doing good things for other people. The story has been kicking around for a while now -- in fact, this blog post was written back in December, I just never got around to pushing it live -- but if you haven't yet read it, I urge you to. It's one of those beautiful real life stories that give you some faith in the inherent good in people.

Win a copy of STUFF EVERY HUSBAND SHOULD KNOW

2011-03-22T14:04:00.003-04:00

A wonderful blog/website called Baby Budgeting is currently holding a contest to win an assortment of five great family books, including the latest from yours truly, Stuff Every Husband Should Know (Quirk Books, April 2011). You can read about the contest and learn how to enter at their website. (How to enter is at the bottom of the blog post.) The contest ends on Friday, so get over there and enter!

TELEVISION: The Walking Dead was overrated

2011-03-21T12:32:00.002-04:00

I'm an unashamed geek and make no bones about it. I love geek stuff. Hell, I took part in co-writing a really great geek book. Proud to have my name attached to all things geek.

But this needs to be said: AMC's smash-hit television show The Walking Dead, while quite entertaining, was also highly, highly overrated by my geek brothers and sisters.

Sorry, my geek bretheren, but it's true. We were so caught up in the thrill of getting something delightfully geeky that we elevated the show to a lofty status it has not yet earned.

Now I'm not saying the show was bad. Far from it. I thought the casting was phenomenal, the writing was generally pretty good (though certainly not always), the acting was top notch, the sets and visuals were outstanding, and that overall it was a very solid drama. I'll be watching when season 2 starts.

But jeez, you'd think the show was the second coming by the way some people gushed. It was the next great show, it was the next Lost (which at the time had just wrapped up a six-season run that garnered it a HUGE cult following), it cured polio, it was this, it was that. By many accounts it was one of the best television shows ever made after just the first few episodes.

Get a grip, people! While I look forward to and will watch season two, a little perspective sure would be nice. Episodes like the Robert Kirkman-penned "Vatos" were clunky and forced. The bunker-centric finale might as well have been an abandoned plotline from Lost. Much of the human drama was fairly strong, but many of the characters were still cardboard thin even after six hours of television. The show's foreshadowing was heavy-handed as hell. And on and on.

I liked it. It was good television. It's got the potential to be great television. But can we get some perspective and set aside the BEST TV SHOW EVAAAR!! talk, please? Just because we've been given something cool and geeky doesn't mean we have to fawn all over it like it's the second coming of The Great Space Coaster (which really WAS the best television show ever). People will think we're acting like ...

... well, geeks.

Hmmmmm. Maybe I ought to reconsider my position on this.

The Geeks: Stephen Segal

2011-03-18T09:07:00.002-04:00

So on Monday I announced my latest project. I also promised to introduce you to the four folks I'd be working alongside. You've met three. Last but not least in my countdown of co-geeks is our fearless leader.

Multi-author projects don't come together without someone leading the way. Geek Wisdom: The Sacred Teachings of Nerd Culture is no exception. Thankfully, we've got a preeeetty good editor and coauthor heading up this project: Stephen Segal, who I've mentioned before.

Stephen isn't just a Huge award-winning editor and a damn fine writer, he's also a terrifically nice guy. But let's stick to the first part. I've worked with him before and couldn't be happier to have him leading this project. He's a writer's editor, but more importantly he's brimming with ideas, guidance, encouragement, and excitement for the project. Plus -- and I'm sure he's happy about this -- he gets to do a lot of writing for this book.

That's cool.

I'd offer a brief bio, but why not just go to his website instead?

And then in August, check out our book. It will be awesome. Looking for more purchase links on my website.

The Geeks: N. K. Jemisin

2011-03-17T09:56:00.002-04:00

I get to work with some pretty cool people on Geek Wisdom. One of them is N. K. Jemisin.

In addition to being pretty damn funny, N.K. (or Nora) is an accomplished author with some excellent work under her belt. Her first novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, came out earlier this year. It's the first part of a trilogy.

Her work has also appeared in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, and a slew of other places, including some awesome anthologies.

Oh, and this: She has been nominated for Hugo and Nebula awards. Hell yeah. Pretty damn spiffy, that.

Go spend some time at her website. She's got free fiction there. Enjoy.

Geek Wisdom: The Sacred Teachings of Nerd Culture is due out August 2011. You can pre-order it here. I'll post more purchase links on my website.

The Geeks: Zaki Hasan

2011-03-16T09:40:00.001-04:00

Yesterday you met Genevieve Valentine, one of the four folks I'll be working alongside* on Geek Wisdom: The Sacred Teachings of Nerd Culture. Today it's someone I knew (in the Internet sense of the term) prior to this project, unabashed geek and sometimes political commentator Zaki Hasan.

Zaki knows his geek stuff. He teaches film, but if you ask me his real passion is in the nerdier (and thus cooler) end of the film spectrum. His commentary on geek films and pop culture is always engaging, and few people dissect a good comic book yarn like Zaki. I've enjoyed his online commentary for some time now and am very happy to be working with him.

The Book of Geek is out next August and is available for pre-order.

*Actually, worked alongside. We've already finished the book. The Geek Wisdom manuscript is long since turned in. Hooray for us.

The Geeks: Genevieve Valentine

2011-03-15T10:21:00.002-04:00

One of the exciting things about Geek Wisdom, which I announced yesterday, is the opportunity to work with some excellent writers. One of them is Genevieve Valentine.

She is a regular blogger at Tor.com, probably the most recognizable publisher of science fiction and fantasy, and her work has appeared in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, and many others. Her first book, Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, is coming in 2011 from Prime Books.

Oh, and did I mention she is a Work Fantasy Award nominated author? Pretty cool.

Genevieve deals in fantasy, steampunk, weird fiction and more. I certainly urge you to check out her website, and of course, to see her work in Geek Wisdom next August and is available for pre-order. (I guess I should put this on my website.)

And Eric's next project is: Geek Wisdom

2011-03-14T08:43:00.006-04:00

A little while back I hinted that I'd have a new project to announce. Well, consider this my announcement.

I'm pleased to say that I'll be one of the contributing authors on Quirk Books' upcoming tome of awesomeness:

Geek Wisdom: The Sacred Teachings of Nerd Culture.

Geek Wisdom is simple (and oh so cool). Take the best, most recognizable, most super awesomely geeky quotes from the world of geekdom -- movies, books, comics, video games, music, television, science, Internet culture, and pop culture in general -- and then use those quotes as launching points for us geeks wax poetic in a fun, smart, and entertaining way.

Five authors, including our heroic editor, will be tag-teaming to make this incredibly fun project a reality. I'm very happy to be part of the team, and in the next few days will introduce them and give 'em some plugs.

Geek Wisdom is due out next August by Quirk Books. Pre-order it here.

Happy Birthday to my coauthor, Jim McDevitt

2011-02-28T10:34:00.002-05:00

When Jim McDevitt and I started writing about the works of Alfred Hitchcock way back in 2006, yeah, we talked about it becoming a book and people reading it and all the usual daydreaming. I'm not sure we imagined it would actually happen, though, or that it would do well enough to earn a paperback edition, or that we'd do 50 something episodes of a podcast based on the book, and that the podcast would get many hundreds of listeners, or a host of other things.

But we did. Two beer-drinking baseball fans decided to do something silly like write a book. It worked out. And that's cool.

So with all that mind, happy birthday to you, Jim. I'm proud to share a book spine with you.

A Year of Hitchcock coming to paperback

2011-02-21T11:49:00.000-05:00

Wasn't sure when I could safely announce this, but since our publisher has done so I guess that means I can do so, too. This fall, A Year of Hitchcock: 52 Weeks with the Master of Suspense, is coming to paperback!

Our publisher, Scarecrow Press, is listing it on their website with an October 28 release date and, most exciting of all, a $19.95 price point. That's a damn nice price, and one likely to be even nicer once it hits online retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Even better, our editor informs us this edition will be targeting bookstores -- which means a wider market than the largely academic readership at which the hardcover edition was aimed.

Both my co-author, Jim McDevitt, and I are excited by this news. It means more people will have a chance to see our work. We're glad for that. It's been five years (!) since we started on this project, and it still takes up a lot of our time and energy. It's always exciting when others have an opportunity to enjoy the fruits of our labors.

Thinking about doing some self-publishing, part 2

2011-02-09T10:17:00.007-05:00

Yesterday I posted about self-publishing a local history book. Niche works like that are ideal candidates for self-publishing. An author with the will and skill can more effectively reach his or her target audience than a publisher, even a specialty publisher, and be more financially successful with it in the process.

Yet that's not what prompted me to start yesterday's post, so let me pick up where I left off: I'm thinking of self-publishing some fiction. A short story collection or three. Digitally.

My thought is, why not? These days print outlets for short fiction are few and far between. Most are already digital, and many are fly-by-night. Short story collections are generally only viable for established authors. While I'll have a second book out this year and will be contributing to a third (which I cannot yet announce), that's neither fiction* nor does it make me "established." It just means my name is on a few books. Big whoop.

I'd like to get this stuff off my chest, though, but also don't want to merely drop it onto a website. It may be ego talking, but I feel like the work deserves more than that. Outlets like Amazon's Kindle publishing program would allow me to set a low 99-cent price point, to make distribution easy, and to reach people I otherwise wouldn't reach. Most of all, it would allow me to call this stuff "done" once and for all because once it's out there, that's it. It's done.

I'm realistic about the idea, mind you. And by "realistic" I mean "would be thankful if I moved even 50 copies."

And that's fine. I'd not be doing it for money. The truth is, many of these stories have been sitting around in my archives doing nothing. No one is reading them. They want to be read, though. I want people to read them. So why not?

I'd prefer traditional publishing. It was, is, and remains my goal. Excited as I am about the surge of self-publishing these days, yeah, I feel like being traditionally published is still ... well, as I said yesterday, that's another discussion so I'll leave that thought unexpressed.

The bottom line is, I'm considering putting some of my short fiction out there. Don't know if they'll be interest. Don't know if I'll have the will or energy to bother promoting it (and without some promotion it will die a quick death). But still, I'm thinking about it.

So we'll see.

*All three published or soon-to-be-published projects are nonfiction. Crossing into fiction is important to me. It's not enough for me to have little bits of brief fiction out there. I need a book. A real book. That's the goal.

Thinking about doing some self-publishing, part 1

2011-01-27T11:14:00.006-05:00

The world of self-publishing, especially in the digital realm, is an exciting one. Not for what it currently is, but for what it could be. There are some established authors who are doing well in self-publishing. So good, in fact, they hope to get the publishing rights back to some of their traditionally published books because they can make more money doing it on their own. Other established authors are getting together to do the same.

In theory there is a very exciting future ahead for self-publishing, ebooks in particular.

I say "in theory" because I also have some strong reservations about the self-publishing boom, but that's a discussion for another time. Right now I just want to talk about my own foray into that world.

Technically, I've already dabbled in some self-publishing. Pitched Vol. 1 and Pitched Vol. 2 were both self-published, after all. So that's a road I've briefly shuffled along. But that's comics. What about prose?

Well, I know for sure I'll be aiming to self-publish at least one other work, probably before the end of this year. Years ago I wrote a history of Lakehurst, NJ, a tiny Pine Barrens town best known for being the site of the Hindenberg disaster. I think it's a good book with an interesting story to tell -- you've got railroad barons, remote mining villages, iconic dirigibles, and more -- but it's also a very tiny niche, so tiny that even publishers who specialize in local history can't see investing in it. Reasonable enough to me. Can't put out a book without a market.

But if I put it out on my own, well hell, that'll work. It'll work for several reasons. First, with print-on-demand services I can easily cater to the niche interested in the subject matter. Second, I'd make much more doing it on my own than through a small publisher -- and papa gotta feed the family. And third, I'm in a position in my day job to promote directly to the people who would most be interested in the subject matter. After all, as the editor of a small town newspaper I already reach those people week in and week out.

Really, I have every reason to do this on my own rather than through a traditional publisher.

So I will.

That's not why I started writing this post, though. I'll tackle the next bit tomorrow.

Pitched 3?

2011-01-24T14:02:00.002-05:00

The answer is yes.

Not ready to make a huge splash or anything, but I've very (very) slowly started getting the gears in motion for a third comic anthology. We've got some stories lined up, some excellent artists, and it's starting to take shape.

So that's fun.

It's been a while

2011-01-21T08:45:00.003-05:00

So it's been a little while. Hell, it's been a long while, really.

No, not THAT. I mean since I last wrote. The folks who know me know that in recent years I've tackled project after project after project. From the time I took on editor duties at the now defunct DVDinmypants.com to this holiday season it's been a relentless stream of projects. Four years of Books both published and pending. Anthologies. Articles. Freelance stuff. Music. And lots more.

All while holding down a full-time job, trying to be a good family man, and attempting to have something resembling a social life.

Shortly into the holidays, I finally hit the wall. Hard. I realized I had to take some time off. Since the completion of the fall's Still Secret Project (announcement coming in March), I haven't done even a stitch of writing. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. (Not TOTALLY true; I accepted one freelance project around Christmas because papa got ta eat! But only one, and it was very short.)

I'd taken short breaks before, but never more than a few weeks. They always came with a designated time when I'd get back to work, too. June 11 or August 8 or whatever. A date when I said, "On that day I will sit down and get back to work." This time I told myself I'd get back to it when I got back to it.

So that's what I've done. No rush. No pushing myself.

Now, the itch is starting to ask for a scratch. Projects beckon. Great things await. I have several cool book-related things happening this year, another comic anthology, some awesome announcements, and lots more fun stuff. Makes me excited for 2011.

Yep, I can almost -- almost -- say, "Can't wait to get back to work."

BEER: Founder's Breakfast Stout

2010-12-14T15:43:00.003-05:00

OOPS! Sorry, readers, this post wasn't meant to go live when it did. Most of my blog entries are written in advance and set to auto-post at a later date. Occasionally I'll set down a rough draft with the intention of returning to it later. This post was exactly that, a mere skeleton of my intended rambling about a beloved beer, but I accidentally set it to auto post.

And it did. And it's here. It posted itself hours ago. You've already read it. So I'm letting it fly as is, despite the fact that it's a batch of incomplete notes rather than a coherent post.

Eh. So be it. Enjoy.

Appearance - Thick, creamy, brown head and a deep, deep brown (nearly black) appearance. On visuals alone it looked delectable, like a meal rather than a drink.

Smell - Not as vibrant as I expected. Hints of coffee and roasted chocolate, but not overpowering. Needed to get right onto the glass to really get it.

Taste - Like a dream of a perfect woman in your embrace just before waking in the morning. Which is to say, utterly divine. VERY full flavored, like a meal in a glass. None of the breakfasty flavors are way up front, though. You don't taste strong chocolate or coffee; they're just hints in an impressive weave of roasty, malty flavors. It's perfectly balanced so that it tastes like a complex stout with some smokey nuances and a smoothness (probably brought on by the chocolate) that belies its bitterness. I'm impressed. Hyped beers often don't live up to it. This one does.

Mouthfeel- Heavy mouthfeel, yet went down more easily than stouts of similar consistency. Only slightly as dry on the mouth as, say, an imperial stout. Very pleasant considering its potency.

Bottom Line - Stupidly good stout that really *would* make a good breakfast if it weren't for the alcohol. Offers a complex yet not challenging taste. None of the boasted flavored (chocolate, coffee, oatmeal) are prominent, instead mixing into a pleasing and heady beverage. Considering it's a high ABV and very complex stout, it's surprisingly drinkable. Believe the hype.

How Served: bottle, into standard pint glass. Bottle room temperature, glass chilled but not frozen/cold.

On writing: when hatchet jobs are a good thing

2010-11-15T10:25:00.000-05:00

I've mentioned before that good editors will almost always improve your work. Writers (myself included) are often too close to their own work to be completely objective about it. It's difficult to get outside your own head and read your work the way a reader would -- and that's a vital part of the polishing process. After all, if you're not writing with readers in mind, you may well be writing crap.

Another blogger recently made an excellent post about working with editors, specifically newspaper editors. That's what I happen to be Monday through Friday, so I was especially delighted to see that this guy got it.

He stood there, reading the draft, occasionally eying me over the top of the page, then pulled out his red pen. My fellow reporters looked on. He made a few quick, emotionless swoops. Then, he turned the printout around to reveal two entire pages that he’d just struck from the draft.

“Who the hell cares?” he said, tossing the pages in my inbox. “Always remember that.”

And then he shrugged and walked away.

That might sound callous to you. It shouldn't. All writers, newspaper or otherwise, should read his full post.

Learning to toss your words in the trash is something all writers need to embrace. Learning to deal with criticism is essential. Learning that not every word you pen is gold is vital. Having a total meltdown because someone doesn't like your work is a bad idea. But most important of all, the criticism of someone tasked with improving your work isn't something to be frightened of, it's to be embraced. These folks are there to make sure your story or article or book or whatever is ready to be embraced by readers. By extension, cutting up your current work will also help to improve all your future work because you'll have those harsh lessons in mind next time you write.

That's not such a bad thing, is it?

Another author temper tantrum

2010-11-12T13:31:00.003-05:00

Sometimes writers (and in this case editors) just don't get it. This guy is a perfect example. He rages and rages and rages about people slamming his/his publication's work, proclaiming, "You don't get to call me unprofessional!"

And then proves his critics right by acting exactly that. Unprofessional.

What this guy doesn't seem to get is that yes, people do get to call him unprofessional. It's part of the unwritten contract you agree to you put your work in front of the public -- especially when you're putting material out in the form of a magazine, newspaper, or website offering strong opinions. In that context, dealing with criticism, even irrational and mean-spirited criticism, IS PART OF THE JOB.

That doesn't mean you don't get to feel offended, put off, or otherwise irritated at stupid, mean or crazed criticism. Of course you do. What it means is that in public, at least, you just have to deal with it. Save the rants for a night when you're having a few beers with your colleagues. Lashing out at the community who supports and/or pays you is idiotic.

Yet some people fall into that trap. Every now and then you get a writer who goes ballistic in response to people slamming their work -- this one was entertaining, and there are some classics here, to name just a few -- and you know what the end result always ending up being?

The author looks like a putz.

Don't do this, people.

In this guy's case especially, being angry that he's been called unprofessional and then launching into a juvenile tirade makes him look unprofessional.

Because yeah, if you're not able to accept criticism without flying into a rage, I'm afraid you're not very professional.

Writing through a rough patch

2010-11-12T09:34:00.004-05:00

There are times when the words don't come, and what words that do come make you cringe. You sit down and work, you reach your writing goals each day, but you hate every last bit of work you produce.

I'm in the midst of one of those rough patches. For the last week or so I've wanted to toss my work-in-progress in the trash. It's not writer's block -- writer's block is bullshit -- it's something else. It's "this sucks, this story sucks, these words suck, why am I bothering with this?"

I hate that feeling.

I've mentioned a few times before that I'm wrapping up a readable draft of a dystopian science fiction novel. I've gone back and forth between hoping people find it thrilling and certain people will find it thrilling, but every once in a while a little voice tells me, "Eric, you're delusional. This world is empty and unbelievable, the characters are paper thin, and your prose is as painful as your singing."

I don't think any of that is true (not consciously, at least), but when those rough patches arise -- and I suspect they're inevitable in all but the most in-love-with-themselves writers -- they can be very disheartening.

For me, I find the only way to work through them is to, well, work through them. Just keep going. Keep writing. You can't let them stop you from working. Take notes on passages or aspects of the story that strike you as particularly weak, then take an objective look at them later when you're in a better frame of mind. Your concerns may have been well-founded. You might also have been a little nuts.

Because let's face it, if you've put all that time and effort and blood and sweat into writing a novel that may never be read, you're probably a little nuts to begin with.

So I'm writing through a rough patch. I'm about 2/3 done with the second draft of this novel. Entering the third act. When it's complete, I'll be asking a few people to read it and offer their (hopefully honest) critiques. And I'll take it from there.

In the meantime, the fingers are on the keyboard no matter what ... because stories don't get written if all you do is stare at the screen trying to wish them into existence.

A midnight visit from the Vampyr

2010-10-31T23:59:00.005-04:00

Surprise! It's midnight on Halloween. You thought my week o' public domain horror films was over with Night of the Living Dead. You were wrong.

Director Carl Dreyer directed one of the great films of all time, The Passion of Joan of Arc, which I once called "a blessing to the world of cinema." Four years later he would direct Vampyr, a ghostly, ostentatious, bold, experimental film. It's dark and slow and brooding and moody and forgoes an engrossing story in exchange for an engrossing atmosphere. Twilight this ain't.

Happy midnight. Enjoy the film. (I've changed the embedded video to links so this page loads faster):

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Read more about Vampyr here. The best edition to purchase -- restored, gorgeous, much better than these videos -- is this one.

Night of the Living Dead!

2010-10-31T13:15:00.002-04:00

For Halloween, I thought I'd go with the big daddy. One of the kings of them all. Grandfather of one of the most popular subgenres of horror today. I'm talking, of course, about George Romero's classic, Night of the Living Dead.

Now THIS is a legendary film. When it comes to modern zombies, it's the one that started it all. And it's still fantastic. It also happens to be in the public domain (see below), so for this Halloween take a gander back at a flick you probably haven't seen in a while:

Some things to note:

* When I spoke to Russell Streiner (Billy) several years ago for a feature on the 2005 Fangoria convention, he told me the movie doesn't hold up just because of the zombies. “Night of the Living Dead, as odd as it may seem, there’s a lot of human drama that went into it. One of the things that made it successful is that it focused on telling a story.” And he's right.

* The film is in the public domain only due to a quirk in the law.

* Because it's in the public domain, there are literally dozens of DVD releases available. Don't get suckered into one of the cheap knock-off DVDS. There is only one version worth getting.

* Happy Halloween!

The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962)

2010-10-30T13:14:00.002-04:00

We'll cap off this Halloween season foray into public domain horror films tomorrow with the biggest classic of the classics, but for now let's just have fun with the schlocky B-movie fun of The Brain That Wouldn't Die, a 1962 flick about a doctor who keeps his girlfriend's decapitated head alive and goes in search of a body to attach it to.

Two of the characters in this movie are billed as "Blonde Stripper" and "Brunet Stripper," so you know this is good cinema.

Oh yeah.

It's in the public domain, so check it out:

The movie is freely and legally available for download here, though I can't vouch for the quality.

Three, three, three! classic silents

2010-10-29T13:22:00.003-04:00

It's the Friday of Halloween weekend. Maybe you're bored. Maybe you're looking for something to occupy your time. That's why I'm packing three, three, three horror classics of the silent era into one blog post.

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

Forget about song and dance and Broadway, the real Phantom of the Opera was a creepy classic that was ahead of its time. The story has been remade five times, but it's tough to beat a silent classic with Lon Chaney.

Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (1920)

Jekyll and Hyde don't rate very highly in modern horror, but way back when it was a pretty creepy story about man's dual nature. This 1920 adaptation is considered by many to be among the best silent horror films.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) is a landmark of German film and of early horror. I almost made this one the featured subject of a post, but had to admit to myself that not many people would find it entertaining. Not because it isn't a great film -- it's rich with images film enthusiasts (especially of the silent era) will love, including amazing staging, set design, and stunning visuals from the German impressionist era -- but because it's simply not entertaining in a modern sense. Remove it from its historical context and only a small segment of people will enjoy it. But that segment of people will enjoy it a LOT, because it's loaded with hallucinatory images and influential filmmaking.

White Zombie (1932)

2010-10-28T13:01:00.004-04:00

For most of this week of horrors I've focused on classics of the silent era. Here I thought I'd throw something else into the mix. Not only is 1932's White Zombie not of the silent era, it's not really a classic, either.

But it IS something of a landmark. Featuring screen legend Béla Lugosi, best known for being creepy as hell (and the most recognizable Dracula), White Zombie is probably the first ever zombie film, albeit not in the George Romero way we think of zombies today. This is classic voodoo and witch doctor stuff.

Is it any good? The reviews were not great (though it's quite a moody picture), and I'm afraid time hasn't sparked a renewed interest in the film, either. Still, if you're a fan of the genre or of Lugosi's work, you might want to check it out. It's public domain, so here it is:

Some things to note:

* Like far, far too many early films, White Zombie was once thought lost. A print was discovered in the 1960s.

* Yes, the band White Zombie named itself after this film.

Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922)

2010-10-27T13:26:00.003-04:00

When I first began to explore silent film, one of the earliest movies to convince me of the power of the silents was 1922's landmark horror film, Nosferatu, a Dracula adaptation in all but name.

I say in all but name because the film was intended to be an adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, but the studio could not obtain the rights the story. A few name changes and plot tweaks and wala! A brand new story ... sort of.

Nosferatu is one of the great silent films and is still one of the great horror films, relying on a creepy, moody approach rather that jump-at-you scares and gore. The film is in the public domain, so that means you can watch it in full, for free, legally. And you can do it right now:

A few things to note:

* You can't see it in the video above, but the original version of the film was heavily color tinted. Quite effectively, too. If you want to see the difference color tinting can make, look at this 10-minute clip, which showcases the yellow tinting (for day) and blue tinting (for night):

* There are about eight gazillion versions of this on DVD. Don't settle for a cheap version. The two best feature excellent restorations, the original coloring, and copious extras. They are the Masters of Cinema release or fantastic Kino edition.

* This film was almost lost. Under a settlement with Bram Stoker's widow, all know prints were destroyed. However, other prints later surfaced -- and thankfully so, because this picture is a landmark.

* Due to the horror, the film was banned in Sweden until 1972.

* The versions available for home viewing are NOT the full version. A full restoration of the original film exists, cobbled together from four separate prints, but it's not available for home viewing. Goddamnit.

House on Haunted Hill (1959)

2010-10-26T13:43:00.003-04:00

Many of the films we dive into during this week o' horrors will be silent films. Not this one. House on Haunted Hill is an influential B-movie from 1959 starring the legendary Vincent Price. So influential, in fact, it was one of the inspirations for Alfred Hitchcock's slasher classic, Psycho.

House on Haunted Hill tells the kind of story you've probably heard before. Five people are invited to stay in a house overnight. Guests who stay until morning win a boatload of cash. But staying is dangerous, and terrible, terrible things begin to happen.

The film is in the public domain, and that means you can watch it right now:

A few things to note:

* The film was re-made in 1999, starring Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Chris Kattan, Ali Larter and others.

* That Alfred Hitchcock fellow? You may have heard a rumor that I co-authored a book about his films.

The Golem (1920)

2010-10-25T13:03:00.000-04:00

This creepy, dreamlike film from 1920 is based on the old Jewish folklore of the Golem, an artificial creature made of inanimate matter and brought to life. (Shades of Frankenstein's monster there.) In this moody German production, the creature comes to life and, naturally, wreaks havoc.

This variation on the tale -- the full title is The Golem: How He Came into the World -- is one of the great examples of German impressionist cinema. Both the story as well as the approach to visual storytelling in this film proved highly influential, guiding the work of legends like Alfred Hitchcock.

Since the film is in the public domain, you can check it out yourself right here:

* The film is available to download (legally) right here.

Frankenstein - the 1910 motion picture

2010-10-24T13:08:00.000-04:00

Halloween is coming, so this week I thought I'd share some great bits of old film that fit into the Halloween theme. These are amazing pieces of our cultural history, many sadly forgotten. We'll start with a 1910's Frankenstein.

Produced by Edison studios (though Edison himself had nothing to do with it), this adaptation of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein was long thought lost. For decades, only a few stills existed. In the 1970s, it was discovered in a private collection, where it had sat since the 1950s, the owner unaware of just how rare the film was.

Though it had been released to DVD earlier, the print was only fully restored and released back in March 2010. The film is in the public domain. Here it is, at a mere 13 minutes long (first minute or so is rough, quality is good after that):

A few interesting things to note:

* The presentation is pure stage show. This is five years before the landmark Birth of a Nation, which all but invented the language of film as we now know it. Prior to that, movies were essentially stage shows on film.

* The color seen above is accurate. We think of early films as being in black and white, but in fact, during the silent era color tinting was common. The awesome Dracula adaptation, Nosferatu, filmed in 1922, is particularly effective at using tinting to enhance the mood and tone of certain scenes.

* At around 7 minutes, check out the way the shot is set up with the mirror. Very creative for its time!

* Charles Ogle, the man who plays the monster, was the son of a fundamentalist minister. His father disowned him for playing the role of a godless creature. He became an accomplished silent film actor, appearing in over 300 productions between 1908 and 1926.

* The director, J. Searle Dawley, did several other adaptations, including one of Snow White that predated Disney's by 21 years!

* In 2003, it was adapted into a 40-page graphic novel called Edison's Frankenstein 1910.

PITCHED 2 IS NOW AVAILABLE!!

2010-10-16T10:45:00.001-04:00

You've been waiting. And the wait is over. PITCHED 2 IS NOW AVAILABLE!

And even better, I'm proud to announce that all profits will go to the Hero Initiative!

BUY IT NOW!!!

via LULU
via INDYPLANET (Ka-Blam.com)
via COMICSMONKEY! (Ka-Blam.com)

(I recommend purchasing through IndyPlanet, but all of the folks above will treat you well.)

Pitched! Vol. 1 is now available via Lulu.com

2010-10-09T08:06:00.003-04:00

If you were interested in that little comics anthology I wrote last year (with the help of a slew of talented artists) but still hadn't gotten around to getting a copy, good news. It's now available via lulu.com. I've gotten my copy and can vouch for its quality. Nice, glossy cover, strong binding, and decent paper quality.

I'll be up front: happy as I was with the quality of the work ComiXpress did (and I was), I got some complaints about slow order fulfillment. Excellent quality on the product, but it's true. A few orders were slow to be fulfilled. The Lulu version takes a slight slight (slight!) hit on paper quality, but trades it for a glossy cover, printed spine, and very fast delivery.

So if you were holding out, stop. Order. Enjoy.

After all, don't you want to read this?

Or this?

Or this?

Yes. Yes, you do.

And the next plug-worthy project is...

2010-10-08T13:05:00.006-04:00

... not something I can announce just yet, but I've been working hard on it for the last two weeks or so, it's due in bookstores next August, I'm working with some extraordinary writers (I'm merely one small part of a team), including Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Award nominees, and it will be geeky as hell.

The last part is the best part of all.

So yeah, all you geeks out there? Watch out for a wickedly fun announcement

Some books by friends

2010-10-04T14:52:00.000-04:00

You folks should check out some of these books. They're self-published by folks I know, but knowing these folks isn't the point. I wouldn't be plugging them if they sucked. They don't suck. These are interesting, unusual, and memorable books worth checking out.

Brian Spaeth is a visionary and probably also a lunatic. I would not let him date my daughter, but I would let him give a speech at my funeral. He has some books.

The Christmas Bridge - "It’s a timeless excitement fable and that means maybe lessons, and explosions, and emotions, and etc." LOL, WUT? In The Christmas Bridge, Christmas is outlawed. So, "When charismatic life drifter JESI BURNS and one-time actoring icon NICK KEEGE are tasked by Santa Claus himself to build a 200-mile long haven for those who still want some Christmas to happen, people’s souls get healed or whatever."

-------------------------------

Prelude to a Super Airplane - This strange and wonderful book contains lines like, "In this moment, before his youngest son was about to die aboard the future of airplane riding, the father was sure the son wished he had the paper, or however that sentence was supposed to be worded." It's awesome.

-------------------------------

Stanley Lieber is a multi-talented genius who writes short stories, does music, creates independent comics (including illustrating this story from my first Pitched anthology), and writes books. Books like this one.

1Oct1993 - It's a political commentary science fiction experimental meta essay action adventure war story dream. Yes. And it's available on Kindle or in print. Stanley's writing will sometimes make your head spin -- in a good way. Enjoy.

-------------------------------

Neil Welch isn't just a great guy, he's a darn good writer. I can't recommend his short story collection, Shadow Whispers, enough. Check it out, along with three other of his books.

Shadow Whispers - A slew of short stories packed into a handsome little volume, this will appeal to anyone who likes The Twilight Zone, Ray Bradbury, and good short fiction.

-------------------------------

Maisie's Cave - A book for young adults that may have some interest from a traditional publisher. "Headstrong and impetuous, Maisie is always leading her friends into trouble. But she didn't bargain for what they would find when they started exploring the cave in Drawstone Bay..."

-------------------------------

Long Shorts - One of these stories is a real tear-jerker about love and loss.

-------------------------------

Dreamhunter - "How does a detective find a kidnap victim who is being held prisoner in a dream?"

Some new photos for your enjoyment

2010-10-01T14:47:00.000-04:00

For those so inclined, I added a second page of photos to my personal website. There you can see nifty pictures like this:

I'm not a photographer, but taking pictures is fun, so I do it. Sometimes they even turn out okay.

(Previous blog posts of photos I've taken are here, here, and here. All can be found on the photography section of my website.)

Want to be published? Learn to query

2010-09-29T11:02:00.002-04:00

Every now and then someone mistakes me for a person with a clue and asks how to approach a publisher about a book. There are no grand secrets -- by now everyone knows that -- just some basics on how to get started. In a series of posts last year I outlined how my first book landed on shelves, but skip all that for now, because I want to get to probably the most important part of the process aside from the writing itself: Your query letter.

A query letter is simple, in theory. It's you saying to an agent or publisher, "Hey, want to see my book?"

Not so simple in practice, though.

I won't get into the details because other people have done a far better job than I ever could. For instance, How to Write a Query Letter in Five Easy Steps. Go read it.

50-word fiction: The Machines

2010-09-27T16:46:00.003-04:00

My Jersey journalist-in-arms John Saccenti put together a little 50-word fiction contest on Facebook. Had a few moments to spare and thought, why not? So, at exactly 50 words, here is my entry:

THE MACHINES

We forgot to unplug them. And so the Machines fell upon us while we slept, a storm of metal and gears filling the sky like so much angry cloud. With scraping and thunder and screaming and wheels, wheels, wheels, the Machines tore into us, and all were turned to meat.

Fin

Didja notice the website?

2010-09-23T17:13:00.000-04:00

So I sort of slipped a webpage up for Pitched! 2. Look. It's probably all sorts of broken (and please tell me where it is), and it's missing some hi-res stuff ... but it's good to go for now.

I'll be updating it with purchase links and so on and so forth as they're available.

Am I crazy?

2010-09-20T17:36:00.000-04:00

Driving home from work the other evening and ideas are rolling through my head. Sitting at a traffic light and it occurs to me, "Say, I should self-publish a science fiction anthology next year, maybe something with a Mars theme. Invite writers to submit stories, do it via CreateSpace and list it at Amazon. Yeah, that would be fun."

What the bloody hell is WRONG with me?

Got it covered

2010-09-17T09:24:00.003-04:00

So, Pitched! 2, right? Here is a not-yet-final mock up of the cover. It's still a work in progress, but it's fairly close to what the final cover will look like.

This cover also contains information for those with discerning eyes; information that may assist in your excitement levels, or at the very least your knowledge of who is in the what and such like.

I promise to post some fully lettered pages over the next two weeks so you can see nice words alongside the shiny pictures. Unfortunately, I can't predict when Pitched! 2 will be available for purchase. We're switching printers and I don't yet know how quickly the new printer turns things around. It's close to certain that it will be available in mid-October ... a mere matter of weeks. But don't hold me to that. At the mercy of forces beyond my control, after all.

Idea Overload

2010-09-16T11:57:00.001-04:00

So here's a problem I still haven't learned to cope with: Idea overload.

Whatever I happen to be working on at any given moment, well, I'd rather be working on the next thing instead. Sometimes even the thing after that thing. There are always too many projects that appeal to me; too many stories I want to write; too many things I want to try. At times it's a little overwhelming.

It's overwhelming RIGHT NOW because there are a solid half-dozen big writing projects I'd like to be working on ... but I don't, because attempting that juggling act is a Bad Idea. I handle it by doing my best to stay focused on just one or two major projects at once. Otherwise, I'd be an unproductive mess.

In the past, before I developed the discipline I needed to stay the course on a big writing project, I'd jump back and forth from one story to another to another to another. Little bit of this one until I was bored, then over to this one, and then start (but never finish) that one.

The result? A load of unfinished stories, none of them particularly focused or polished or worth reading.

I'm better about that now. Mostly.

But I still have this constant buzzing in my belly nudging me towards the thing I'm not writing rather than the thing I am writing. It's frustrating. It's especially frustrating because I know I won't be on this Earth forever, and I feel like I have to get it all out of my system before I'm gone.

Which is stupid, because it's likely I'll NEVER get it all out of my system.

Citizen 13660 - forgotten gem of graphic literature

2010-09-14T09:09:00.005-04:00

Every now and then you stumble across something and think, "Why isn't this considered a landmark in its field?"

Citizen 13660, published in 1946, is one of those things. It's not quite a comic, but should be hailed among the important works of graphic literature. Somehow, though, despite being an avid comic/graphic novel reader, this has slipped under my radar and the radar of every other fan of the medium I know.

That's too bad. This deserves to be widely known in such circles.

In 1946, just after spending time in two internment camps, Japanese-American Miné Okubo published an illustrated memoir of her experience. It was called Citizen 13660, after the family number given to her in the camps.

The novel/graphic novel hybrid was introduced to me by my wife, who read it for an Asian literature class. Prior to that exposure, I had never seen or heard it mentioned in all my years of reading about, discussing, writing about, and debating comics and graphic novels. (I have an infrequently-updated blog of reviews here; you can also see my commentary on Neil Gaiman's Sandman series here, and some commentary on Dave Sim's Cerebus here.)

Now in all fairness, it's not quite a graphic novel. Certainly not in the way we think of them. Its formatting is more akin to a picture book. Each page is illustrated (a single image per page) with accompanying text, usually brief. There are no panels, per se, and the illustrations are snapshots, not sequential storytelling.

The nature of the illustrations, however, screams comic. Were Citizen 13660 produced today, it's likely it would be hailed by the independent comic crowd. The illustrations are beautiful. The writing is simple and direct. The story is a window into a short period of American history many still can't fully picture.

One thing I appreciated about the book is that it wasn't pushing a viewpoint or casting judgments. It was her experience in the camps. That's it. That's all it seeks to do and all it accomplishes. Very direct, just, "Here is what I experienced." At times it borders on the mundane, dealing with simple topics such as how Japanese internees ate, entertained themselves, and passed the time in camp.

So no, it's not a wild ride full of adventure, or political commentary, or criticism. It's a memoir. It's a brief snapshot of a woman's time in the internment camps. Despite straying from the traditional comic format -- again, no panels, no sequential illustrations, just images and text -- this is a work begging to be embraced by the comics community. Panels or not, it's an important work.

Those of you interested in graphic literature that explores history, social issues and so on should check your local library for Citizen 13660. It's very much worth reading.

Those interested in knowing more should read this in-depth story from Indy Magazine. It has dozens of sample pages, a full history of the work and creator, and thoughtful analysis of why the work is important. It's still in print and is only $10 from Amazon. Check it out.

Okay, so I CAN wait to get it started

2010-09-13T16:23:00.003-04:00

Waaaaaay back in February, I breathlessly posted about my desire to begin the second draft of a science fiction novel I've been kicking around. First draft was done. Readable. But needed work.

First I planned to start the second draft early in the year and wrap it up by late spring.

Then I pushed it back to March in order to slam out some other, shorter projects.

Then Stuff Every Husband Should Know came up and took priority.

Then I had to finish scripting Pitched! 2 so we could get it out in 2010.

Then I took the rest of the summer off from writing because damn did I need a breather.

So now, many endless months later, I finally start on Ye Olde Second Draft. I feel like I've been away from it too long. The reckless part of me at one time even considered starting the first draft of another novel by the end of the year. (I've several in the queue.) That surely won't happen now. But I suppose when all is said and done, finishing two books and a comic anthology, among other projects, won't have made for a bad year.

For now, though, it's all about getting this second draft done and finished and looking awesome. Here's to hoping.

Pitched 2: So close, yet so far away

2010-09-10T15:05:00.003-04:00

It's the final few loose ends of a major project that are the most frustrating, not because they're particularly difficult or troublesome, but because the finish line is right freakin' there, just out of your reach, teasing you like the chicken nugget that slips from of your grasp and under the passenger side seat.

I'm talking about Pitched! 2: Seven More Stories, which is the follow-up to my self-published comic anthology of 2009, Pitched!: Nine Stories. It is, I hope, an eclectic and entertaining batch of stories made 100 percent better by a talented bunch of artists and collaborators.

The good news is, I'll be sending the final pages to our printer in the super duper immediate future. The bad news is that it will likely still be a month or so before it's available for purchase, give or take. Mostly give. But I'm sure I speak for all involved when I say I hope y'all like it.

In fact, just because I'm swell, I'll post some super duper finished pages for you to read and ogle and fondle in the next week or so. Super duper!

"Stuff Every Husband Should Know" is pretty much done

2010-09-09T16:59:00.002-04:00

What the title of this post says is true and good and quite factual to the best of my knowledge -- which admittedly isn't particularly deep, but I think I can speak on this subject with at least some authority.

Last week, two weeks ago, something like that -- time is largely a blur to me -- I took a gander at the edited-and-laid-out-and-made-pretty version of Stuff Every Husband Should Know (due out April 5, 2011 from the fine folks at Quirk Books). It looked pretty darn swell, if I may say so myself. (I may.) The illustrations are spiffy, the topics that made the final cut are wide-ranging and interesting (wrote more than we needed, so maybe ten chapters or so are sitting on the cutting room floor), and my editor fixed all the lousy parts.

All of this is good.

For the most part, the door is closed on this project. May have an odd to handle. Maybe an end. Maybe both. But it's pretty much out of my hands at this point.

Only seventeen more projects to go.

Stuff Every Husband Should Know is on sale...

2010-07-29T09:59:00.004-04:00

...April 5, 2011.

So, like, mark your calendars and stuff.

(Stuff is my upcoming book, set for release in Quirk Books' pocket books series. To give you a sense of what it will be like, check out Stuff Every Man Should Know.)

(And hey, I just realized that an early listing of Husband is up at Amazon. Check it out. No real info there yet, but that's to be expected; it's still very early in the process. The final manuscript was only just approved a few weeks ago.

Pudding

2010-07-15T17:33:00.003-04:00

I have the house to myself for a few days, which means my usual schedule has been replaced with slothful behavior. I'm okay with that, I think I've earned some down time, but I think it reached a breaking point yesterday when ...

How do I say this?

When I realized I was sprawled out on the couch, in my boxers, watching South Park and eating an obscenely huge bowl of pudding.

Instant shame.

Not shame enough to put down the pudding, mind you, because pudding is delicious.

Thank god for editors

2010-07-12T16:01:00.003-04:00

Editors are the best. I don't say that because I am one (though I am), I say that because editors exist to make your work better -- and if you write, don't you want your work to be better? Too many aspiring writers resist the idea of letting someone else touch their words. It's tampering; it's an insult; the words are pure and perfect and blah blah farking blah.

No.

If you write, nine times out of ten a good editor will make your work better. You don't need a pat on the back from friends and family. You don't need blind praise. You don't need relentless criticism. You need someone to massage your work; to bring out the good; suppress the bad; and just plain make it shine. And by god, if you're going to write you'd BETTER be ready to embrace the process, because your words are NOT sacrosanct.

I recently got the post-editing draft of Stuff Every Husband Should Know back from my editor, Hugo award-winning editor Stephen Segal, and the result is a better manuscript than I initially submitted. I liked the submitted draft just fine, but this one is ready for prime time. It's tighter, leaner, and cleaner. It's still me through and through, but it's me after a shower and shave rather than after a weekend binge of beer and cigars.

That's what good editors do.

Your words aren't sacred. Never have been. Never will be. Editors exist for a reason. And writers should be thankful for that.

Taking a stab at comic art

2010-07-08T15:34:00.001-04:00

And cheating at it along the way.

I drew all throughout my childhood, a sheet of not-to-be-blank-for-long paper perpetually in front of me and a pencil feverishly scritching away drawing maps, wars, and terrible comics. It probably wasn't until the eighth grade and Jason Dixon, talented sonofabitch that he was, that I realized I couldn't actually draw.

Didn't stop me from doing loads of really awful comics in high school, though. A few friends would make up our own goofy superhero comics and pass them out to one another. Mine tended to be tongue-in-cheek "homages" to popular characters, such as Clawman, who broke the fourth wall and acknowledged he was a Wolverine ripoff, or Buttman and Rectum, who ... well, the less said about them, the better. Good, geeky fun, it was.

Since then I gave up on drawing. It's just not a part of me the way writing and music are.

Recently, however, I jumped back into making comics -- only this time I left the images up to people who could actually draw.

Thing is, I've had a story kicking around for a few years. A story I wanted to tell with characters I wanted to write. It's not a complex story and the characters aren't particularly deep, but there is something about it that makes me want to see it through. Not sure what, not sure I even want to discover why I'm drawn to it, but it's a story I want to get out of my system. Never found the right artist for the first anthology, however, and didn't find the right connection for the upcoming anthology, either. Not because people were incapable -- did you see the amazing work everyone did? -- but because I try to match style to story and approach whenever I can, and no one felt quite right for this story.

So I decided to say, "Screw it, I'll try this myself."

But I'm cheating. The story already exists in a badly drawn, borderline thumbnailed form, but I'm using that as a storyboard. Instead, I'm shooting photos and screwing with them in Photoshop to get them somewhat comic-like. My first experience working with a tablet, too (I bought an entry level Bamboo), trying to sketch them up a bit, make them look at least somewhat comic booky.

I'm not good at it. I have a lot to learn. I don't know that this will even appear in Pitched 2, as we're already behind schedule and this work won't go fast and there remains so much more to do on the whole project. Still, I'm trying. This in-progress image is how my first experiment looks so far:

I dunno that I'm in love with it, but it should work for the story I'm telling. Maybe. We'll see.

But even if it's a failure, the creative experience will be worthwhile and enjoyable.

I am a terrible painter

2010-07-06T16:27:00.000-04:00

This summer I've returned to something I discovered last summer. Something that had me relaxed in a way few things get me relaxed. Painting. Some brushes, a bit o' canvas, a cold drink, and music while sitting outdoors in the sun, looking over the water and getting lost whipping that brush back and forth.

It's very, very easy to wind away an entire afternoon like that.

The problem is that I'm awful. Just downright awful. Like, reallyreallyreally awful.

And you know? I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that because I'm not doing it for any reason other than to relax. And there sure are far worse ways to relax.

So painting is what I'll do.

Screw you, time. SCREW YOU

2010-07-01T12:31:00.002-04:00

Time can go to hell. Or more specifically, the lack of time that seems to exist around me can go to hell.

Right to HELL.

I don't ask much of this world. As little misery at work as possible, some time with friends and family, some relaxation, and the opportunity to pursue the projects I want to pursue, whether professional endeavors ("Stuff Every Husband Should Know") or hobbies (recording music or doing comic anthologies).

But there isn't time to squeeze it all in. This stacks up with that is piled onto that other thing, and pretty soon you're tearing your hair out, picking priorities, dropping things that aren't all that important to you, and just hoping to escape with a few shreds of sanity -- especially during the summer, when BBQs, parties, concerts, and other social gatherings pick up steam. They're always going to take priority over anything other than paid work. It's frustrating to lose productivity, yes, but on the other hand screw not having a life.

I hereby mandate that all days shall have 32 hours.

Makes me want to eat Guinea pigs.

Ian hints at the creative process

2010-06-30T09:34:00.002-04:00

A few days back I teased an image by artist and photographer Ian Sokoliwski. It's a great image, created as part of a text and visual narrative we're developing. He recently said of the project:

Combining these photos with an actual narrative got me thinking in a different way, and I really like the results.

You can check out Ian's comments on his blog.

PITCHED2: Ace Starstruck

2010-06-29T10:08:00.000-04:00

Another art preview snagged from the upcoming second volume of Pitched, my series of comic anthologies. This one is the opening page of an Ace Starstruck story, a Buck Roger-meets-super-fun concept created by my buddy Frank Saxon. Frank asked if I'd like to write his characters. When I saw how fun they looked, I couldn't say no. This is the opening page (unlettered, of course) of our story:

Click image for full-sized

Eric's new album: Happy Life

2010-06-28T14:52:00.000-04:00

This is my new album. I sing on it and stuff. You can download it and everything. So that's neat.

X-Sweet
Happy Life

DOWNLOAD FULL ALBUM (or get songs individually below)

1) The Key to a Happy Life
2) Went Away
3) Down Down
4) So Much Blood
5) We Are Walking Avatars
6) Magic Nights
7) Summer Bottles
8) Ma vie est terminée
9) The First is Last
10) At the Window

PITCHED 2: Something a little different

2010-06-27T11:23:00.001-04:00

And now for something a little different.

I've wanted to work with artist, colorist, and photographer Ian Sokoliwski for some time now. He's not just a very talented guy, he's also funny and wacky and unusual in all the right ways. (Check out my interview with Ian to see what makes Ian the Professional Colorist tick.)

So needless to say, I was pleased when he agreed to jump on board for Pitched 2, the second in my series of comic anthologies. Ian has paying work that has to take priority, you see, so I'm honored he carved out time for me. I was inspired by his Gothic photography, specifically his series of doll pictures, and had a story in mind based on the visuals he was creating.

But I wanted something that wasn't very traditional. Maybe wasn't even comics, exactly, but rather something that merged his evocative images with my words in a way that managed to be its own thing. Something along the line of the text-and-images pieces in Dave Sim's brilliant Jaka's Story. Ian liked the idea and the rest is history.

Will we succeed in creating something great? I don't know. It will be a challenge. I'm setting lofty standards for myself. Ian sure isn't making living up to my end of the bargain easy when he creates images as amazing as this one:

Click image for full-sized

That's good stuff right there, featuring Ian's assistant, Kelsie, who helped stage the images. I've got me some writin' to do.

This is the reason I do these Pitched anthologies. Because it gives me a chance to push myself in unexpected directions, driven by talented people like Ian and Kelsie.

PITCHED 2: Happily Ever After

2010-06-25T10:15:00.002-04:00

Here's a neat one for you. "Happily Ever After" is a humorous swashbuckling tale first conceived as a short story, then plotted for the first Pitched! anthology, then dropped only to be resurrected for the upcoming second installment. The talented Trevor Giberson dove into the art and captured the tone of the story perfectly. Below is a preview page of his art. The awesome John Mietus, who lettered stories like "The Homecoming of Carlos Ruiz" in the first volume, will only add to the fun. This script has been a trip to write; I look forward to folks getting a chance to read it.

Click image for full-sized

Soon. New Eric music. Very soon.

2010-06-24T09:58:00.000-04:00

When recording music, self-indulgence is a huge sin -- and one I commit time and again. Can't help it. It's not like it's musician wank. I'm not anywhere CLOSE to a good enough musician for that. It's sound wank. Noise, big sound, layered drones, guitar feedback. Stuff no one wants to hear.

But I like to hear it, so I do it.

So anyway, I'm recording a new X-Sweet album, right? And X-Sweet tends to be my more traditional musical project, what with me singing reg'lar ol' songs and all that. I'm not claiming it's good, as you can see for yourself, I'm just saying it exists. I like doing honest to goodness songs, but I'm objective enough to admit my guitar soundscapes are far better conceived (though not for everyone) and are better at what they aspire to do -- even if only because my limited skills can accomplish the one and not necessarily the other.

Yet here I am, trying to merge the two.

That's been my goal on the almost-completed-new-album. To merge that dense sonic assault with actual songs and singing and stuff. I think I may have gotten close. I feel like I may have recorded some stuff that is close to what I hear in my head. Wrote and recorded about 18 songs, narrowed the final tracklist down to nine that I didn't hate, now I'm just making tweaks to the final mixes and making sure all is well.

So in the next few days, I'll probably start uploading some tracks. Maybe even the whole damn thing, assuming I can get the album cover done. As I type this, I have a very busy week ahead of me. I have to edit another one of those goddamn podcasts, finish some scripting on Pitched 2, create a web page for the same, and a host of other crap.

But soon. Very soon. Music.

Please do listen.

PITCHED 2: Some Time with the Family

2010-06-23T10:34:00.002-04:00

We're getting close to the finish line on the second volume of Pitched, my series of comic anthologies, so I thought I'd throw some more preview art out there.

These are the first two pages of a story called "Some Time with the Family," a horror story (obviously) penciled by Logan Reilly, inked by James Pipik (who did the art on "The End of All Summers" for the first volume of Pitched), and written by yours truly.

Despite the art being unfinished, I think it looks quite nice, and so will you:

Click image for full-sized

Standing in the middle of the road

2010-06-22T09:16:00.002-04:00

Three paces, then four, then five, and you're in the middle of the road, watching it stretch out in either direction, no cars for as far as you can see, just blacktop and you. And somehow, it manages to make you feel freer than you've felt since you were 12 and were allowed to ride your bike around the neighborhood on your own; like nothing in the world can contain you.

It might be a remnant from childhood. The unspoken knowledge that you're breaking a Rule. That you're doing something you're not supposed to do. After all, you don't just walk out into the middle of the road. That's dangerous. We all know this. And you certainly don't just stand there. You cross quickly and move on.

But that one time when you DO just stand there, when you have an opportunity on what is usually a busy road, you stop and look around and maybe, if you're sure no one is looking, you throw your arms in the air. Maybe even turn around, veering ever so close to spinning, and you feel like you're standing on the edge of a precipice, delicately balanced on the cusp of danger and yet in total control. You're there, just you and the road, and you're breaking the rules and floating in a space that doesn't belong to you.

Then a car comes into view, humming along towards you, and your brief, glorious moment of freedom is over.

Everyone should stand in the middle of the road when they get a chance.

Stuff Every Husband Should Know manuscript = complete

2010-05-28T08:59:00.003-04:00

Headline says it all. The manuscript for my next book, a pocket book called Stuff Every Husband Should Know and scheduled for publication next spring by Quirk Books, has been finished and turned in to my awesome editor, Stephen Segal.

This doesn't mean my work is finished, of course. There will be more to do on the project. But the tough stuff is done. And that's good.

Now I set my sights on scripting my next comic anthology, which I have mentioned a few times before. Some great stuff is coming in from the artists involved, really exciting images that are bringing these stories to life in ways I hadn't imagined. Can't wait for people to see more. Further preview pages will be coming soon.

To all you folks who helped me with the book, you have my sincere thanks.