I'm heading out the door shortly with my younger boy to:

1] Visit the San Antonio College's drama building to check the place out prior to his upcoming drama camp. I participated in a few camps and programs that took place on college campuses and would have appreciated a bit of familiarity about where I would be going.

2] Finding free wifi locations in the area of SAC because I'll be driving him there and back each day and it will make more sense for me to work in the vicinity of the college -- at least for some of the days.

3] Heading to the downtown branch of the San Antonio Library. We are looking for monologues for his rehearsal on the first day of camp. When I originally looked into "Free Monologue Adolescent Male," I came up with nearly nothing. I don't think he's ready to spit out even a quick minute of Shakespeare and everything else seems to be locked away in books or must be purchased per performace. New territory for me.

Even if I find a great one tonight, this brings me to a cool solution. I decided yesterday that I'd write him a 1-minute monologue myself.

I'd never done it before, so I wasn't sure where to start. That never being much of a problem for me -- at least in the sense of writers block -- I plunged in, figuring I could read the dos and don'ts later. I'd love to show what I came up with, but I'm adverse to showing first drafts of anything I do lest it be founds via a search and mistaken for my finished work. Not a great association.

Anyway, the first run was successful to a point, as much as can be expected of a first draft, maybe better. I showed it to my critique group and they offered great advice, though none of them has much (or any?) first-hand experience with screenplays or monologues. 

I'm looking forward to tweaking this in time for my boy to practice it for the camp audition. Doing so will also provide me a welcome break from my Wady/Appalachian story. I haven't lost steam or passion but a tiny bit of distance usually pays good dividends.

A quick note about backing up your writing...

it just occurred to me after a recent speaker at the San Antonio Writers Guild related a story about his having lost literally all of his digital files that there's really no need for this ever to happen if one joins a critique group.

Every two weeks, my small critique group meets. There are between 4 and six of us depending upon the state of the world -- we have a military officer and a police sergeant among our ranks -- and we send our work to one another digitally a few days before each meeting. 

While filing two of the members' work into tidy folders, i mis-clicked a folder that turned out to be from August of '08. In this folder was a now-published story in a near complete state. Seeing that file made me realize how lucky we all were to have one another as yet another layer of protection in the event of calamity such as fire or  theft, crash or clumsiness.

A quick email to these friends and, voila, I'm back in business. Maybe I'll lose a day or a month, but I won't ever lose it all. I might lose all of a few of the more obscure works, those that I didn't complete, but I wouldn't jump off a bridge to lose them.

So, if you don't want to lose your files, don't lose your friends!

The reality is, sometimes things get in the way of writing. Family in from Pennsylvania, my regular family and full-time job obligations and a convergence of two sites that I work on for friends and friends of friends needing a huge amount of attention all hit at the same time. All this went on for nearly two weeks. Could I write during that? Honestly no. I needed to sleep in order to focus on the next day. To be technically correct, I did write some -- I even edited three semi-long pieces while all this was going on -- but we're talking a trickle. Just enough to say I wrote, really.

But when I woke up yesterday [Saturday, May 29] there was no visiting family. I was caught up on work. I had knocked out the non-work sites. There was no critiquing waiting in the wings. I was even well-rested. To add to the day's perfection, my wife had plans to take my younger son and his best friend bowling until mid-to-late afternoon.

I split before everyone rose and was out the door just after seven. Nothing but time and writing ahead of me. I could feel the pressure of writing long waiting to be done behind the dam as I drove.

A writer never really stops writing. During all the madness of the previous two weeks, I still ate and showered and drove and walked. To a writer, that's basically planning time. Perfect for contemplation of details and jotting notes. So when I finally sat down with my Local Coffee press pot, the next six hours -- 6 HOURS -- were writing bliss. It was as if the rubber band had released.

The piece I'm working on requires a huge amount of attention to word choice and fluidity to pull off a very thick and unique dialect, so the hours didn't directly translate into a high word count, but writers know that word count and page count are not the be all and end all of a successful day. Sometimes simply solving problems is enough. Sometimes getting right the order of detail revelation is enough. Sometimes smoothing the language or doing good research is enough. I pulled off a little of all of these plus put down a few good new pages.

I'm sitting in bed writing this and only wishing today offered a fraction of the time I enjoyed yesterday. Times like these, I know I'm a writer, no matter the stage of my career. This feeling and this yearning for more. This looking forward is what the art and life is all about for me.

What I'm talking about is doing what one needs to do to make time to write.

If you didn't already know, I'm a web designer with ICG Link, Inc. in Brentwood, TN. I've been with them since '99. I worked in the office for about 4 years before my wife, Nadine, started moving around the country following better positions, first within, then without the company she worked for. Since then, I've been tele-commuting.  It's a great gig. If there's any drawback to the job, it's that it's not a magic position that allows me to do virtually nothing and still collect a fat-ass paycheck. Wouldn't that be great.

Kidding.

The real drawback of working from home is that, knowing I have all the time in the world to get my hours in, it's tempting to take a 20-minute nap in the middle of the day or pick up the guitar. This often makes my days long when they could, if I disciplined myself, go pretty quickly, especially considering I don't have a morning or afternoon commute. What I'm accomplishing is not a freer day or week, but less writing time. 

Self-defeating.

And that leads me to a new phase of experimentation. I'm trying out working four 10-hour days. No naps. No distractions. Just plug away. I've always been able to stack a lot of hours over the weekend, but this gives me a whole weekday day in which to exclusively write. I'm not sure yet if Friday or Wednesday will work out better. Friday strikes me as the better day since it would feel more like a reward for a week of hard work, but Wednesday would be nice too since it would break up the long days.

I've always written some in the evenings through the week, but I find that unless I can dedicate a good three hours, I'm not really writing my best. Typically, I get about an hour each night if I'm not distracted by rare TV or family obligations. So even on the best of days I feel like I'm wasting the time whether I'm writing or not.

I'm on my last long day this week, so tomorrow (Friday) will be my first test all-writing day. I'll let you know how it goes.

This last Wednesday, I attended Rebecca Stockton's final independent study presentation. Rebecca had been my mentee throughout her Senior year and had written an astounding 18 chapters, the first third of an ambitious teen novel based on Beauty and the Beast. Watching her presentation, I was filled with pride. She really knows her stuff when it comes to folklore. She's especially knowledgeable about the world surround King Arthur.

The bulk of her presentation guided the audience through the path the Beauty and the Beast story traveled through time to get to us in its most recent Disney form. Turns out it began as Cupid and Psyche in Greece. It showed up later in German in a modified form. Then it was off to France in the form most of us were familiar with. Finally, it has ended up in the United States in the form of popular Disney animated movies and musicals of the last couple decades. Actually very interesting stuff.

I was glad to meet all of Rebecca's family and many of her friends. Such a smart and funny group. Having edited Rebecca's work over the last year, I could see many of her characters and much of the energy that must of has inspired the action she added. Seeing it made me wonder how transparent my own life is in my work.

Even though driving to the Bandera area of San Antonio from where I live and work in Stone Oak was a long and sometimes annoying weekly chore and even though editing a Beauty and the Beast inspired novel meant for teen girls was not always my first choice of fun things to do, I have no regrets. What I learned from the experience cannot be measured and it did feel like that "giving" Oprah keeps yapping about. Of course, to know Rebecca and her family, giving in the charitable sense is the last thing she'll ever need. But I really felt like I was making a difference. I could see it in her writing and in the way she communicated about story, character and plot. A truly quick study.

Rebecca humorously mentioned her book's acknowledgement that she had a feeling her story would never be my favorite, nothing could be further from the truth. It will remain a treasured possession and a reminder that I had a hand in what is certain to be a very successful person's life.

Thank you, Rebecca and Godspeed Ahead.

I will have been committed to writing seriously for four years at the end of this month, May 2006 being the earliest version of the head-on-a-stump story I can find and that story being the one that started the ball rolling. So four years on, how would I assess my progress?

SKILL

It's no surprise that answering that question requires more than a short answer. Even dividing that question into logical subquestions, if there are such things, requires a lengthy response. There is skill, motivation and publishing and other types of "success" to address. Let's take them in order.

When I found that earliest version of my head-on-a-stump story a few months ago, I read as much of it as I could stand. I could not stand much of it. All manner of simplest errors freckled the eight or so pages. That in itself is forgivable but I was proud enough of it that I showed it to my wife and boys. That, again, is not a bad thing, but doing so breaks at least a couple very basic rules of serious writing:

1. I showed someone a first draft before poring over it, making sure it was ready to show. For the record, never show someone a first draft unless you very much like criticism or you very much don't like the person to whom you've shown it.
2. I showed people I live with and love my work. What can one really expect besides courteous smiles and half-hearted, well-intentioned compliments and support. I recall the uncertainty and embarrassment on each of their faces. None of them sure what to say and none of them sure whether they should tell me I'm not cut out to be a writer.

The good part, the happy ending to all of this is that as I read that early story, it was like reading a child's work in many regards. I read it like an experienced writer. All the critiques, all the words written, all the books read, all the editing and blogging. I've emerged at the very least someone who can see suck a mile away and can advise -- though not perfectly -- how and whether to try to improve a piece.

But I sell myself short. Though there's no perfect way to rank one's skill as a writer, one can see the signs and get a decent idea. A pretty girl, even if she hasn't seen her reflection her whole life, can gather from the frequency and nature of reactions, compliments and inquiries a good idea of the level of her attraction. In this way, being so close to my own writing, I can say with confidence what I excel at and where I fall short. In a too-brief nutshell:

• I have a a tasteful and fairly established style
• I do character better than plot
• I am confident there is something special and yet undefined and unrefined about my writing, thus making continuing the endeavor worth while. 

MOTIVATION

Since becoming a serious writer, I'd say my motivation to continue has never waned. I've wondered a few times in the last four years whether I was good enough to write alongside the big boys but each time that doubt has come up, I've denied that goal is valid. I'm not writing to compete; I'm writing to write. There is a certain amount of unavoidable, even fun competition to it but competition is far from my central motivation. I know the type who are driven by competition. They're often successful, but theirs is the type of success I would not enjoy in most cases. No, staying motivated to write has not been an issue for me. I write and enjoy it every time. 

My motivation to blog, to mentor and to edit, however, could use some work from time to time. I tend not to blog short. Each entry takes me no less than an hour. The fact that few actually read my blog can make blogging difficult to begin, too. I just plough ahead and pretend someday people will care. ::sigh:: Regardless, there's a crap-load of stuff for a beginning writer to read, so tell a friend.

"SUCCESS"

"Success" gets italicized since my liberal leanings remind me that success can come in many forms.

In the conservative sense, my success has been limited. I've been runner-up in one contest. I've won another. And I've had a short story -- flash fiction -- published in an online magazine. On the surface, it doesn't sound like much. Okay...even well below the surface, it doesn't sound like much for having worked my ass off, threatened my marriage and gotten myself kicked out of the Awesome Dad club.

Back to the liberal leanings now. My progress to becoming the kind of writer I want to be is my success. I started writing seriously late in life. I haven't read as much as one might think one need to in order to write well. I am fighting against a fit, convincing, overly-critical mind chatter. Despite all of this, I have come leaps and bounds toward writing in the way I demand I need to before I'm comfortable to show too much to the world.

A few writers have told me to write short stories. Get recognition there then move to longer works once your name is somewhat known. Some advise me to submit anything to anywhere that'll accept the piece. Some say follow the rules when it comes to writing, submitting and marketing. There are others who say more still. The bottom line for me is that if I don't have a sense I'm doing things in the way that's right for me, that if I don't see the reason behind something, that if I don't feel comfortable doing or saying something, I'll live to regret it. More and more each day, I find something new that identifies me as a writer. My process is slow but I'm getting somewhere certain.

To me...for now...that's success.

SO, FOUR YEARS ON

So where would I put myself after four years of writing? Imperfect and patient. What I do wrong or too slowly, I'm addressing. What I do well, I'm trying to strengthen. I've come to learn better which types of stories I like and which types I write well. Sometimes they are the same and sometimes they are different. That distinction is one of the important things I'm learning.

Four years on, I know at least one thing with total confidence. I can do this and I like it enough that I expect to be writing while or not long before I eventually croak. If I haven't had some traditional form of success by then, I'll be shocked, but in no way disappointed as long as I'm enjoying the process and the life as much as I do now.  

I'll freely admit I write slowly. Sometimes my fellow authors will ask, usually at critiques where they have work to show, "How's your writing coming, Thomas?" I feel the need to reassure them that I'm not just here for the curiosity, that I'm actually writing. After weeks of not showing anything publicly, though, I wonder if my honesty is called into question.

I'll sit and edit a story to death. The story can sometimes go stale. I lose interest. Or it can feel overworked. For instance, my recently-finished time-shift short story is about 5k. I've worked on it probably since the 10th, so around 20 days. That's right at 1 "perfected" page each day. I've heard of authors who work at this snail's pace, but most of them have been somewhat or outright established. And since I started my career late, I'm not sure if I have the luxury of slowness.

So:

• Should I embrace my slow writing speed, or
• Should I be concerned? If concerned,
  • Should I trust that, over time, my speed will pick up, or
  • Should I take definite action?

Probably the most important thing to determine first is whether my slow writing speed is a problem.

As I mentioned above, sometimes I feel like a writing loser when other authors who work faster then I do -- and in some cases much much faster than I do -- bring attention to my slow speed. But I believe my slow output bothers me more on a day-to-day basis than it does in those relatively rare moments. So, I'd say I have a problem. If I have a problem then embracing my slowness is not an option.

So the next thing to determine is whether I should act to fix the problem or allow time to fix it for me.

This is more difficult. On one hand, my writing is benefitting from looking so excruciatingly closely at ever aspect of a story, bravely calling into question each sentence, demanding more of myself and my skills. It's sort of a P90X mentality toward getting better fast. But, at the end of the day, I have less to submit and only submissions lead to publications and only publications lead to better opportunities and only better opportunities lead to success.

Do I see my speed picking up? Yes and no. 

I can tell that I produce more GOOD pages recently than I ever have, but I'm not producing MORE PAGES. So is that an increase in speed? Hard to tell when my goal is to produce MORE GOOD PAGES. 

Bottom line is probably this: I do have a problem right now writing slowly. But I write every day and, in so doing, I'm becoming a better writer. So, I'm sort of doing both things I mentioned one should do if concerned about his speed. I'm taking definite action, even if that action is not specifically addressing my speed. Likewise, I have faith that, over time, my speed will pick up as a result of writing every day.

Not sure what I've accomplished here, but it sure was enlightening thinking about it in such detail.

Time goes so quickly. For the first time since I started this blog a couple years ago, I let nearly a whole month lapse without a blog entry. I'm not sure if that's a good sign. If it were because I was writing so much I didn't have time to blog too, I'd say that was definitely a good thing. But I fear it was the Olympics more than it was binge writing.

Here's to doing better in the future.

This is the 100th Thomas McAuley's Writing Blog Posting!!!

(And, being such, it deserves a special font treatment.)

Since this is the 100th blog posting, I thought it would be a good time to look back at the writing blog as well as the current state of my writing in general, since that has been the central focus of the blog since January of 2008.

Two Years of the Blog

First off, I've enjoyed creating -- for the most part -- thoughtful postings about the craft of writing from my perspective, my take on the writing life and hints and techniques and items of interest in relation to writing. Throughout, I've tried to add in a few items that show the non-writing side of myself as no writer is (or should be, at least) 100% a writer 100% of the time.

If I compare those earliest posts to the more recent ones, I find a certain innocence to them. Most notably, my comfort level has grown. In the beginning, it's obvious I wasn't sure what sorts of things to start talking about since nothing I talked about had been covered already. This indecision and newness probably lead to short posts as well as odd topics. Another factor in how the posts have changed over time is the type of tool I have used to create them. In the beginning, I used typical website software. That sucked. Now I use ICG Link's Build111 site building tool and posting is easier and, therefore, more frequent and usually much longer.

Two Years of Writing

When I started blogging, I had already been seriously writing for about a year and a half. I remember my eagerness in sharing everything about my experience. I started by posting about what I listened to while I wrote. I talked about what I was writing and thinking about. I pondered whether I could even call myself a writer at that time since I hadn't been published yet.

I began fit, telling anyone who would listen how important exercise is to a writing, who spends so much time in a seated position. Since then, I got fat(ish) and then fit again.

I also started in the midst of writing my head-on-a-stump novel. Since then I pretty much abandoned it and picked it up again.

Along the way, I've had spans of high energy and low, those of hope and hopelessness and times of focus and aimlessness. I have succeeded in being published but I fail to submit with great enough frequency despite Wednesdays now dedicated to the task. My writing has improved in many ways since 2006 but there's always more to learn and the obstacles, I find, rise up in a rotation. That is, as soon as I conquer one pitfall, another rises up, then another and anther until I make my way back around to the first one I thought I had conquered. Spinning plates, indeed. Still, looking back at my work from those beginning stages, even remembering some of the things I'd been told in critiques, there's little doubt I've improved. And, with few exceptions, I continue to produce words every day. Sometimes, what I write ends up getting replaced wholesale, but I'm writing and I have faith that gets me somewhere in the bigger picture.

From what I hear, this pile of good and bad alone makes me a writer. One of the first quotes that assured me I could do this thing called writing is "A professional is an amateur who didn't quit."

Amen. Here's to 100 more entries.

I'm now blogging into my third year and I find it odd I've never once mentioned my crack-whore-esque addiction to English Premier League Footbal -- that's soccer to most of us here in the States, of course. Almost from the first year it could be viewed here, I was on board like a rat. 

Some complain that soccer is a slow game. Trust me I've seen slow soccer and it IS a wrist-slashing venture; however, anyone who would say that the sport is slow across the board hasn't a clue at what level the English game is played.

A high school game in America can be slow. College, the same. Men's National Team is a step better. The MLS -- United States' Major League Soccer -- is another. The interest continues to improve with the Women's National Team, believe it or not.

Beyond these, the game -- that's now called Futbol or Football, depending upon where you're talking about -- gets truly interesting with the various second-teir international professional leagues, like Australia, Asia, Scotland or Turkey.

Then, once you get to the big boy leagues: Germany, Italy, Span, France, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, etc. With these, you're hard-pressed not to find something astounding in each and every game. Commonly, even games announcers label as "disappointing" or "slow" is anything but. They're just spoiled because their expectations are so ridiculously high.

But the grand poobah of all Football in the world, again, is the English Premier League. On average, the teams are stronger than any others in the world. Tournaments that pit all top clubs in Europe find English teams consistently at the very top. Only a small handful of club teams -- and only those from the very strong leagues -- can compete with those from England.

Simply stated, the league's management "got it" before any others did. Back in '92, they found the formula that worked. I don't pretend to know what exactly that formula is or was but from that date, English soccer left the world in its rear view mirror. As a result, the league, now in its 18th season (as of this posting) boasts the highest payrolls, the best players and, if I'm not mistaken, the highest consistent ticket sales.

You may not understood any of that so here it is in a nutshell. Let's use the NFL as an example. Pretend for a moment that at the end of the Football season, the bottom 3 teams don't get rewarded by earning first pick in next year's draft. Instead, they get kicked out of the NFL entirely because they suck. That gap is filled by the BEST three teams from the next league down.

What this accomplishes is two-fold. Not only do the bottom teams fight viciously to "stay up" in the NFL, making even the games between the crappiest teams interesting to watch, the teams in the next league down also are fighting with equal ardour to be "promoted" into the NFL. 

Now that might all sound like the interesting games are only at the bottom where the crappy teams reside. It would be true if that's where the planning stopped. 

Now imagine that the rest of the world gave a crap for American style football. (They don't, by the way) At the end of the season, not only is the Champion crowned in the Super Bowl, the top FOUR teams in the season win the right to compete against the top three or four teams from all the rest of the world's best league teams.

So the seasons for these excellent teams are filled not only with inter-leage games, but international games as well. It's a terrific system that works well to add interest to an already amazing game.

The next major argument against soccer is that there are ties. I can understand that, from the outside, it sounds like a tie would be a let down. In a sense it is a let down in exactly the way its thought to be but that disappointment is countered by the points system.

The Premier League champion is decided by points over the whole season. A team earns 3 points for a win but BOTH teams are awarded 1 point for a tie. So, feasibility, a team that ties in every game could do quite well by the end of the season. A tie is worth fighting for. Even a scoreless tie is worth fighting for because a singe goal means the difference between 1 and 3 points and that's huge.

The points system nearly guarantees the best team is the champion. In the NFL, one slip-up in the playoffs and a  lesser team is crowned.

So, bottom line: My hope is that if you don't have Fox Soccer Channel or can't find a game on Pay-Per-View, you'll head to your local Lion & Rose or check out the highlights on YouTube. Give "The Beautiful Game" a chance in whatever form you can, but try your damnedest to watch the English Premier League.

A stand-out occurrence of 2009 was discovering Local Coffee, a terrific coffee shop in the Stone Oak area of San Antonio. It is a simply-designed, quiet space that, in the first 6 weeks of its opening, became THE go-to spot for writing, conducting business and just relaxing. 

The secret is unrivaled coffee. The quality of the beans and the impeccable knowledge and care with which they are prepared results in a cup of coffee like none I've tasted before. I've spoken to the owner, Robbie Grubbs, on a number of occasions about various aspects of the coffee's preparation and there seems to be no end to the amount of small details that go into the path from plantation to enjoyment.

To illustrate, a number of employees did not make the cut the first couple weeks. I asked Robbie how this was possible: it's just coffee, right? The ones who did not make it did not understand Robbie's vision and standard of excellence. Eventually, he brought in a couple of folks with a huge amount of experience in one of the few coffee houses that share Robbie's high standards. One of the baristas was basically imported from Washington, DC. Unreasonable? Before you taste the coffee, you may think so. Afterwards, there is no question his close attention to detail is what is behind Local Coffee's quick success.

Local Coffee, as the name might suggest, is dedicated to "local made/local paid," healthy and eco-responsible. Nearly all of the interior build-out was done with reclaimed materials. All the lighting is environmentally friendly. The travelers -- the to-go coffee pitchers for businesses, etc. -- are made from recycled cardboard.  All their baked goods are from local businesses

They display art from local artists on an approximately one-month turnover. They also hosts quiet, tasteful acoustic sets from local musicians on Saturdays (as of this blogging, of course). 

So if you haven't tried Local Coffee, stop in. It's located at the southwest corner of Sonterra and Sigma. Look for the orange and black sign (also shown here).

With the new year only days away, it is time for us to consider resolutions. Though my sense of humor is well intact, I'm not one of those who finds breaking one's resolutions humorous.

For around a decade, I've given myself a limit of three resolutions as a way of better insuring I can keep my word. I begin one thing, end one and improve one. This system has not let me down. It is efficient and manageable.

This year I thought I'd go one step further, considering I have not been a perfect writer in 2009. This year, in addition to the "real" resolutions, I'll also include some sub-resolutions that are specific to writing.

What to begin
One day -- Wednesdays, I think -- will be submission days. I probably submitted 12 times in 2009. No excuses, that was not enough. The winner of this year's San Antonio Writers Guild Judy Award, Sanford Allen, had over 60 rejections in 2009. Rejections. Not total submissions. Only rejections. And, needless to say, he got his fair share of acceptances. As the founder of the Judy Award says at each of our once-a-month meetings, "You can't get published if you don't submit." Thus the cash prize she offers.

What to end
This one was a bit harder because everything I wanted to end really sounded like another "begin." So what did I do in 2009 (and before) that I needed to stop doing? Again, I'll make another reference to Sanford Allen who, in 2008, shared a list of practices he found in some publication or other that gave suggestions for how to keep distractions out of one's writing space. Near the top, if not the top itself, on the list was -- and I paraphrase -- "Turn off your browser BEFORE you write." Man is that me in a nutshell. For whatever reason, before I write, I have the nasty habit of checking my trash email -- my Yahoo! account -- for anything of interest. Sometimes doing so can take me a minute and sometimes it can erase a whole writing session. Somewhere deep in my psyche, the fear of failure/success/work/whatever is allowing this distraction in. In 2010, I am allowing it out.

What to change
This may not be totally fair but, in all honesty, I haven't given this idea all the room to breath it needs in order to be fairly judged successful or not. Detailed outlining for anything I write over 1k words. In 2009, I was so impressed with the outlining process, I am wanting to implement it with more seriousness going forward. Though it may end up not working out, or only working out for a time, I have found enough beneficial in creating detailed plot outlines that upping the practice, in my opinion, counts as a change.

So, my suggestion to you is this: in the last days of 2009, take careful inventory of your own writing habits and isolate those three things that will improve you as a writer. Decide, commit and reap the benefits. 

Have a great holiday season.

My mentee -- and let me say once again how much I truly hate the word -- finally got on her page and spoke to the world, so I'd like everyone to stop by and give her a quick read or her efforts will have been in vain and, well, you'll all be to blame, won't you now.

Click here to visit Rebecca's sparse page »

What do you get when you squeeze a pod?
Peas out.

I'm not normally a sci-fi buff but a copy of Phillip K. Dick's Blade Runner (Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep) had been calling out to me for years, so I finally opened it up. To be honest, I can't recall why I had the book in the first place. I loved the movie; it's one of my favorites of all time, but it wasn't the sci-fi or steam punk that hooked me. It was the desolation and quiet that I loved.

Being a bit of a mystic, I respected and listened to the fact that this book just fell in front of me recently.

It was an amazing read, possibly because it fits a particular tone I need for my current work. There is a sadness and drone-like quality to the lead character, a bounty hunter. He must also face the possibility of there being nothing greater than himself in the Universe, an abysmal prospect for most. All of this was handled well though surprisingly not with perfection which, in an odd way, comforted me, possibly because it heartens me I can achieve the stillness and emptiness I need for parts of my novel.

Despite the imperfection of the writing, I feel I may be entering a Phillip K. Dick stage. There's something intangible about his writing that I'm driven to learn, something that I haven't felt since reading Camus and Suskind in the 80s. Reading Dick's work has been a coming home of sorts.

My wife, Nadine is turning...well, turning tomorrow. It's her birthday! And she's pretty awesome. We've been married for more than 20 years now and I'd say she's half responsible for that rare feat in these decadent modern times.

As with any couple, we've had our rough and smooth times, but she's always been there. She's largely made me who I am today, a moral, somewhat centered person whereas, before, I was strongly not so. She continues to be a source of centering and pragmatic support when I tend to drift into my world of dreams. She's always non-judgmental when I am anything but toward her. And, as shallow as it probably is, she's never stopped caring about her appearance, has never embarrassed me in public or been anything but impressive to me and everyone she meets. A trophy wife of the perfect sort for my personal needs. Thank you and woo-hoo!

So, Happy Birthday Nadine. You smell like a bean! You are my sunshine.

After many hours of hard work (on my own time...waaaah) the new San Antonio Writers Guild website is done.

Okay. Here's the main reason why lately I haven't done the amount or quality of writing I normally produce. I've been designing a kit -- that's the shorts and jersey set for competitive cyclists -- for my son's team, Bicycle Heaven. He's been working there since he was legal to work and had been hanging out there, learning the ropes, a year before that, so I'm infinitely indebted to that elite bike shop for helping make my older boy less of a maniac than he is.

This is the first kit I've ever designed -- I'm only still at the mock-up stage, by the way -- and it has proven to be a challenge. Designing in two dimensions has its own set of obstacles and considerations that I barely think about anymore, having done it well for nearly a decade, but designing in three dimensions with the goal being a physical product and not a website is altogether another set of challenges. I put in 14 hours to get it to this stage and I'm still looking at half again that many to get it to the templated stage when FINAL final approval comes in from the sponsors. Regardless, I would do this again if given the opportunity since it's for a great cause and a great bunch of people.

Here's the front:

And here's the back: (and, yes, I realize the colors are juxtaposed on the shorts; it'll get fixed ;-)

Check out all that Bicycle Heaven has to offer by visiting the store at the corner of Stone Hue and Huebner here in San Antonio or click here to check out their wondermous site I designed for them a couple years back. Viva la Bicycle Heaven!

My critique group just picked up a wonderful addition in Joe McKinney, author of Dead City and countless other published and unpublished works of various lengths. Besides being an extraordinary author, he is also, and arguably more impressively, a San Antonio homicide detective, a vocation that lends his disturbing stories authenticity that can't be gained from a second-hand interview.

I initially met Joe when he guest spoke at the San Antonio Writers Guild, sharing with us his history, writing  techniques and work habits. He immediately impressed me with his calm and linear thinking, something he no-doubt cultivated as a skill necessary to his unique line of work.

Only writing with an eye on getting published since 2005, Joe has followed a fast path to success writing late into many evenings only to wake early for another day of sleuthing. His dedication and focus are palpable when in his presence.

His added insight has been valuable to all of us. I feared we as a group might not be able to keep up with his quality and prolificacy; however, I've since found that he is indeed a mortal, eager to better his writing just like the rest of us. He seems satisfied with his experience thus far. He has confided he was not formerly someone who had faith that a group setting would be comfortable or beneficial but that he found our sessions to be both.

So again a warm welcome to Joe. Check him out in more depth at JoeMcKinney.net. And be sure to support his work. Click here to buy Dead City.

I was looking at my Google Analytics stats from a couple days ago and was surprised to find a huge spike in visitors. I looked at the search terms that had led so many supposed fiction enthusiasts to my doorstep and found a new phrase on the list:

Thomas McAuley drugs

I slowly raised my hand to ask for an explanation but, being a work-from-home web designer surrounded only by dogs and cats, no one called on me. It would be up to me to get to the bottom of my new association with the dark side. In a handful of clicks I found this news item: 

Drugs bust man facing execution

Wednesday, 29 April 2009

A Belfast man could be facing a death sentence in Thailand after being arrested and accused of dealing in a cocktail of drugs in a beach resort.

Thomas McAuley, 48, was allegedly caught in a police sting operation in the Thai resort of Pattaya, 100 miles east of Bangkok this week. Thai police say he was dealing in crystal ice, methamphetamines, known locally as ‘yaa baa’ — the mad drug — and also opium and cannabis.

Click for the rest of the story »

So, again, if you've happened to Google me and have stumbled across an overabundance of drug references, fear not. I am NOT facing the death penalty...yet.

I'm a genetics/evolutionary buff, so when I ran across this insane, acid-driven clip, I could not but share it with all my nerd brethren.

Here is the description provided by the YouTube user who originally found and posted it:

Can you imagine the amount of coordination and raw drug force this took to organize? Even if you're not into chemistry and the science behind RNA's path through protein synthesis, please enjoy it for its historical significance.

And the next time you see a 60-something person, shake his/her hand for making it through that era with their life. Give them a quick scan too. I'm confident you'll find they've developed a better fashion sense as well, cause for further congratulations.

Go Peptide Bonding!!!