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!!!

A friend of mine introduced me to Phyllis Weil, a sweet woman who had written a book about a moving religious experience. Come Forth as Gold went to print at the end of August and is now available for direct order

Though I'm not the most traditionally religious person you're bound to meet, I was proud to give Phyllis a design that really seemed to brighten her day.

I know how difficult completing a book is and I could hear in her voice how proud she was to see the finished product in print.

If you're a Christian looking for an inspirational religious memoir, contact Phyllis Weil or contact me for her information. Soon the book will be available in Christian bookstores in the Middle Tennessee. If enough copies sell, Phyllis might be picked up by a publisher and distributed in Christian bookstores in a wider area.

One of my life-long friends -- who will remain unnamed -- runs one of the most successful Second Life real estate companies. Earlier this year, he asked me to brand VirtualWorldi with a srong logo that would communicate to Second LIfe users and would read at different sizes and resolutions. 

I was please to learn from him today that his first ad is up and running. Whether or not you are a participant in Second Life, I think you'll find the ad both professional and striking. Not being a participant myself, I find the whole thing fascinating and surreal.

Enjoy the ad and pay specail attention to the logo at the end. Pause it and digest it. Kidding, of course, but I'm proud of it. Apparently, the logo appears in a number of place in Second Life that I haven't seen.

To contact VirtualWorldi you can:

• IM Phobos Jamberoo
• or visit them at www.virtualworldi.com

Thank the Lord (or whatever) for coffee houses. 

Today, I'm sitting with my older boy, Addison. We're at a coffee house. This last weekend, Nadine (my lovely wife) and I hung out at our favorite place, the local bookstore. Where did we sit to look through our prospective purchases? A coffee house. My younger son, Ian, and i sat in a coffee house toward the end of the school year last Spring and made up weird, funny alternate rules to the classic card game, War. The day after, he shared with his teacher how much fun he had had on our "date."

I've spent hundreds of hours in coffee house during my return to writing. The places feel like familiar rooms in my house, if not members of my family. I'm curious to see how I'll think about coffee houses when I'm older, looking back on my life.

The standouts coffee houses have been Cafeggio's, Olmos Cafe, La Taza and, shamefully, various Starbucks locations around San Antonio. Like Microsoft, Starbucks can't be avoided.

Cafeggio's in the Stone Oak area of San Antonio. It was a terrific, independent coffee house about a mile from home. And I say "was" because Addison and I drove by it today and it, finally, has failed. You see, though it was a great place at first -- great help, great coffee, great seating and atmosphere (if a little to bright for glossy screens at certain times of the day) -- once it was sold by the original owners, the shine went away. The coffee was good, but they moved the furniture around. Overnight, there wasn't a single comfortable place to plug in a laptop. And you couldn't tell the management because no one spoke English better than a tourist. Then again, when the second people sold it, it got even worse. The one saving grace, the coffee, became undrinkable with the third group of mutated owners. What were they thinking.  It was bitter-sweet to see the place close, but, given the horrid quality of the place at the end, its failure was inevitable. Regardless, Cafeggio's will always be closer to my heart than any other coffee house in San Antonio, and perhaps any coffee house period, because it was the one where I got my start on my serious phase of writing.

Next is Olmos Cafe, another fine coffee shop in the Olmos area of San Antonio. I'm certain Olmos Cafe would have been my favorite coffee house were it not a 20-minute drive away. Hands down, Olmos Cafe has the best interior design, music selection, artistic and tasteful drinks and best baked snacks of any coffee house I've visited in San Antonio. It is a modern, masculine, peaceful space with comfortable couches, traditional tables and cubicle-line booths for more concentrated laptop work.

My favorite current go-to coffee house is La Taza at Brook Hollow and 281 North. It's may bring to mind a country breakfast-oriented restaurant with its too bright interior and nowhere-close-to-modern furniture, but there's a great, living room vibe I haven't found before in a city setting. In fact, La Taza reminds me of Buffalo River Coffee House in Hohenwald, Tennessee, which looks exactly like you'd expect a coffee house 30-minutes away from other civilization to look.

And Starbucks. You can't avoid them. You've all seen them. They are the McDonald's of coffee houses: predictable, acceptable drinks and snacks, safe music, generic furniture, neurotic staff (did I say that?). It's the rest stop on a long trip. You know they'll be there on your way if you can just hold it long enough, but they're not the best place you've ever stopped.

And now I'm finishing up this blog. It's 9pm and I don't feel remotely like going to bed. It's the coffee. I guess it's not a total loss though. I get to think about the conversation and the quiet Addison and I spent at yet another coffee house today.

A year ago, I kept my nose in one story: Rain of a Southern Sun. Today, I have more good starts on promising stories than I can handle. Today, I finally got walled in with critique stacks. I had to jump to escape my office.

in the editing/reworking stage:

• Double-Take: Mr. Salley is late for an important meeting when he bumps into an interesting character from his past. Now, as then, he is faced with a choice, continue or follow.
   
• Change: Skyyt (pronounced "skit") has lost everything to a Ponzi scheme. His next piece of art is dedicated to the man who orchestrated the crime against him.
   
• Sugar Rush: God chose Tricia at the fair, of all places. She's sure of it. The fortune-teller must have God's message, right?
   
• No Good Deed: Mr. Proctor didn't exist this morning but now he does. Normal life was what he wanted but the transition from there to here proves more difficult than he imagined. And the dogs keep looking at him.
   
• The Need to Split: Gunlon the Dwarf is good at what he does and has never had to consider what sort of vacation might suit him until now.
   
• Man in a Box: There has to be a reason a man awakens in horrific pain in a tiny room with no windows, no door and lit by an invisible source. Maybe if he figures out why there's a chicken on the other side of the wall.

There may be a couple more hidden somewhere. I know there is a drabble-length story in the works, but I'm not lumping those into the same batch.

When I went to the grocery store today -- a super store -- I picked up an accordion file folder where I'll keep all in-progress works and their associated notes. My book bag has always been spacious, but now that I have my thin Mac, I have even more room, so doing so shouldn't be a problem.

Unfortunately I need to carry some non-writing-related work into the weekend and Nadine and I will be belatedly celebrating our 20th Anniversary, so I may not have as much time as I would have hoped to make substantial progress on one or a few of these. (I hold out no hope for making progress on all of them.)

I haven't mentioned it enough -- and probably should have -- that, when I'm not traipsing around as a writer, I work as a web designer / developer for ICG Link, Inc., a top notch web design and web hosting company out of Brentwood, TN.

In that role, I design new websites, redesign websites that have aged or are ready for the next level. One of my favorite tasks is creating logos. In fact logos and cd covers are probably the two biggest reasons folks in my age bracket got interested in design in the first place. Logo design is something I don't get to do as often as I would like, so when the chance comes along every now and again, I dive in with a passion.

Hear1st, either a sister or a child company of HearingPlanet.com, requested a logo redesign last week and here's the finished piece. They are a site that offers inexpensive medium-to-high-end hearing aids through their enormous network of audiologists across the company. The logo had to communicate "inexpensive" but not "cheap," "high-end" but not "out of range" as well as communicate the industry the company is in: hearing, sound, health.

For those who don't know about typography, some words are better suited to stylization than others. It just so happens, the word "hear" is one of those words that, regardless how it is written -- all caps, initial caps, lower case, vertical (never a good idea) or whatever -- it always looks weak. Trust me on this. "h" is horrible to work with. I could go on and on.

Bottom line I had fun coming up with this. The graded blue (high-end) counters the orange (affordable) and the curved lines, in a lower position relative to the type, read as sound waves without stealing attention from the company name. I was very happy with the outcome and the client signed off on it. A good half day's work.

The 4th is meant to be a time spent with family. In that regard alone, our family's holiday was not a disappointment.

My older son had a crit (criterium race, cylcing) around 8am. He's hot off a cycling development camp and wa eager to test his new skills in a Cat 4/5 race. That's a race against beginning racers and those in the level just above them. He's been steadily improving his finishes: top-5 finishes are becoming the norm.

With one lap to go, my fatherly nerves kicked in

The final stretch. A sprint finish. My boy is sandwiched between two teammates from an opposing Austin team. The idiot on his right accelerates and veers left to squeeze him out. My boy has learned how to lean and nudge so he applies the skill -- likely to the older rider's surprise and disappointment -- and finishes 3rd.

The bad news is he finishes, not on his bike but backwards in the air. He breaks his collarbone and ends up (for now) being disqualified. The other guy should have been (and may still end up being) disqualified; however, he was able to protest in the 15 minutes following the race and my boy, on his way to the local emergency room, was not. I'm confident, he will be vindicated in the end.

He suffered abbrasions to the palm, wrist, both elbows, left shoulder and right shin. Of course, being a boy of (nearly) 17, he's more disturbed by the disqualification and the points missed out on as a result.

As a father, I could handle the injury. I saw it happen and realized, though his collar bone was broken, there was no sign of spinal injury or serious breaks.

My wife, on the other hand, could only imagine her boy's condition, so she took the news harder. To make matters worse, after she hung up with me, the sad news came that her mother had died. Elsie had been fighting a third bout with cancer in the last two years. Finally, three or so months ago, she had a series of minor strokes which had increasingly complicating effects. In the last few weeks, there was no Elsie left. The end was not surpring, but the period at the end of the sentence brings with it a clearer point of view.

So this holiday weekend has been one of worry and grieving. My boy is doing fine, even to the point he could bake a batch of delicious chocolate chip cookies. And my wife is doing well considering the situation. She leaves for Florida early tomorrow morning.

We did end up seeing some impressive fireworks though. Six Flags over San Antonio can't hide their show, so thousands of us line roads for miles around the park. The funny thing is a large church near us happened to have an equally impressive display so we were treated to that on our slow drive home. It was close enough, we could have stayed home the whole time. Ah well.

My iPod nano is a "magic stick." It is a Heath bar of music. It is my new best friend.

If you didn't know, I'm a complete music nut since the age of...well, young...always. My folks used to listen to Seals and Crofts, the Carpenters, Leo Kottke, Dolly Parton, James Taylor, any more good ones as we drove hour upon hour across America on vacations. We'd sing endlessly. We'd make up songs. A real nerdy, artsy upbringing in many ways.

The real change for me came when I first realized how crappy my sister's taste in music was. It probably wasn't her taste as I think back on it but at the time I couldn't wrap my head around why someone would listen to the Bee Gees, Styx and Peter Frampton. And, growing up and wanting to be my own boy, I didn't want to listen to the same stuff my parents listened to. When I first heard the exquisitely produced Double Vision by Foreigner (don't laugh yet) I realized there was more out there than the crap pop my sister was listening to even if Foreigner wouldn't be the band to bite me per se.

A string of events occurred in quick succession:

• I heard Heart of Glass by Blondie and bought the single -- bite 1
• I followed my first videos show Pop Clips and discovered Split Enz and bought True Colors -- bite 2
• I heard Rush's Tom Sawyer -- bite 3
• In a religious moment, I heard Adam and the Ants' Stand and Deliver -- bite 4 (the big bite)
• I followed up on this mysterious David Bowie character -- a fatal bite
• Seeing my reaction to it, an already well-entrenched music nut friend of my sister's introduced me to early Men Without Hats, Joy Division, some unsigned New York bands that I never got their names, and Roxy Music, -- bitten deep and wholly

I would never look back. Since those early years -- late 70s early 80s -- I've amassed a ridiculous collection of music now three times: albums, cassettes then CDs.

The bottom line is, when I received my iPod on Father's Day a week or so ago, I spent the following week converting my CDs to iTunes files, correcting data, grouping, finding cover art and Geniusing the hell out the collection to make thrilling playlists.

It was a week well spent.

Regarding Black Metal and Death Metal

Along with the iPod, my family got me an iTunes gift card which I spent almost instantly on Meshuggah's Obzen and Gorgoroth's Ad Majorem Sathanas Glorium.

I have spent the last six months pouring through the black/death metal genre and have found my personal favorites:

• Best black metal: Gorogoroth
• Best death metal: Amon Amarth
• Best black/death metal from a musician's standpoint: Meshuggah
• Best recent black/death metal album: (Tie) The Dethalbum by Dethklok or Twilight of the Thunder Gods by Amon Amarth
• Best genre guitarist: Ese (Windir and Vreid) for a terrific guitar sound and style. Right to the heart.
• Vocalist: Gaahl of Gorgoroth for his lyrics, delivery and his unapologetic exit from the closet.
• Drummer: Tomas Haake (like he needs more recognition)

Honorable mention goes to Dave Mustaine, Venom and countless misguided Norwegians without whom the genre would not have existed.

Now I can return to my normal listening habits, integrating black/death metal in a natural fashion.

So I've been writing seriously since the 2006ish and only now does it come out over the phone that my mom wrote a children's book some odd years ago. She was here for nearly three months and she knows I've been writing a children's book since the beginning of the year and that little nugget never came up? Weird.

I asked her what it was about, what she did with it at the time, where is it now? Her answers: I can't remember but I'll try to think about it; I submitted it to one magazine, received a rejection and figured -- her words -- "I guess this isn't the right thing for me"; and I think I threw it out somewhere along the way.

Crap, drat and c'mon!

I told her, knowing what I know now about rejections, that they are signs of a soon-to-be-successful author in many cases, that she shouldn't have stopped submitting. Certainly she shouldn't have taken as a sign she wasn't a good writer, and, dear God, she shouldn't have thrown it away. I can't fathom that last one.

I really want to know what it was about. Mom is a strange animal when it comes to things like this. I've told her many times how much I enjoyed her writing when I was in Basic in '86, how her ability surprised and pleased me. My guess is that's the last I'll hear about it unless I press her further.