Goddamn, I know some talented people.

Like roots music? Check out Betsy Badwater and Lang Hollowman.

Seriously, who has names like that? I need a name like that.

Love:



And here, have a Suitcase Full of Whiskey:

After working there three and a half years, the Library has offered me full-time status.

I, obviously, said yes.

This will be the first time in EVER I have had benefits from a job. I don't know what any of it entails.* HR will talk to me about it when I sign the paperwork.

Starting June 3rd, I will be a full time Readers' Advisor.

Boo.
and
Yah.















*originally typed "entrails"

I am an ass.

I am a selfish jackass.

I hope to not be a selfish jackass in the future. It's just...there's not much time left. 12 days. I have twelve days until I told myself the novel would be done.

And it will be.

But I am coming down to the GD line, folks.

In my assery, I'm ignoring emails, not keeping up with journals, RSS feeds my own blog, Tumblr. Everything. Everything except the library is put on hold. I even made sure that this week I only work one bar shift. Same for next week. Nothing is doing except for library work and writing work. I am putting friends and family aside for a little bit. I am going to miss a tiny nephew's birthday party on Sunday. I know. I am a jackass. But Sunday is the only day off I have in the next 12 days. I need it. Gotta finish a lot that day.

This will not happen every time I get entrenched in a novel. Just this one. I have to prove to myself that I can finish something longer than a damn 50 page story. This shit is getting done May 22nd.

I frikkin can't wait to write something that is contemporary. That is not following 5 different stories. That I don't have to research every other page if there were gutters, sewers and buttons invented yet. I had to read about oven and toilet history two days ago to see if I could casually make reference to them. GAH. Can't wait to write something modern. I can't wait to READ and WATCH a million things. (Avengers, Ides of March, Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, Hesher, My Week with Marilyn, A Dangerous Method, Castle, Fringe, Unbroken, Railsea, Magic Words, Let's Pretend This Never Happened, THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE, The New Jim Crow, Advance Man, Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist, In Other Worlds, The Heroes, Blackbirds - to name only a few of the STACK!). I especially can't wait to read a few of the drafts that have stacked up from friends. And then holy ef, WISCON is this month. I have a reading with Shira Lipkin, Rose Lemberg and Alex Dally Macfarlane on Saturday. I have no idea what excerpt I'm going with. YARP!

Postcards and letters will abound at the end of the month.

I thank you all for your patience and encouragement in my assery.

Hi.

I interviewed Myke Cole for Black Gate.

Read the interview here.

You can buy his first novel, SHADOW OPS:  Control Point, here. Or here. Or here.

So I hear you have ten bucks. Eh? Everyone has ten bucks. Or give it a week until payday and then you have ten bucks.

Here is what you should do with your ten bucks. You should buy C.S.E. Cooney's NEW POETRY BOOK!

What the hell, man?

I am a freak.

I've been listening to the same eleven songs on Grooveshark for about a month now. Looks like it's gonna stay that way.

I like to write with music on. I like the wall of sound. But it has to be a wall of sound I'm familiar with so I'm not distracted by learning a new band or album.

Here's what I've been writing to:

Don't Fear the Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult
Burning for You - Blue Oyster Cult
Caught Up in You - .38 Special
Hold on Loosely - .38 Special
Back in Black - AC/DC
Highway to Hell - AC/DC
You Shook Me All Night Long - AC/DC
Hell's Bells - AC/DC
Cuts You Up - Peter Murphy
Temple of Love - Sisters of Mercy
She Sells Sanctuary - The Cult

It's been working. Before this it was a month of Rammstein and Finntroll. All foreign metal, all the time.

That is all.

***EDIT***
Ten minutes after I wrote this I was all....hmm. Finntroll. I like Finntroll.

Back on the foreign metal while writing kick.

:: proceeds back to novel writing ::

It has been much too long since I have seen Rancid.

Want.

Guess who's kicking goddamn hella fat-bottomed book ass?

ME ME ME ME ME

I don't know what that meant.

Or maybe I do.

My book is a big fat-bottomed ass. And I'm kicking it.

And big gorgeous fat-bottomed asses are a good thing. Just ask Freddie Mercury.

I have 20 days. TWENTY DAYS until I am done.

If all stays on schedule. Which it is. Sort of. Somewhat. I'm only a little behind. The smallest crack of panic, but I'm good. I am mostly really damn good. And that panic only comes from losing last week to EPIC ILLNESS. Ok. No. Not epic. Epic would be my eyeballs shot blood and my tongue turned into a unicorn and I woke up with a Quato. None of these things happened. BUT CRAP. Crap. Here's how it went down, Monday I had a headache. Tuesday it went to throat monkeys. Wednesday my skin hurt and fever death kill UGH. Onward, etc. It was a shitty week and I got nothing done. I didn't even watch TV. Well, I watched the new 3 Musketeers movie and - if you happened to wonder what the skeleton of Alexander Dumas was doing last Thursday - he was at my pad slamming his bones against my TV and spitefully whizzing on my DVD player. Long dead and completely dehydrated, it was but a sad powder he pissed onto the DVD, but still, I couldn't have agreed with him more. It sucked. Way to ef in the ear a badass story. Pff. Hollywood. Assholes.

Back to, I lost a week, but it's ok. I'm doing ok.

BUT 20 DAYS?

That's insane. I'm on schedule and I will have a completed novel.

20 DAYS?
oi.

And it's still being fun.

*

A strange thought trend that I have had to deal with lately goes like this:

1.  Oh my god, my novel is almost done.
2.  Oh my god, people are actually going to read it.
3.  Oh my god, WHAT IF I'M NOT AS BRILLIANT AS I THINK I AM?

Inevitably, I say to myself, "PFF, stop thinking about your readers and think about the story." and "PFFF! Not brilliant? NOT BRILLIANT? Of course you are!"

I know this novel isn't perfect. But I do think it is good. Damn good, and Sarah Winchester's backstory is something that hasn't been written about extensively, especially in fiction. Which, wow, yeah, this novel is historical fiction, but damn I am taking a lot of liberties in making up entire worlds of information.

But I came to the point with this novel where I was busted. I didn't believe in it anymore because I didn't believe in myself. I didn't believe I could finish it. I didn't believe anyone would want it if I did. Mainly, somewhere around 25 or 26, I just didn't know if I was a writer anymore. I wrote, but not often enough. I wasn't getting anything published. I was sick of working dead end jobs, joyful as they might be at used bookstores or otherwise, that made me no money. I thought I needed to "grow up." To get a "real" job. I got rid of some band shirts (BAD IDEA). I tried to buy "nice" clothes.

This was ridiculous. It wasn't true to me. I was trying to find a spot for myself in the Great Big World.

I was in a bad mojo cycle. Thinking bad. Writing bad. Doing bad. Or worse than doing bad, doing nothing. Creating nothing.

Here is what happens when I think I need to "grow up" or become a "professional" with "prospects"...I move to fucking Osaka with my boyfriend.

WTF?

I know. Running away to another country totally grown up, right?

Uh. Hmm.

I did find a "real" job. As an English teacher, but didn't end up getting to actually do it. I was in Japan 3 months. Found the job....and then didn't get the certificate of eligibility (first step in visa process) until months after I already had to return to the U.S. because my 3 month tourist visa was up. 

Here is the hilarious thing about this debacle, while in Japan, I job searched and wrote and watched pirated TV on the internet. That's all I did. Yes, yes, I also saw rad shit like this:




























 






















































and I went to bars the size of coffee tables and had a badass, albeit somewhat alienated lonely time in a foreign country....

but I wrote. A lot.

Because that's who I frikkin am. A writer. It's what I do. I finally nailed it into my head. I didn't question it anymore. I told myself, I am a writer. I want to do this. I am already doing this so I want to do it for real. I am going to work at it. Writing is not inspiration and romanticism. It is your ass in the chair and work.

Going to Japan is what got me back on track with writing. And then getting home from Japan and having four months wherein I scrounged everywhere for a job, from publishing houses to bars (see the common theme of books and liqour in my work history?), I got back on track with my novel.

In the three years since Japan, I worked a hella lot at two libraries, picked up a bar job and, very soon, will have finished a novel.

I came up with the mantra "No time for self doubt" and stuck to it. I also came to the conclusion that I would rather be a poor writer than a rich whatever-the-hell-professional.

Know what? Negative thinking gets shit done. Zilch. Nothing. Neither does running away from who you are, even if who you are doesn't immediately lead to money sacks and gold bricks.

Being happy isn't easy.
Being happy with my writing isn't always easy.
Life is work. Being happy is work. Writing is work.

And worrying what others think about you? That...that is some stupid shit. It just takes up brain space that would be better placed elsewhere. Like on the zillion or so short stories I wanna write in 20 DAYS when the novel is done.

*

Did I mention, MY NOVEL IS GOING TO BE  DONE IN 20 DAYS?

OH MY FRIKKIN STARS.

There will be the motherload of dance parties, only ever topped by the glitter bomb tastic dance fest that occurs when I sell the thing.

*

This held a lot more personal history than I usually put on this blog and I'm not sure it was all even coherent, but what the hell, I'm devil may care. I'mna leave it up. I got a novel to write. I can't be dickering around on LJ all day.

Later yo.

In the kitchen. Must. Go. To. Kitchen.

BRB.

:: sits back down ::
:: sips hazelnut coffee ::

Mmm. Yes. Ok. Life can continue.

I have virtuously started off the day with oatmeal containing chia seeds, flaxseed meal and only the hintiest nom of brown sugar. Later I will have a mega green smoothie. Go me. For now, goddamn right I'm having coffee.

Here is a trend you might notice. I drink coffee, a lot of coffee, when I'm on a writing tear. When it's going good. Real good. The past month of writing has gone awesome. I have 32 DAYS LEFT of the Nellie Bly Challenge. The novel is getting done at great speed. Well...at mostly great speed. I'm perpetually 20 pages behind where I want to be, but my ass is in the chair every day and pages are added.

It will be done by WisCon! There will be much celebration.

Elsewise, I got nothing doing. Lots of coffee. Lots of writing. Lots of library and bar work.

Lots of cool art too. Here, have some.

Sune Johnsson, Hjalmar Nyberg, Nyåker, 1956
 

































































The photography of Nicholas Alan Cope and Dustin Edward Arnold:

I'm reading Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer for the Library's book club next month.

Ye gods, it's going to be a hard discussion to facilitate fairly.

Every other page I'm like WTF?

or ASSHOLES.

or SEXIST ASSHOLES.

or PATRIARCHAL LYING ASSHOLES.

I'm about 200 some odd pages in.

I have to settle down. I have to quit being so goddamned judgey.

If your faith makes you a better person, then good for you. Keep your faith.

If your faith demands that you kill the twenty-something wife and child of your brother because "God revealed it to you" because she was a "bitch" who wasn't into plural marriage, then you are an evil, delusional son of a bitch and deserve the nuthouse or jail.

I'm going to have to read some faith-positive books to balance myself out after this one...because right now, right now all I got is interpretive spectacles, peep stones, a religious founder who cheated on his wife repeatedly and then made a divine commandment out of it, blood that's beyond "saving," sacred underpants and women who (even today) can be "endowed with priesthood power," but Joseph Smith forbid they actually become priests. No. Of course they can't. Priests are men. Only men. At least in the largest faction of Mormonism.

Anyways. I got half a book to go and hopefully my head won't explode.