Meanwhile…

Vacation, amIright? I spent the last couple of weeks wrangling in-laws and seeing friends I don’t see nearly enough and playing lots of Rock Band.

Yes, I created Virtuoso Of The Serious Combat on Rock Band, so if you’d like to get into a drum-off with the Iron Acrobat, match guitars with the Secret Earl that Grasps, or sing a duet with the Eighth Unspeakable Warden, this is something we can make happen.

Saw Up in the Air, which was excellent, but didn’t get to see Sherlock Holmes (don’t worry, I will). Drooled over Star Trek on Blu-Ray. Went to a hockey game. Tinkered on the cars a bit.

But last night before bed I felt the writing urge start to hit. Ideas percolated. That part of me that needs to write was letting me know it’s time to get back to work.

Goals for the year:

• Some rejection letters from pro markets. As Erin indicated a few weeks ago, our writing group has decided to focus on producing stories that might be publishable at the pro level. Having just received a loss at the latest Writers of the Future, I feel like I’m a step ahead on this one.
• More writing in general. I don’t feel I was particularly productive this past year, for whatever reason. I need to get back to pumping out lots of writing exercises, as that’s usually where I get my published flash pieces from. I want to keep up my goal of submitting at least one story a month somewhere. Since I set that goal late last year I’ve basically just been meeting the minimum, which really isn’t enough.
• Reading more. I am by no means a slow reader, but damn it takes me forever to get anything read nowadays. I need to make more time for that, because it’s an integral part of being a good writer.
• Finally finish revising several stories I’ve got gathering dust. I have a few stories that I’ve gotten great notes on from the writing group that are just sitting around. I need to finish revising them. In particular I want to finish my rewrite of my Dr. Strange-style urban fantasy, and decide what to do with my feature-length Chuck Chaykin story.

Crazy! I’m still trying to catch up. Sometimes it seems like a vacation just means doing twice as much work and being twice as stressed the week after you get back.

Star Trek rocked. I had the pleasure of seeing it in the Arclight Dome in Hollywood, surely one of the best theaters on the planet. I thought it was a pretty pretty movie full of pretty pretty people, and a blast to experience. Then I saw it again a few days later on my birthday and enjoyed it even more. I could go on about it, but I feel like all the discussion probably happened while I was away. Suffice to say I loved it.

(Oh, yes, I aged a year in a mere day on the 14th. Talk about time dilation. Birthdays ceased to have much meaning for me after they allowed me to start drinking legally, so I don’t really think about it anymore.)

My chosen traveling reading material was solid. Torso was quite good (though my copy kind of fell apart while I was reading it, which is irritating). Loyola Chin and the San Pelligran Order was also quite enjoyable, though I liked American Born Chinese more. Strangers in Paradise I only got through some of, and I’m still on the fence about. If I have any recommendations there, it’s to skip the first volume (the first three issues). They’re a little more, I dunno, cartoony than I was expecting, and not really to my taste. But between those initial issues and the next volume, Moore really refined his style and the mood of the book. I’m digging it so far. We’ll see if it interests me enough to continue past the third trade.

One of the highlights of my trip was visiting the Echo Park Time Travel Mart in LA. The Time Travel Mart is part of a network of children’s writing centers. I nabbed one of the little chapbooks full of stories written by the kids there about how much they hate writing. It seemed appropriate.

There are various other such themed stores around the country, if there’s one nearby you should check it out (I’m aching to swing by the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. next time I’m in New York). If I’d known about the one in San Francisco I would have gone there and gotten some pirate booty while we were in town.

California was awesome. Great weather, good times had with good friends, and sense of irony still firmly in place. That is a Los Angeles joke, but not a very good one. San Francisco was amazing, and has moved up near (or possibly at) the top of coolest places I’d love to move to were money and current state of life not an issue.

I’m still trying to catch up on everything that happened while I was gone, but we should be returning to our regularly scheduled programming momentarily.

I doubt I’ll get a chance to post anything tomorrow, so I’ll just do it now. Tomorrow morning I’ll be hopping on a flight to California, and won’t be home until the 14th, over a week from now. Communication will be spotty, but I will especially try to check in next Monday, when I have a story go live over at Every Day Fiction. I’ll probably set up a post for that to appear automatically if I can figure that out.

My in-flight reading material:

Torso, by Brian Michael Bendis and Marc Andreyko. A true crime novel about a serial killer case Elliot Ness investigated after all that Chicago business. Looking forward to this one. I met Andreyko a couple years ago and he seemed like a pretty cool guy, and I’ve enjoyed most everything Bendis has written.

Strangers in Paradise, volumes 1-3, by Terry Moore. I don’t really know what this is about, but all I hear is great things, and I’m greatly enjoying his current series, Echo.

Loyola Chin and the San Peligran Order, by Gene Yang. I’m a huge fan of his American Born Chinese, which I heartily recommend to anyone who is a fan of things that are good. You know who you are.

So I suppose that will be it for the next week or so. How will you all get by without me? I don’t know, but don’t tell me. All my illusions will be shattered!

According to the May Table of Contents, “The Squeeze” will be going up over at Every Day Fiction on the 11th. It’ll be a funny little story to start your week. Unfortunately that’s right in the middle of my vacation, so I won’t be around to really see the response. I’ll do my best to check in, though.

Yes, I’ll be going on vacation next week, starting on Wednesday. The wife and I are California bound. We’ll meet up with friends in LA and drive up to San Francisco. As per local law, I will be wearing flowers in my hair.

This weekend will be crammed with chores and preparation for the vacation, but I will find some time to go see the Wolverine film. I believe we have some free passes around here somewhere, and this seems a good time to use them.

The formula for superhero films is always that the more characters you add, the worse it gets. I don’t get why the studios still haven’t learned this. Wolverine seems to be adding as many unnecessary characters as possible to an already complex origin story, virtually guaranteeing disaster. Wolverine is one of those characters who can be fun even in a bad story, so I think it should still be at least moderately entertaining.