W.I.P. Wednesday (it's this great new game I'm playing)

First off, to my writer buddies who don't already participate in WIP Wednesday -- you better jump on in. Cuz it's a really cool idea.

In fact, it's so cool, that if your eyeballs beheld any part of the previous two sentences, you might as well consider yourself tagged, cuz you are now officially playing.

I first noticed Matt Betts and Mercedes Yardley doing it, so I asked about it, and they directed me here, which is where a nice lady named Kate Karyus Quinn blogs, and hosts the thing and has this link about WIP Wednesday. Click that last one to learn the deal and get the cool graphic.

So... here's what's up with my 'work in progress':

I mentioned a couple posts back about how I've been writing fifteen to seventeen pages a day, and for the most part, I've been able to sustain that momentum. About four days a week anyway. Sometimes I can't avoid falling asleep -- sometimes for the better part of the day. And then I have to go and do actual work until midnight. (But at least it translates into actual cash money.)

Anyway. Strangely enough, I don't think I've ever mentioned this particular project on my blog before. It's called 'Talonshale', it's about the distant future of gaming, and what role-playing games would be like with almost unlimited technology. No, I haven't seen 'Gamer', but to tell you the truth, it offends me that they've made a movie out of my idea so quickly this time. Luckily mine's also a murder mystery -- a murder mystery for teenage dudes.

Who did it? Was it a hacker? Was it a computer glitch? Was it another player trying to make it look a glitch? There's only one way to find out, my friends -- wait another couple weeks and volunteer to be a beta reader.

Cuz yeah, my plan is for Talonshale to wind up around 65 - 70k words. Right now I'm at 50, and I'm thinking of setting the goal of finishing the first draft by next Friday. What do you think -- can I do it?

For those people who've been asking about Fiersom's Brood, I've got some bad news. Submissions are drawing to a close. Which I can only assume means no acquisitions editors are teenage dudes. This, in turn, means that my agent will be looking for my next project in the very near future, and my hope is that Talonshale blows him away.

...and then subsequently blows away the grown up editors, and grown up publishers, and ultimately -- teenage-dudes that still like to read.

Montague Class of 1989 -- 20 year reunion

So I understand that individual experiences might vary, but I’m gonna give you my take on our twenty year, high-school reunion:

For starters, there were some dudes I was hoping to see there that couldn’t make it. You dudes know who you dudes are. Anyway, knowing they weren’t going to be there, I was kind of disappointed. I told Cindy, “Yeah, you know, maybe we won’t hang around that long. Maybe we’ll pick up the kids early and go home and watch a movie or something.”

Then BAM! Seven hours passed in a heartbeat.

I don’t know about anybody else, but I think that our reunion could’ve lasted seventy hours and none of would have even felt remotely “caught up”. Something kind of weird happened at the Chamber Bar this last Saturday night, and I don’t think I was the only one who noticed. Because I had a bunch of conversations that went something like this:

“Isn’t this weird?”

“Yeah – weird.”

“It’s great though.”

“Yeah, great.”

“But weird.”

So later on, I really had to get that sucker figured out (‘later on’ being later that night while I was laying awake until 5 AM because of the thirty-two cups of coffee I drank at the reunion (but Cindy had fun)). Point is: I think I finally figured out what we were trying to express.

Bottom line: we’re pushing forty. Pushing it hard. Most of us have jobs and kids and mortgages, and for the past twenty years, these things have occupied our full attention. Meanwhile, the things we cared about for the first twenty years of our lives have almost completely faded. Like the people we shared those years with – the kids we grew up with. So on Saturday night, even though we were all strangers in a sense, from different towns and states and different walks of life, just for that one night, we kind of magically reconnected with that first half of our lives. Leprechauns and faeries sprinkled glittery sparkles all through the air, and we all de-aged twenty years. We became those same high-schoolers again, far removed from our jobs and kids and mortgages, just together in one place, enjoying one another’s company like a big, sweet mug of gut-warming hot chocolate.

Which is a goofy and gay way of saying it, but that’s kind of what it was like – hot chocolate. You couldn’t call it pickle juice or anything because I never really noticed anybody sitting shunned in the corner. So yeah… goofy or not, hopefully… it was hot chocolate all around.

And that’s my take.

Any other 89’s out there want to add anything?

Whiskey in the Jar

So I've been writing like mad. Fifteen to seventeen pages a day for the past two weeks. Today I was going to shoot for twenty-plus pages, because I took the day off work to attend my favorite event of the year, the Michigan Irish Music Festival, (To see me in action at the MIMF, click here, and here), but I have yet to sit down with my little writing computer.

I'm just too psyched about this weekend.

So after I found this song online, I made this video instead.

Enjoy.