Novocaine

Feeling a tad spacy right now. Probably from the novocaine I had at the dentist's. Sigh. Stupid cavities. Stupid fillings. I just wanted to share with you all an ad I heard on the radio this morning. So there I am, driving home from the dentist, listening to talk radio. The ads come on, and they're talking about how hard it is sometimes to find space in your suitcase when you're packing for a trip. Okay--fine. I'm with them. Their solution?

Disposable underwear.

I am not making this up.

Underwear you wear once, then toss away. Riiiiiiiiight. That's just wrong on so many levels, but let me just point out that if your suitcase is getting too crammed because you're packing too much underwear, then you've got more serious problems. What kind of underwear are these people packing? Seriously.

Still No Baby

If you're at all "in the know" about my life, then you know that we're expecting our second child (a girl) in less than a week. That's right. Hordes of people are planning on getting plastered and earning beads in salacious fashion, all in honor of our due date.* Go figure. It's nice for everyone to get excited, although I'd like to take this moment to implore women across the country to keep their shirts on. Labor is a big deal, but not that big a deal.

It'll be interesting to see when the baby actually arrives. If she comes Saturday, I thought about naming her Phillina, in honor of Punxsutawney Phil. My wife shot that idea down, and I hope February 2nd isn't the birthday anyway. It would be too much like having a birthday on Christmas. Better to have things separated out a bit, presents-wise. Otherwise, getting a present from the Great Groundhog will be obscured by all that birthday stuff. Who wants that?

In any case, I don't have much more time to blog today, but rest assured I'll keep you all up to date on the goings on here. Wish us luck.


*Some people have told me that these people are actually going to be celebrating something they call "Mardi Gras," to which I reply: any celebration that discriminates against pronouncing the letter "s" ought to be outlawed. Really. What has our ociety come to?

To the State of Florida

In light of the Clinton/McCain victories this evening, and in honor of the impending Holiday of Holidays*, I'd like to send out a personal message from yours truly to the entire state of Florida. In the words of the immortal Bill Murray:


Morons, your bus is leaving.




*I speak, of course, of Groundhog Day.

Florida Primary

So today's the day. What all the pundits* have been hyping as "do or die" in the Republican primary. I've been following this here election pretty closely, and my choice comes down to one simple answer.

Mitt Romney or Barrack Obama.

Why Mitt? He's the only presidential candidate who gave me a wedding present. That just shows you how on top of things Mitt is. Even back in 2001, he was already campaigning for my vote. I'm convinced that if he would just spend all his money buying people wedding presents instead of buying television time, he'd already have this election in the bag.

Why Obama? Because the man's got a gift. When he gives a speech, he gives a *speech*. I don't know anything about his policies, and so maybe this gut reaction will change over the course of the next ten months, but for now, he seems like he might actually have a shot at uniting people who right now are at odds with each other. Can't we all just get along?

Of course, I've also made other decisions. The people I'd like to see in the presidency next year are (in order from most desired to least):

Mitt/Obama--As of today, I would vote for either of these guys, as explained above.

Giuliani/McCain--I would vote for either of these guys if they were up against Hillary. Giuliani I have nothing strong against, but I think McCain's run a dishonest campaign, and he's stretched the facts too far for me. Yes, people can say Mitt's stretched the facts, too. But McCain didn't get me a wedding present. End of story.

Clinton--There's no way I would ever vote for this woman. I don't like the way the Clintons play politics, and I don't want to see either of them anywhere near the White House ever again.

Huckabee--Even with my distaste for Senator Clinton, if Huckabee were the nominee--or the running mate of the nominee (judging by his apparent Man Crush on McCain)--I would not vote for him. That doesn't mean I'd vote for Hillary--I just wouldn't vote. Huckabee's played the "I'm a preacher vote for me" holier than thou card way too many times. I think he's a hypocrite, and he reminds me of the people in high school who would run for class president and have no platform other than "I can tell good jokes vote for me." Don't get me started on Huck. Seriously.

So I'm rooting for Mitt and Obama today. Of course, I think politics would be cooler if each candidate had to compete in some sort of sporting event. Can you just see "World's Strongest Person: Presidential Edition" on ESPN2? Or how about a Presidential one on one basketball tournament. Winner take all. That would be awesome.




*Is it just me, or do you find it curious that "pundit" and "nitwit" seem like such similar words? Of course, "pundit" comes from the Hindi "pandit," which means "learned man," and "nitwit" is the lovechild of Germanic "niht," meaning "nothing," and Old English "weid," meaning "to see." So a nitwit literally is someone who sees nothing, which goes to show how prejudiced all those Old English German people were--making up names for blind people and stuff. And pundits today are also prejudiced most of the time, so it's all come full circle. In a sense.

Thanksgiving

We're having Thanksgiving Dinner today. Why in January, you ask? The answer's simple. Denisa wants to be able to cook a good Thanksgiving dinner. To do that, she needs practice cooking it. However, we keep eating at family's for Thanksgiving, so she never gets a chance to practice. Hence, today. Practice. Turkey. Stuffing. Mashed potatoes. Rolls. Cranberry sauce.

Mmmmm . . .

Lobster

I can no longer truthfully say I've never eaten lobster. That's right. Last night, courtesy of some friends from my church, I had lobster for the first time. Boiled the little suckers alive and all. (As a side note, can I just say how pleased I am that we don't kill cows inside our kitchen right before we eat them?) I'm not really a seafood kind of guy, but I figured when in Maine . . .

What did I think about it?

Not too fishy. Kind of meaty.  I liked the claws and knuckles more than the tail, which was too rubbery. All in all, not bad. But considering how much it costs (yes, even in Maine), I don't foresee me becoming a lobster eater anytime soon. If I'm gonna buy something expensive to eat, it's going to be steak. You can count on that. I love eating steak. I didn't mind eating lobster. See the difference?

Rifftrax

Enough blogging about my writing for now. Time to switch things up, at least for one day. I don't recall ever blogging about this before, but if I have, sorry. I just discovered that one of my favorite movie addons--well, the only movie addon I know--has free samples online. Rifftrax is done by the guys who did Mystery Science Theater 3000. Basically, they've now created spoof commentaries for actual movies you might have seen (Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc.). You download them from their site, burn them to a cd or put them on your iPod, and synch them with the DVD when you watch it. Voila--you have an MST3K spoof of a new movie. The tracks are about $3-4 to download and keep, and they're well worth it. Very funny. Check out samples here. Enjoy.

Publisher's Weekly Review

It's posted at last over at my ABNA page. For those of you too lazy to click over there to read it, here it is:

manuscript review by Publishers Weekly, an independent organization
American teenagers meet Slovak fairy tales come to frightening life in this engaging if occasionally over-plotted fantasy novel. After his family's home burns down, Tomas and his parents move back to their native Slovakia, where Tomas finds himself plagued by strange visions and forebodings of events to come. His parents attempt to shield him from the shadowy events of his childhood, that caused them to leave for the U.S., but Tomas- still deeply self-conscious about the burns he sustained on his arm in a childhood accident- digs into the past. With the help of his fetching cousin Katka, Tomas investigates his visions and discovers their intimate relationship with the figures of Slovak folklore, including the trickster vodnik. Can Tomas navigate his way through a new country, and a bizarre new set of friends and enemies, without causing further injury to himself, or to his cousin? The novel is heavily padded with action- at times too much action- and the characters lack definition, or much motivation, but the author keeps the plot rolling, and there is enough humanity lurking amidst the Slovak nightmares to keep readers interested.

Entering this contest was worth the PW review alone, in my opinion. Was the review glowing with praise? Not really. But it also wasn't nearly as harsh as most of the other SF/F reviews in the contest. Considering this book had no professional editorial help--and the absolute mess of a first draft it was--I'm rather pleased that I got it into good enough shape to warrant this review, which I feel is fairly accurate at this point in the novel's progress. What do you all think of the review? It looks like my progress in the contest ends at this point--I don't think I'll make the next cut, from 836 to 100--but I'm happy to have gotten this far. To me, it's more of a "I can do this if I keep at it" sign. If it had been truly terrible, I'm sure I would be quite depressed.

Wintry Beach

Yesterday we went off to Freeport, Maine (home of L. L. Bean) to do some exploring. Ended up going to the beach, even though the temperature was about 10 degrees (below zero with the wind chill). Actually, we had a really good time. Nothing like sliding around on ice at the beach. :-)

In other news, I now have two reviews of my story posted on Amazon. Reviews by complete strangers, might I add. (Meaning none of you have yet to post anything.) Of course, for some reason, getting a review by a complete stranger seems much more valid to me. I mean, it's one thing to have someone who knows you say nice things about your writing, but these are people who don't know me at all, and they don't have to worry about my feelings if I don't like what they say. And yet they still said nice things. So that's something, I suppose. But then again, since I don't know them at all, I have no idea if they have good taste. I mean, maybe they like drinking pickle juice for breakfast, or watching 13 hours of Pokemon each day. My point is, why is it that random reviews sometimes seem to overshadow reviews by people you know and trust? Maybe it's that element of trust--you know and trust your friends, but because they're your friends, you're not entirely sure you can trust them to be honest about your writing. Of course, once I get unfavorable reviews by people I don't know or trust, I'm sure I'll come up with all the reasons not to trust them.

I think I've used the words "know" and "trust" enough now. I'll stop.

Rejections

I've got two things to say today about rejection. The first humorous, the second serious. First of all, I just barely got an email from Yale telling me that I wasn't accepted for the librarian position. I can't remember which position this was--it would have been one I applied for about ten months ago. Nice of them to get back to me, though. I'm sure that if I hadn't found a job yet, that rejection would have been yet another devastating blow. But I have a job--one I like very much, so I can just laugh at it.

Now, my next observation about rejection is focused on this ABNA thing. I've been reading the discussion boards over there, and I've been amazed at how people are approaching the "rating" idea. So many of them are saying something along the lines of "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all," by which they mean that they're only giving positive reviews. If they read something they don't like, they're not reviewing it. This seems to run so counter to the whole idea behind improving your writing. If people only told me what they liked about my stuff--and never what they didn't--how would I ever get better? If I only heard praise, how much more devastating would it be when I finally heard criticism. There are 850 some odd people left in the competition. In a month, it'll be down to 100, then 10, then 1 winner. To quote Highlander, "There can be only one." I'm going to get eliminated. It happens. When it does happen, I'd much rather have an idea what people didn't like in the excerpt they read than to think that everyone loved it, but I lost anyway. The result of that is the other trend I've been seeing on those ABNA boards: people are disgusted that they didn't make the cut. They're convinced the contest was shoddily run and is meaningless. Well, all I can say is that people need to get their skin thickened some, or they're never going to make it as an author.

That said, I have yet to receive a single review. Maybe I'll start crying when I get my first 1 star . . . (NOTE: This is not a request for someone to give me a 1 star review.)

ABNA Clarification

Due to some confusion, allow me to clarify what you need to do to "vote" in the Amazon ABNA contest. Perhaps "vote" was a poor choice of word. "Rate My Entry" would have been better. Follow this link (same as last time), download my entry and then rate it after you've read it, just like with any other Amazon item: 1 to 5 stars. These ratings will be taken into consideration as the contest progresses. Thank you for your support!

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Semi-Finalist

Just wanted to post here to let you all know that I made the first cut in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. For those of you who don't know, back in October or so of last year, Amazon opened this contest to the first 5,000 people who submitted their novel. I heard about it through a newsgroup I'm part of, and I figured why not. I submitted Vodnik. They've now narrowed it down to at most the top 1,000--though it sounds like maybe it was more like the top 850 or so. An excerpt of Vodnik is now on Amazon, and there should soon be a Publisher's Weekly Review of the whole book. Customers can read the excerpt and rate it. We were limited to submitting just the first 5,000 words. I'm not overjoyed with where it cuts off, but such is life. From here, it's going to be narrowed down to the top 100, and then Penguin editors will narrow it to the top 10, after which customers will vote to pick the winner, who will get a book contract with Penguin. Anyway, faithful readers--go and vote! Here's a link for you all (I'm on a Mac, and I'm having trouble putting in an actual link, so I'll just cut and paste the link):

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00122GTYG

Tune in later to see what PW had to say about the book. Anyone else out there enter? Please tell.

Dentists

I think I wouldn't mind dentists so much if they didn't involve the fusion of two things I dislike: pain and paying money. If, for example, they PAID me money to go to the dentist, then that wouldn't be as bad. I don't always want to go to work, but that's why they pay me--to make sure I go anyway. And then again, if I paid money and got something I enjoyed in return, that would be fine, too. That's what paying money's all about: getting stuff you want to get. But somehow, Dentists have become convinced that we want to get pain badly enough that we'll pay them to dole it out. And we encourage this notion by actually doing it.

Of course, maybe it's because if I don't pay for this kind of pain, then I'll get even worse pain for free.

Sigh.

Grumbling

You know, every now and then the whole try-to-get-published thing can be a downer. Today, for example, I've been put in a bit of a bad mood because I read on another person's blog that they've heard back already from an editor I'm waiting to hear back from. How silly is that? Why in the world should my current mood be affected by hearing about other people's success? The thing is, I know that even if I did get published, I'd still have other things to worry about. Will my book sell in stores? Will I be able to make a career out of the business? How are foreign rights doing? I know several successful authors personally, and I know from seeing them that it's not like getting published automatically makes your days sunny and bright. I know that in the end, my current whiny mood is just the desire to have someone in "the know" read my books and tell me that they're publishable. And I know that even once I got that acknowledgment, I'd only want more. I'd only want more and more people to buy those books and agree that they're good. Having other people reaffirm your self-worth is like a drug, and it's something I think I need to avoid like the plague.

Too bad I'm not better at doing that.

Mythos Beta

Any of you people out there like Diablo 2? Well, I have a deal for two of you today. There's a new Diablo-esque game being developed called Mythos. It's done by the same group that made Diablo 2, although they've now changed companies. It's in beta right now, and while the game is by no means finished, it is definitely very playable. I'm part of the beta test right now, and I've really been enjoying it. It's like a mix between WoW and Diablo 2. Cool. Anyway, I have 2 invites that I can give out to people, so if there's anyone interested, you have but to comment and you'll get one of them. First come, first served.

Rain

You know, it's true that you don't have to shovel rain, but I think I'd still rather have snow. Rain just makes things ugly, especially when it's combined with fog. Snow makes things light and fluffy. And you can ski in it. You can ski in rain, too, but they call that hydro-planing, which isn't nearly as much fun, and usually involves automobile accidents.

It Can Always Be Worse

I thought my dishwater leak was bad, and my sister's flooded basement was worse, but my mom's flooded house (dry wall sloughing off the walls, ceilings ruined) wins. What is it with water damage and my family right now?

In other news, this nasty virus continues to rule me. I lay down most of the evening last night, and that helped, but a full day of work has worn me out yet again. With Denisa being 8 months pregnant, me being worn out is not a good thing, especially when you add a 3 year old to the mix.

But hey, it was up in the 60s today in Maine, so I guess not everything's bad.

New Year

Time for a new year's post, I suppose. I'm back from vacation in Pennsylvania, which was nice, even if all of us got sick for most of the time we were gone. I came home yesterday to find a monster heating bill (heating oil=bad) and the dishwasher leaking. Not as bad as my sister, who came home to a flooded basement, but still--who said that one person's troubles have to be compared to others'? It still was a not nice surprise.

For my writing time recently I've been reading a book on characterization by Orson Scott Card, as well as Dave Wolverton's daily writing tips that he emails out. Both have been highly helpful, and I'm really excited to get into plotting this next book soon here. This time, I'm really trying to take my time and do some things differently. I feel like my plotting and characterization has gotten sloppy, and I need to tune those up. We'll see how it goes.

I'm also going to (try to) do better at posting entries in this blog more frequently. Life is settling down enough at this point that I should be able to. Of course, baby #2 comes at the beginning of February, so maybe that will upset the balance again. Such is life. It's good to have goals anyway, though. Right?

Here's hoping you and yours had a happy holidays, and that your new year looks bright and shiny and relatively leak free.