Who we were

The original entry was in 2005. It struck a chord. People still show up at this blog searching for it. I thought I'd do a brief  'where are they now'. Some were originally left as anonymous comments and so there is no way to follow them up.


***


I’m the one you said would end up a chain-smoking, loveless, alcoholic lawyer. I’m the guy who sometimes believes you. I’m the guy you once tried to teach ballet to after a couple of drinks. (aleej.com - gone from the intenet)


I’m the girl who squeezed your hand when they talked about boys. Who laughed when they asked you which guy you liked, and even more when they realized there was none. I’m the girl who didn’t believe a single word you said, during, before or after, and still don’t: yet I let you hold my hand on the way to the airport. (Popagandhi is alive and well!)


It was me, all of it; walking past dead animals and feeling sorry for the poor sods; being asked to collect donations and feeling like I was holding a tin of filthy greed... (halfcrazed.org - gone from the internet)


I’m the girl who stopped going to church, yet prays frantically whenever I’m scared out of my wits. I’m the girl that hates iced lemon tea and red bull (both together and separately). I am the girl who wrote you 17 letters in one day, yet never had the guts to send a single one.
I am the girl that’s scared of the dark. (Dubdew is alive and well!)


i'm that girl who has never told anyone about her past and yet wrote it down here for the whole world to see. (nadnut moved on in 2005 and left no forwarding address)


I'm the only girl who had no guidance for nine and a half weeks, and then I became the girl who had the last half week of her attachment in Hell instead of an accountancy firm. I'm also the one you gave a limp handshake to the first day of work. I'm now the girl who will shout FUCK YOU the next time I see you. (flutterby - gone from the internet)


I'm that guy who finally learn that thoughts are waves and i can relate to trees and plants. (petrogrosso is still around)


I am the girl who did not understand why barbie looked so "perfect", when there is a flaw in everyone. so I pulled out my magic marker and gave all my barbies birthmarks. EVERYONE has a flaw now. (starcrossedangel moved and left no forwarding address)


I’m the girl you called the sweetest girl around. I’m the one who told you that you need to meet more girls. (little miss random is alive and well!)


I'm the cheerleader who listens to Nine Inch Nails. I'm the debate team captain who goes to Detroit Red Wings hockey games. I'm the writer who just can't seem to make the words flow right. ( Vanity Spared moved to LA and has vanished. Her later blog is locked. I miss her writing.)


I am the guy who pushed when the sign said pull. (E@L is alive and well!)

i am the girl who procrastinates over my thesis, i am the girl who belts out sad emo love songs in honor of you when i am alone in my room. (brilliantcolorsthatyoubring.net is gone from the internet)

i am the girl who still thinks of you every single motherfucking day. (anonymous comment)

i am the girl whose hand you loved holding. i am the girl who grinned in the cab when you hung up the phone on her just to have supper with me. i am the girl who lied to you through my teeth. (anonymous comment)

I'm the guy who recently discovered that happiness is one part decision and two parts caffeine, the one who treats coffee like a drug, taking it once a day, after meal, when required. I'm the guy in the military who didn't greet you (at first) because I'm indignant about having to practice what is acutely incongruent - "mandatory respect", but is beginning to cave because fear outweighs principles. (http://bluedelusions.blogspot.com os gone from the internet)

I'm that boy who sat beside you, threw ants into your hair to get your attention. That boy who waited 7 years till he enlisted and you engaged. (http://9mmdesigns.blogspot.com/ is locked)

I'm that girl who once loved you. I'm that girl who erased you. (hungrybunny/one little twit - gone from the internet)

I'm the girl who once dreamt of marrying Neil Gaiman and now thinks she'll never get married at all. (adinahaes stopped blogging, at least there, in 2007)

I’m the boy who turned up three and a half hours late for our first official date. To this day I’m still amazed that you waited. (Xu Si Han is alive and well and living on facebook)

I am the baby you almost gave away. Why? Because you were too young to get married. (PC is alive and well and living on facebook)

i'm the one who has the excitement in her eyes. it was me that was feckless, the one that crashed your car and spent the rest of the day making up lies you could tell your mum so i could get away scot free. (the neurotic babe is gone from the internet)

I'm the girl you walked past once, but was just another face in the crowd. (http://www.idledays.net/ - gone from the internet. La Idler passed away in 2005)

I am nothing... (Jaschocolate is alive and well, and not nothing!)

I’m the guy who bought a pregnancy test kit, and stuffed it in his sidepocket (it stuck out conspicuosly), sat at a bar alone, and drank until he threw up. I’m the guy who likes rainy weather, and the smell of christmas. I am the guy who uses repeat-1 more often than any other mode in iTunes. I am the guy who lights incense cones when the evening is perfect. I am the guy who cuddles underneath the sheets. (gone from the internet)

I’m the guy who told the old man my name is Johnny when it’s not, because it came naturally to me. (anonymous comment)

And i'm that one who is walking around in circles, apparently love only lurks around corners... (sassyjan is alive and well... and sassy)

I’m the one who fed your dog ice cream. I am the girl can do handstands and backflips. I am the girl who laughs when she’s nervous. I’m the girl who broke your nose. (saltwater giggles is gone from the internet)

I am the girl you accused of being “not Asian enough”. (anonymous comment)

I’m the girl who always asks for more mayonnaise. I am the girl who fell asleep on your couch. I’m the girl who set fire to her towel by accident. (anonymous comment)

I'm the girl who sat up the whole night crying because I didn't know if you were okay and i couldn't reach you. I'm the girl who laughed so hard when you sang Green Eyes and then leaned over and kissed you for it. (anantya.blogspot.com is gone from the internet)

I'm the girl who waited till you woke up on the bus and then told you that you had the most beautiful eyes I'd ever seen. (anonymous comment)

I'm the girl who hates beer so gets drunk on other stuff. I'm the girl who passed out in front of Zouk and had to be carried around into the waiting car and woke up remembering none of it. I'm the girl who passed out on your couch once and puked into the pail you put at the side and that was before I fell so deeply in love with you. I'm the girl no one really takes seriously so she smiles and pretends that everything is fine so one no knows how much she truly hurts. (livejournal last updated 2009)

I am the boyfriend who stayed as late at your place as he possibly could, and ran after the very last Number 8 bus, so that he could take the very last Number 51, so that he did not have to take a cab or pay the midnight surcharge. (Mr Brown is alive and well!)

I am that guy that had crushes with you, you, you, you and you. (jasper the dummy is gone from the internet)

I'm the one who breaks my promises, but abides by those i've never mentioned to you before. I am the girl who thinks that relationships should have obituaries, so everyone knows what happened in a succinct line or two. (green apple delight is gone from the internet)

I’m the girl who sat on the window still and waved to passers-by below. I’m the girl who sat on the kitchen table as you held her close, picked her up and fell together in a heap onto a matteress on the floor. (upok.net - gone from the internet)

I'm the guy who thought it was so darn cool you are writing a play. Even if it was for the Hainanese clan. I'm the guy who took your money off your bag. I'm the guy who spends too much and still doesn't know how to spend less or save more. I'm the guy who deliberately left coins under the carpet so one day we will never be bankrupt. ( He Shuming hasn't blogged in a year, but is apparently alive and well on twitter)

I am the little girl who laughed excitedly and took the bus alone on the first day of school. I am the little girl who turned around and sobbed inconsolably into her mother’s arms on the second day of school when she realised that boarding the bus alone was not a one-off thing but for the rest of her life. (faithtoh.quackpolka.com - gone from the internet)

I’m the one who threw up in (near, around) your recliner, and I’m the one who chopped down the evergreen in your front lawn. I’m also the one who changes your diapers at four in the morning, and the guy who sits with you while you take your shower for a month after you watch a scary movie. (Michael McClung is alive and well and living in Joo Chiat. You might catch him at East Wind kopitiam of a morning)


***


There are more, in the comments. There are more in the comments of other blogs. Too many to find them all.


Six years later, I still wonder- who are you? 

Moderation in all things

...including political correctness.

Has everyone seen the various iterations of the Hitler video meme? My new favourite is one sent to me by my good friend Christien about a particularly popular bbq restaurant in Austin. It takes a certain skill and wit to do one of these retellings in a funny, effective way.

Of course, some people will never, ever find anything to do with Hitler in any way funny at all. Ever. No matter what. Ever.

Ever.

Which is sad, really. Just as I believe that the best revenge holocaust survivors could have taken on the nazis was to live a full, joyous life, so too do I believe the best way to denounce the pit of evil in the human soul that makes such things as the holocaust possible is to lampoon, to parody, to laugh and repurpose what symbols we may of that evil. To be silly and lighthearted. And, yes, to be irreverent.

To be human.

Friday

...is, unfortunately, for marking papers.

In other news, have I mentioned that I like sitting on grass? Yesterday during a break, I sat down in a little grassy patch by the MRT station (garnering a few odd looks, but meh) and thought a bit about The Blade That Whispers Hate and the plotting problems I've been having with that one.

And I think I have a least part of a solution.

In other news, I'm supposed to be writing faster. I see the point, but I'm stuck with my pace, and my pace is what it is. I'm also supposed to learn from failure. Oh, believe me, I've an Ivy League education in that. :)

Enjoy your Friday, peeps.

WIP Wednesday

Taking a page from Aaron Polson, I thought I'd try something new on Wednesdays. Wednesdays- very long days for me. I leave the house at 8 am, and get back at 10 pm. Maybe WIP Thursdays would be a better idea, but then I don't get the alliteration.

So, I'll introduce one of my works in progress every Wednesday, give you an excerpt, a brief idea of what the story is (supposedly) about, and some indication as to why it is not yet a completed work. Then you, Dear Readers, can kibbutz in the comments if you are so inclined :)

The inaugural Wednesday WIP is entitled Kissing the Blade. It is a fantasy short story that is already over 14,000 words long:


The thing shrieked as it flew at him in a savage burst of motion. Caida caught a blurred impression of leathery wings, gray, side-slitted eyes, and then it was on him. He had no time to bring his weapon to bear; the thing had trapped his sword and his right arm, still gripping the hilt, between bodies as it grabbed him up in a bear hug. Talons ripped into his back. Chilling dead eyes bored into his from dark, leathery, humanoid face devoid of any emotion Caida could read.

It hissed something at him, two words. Again it hissed them. Again. And then Caida slammed his forehead against the creature's nose with enough force to splinter cartilage and send it reeling away from him, talons gouging furrows in the flesh of his back. Ignoring the agony, he brought his sword around in a whistling arc that terminated at the crook of the thing's neck and parted its head from its body in a spray of rotting blood.

The head tumbled down the ravine while the body, wings spastically twitching, toppled slowly backward.


This one is still a WIP because I've no real idea how it's going to end, the bad guys are made of cardboard, and it's bloated. On the plus side, I like the main character (a sword-monk) and the setting well enough. but out of 14,000 words, I think about 5,000 are salvageable.

Nevertheless, Caida is still my man, and I'm hanging in there with this one, waiting for inspiration to strike.

Ok, tired now. Night-night.

Some nice things said

Over at Horrortalk, Steve Pattee had some nice things to say about the Pill Hill Press anthology Flesh & Bone: Rise of the Necromancers -- including my short story therein.

Thanks, Steve!

Another excerpt

So Anthony asked me some time ago about when I was going to write a sequel to Thagoth. As I mentioned previously, there are several bits and pieces floating around, sequel and prequel and short story. I thought I might share a bit of the prequel, The Blade That Whispers Hate. In this scene, Holgren the mage gets to act like a bit of the bad-ass he is:


In a place like the Cock’s Spur, they don’t even bother putting out chairs or benches that don’t face the door. Nobody wants their back to any trouble that enters. As I came through the door, a couple dozen pairs of eyes skewered me. Well, except for the one hairy brute that had lost a beady, pig-like peeper somewhere, and in the not-too distant past, judging from the puss weeping out of the socket. He really should have considered an eye patch; if not for himself, then at least for anyone forced to look at him.


After a heartbeat, all the eyes slid right off me onto Holgren, which gave me faith in the fetish he’d given me. Or maybe it was the quality of his clothes. I heard Holgren sniff behind me.

“What’s that smell?” he murmured.

“I think they’re brewing ale.”

“Oh. I thought it was cat urine. Is it supposed to smell that way?”

“Maybe the house recipe calls for cat piss.” I’d heard of stranger ingredients, if not less disgusting. Bludgeoned roosters and the like. There was a reason I generally stuck to wine.

“I find myself appallingly unthirsty,” said Holgren.

“Come on, let’s brace the bartender.”

“About the ingredients?”

“About the owner.”

“Good idea. Take your complaint to the top, I always say.” Holgren was nervous. He joked when he was nervous, I’d finally figured out. That Holgren was nervous made me nervous. Which made me pissy. I strode over to the bar along the left-hand wall where the tap man was pushing a filthy rag along the filthy bar top.

“When you’re done rearranging the dirt, I want to speak to Gavon.”

“Ee innt ear,” the spindly man said, or something like it.

“Sorry, could you speak a human language?”

He hawked and spat. “Gavon’s not ‘ere.”

I lifted the heavy satchel to the bar top and lifted the flap so he could see. “Get him here, and soon, or I’ll let everybody in the place have a look at this. If I do that, they’ll try to take it away from me, and then me and my friend will have to kill them all. That won’t be good for business.”

He stared at me for a second. “You couldn’t take um all.”

“If they take Gavon’s gold, it won’t matter if we could or couldn’t. Not to you, anyway, because he’ll kill you for pissing around instead of minding his business.”

He thought about that. “That’s a point. Stay ‘ere.”

He drifted up a set of decrepit stairs into the gloom above. Three of the bigger patrons seemed to take that as a signal for opportunity. They got up and walked toward Holgren and me, bad intent written all over their faces. I slipped a knife into the palm of my hand, but Holgren stepped between me and them.

“Gentlemen,” he said, purple light suddenly arcing from hand to hand, “the tap man will be back shortly. I’m sure he’ll see to refills then. Until such time, I suggest you remain seated.”

Two of them saw the sense in that. One, a lean man with enormous hands, fingered something under his shirt. Some sort of talisman. I could see him deciding to place his faith in it.

“Why, I just wanted to have a word, all private-like,” he said. “You being newcomers to this fine establishment and all, I thought—” and the knife came from his waist and towards Holgren’s throat in a blur of reflected lantern light.

Holgren was quick, quicker than I would have given him credit for. He twisted away, and the knife blade kissed his earlobe on its way to being buried in the wall behind the bar.

The man wasn’t waiting to see if his blade would do the job; he was already rushing in with those big hands clenched into fists. Holgren put his own hand out, palm forward, and that purple arcing light leaped from his hand to the would-be killer’s face. Where it began to gnaw at the flesh like a hungry animal. In an instant I could see the man’s teeth through a hole in his cheek. He screamed and stumbled, and clawed at his own face. He fell to the hard packed dirt floor and screamed some more. Holgren fingered his cut earlobe. His hand came away red. He pulled a handkerchief out of his sleeve.

“That’s enough, mage.” A voice from the stairs, mild, a little high pitched. I glanced up and saw a supremely nondescript man drumming his fingers against the railing, the tap man behind him.

“He started it, Gavon.”

“So finish it, Angrado.”

“Fine.” Holgren did nothing that I could see, but the weird light playing on what was left of the man’s face winked out. The man stopped screaming. I glanced at him, then took a double take. The only wounds on his face were the claw marks he’d made himself.

Holgren leaned down, elbows on knees, and said conversationally, “That trinket around your neck has never been within a mile of a mage. Until tonight.” Then he stood and walked toward the stairs. After a second, I followed.

Disturbing trends

I've had this blog since 2005, and much of the early focus was on Singapore and things Singaporean. Some of the posts were funny (and some nearly as funny as I thought they were as I wrote them), and some were serious.

Now it's 2011. Looking at the stats that blogger has (finally) helpfully added to blogs, I notice that on a daily basis, people stumble onto this blog using variations on two search terms:

• what to do last day at work
• singapore racism

Now both of the posts relevant to these searches were written in 2005, so if people were looking for timely rather than timeless advice, they were sure to be disappointed. But honestly, thats not what disturbs me. It's the thought that (a) lots of people have found they're out of a job and (b) lots of people are experiencing racism in Singapore.

It makes me worried, and a little sad.

They say 'zombie lover' like it's a bad thing

So I spent like five hours at Singapore General Hospital yesterday, where they did lots of tests and scratched their heads and made me lie down on a gurney and stuff. Lungs ok. Blood sugar ok. 14 different blood tests, all that came back was 'slightly elevated white blood cell count'. Heart seems ok, but have an appointment with a cardiologist. Guess we'll see. My guess is I'll soon be turning into a zombie. You guys will still love me even if all my  posts are like "MMMRGH OUUUFTH BRAAIYNZZZ" right?

Right?


Anyway, I'm glad I brought along something kick-ass to read while waiting yesterday:

 

Zen-like detachment, part one

I used to fuss over every word I wrote, but especially the first paragraph. I'd agonize over word choice and word order. I would spend as much time polishing as writing, which meant, I'm afraid, that I spent a lot of time polishing turds. I wouldn't say it was an obsession, but it was a preoccupation.

Why? Because I couldn't get this image out of my head of an editor, pipe in hand, opening the manila envelope containing my story, reading the first paragraph, shaking his head sadly and saying 'So close. If only he'd said it a slightly different way."

Things have changed. I've changed.

It's not that I have no interest in writing a great opening paragraph. I have written and perversely enjoy writing beginnings far more than I enjoy writing 'the end.' What has changed is that I no longer write to be published, on a psychological level, but to explore stories and themes and to follow an odd idea to its conclusion.

Once you stop caring about rejection, once you detach yourself from what happens to the story after you finish it, you are free to do, literally, anything in and with the story. And then you're free to re-do it until you have something that says exactly what you want it to say.

And that, my friends, engenders a far more powerful feeling than any acceptance letter I have ever received.

Writing news & plans & suchlike

• One of the stories that I mentioned would be published in an anthology will now not be. It was a last minute replacement for another tale. Didn't work out. I had a feeling about it (scrunches up face).
• I am so gonna finish and polish up The Crimson Witch to submit to Sword & Sorceress XXVI.
• Tomorrow I go see the doctor to find out why I have been dizzy/short of breath for more than a week. Well, another doctor. The first one basically said I had gas. Then he asked for payment in chickens. 
• Put your hand down, Alligator. I didn't even ask a question this time.

Who knows why I keep waking up earlier and earlier?

via

Sex sells

No, really. Erotica sales on kindle are through the roof, apparently.

I can find no concrete data on Amazon's sales figures (and yes, I've looked, though not exhaustively), but one of the things I've turned up in my research is anecdote after andecdote of authors comparing their erotica sales (or the sales of their 'friends') to their non-erotica sales, and apparently it's like 100-1.

Maybe I should change genres? And think up a groovy pen name?

Some good news

I'll be having a couple of short stories coming out in anthologies this year.  As I have more info, I'll update here.

China's Ghost Cities & Malls

The madness of the modern economy displays many morbidly fascinating symptoms:

I wonder what it says about me that I was thinking about all this in terms of a story as I watched. Nothing good, I'm sure.

If Amanda Hocking and Joe Konrath had a baby

...I bet Joe's wife would be really pissed.

But seriously, here's the thing: For the past two weeks I've been researching the new world of publishing, trying to find the common denominator between the success that Joe Konrath has enjoyed in selling his works in electronic format, and the success that Amanda Hocking has had.

A few conclusions:

• Konrath and Hocking write in different, almost mutually exclusive genres  
• Konrath came from the world of traditional publishing, while Hocking was a complete unknown
• Konrath has spent a decade promoting his work, while Hocking has far less experience (though as Belinda points out, she didn't just sit on her tookus)

So what do these epubbing titans have in common? A large number of works available for purchase at a reasonable price.

At the end of the day, if you want to make money publishing your work electronically, you need to have a body of work for readers to discover, and cross-buy. Each offering will boot-strap the other works (if your work is any good).

Conclusion: I need to stop worrying about research and marketing, at least right now, and start finishing some dang writing.

Fiction alert!

Do you like short-short fiction with lush imagery and startling O. Henry-esque twists? Then you should really be over at New Beginnings, encouraging Dream Pedlar to write more.

That is all.

Great Googlie Mooglie update

Went to bed before 11 pm.
Woke up at 4:45 am (approximately).

This is getting ridiculous.

And the Super-Secret Guest Blogger is.... Expat At large!

At last the mystery is de-mystified. Also at the end you'll see he says I pressured him. Absolutely untrue. I threatened bodily harm. -MM  

Observations on Blogging in 2011

Yep, I'd say the rise of Facebook has pretty much put the kybosh on blogging being a smoothly functioning social networking tool. 2008 is to blame (or to be thanked, depending).

The social blogging that once had schools-kids frenetically clacking away on their MacBooks in Starbucks to update their blogs has disappeared (at least from Singapore). Instead these kids are clacking away on their MacBooks in Starbucks, not on blogs, but on Facebook or Twitter, updating status and location, uploading pictures of lunch, group gossiping in quasi-real-time. People are on their phones tapping away for the same thrill of communication and response. They are not writing their next blog post (or novel) on the train. Neither are they reading any blogs there. They are networking, txt-ing, watching movies, they are playing games, things that blogs can't do.

The feedback was never that fast on blogs , the gratification was delayed, and that won't work anymore in this nano-second late is too late age.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The sex-bloggers have all signed book-deals or got married (or are playing D&D type games all day like former SPG, Izzy).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fortunately I had met many (OK most) of my first batch of Singapore friends through blogging well before that cut-off date. The ones who I see most are Platypus/IndianaJones, Mercer Machine (not as much as I'd like, barring D&D games) and Izzy (well, she was my - platonic! - flatmate for over a year - was it two years?). There are some other local bloggers I have met at things like the first Singapore Blogger Piss-up at Brewerkz (God when was that?), then mr miyagi and mr brown helped organize the BloggerCon in 2005 (got my photo in the paper for that - was considered the oldest there, at 48, and "could have been the father of most of the bloggers here". Yes it was a young person's game.)

After I met Mercer Machine (not quite a potential son) there, he called for the occasional SExBB nights (Singapore Expat Bloggers' Beers). Initially it was just he and I or maybe Indy who turned up - the Expat blogging community in Singapore was not so big, nor very social at that time as I commented when handed a microphone at the Blogger-con.

One or two pretty local girls were game enough to show up at the SeXBB and risk their life, limb, sobriety and/or virginity with such a rowdy bunch... I do see Valkyrie, (from one of the SExB nights), she of the dragon tattoos, at the above mentioned D&D nights. With Izzy living in Holland now, and me being less than enthralled by the whole schtick, my D&D days have fallen away...

Since 2008 I don't think there have been any people in Singapore I have met through my, or their, blog.

I do maintain a modicum of extra-blogspot contact with a few pre-2008 overseas bloggers. I had beers in Bangkok with Dick Headley about 6 month ago. Skippy-San is always up for beers when he's in Singapore. I catch up with Spike in HK most times I am there. Beers. Though we have not met, I do have Savannah's hotel recommendation for a few currently un-visitable North Africa countries - she is more of a red wine person I gather (Sav, you would have loved the 2004 Burton of Coonawarra Cab Sav the other night!) . And I have a beer or four with Scott (frequent commenter) when I am in Melbourne.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Are people still trawling for new blogs? Do they want another semi-anonymous pen-pals? Do people have enough time to read the entire internet even though, as the Fraternity of Infinite Monkeys which I have battling since 2004 moves to a lower Aleph of infinity, the universe of blogs is shrinking. According to Technorati's 2010 report, the line is blurring between blogging and social networking. I think that is false confidence, a little bit of self-delusion. They don't mention whether the ACTIVE blog community is shrinking or growing.

They do make the point of the rising phenomenon of mum blogging. Immensely popular public diaries of women bringing up kids, doing the dishes, battling for recognition at work, trying to find an acceptable compromise for their family/work balance. These are essentially novelizations of a life-in-progress, autobiographies on the fly. I read about one somewhere. (NYT?) Mainly read by other women? I would think so. (The woman in the article was getting thousands of dollars through her advertising! [see below] So it does work!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Back to socialising. I meet people in different ways now. A couple of junk trips* organized by a part-time blogger with big tits (a friend of Indy, duh) widened my social circle again. Several of the people I met there now admit to knowing me still, and they permit me to sit at their table if I buy them a beer or two.

(*Junk Trip - an social phenomenon in the tropics whereby, usually, a "chinese style" flat-bottomed, motorised boat, (not the one last traditional junk with the pig's blood coloured sails - IKYN), with a rooftop lounge area and deep fridges is hired to take expats and people interested in expats to places where watery sports are encouraged (except for the people who look at the crap floating in the water), and to deliver drunken, sunburnt versions of the same people - and hopefully, the same number of same - back to the marina or jetty, safely. After which they all come back to E@L-GHQ and trash the place. In Hong Kong, try getting on or off one at Queen's pier - the rollicking junk is dancing and bouncing frighteningly in the reinforced waves reflecting from the reclaimed-land lined with straight walls of what's left of Victoria Harbour. Singapore is a cake-walk, you get on at a calm marina.) /end *)

Point being, these events are, and perhaps only could be, organized on Facebook. Or, OK, by complex txt-ing, I guess.

Create Event, send out invitations to your FB-ers, await RSVP.

Try and do that on a blog these days. No-one is going to turn up. No-one you know has read your blog in the past two weeks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I only blog now once a week or so (no wonder no-one reads it) - partly because the the steam is let out of the kettle with a cloud of twitter-like status updates on FB that must drive my friends crazy. And because I am on MY blog so infrequently, I end up visiting other blogs less frequently as well. And those other people blog less as well (except the specific audience-targetted blogs - like for writing or for SciFi nutters or for other hobbyists). It's a vicious circle that has killed that must-read-fervor of the mid-to-late noughties.

Also, as I am hanging with a bunch of wannabe alcoholics my, I suppose you could call it *social* life, has gone through the roof - and landed ker-splat into the gutter as I slump from the taxi, vomiting copiously onto the potted plants like any good stereotypical expat. (Favorite joke: Girl says: "Get your mind out of the gutter!" Man says: "I can't, it's attached to my body.") I often have no time to write long posts - the ones that satisfy *me*, the ones *I* enjoy writing - and so I FB a brain-fart myself every so often.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bloggers target the wider audience of the WWW, not your Dunbar's Number^3 of FB acquaintances.

It's a much bigger audience that blogs address and attempt to make some form of contact with, everyone in the world. Of course as many have done (Mercer Machine for one), you could link your blogs posts to Twitter and Facebook in order to draw readers. But these are already your friends and friends of friends, hardly the billions of un-entertained non-readers out there.

Who/what are left but the prolix ranters, (like myself, for whom Facebook's 450 characters are often not enough for me to finish my first sentence, let alone attempt the over-sharing brain-farts of Twitter - I have an account but I never use it), the serious social-commentary blogs, the intellectual observation blogs, the blogs from writers who are honing their skills (like Mercer Machine), the blogs with lots of funny or provocative pictures, the blogs where you can say things that you don't want your FB friends or your parents to read, the journalist's blogs where unedited articles can survive, the newspaper controversy blogs designed to stimulate hits to the paper (for REAL advertising revenue, not Google Ad's paltry token pennies [see above re: mom blogging), and blogs that only your enemies read.

I can't be sure, but the days of anxiously checking stats each day have passed. The days of making money from Google Ads have passed. The days of gaining credits from Amazon's referral points are gone.

And they days of leaving cardboard boxes of rants and story ideas and novel commencements are gone. Everything, like David Foster Wallace's posthumous new novel, are scattered around instead on the blog, in lost or abandoned external HDDs, on various laptops you have (6 computers for me now).

Or the text resides in the clouds. I am writing this on a MacAir in the office, using Evernote. When I get home, it will be on desktop computer. I could modify it on my Galaxy S on the way home if I wanted to (I am the one person on the train writing a blog), or on an iPad if I had one.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Points of all points: I am writing less on my blog. Fewer people are reading my blog (do I care?). I am reading fewer blogs. I am not looking for new blogs, though I am glad when I find a worthy one. Social blogs are dead in the virtual water thanks to all this social networking. Writing on blogs is a private thing, requiring time and space. You will not meet new friends through your blog.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Blogging is so 2008 maybe, but for many of us, expressing ourselves is not about fashion. It's a need, a passion, a compulsion beyond. And so blogs have evolved. Well not really *evolved* so much as become smarter, better, more attenuated, according to the alcohol-kills-bad-brain-cells concept (however flawed).

Yes, only the select few million remain, those who have failed to be distracted and completely fallen by the wayside of short-term, near-instant feedback, quasi conversational, brief communication after all.

We are often older and wiser (or not), we are the proven survivors. And we like to waffle on.


E@L

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.s. I am sorry I haven't put in all the relevant links in at this point, MM was sort of pressuring me to get this out ASAP. Maybe he'll let me come back and do that.





cheers

Friday informs you about Saturday

Those you waiting for the Guest Blogger today will need to wait until tomorrow due to circumstances beyond our control. The official reason is 'Got wasted last night and the dog ate my homework'.

Sounds reasonable : D

My Friend Izzy is Awesome

She says she still wants to play around with the font, or as Expat insists, the typeface. Izzy can call it what she wants, because I call it awesome.
Once all is ready and I parang my way through the formatting for Kindle, I'll be uploading this book of short stories to Amazon. I just wish they'd sell to Singapore. I need to find another platform that does. Currently considering Smashwords.

Once again, thanks so much Izzy. this is a truly beautiful, evocative cover.

Great Googlie Mooglie, why can't I just sleep in?

Sleep and I have had a difficult relationship for years- bouts of insomnia that would last for months, leaving me a withered thing that shuffled through my days cringing away from a too-loud, too-bright blur of a world. In recent years, that insomnia has trailed off and become a rare occurrence, but what has taken its place is this freaky 'no matter what time I go to bed I will wake up at an hour no farmer would sneer at even if I have no reason to be conscious' state.

It's seven in the morning. I've been up for an hour. Today I have nothing to do and nowhere to be before 12:30, and I worked a 12 hour day yesterday.

Well, they say as you get older you need less sleep...

Wednesday warns you about Friday

Just to let you know, there will be a super-secret guest blogger here at SomethingSticky on Friday. I could tell you who it was, but then it would not be super-secret, would it? Geez. But feel free to guess who it might be in the comments section. I will give you three hints:

• He (yes, it is a he) is not dead, nor fictional 
• He may have some prior blogging experience
• He is not the other voice in my head

Masochistic writing challenge, or "Breakin' th' Law"

So I was perusing submission guidelines, as I am sometimes known to do, and came across this from Clarkesworld Magazine:

Though no particular setting, theme, or plot is anathema to us, the following are likely hard sells:


•stories in which a milquetoast civilian government is depicted as the sole obstacle to either catching some depraved criminal or to an uncomplicated military victory
•stories in which the words "thou" or "thine" appear
•talking cats
•talking swords
•stories where the climax is dependent on the spilling of intestines
•stories where FTL travel is as easy as is it on television shows or movies
•time travel too
•stories that depend on some vestigial belief in Judeo-Christian mythology in order to be frightening (i.e., Cain and Abel are vampires, the End Times are a' comin', Communion wine turns to Christ's literal blood and it's HIV positive, Satan's gonna getcha, etc.)
•stories about rapist-murderer-cannibals
•stories about young kids playing in some field and discovering ANYTHING. (a body, an alien craft, Excalibur, ANYTHING).
•stories about the stuff we all read in Scientific American three months ago
•stories where the Republicans, or Democrats, or Libertarians, or the Spartacist League, etc. take over the world and either save or ruin it
•your AD&D game
•"funny" stories that depend on, or even include, puns
•sexy vampires, wanton werewolves, or lusty pirates
•zombies or zombie-wannabes
•stories originally intended for someone's upcoming theme anthology or issue
•stories where the protagonist is either widely despised or widely admired simply because he or she is just so smart and/or strange
•stories that take place within an artsy-fartsy bohemia as written by an author who has clearly never experienced one
•your trunk stories

Now I have this voice in my head. No, not that one. The other one, the one that makes me want to do things just because somebody told me 'don't do that'. And right now it's telling me I really, really wanna write a story with as many of the above elements as I can possibly jam in and still have a good story.

Who's in?

the Deaf: a garage band from the Netherlands

I kinda like it :)

Would you like to take a hot bath while I massage your back?

via Pat's Fantasy Hotlist

Ode to Herculaneum, and other visually stunning stuff

...from Kris Kuksi

Not terrible writing, Exhibit A

I barely remember writing this. It's like somebody else wrote it, honestly, and I'd like to read more:



They sent me to Singapore.

To be more exact, they sent me to New Braunfels, Texas, and from there I got sent to Singapore, but the distinctions are too fine at this point to matter much. New Braunfels, time-wise, was simply a layover, unimportant except for the fact that I met Buddy Terkel.

The meta-company I work for – let's call it Globocorp—has their cthulu-like tentacles in virtually everything. From chemicals to construction, from publishing to software to plastics manufacturing to life insurance to fast food to elderly care and beyond. It is omnivorous and insatiable.

My division, Sundries, specializes almost by accident in the embarrassing, tacky and oddly appealing. Twenty-odd years ago, in the late eighties, it started off as the corporate gifts department, or so I understand, but over time all the odds and ends and novelties got dumped on us. Currently we add about five billion a year to the bottom line.

So one Thursday afternoon I was sitting in my cubicle going over the adult diaper sales for the quarter when my supervisor, Mr Hadley, poked his bald, shiny head around the corner.

"Addison."

"Sir?" I looked up. He had an odd gleam in his eye. This, I knew, did not bode well.

"How would you like to go on an excursion?" He smiled, and his grandfatherly eyes crinkled up behind his round, wire-rimmed glasses like an oddly hairless Santa Clause. Warning bells sounded. Normally I'd jump at any chance to leave the office, but I felt bad mojo humming down the line.

"Gee Mr Hadley, I've got the quarterly report and the TPS sheets to do…."

"Don't worry about that, Addison. Forman will be happy to take over for you. Won't you Forman?" That last bit he shouted over the cubicle divider.

"Oh yeah, sure thing Mr Hadly. Can't think of a thing I'd rather do," came the reply, the bitterly sarcastic tone utterly lost on Hadley, who was impervious to sarcasm, irony and whining.

"See? All taken care of."

"Looks that way. What's up?"

He glanced at his watch. "Well, technically speaking, you will be, in about an hour. I need you to fly to Texas."

I stared at him. I think I blinked a couple of times.

"Texas?"

"Texas," he confirmed.

"Like…Texas? Big State? Down South?"

"That's the one. Unless they moved it."

"Um, why?"

"I need you to meet with a shareholder."

I waited for more information. None seemed to be forthcoming. I went with what I knew.

"Um, why?"

"Honestly? I don't know. He called up and asked HR to send him the best and brightest from Sundries. I told them Joan was on maternity leave. Then he asked us to send the biggest underachiever in the department. Tag, you're it." And then he laughed that Santa Clause laugh of his, the one that sounds so jolly but is actually sonically laced with traces of pure evil. I cringed under the weight of it. When it finally trailed off, Hadley took off his glasses and wiped tears from the corner of his eye with one oddly hairless wrist. He noticed the time on his watch.

"Say, you'd better get going. The plane is leaving in fifty minutes." He handed me a manilla envelope and strolled off down the corridor whistling some Doris Day tune.

I didn't have time to go home and pack. I didn't have time to take a leak. I threw some odds and ends into a briefcase that hadn't seen use since I joined the company and ran out the door to catch a taxi. I left my computer on. For all I know it's still on.

That was two years ago.

prose unearthed

So I managed to get a large chunk of my writing off the old, schizophrenic laptop's hard drive (it chuckled evilly all the time, but didn't actually crash except the once) and have added almost all my viable works in progress and their word counts over there on the right side of the blog.

One down, two to go.

The PC is going to be a bugger. It doesn't recognize the keyboard or the mouse. I'd just forget about it, but I know there is at least one project on there that I want to complete, and there very well may be several I've forgotten about. The other ancient floppy drive Dell laptop I may just let rest in peace. The stuff on there is so old, it might as well be written in cuneiform.

What really blows me away is just how much there is. Over the last eight years I've started many, many stories. Some of them I abandoned for good reason- they stunk. But what surprised me today as I went over the material I recovered from the laptop is just how not bad most of it is. Not perfect, certainly, but you can't expect unfinished first drafts to be flawless gems.

The other thing I noticed was that I seem to have progressed over time, writing-wise. Sentences become sleeker, better crafted, with less padding and better word choice. Not to toot my own horn, but I have matured as a writer- or at least as a writer of beginnings. At the time I was writing these, the initial spark of an idea and the excitement that accompanied it quicky fizzled. I was sure it was dreck.

Nice to know I was improving nonetheless.

Now they're up there for all to see- the word counts, I mean, not the stories themselves. I'll keep it updated for myself, if no-one else. It's a good spur. :)

Stray quote of the day

Hatred is one long wait. ~René Maran

Stray thought of the day

Wisdom keeps its mouth shut.

So Elton says Friday's allright for fighting and-

what? It's only Thursday?

Crud.

In other news, I'm pulling All the World a Grave from Amazon. I'm not comfortable just selling single short stories; too much risk of confusion, people thinking it's a full novel or a full collection of short stories. Out of the three sales on it so far, it's already happened at least once (sorry Izzy! I'll send you a hard copy of the short story collection) and I really, really don't want people to be disappointed.

Your Wednesday moment of zen

Alderaanian Death Legion

Tuesday nights:

not so speshul, reely.

Need to mark some papers, so I bid the intertubes a fond goodnight and leave you with some random images:

Now choose one and write a 500 word short story, using it as inspiration. The best one gets an autograped copy of All the World a Grave, but don't let that stop you.



Now I have to scrape up the money for an HBO subscription

The first 15 minutes of A Game of Thrones:


http://www.hbo.com/video/video.html/?autoplay=true&vid=1170886&filter=game-of-thrones&view=null

Sometimes this question comes up

My very good friend and fellow geek Anthony (hi Anthony!) asked me via facebook when I plan on writing a sequel for Thagoth. If he'd asked me a year ago, I would have told him 'never'.

In actual fact, I've got material featuring Amra and Holgren written, sitting on one hard drive or another. None of it is finished, though the different projects are in differing states of completion. Some just sketches, one, if memory serves me correctly, at about 15k words and roughly plotted out to the end. But the brutal truth is, every time I think about this stuff, the question comes to my mind: why write a sequel (or a prequel, as one of them is) to a book that virtually nobody wanted to read in the first place?

On the one hand, Thagoth remains a sore spot on my writer's psyche. I could worry at it like a dog who bites himself till he bleeds, or I can move on to other stuff.

On the other, I like Amra and Holgren. I like writing about them. They're fun and interesting characters, and the scrapes they get into are amusing even when they're terrifying. From a business perspective, if I choose to pursue fame and fortune via Amazon a la Hocking, I stand a better chance with series characters.

What it ultimately boils down to is the ethos of the book and the characters. The main theme of Thagoth (and yes, it does have one) is bloody-minded persistence = survival, and possibly even success. Endurance trumps power. You do your best, and never, ever give up. You spit in the eye of those who can crush you like a bug, even if you have to run away like a littlle girl immediately after. That's what Amra and Holgren are all about.

***

For a few years now I simply couldn't write in that vein, not believably, because I simply didn't believe it anymore. I find it a bit ironic that two characters I created were stronger than I was.

Yes, I said 'was'.

This last year of my life has reminded me of that ethos. Sometimes being done a deep wrong gives you a gift, all unsuspected.

So. Will there be more adventures featuring Amra and Holgren? Maybe. I've got a lot of writing projects on the slate, and the resumption of my writing career is still nascent. I have eight years' worth of material to sort through and judge as to whether it's viable to continue (my problem was never starting a story, just finishing one). I have some experiments to conduct, to see how best to write now. I'm a different person than I was before, and I suspect a different writer. Certainly a more experienced person.

So, Anthony, this is a long-winded way of saying 'maybe' :)

A week in the life

So the apartment is clean. I mean really clean, except for the bookshelves and the kitchen, and I'll get to them. The kind of clean where you look under the bed and see the eviction notice for all the dust bunnies and sundry other pests. Even the dog is clean.

So now that's out of the way, I've just got papers to mark and a 45 minute grammar lesson to prepare before Wednesday. Does this mean I'll get tons of writing done this week? Not really, because Sunday afternoon through Tuesday afternoon is about the kids. I'll go and pick Ryan up in about four hours, and then it's about him. Then tomorrow morning I'll take him to school and have four hours between school start and lunch time. When I take him back to school after lunch his sister Aubrey arrives, so there's a couple of hours with just her, and then her gor gor (big brother) gets off school, and pandemonium ensues. It's frenetic, dramatic, hair-pulling, full of vile accusations and dastardly deeds, and the best part of my week.

The brother will pack it in about 9:30, but little sis will fight for consciousness with every fibre of her little chubby body. Who knows when she will finally pack it in? 10:30? 11:00?

And the next morning there's the mad rush to get food in the boy and get him off to school, and then some time with the little one, then lunches, and then its time for me to go to work. It's all over too quickly. And Wednesday comes, with a packed schedule from 9 to 9, leaving Thursday and Friday a little writing room. Saturday is a 9-6 kinda day, seeing me reach home about 8. Dinner, a little internet or tv or a book, and done.

So no, I don't get lots of writing done during the week, despite my 'light' schedule. It seems I write in 500 word bursts, approximately. and that's fine. A couple of pages at a time.

Sorry for the blather. It's just that kind of morning.

Something to get you going on a Friday morning

None of my words would do this justice, so I will simply offer without comment:

All My Enemies*

The new title of a short story that's been kicking around in my head for a couple of years now. Man, my bedroom ceiling is just chock full of ideas.

*Teh Google tells me this is also the title of a song from someone named Dyablo. I'm in no shape to judge Dyablo's lyrics, so I will simply take the following lines as today's zen koan:

how are you goin to fuck with a dawg who packs guns
ima srtangle them bitches who is havin fun
ima cat with wild hot verses man
ima blow out my enemies and them fuckin bastards
i aint worried to push them weak skills

I am Stephen King meets Ursula Le Guin*

A few of you may know that I self-published a book of short stories a few years ago on Lulu.com. I did a sucky job of formatting the book, so I've subsequently pulled it from print**, but just this morning I noticed that someone on Amazon actually reviewed it - and apparently really liked it. Hill Fort Rambler of Lexington Kentucky, if you're still out there, thanks very much, and sorry for the tiny-tiny print and the big white spaces on the pages.

5.0 out of 5 stars Stephen King meets Ursula Le Guin, October 27, 2009


By hill fort rambler (Lexington, KY USA) - See all my reviewsThis review is from: All the World a Grave (Paperback)

Michael McClung's no holds barred approach delivers modern day fairy tales both refreshing and highly entertaining. The protagonists, set in the most peculiar and otherwordly of scenarios, are balanced with quirks and foibles, giving them tangible depth that allows the reader to relate to the darkest of their sufferings. I read this book after perusing a rather boring New York Times bestseller, and I literally could not put this book down. If you are mesmerized by the macabre depictions by Stephen King or are drawn to the fantasy worlds of Ursula Le Guin, you will find this book a rare gem. Be prepared to have your stomach turn at times. For adults only and certainly not for the faint of heart.

Here's a pic of the cover for the morbily curious:

*According to somebody I don't even know/didn't have to pay!
**Signed copies available for one gajillion dollars. Or a taco. Very limited quantities available.

Cage match: Vin vs Jon Snow

Brandon Sanderson's Vin vs George RR Martin's John Snow. Who will win this death duel? Only the fanboys know! (But my money is on Vin).

Need your input

So I'm thinking about doing an Amazon experiment and publishing my short story 'All the World a Grave' on Amazon. Say you were shopping around for a quick  horror or dark fantasy read, and saw this for 99 cents. Would it grab your attention?

Please let me know in the comments. Thanks!

Still not skiving: another Joo Chiat Blues excerpt

Nair didn’t call me that afternoon, or the following morning, on account of him being decapitated.


Going home on his big BMW bike, he hit a patch of oil on the Shears Bridge and went flying over the cement divider into oncoming traffic. Hit an open-sided lorry transporting plate glass. They fished his helmeted head out of the water a few hours later.

Jaimie Wee called me about seven the next morning to give me the news. I was surprised about Nair, but less so that Jaime was the one to call me about it. He was the right hand man of Singapore’s biggest, baddest underworld Tow Kay, an undead piece of shit named Ah Soon.

My handphone brought me out of the dregs of sleep. I rolled over and picked it up from the nightstand. I grunted into it.

“Sorry to wake you, William, but there’s been an unfortunate occurrence. Devin Nair was killed in a motorcycle accident last night.”

“Jaimie. Your boss order the accident?” I sat up on the edge of the bed and tried to dispel the cobwebs.

Jaimie laughed good naturedly. “Ah Soon may not be fond of lawyers, but he doesn’t generally have them killed. Especially not his own lawyer.”

“Your boss was Nair’s client.”

“And indirectly yours, yes.”

“Well tell him thanks for the five hundred, and I’ll be donating it to the Children’s Pocket Fund in his name.” I walked into the living room, lit a cigarette, trudged to the kitchen and started microwaving some powdered caffeine in water. I couldn’t bring myself to think of it in coffee terms or I wouldn’t have been able to gag it down.

“Tell him yourself. He wants to meet with you today. The sooner the better.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so, Jamie. No offense to you, but you work for the biggest scumbag in Singapore, possibly all of Southeast Asia. Plus I’m getting my nails done. I got a voucher in the mail.”

“William, there’s something you need to know. What happened to Nair was no accident, and it will happen to you next.”

“I don’t even own a motorcycle.” I watched the coffee mug go round and round inside the microwave. That Woody character from the Pixar shows was painted on the side. Got it free with two tubes of toothpaste.

“Don’t be deliberately obtuse. You will end up dead, just as Nair did.”

“And why is that, Jamie?” I turned away from the microwave to get the sugar out of the fridge. I have to keep it in the fridge. Ants.

“Because you know about the mask, and those in possession of it know about you.”

Just then the microwave made that little dink sound that means it’s done irradiating my kitchen. Then it made a big boom sound and the door flew off and through the space where my head had just been. It smashed into the wall with enough force to gouge the paint and the concrete beneath it. My back was scalded by instant coffee and lascerated by bits of ceramic Woody mug. I may have screamed.

“William? William! Are you all right?”

“Shit! That was my favourite fucking mug!”

So this morning I am sitting at the East Wind kopitiam (Vietnamese favourites!*) near my apartment, drinking my kopi c (coffee brewed in a sock with heavily sweetened condensed milk**)

Not really doing a lot of writing at this very moment (no, blog posts don't count). I am, however, doing a lot of thinking about writing, how I write,  why I write, and why I don't write. This last week has been something of a therapy session for my inner writer, I guess. Lots of things to digest.

Thagoth: The novel that has been the albatross around my neck for close to a decade. Much as I hate to admit it, the whole experience damaged me. Somewhere in my psyche it seems the notion lodged itself deep that either I was a faliure as a writer or that it didn't matter how well I wrote, because the game was rigged. Either way, I've had a hell of a hard time writing fiction for years now. It's damn hard to shake a loser mentality. It wasn't just the Thagoth experience that contributed to it; many events have happened in my life over the last few years that fed into vicious cycle of self-defeat. We'll save that for another post, though.

Acknowledgement: Over on Scalzi's blog, a simple conversation with Kat Goodwin about the state of the ebook market gave me something I didn't expect, right out of the blue:

"Yes, in 2003, you were screwed. Publishers had been burned on e-books before back in the early 1990′s. And there simply wasn’t a real set of working bookselling vendors in 2003 to sell much in e-books. (Amazon had not fully committed.) There were some companies doing some stuff, including self-publishing, so Del Rey tried the contest, but it wasn’t enough of a market then. When they decided to dump it, you should have been put into print, although that might have required a new contract, but you got “orphaned” — your editor and advocate left and the new ones didn’t want your stuff. Happens a lot; never meant that your book wasn’t worthy of an audience."


A few words from someone in the traditional publishing arena telling me things I already knew carried a psychic weight that surprised me. I told myself this stuff for years, but it made no impression. External confirmation has. It's still working through my system, honestly.

Validation: 1. Thagoth Yes, telling my facebook friends has raised sales of Thagoth, but honestly it's not the sales. The money I'll make from it isn't such a much (we're talking low three figures or high two figures unless something truly unexpected happens). What's priceless to me is that people actually cared enough to repost the link to the book and say nice things. Food for the writing soul, after years of wandering the desert. I can't thank people enough.

Validation: 2. "All the World a Grave" There were 21 stories in the anthology, and the Speculative Book Review singled out three for praise, including mine. The story that only I and Sarah Prineas believed in.

I'm a writer. I write. I can't let all the other nonsense get in the way anymore.

* Not sure if they are referring to the food or the ladies of the evening who frequent it.
** Don't you dare judge me

My brainz. It works funny.

Lying in bed last night, staring at the ceiling, it came to me what my story-in-progress "The Rashomon Gate" "was really about. Voila, just like that, I had the ending and a big chunk of the middle fall into my lap.

Total non-spoiler tease, it's sort of a Purloined Letter of extreme proportions. Poe for the save!

Your daily dose of inspiration

She Don't like Firefly...

...so she's gone, gone, gone.

Some things you can accept about another person in a relationship, and some things you just can't.

-via Kat Goodwin's blog.

On Piñatas in Singapore

1. They are made in China
2. They are constructed with steel reinforced concrete
3. Number 2 is a lie; they are made of really thick cardboard, though
4. Number 3 means that instead of a festively decorated bat, the piñata should come with a festively decorated spear.
5. To paraphrase my friend Christien, they get wha they deserve for being filled with candy.

Love Dickens? Love The Wire?

Then you absolutely have to check this out.

"Omar comin', yo!"

I miss my friend Randy Schaub. The most decent person I ever met.

Here's a post about him on Bookslut from his brother Michael, listing ten books Randy loved.

Singapore calling

Last night I called Ballantine in New York because I realized it had been, oh, five years or so since I received a royalty check for Thagoth. After the initial release, sales dropped off fairly quickly, and the last check I received was for something like $25.16. Then we moved, and moved again, and I just couldn't be arsed to call long distance at midnight to talk to somebody and let them know. But of course I got to thinking about it since the Great Facebook Campaign began, and so I called.

A nice lady named Nancy is sending out my check. In the last five years or so Thagoth has earned me the handsome sum of $70-and-change. If I remember corectly, I get 50 cents or so from every copy, so that means about 150 copies have been sold in the last five years.

I'll probably sell that many copies in five days. It really is a new world for ebooks, huh?

...with a little help from my friends

In Singapore they call it pai seh. Growing up I don't think we had an exact word to cover it, but it was the feeling of embarrassment/shame for making a mistake or imposing on someone. That's what's kept me from letting many people know I'm a published writer. When it comes up in conversation, I sort of squirm mentally. 'Aw, shucks' without the sense of false pride.

Yesterday I decided to let my facebook friends know that I had an  ebook out there, and that it was only $2.99. I asked them to pass on the link to it.

At the beginning of yesterday, THAGOTH was #397,564 on Amazon and #371,279 on Barnes & Noble.

Tonight on Amazon it's #45,093 and on B&N, #224,395.

This is for my fb friends:

Note to self.

Remain calm

Some people (okay, one person) has expressed some startlement at the recent changes on this here blog. I would just like to reassure everyone that change is good, change is natural. This is still SomethingSticky, I'm just adding the bit of my life that I've mostly left out -- the writing as profession bit.

Why haven't I really blogged about that much before? Mainly because it didn't exist much after THAGOTH got published. Depression, life change, fatherhood, life in general, including a serious bout of writer's block.

But, knock wood, I've got the old tingle back. Writing is happening around here, perhaps at a slower pace than previously, but steadily. And I still consider myself a writer, after everything that has happened. Self-identification is a powerful force.

So this blog should also reflect and reinforce that.

Amanda Hocking is one of my tribe

Now don't get me wrong. It's unlikely I will ever read any of her work. Paranormal romance makes my eyes bleed. Literally. I have a doctor's note. But Amanda Hocking is one of my tribe, nonetheless.

You go, girl.

Thanks for inspiring me to believe in and promote my own work.

more proof I haven't been skiving

This is the first bit of a short story (unrelated to the WL King stuff) I'm working on. Funny thing is, I saw a call for 'monk punk' short stories, but the deadline had passed. I wanted to write it anyway. The original Rashomon story has always kind of haunted me, as has the Kurosawa film which had very little to do with the short story. Anyway, if Kurosawa can steal for inspiration, so can I.

The Rashomon Gate

In those days the Capital was in a sad state of affairs. Famine and flood, fire and whirlwind had each made their appearance over the years, one disaster leading on to the next in a chain of misery. Nearly everything, it seemed, was in disrepair, including the Rashomon Gate. All manner of wild things had crept in over the years and made their home in the dilapidated structure; foxes, badgers, robbers. And other things.

You may have heard that people would bring unclaimed bodies there to dump, and this is true. Furtive figures would mount the wide red staircase that led to the tower atop the gate, dragging their burdens, sometimes perhaps with a sketchy sort of respect, sometimes just performing distasteful chore, according to their own natures and the natures of the departed. And then they would depart, and the crows would descend from their perches on the ridge poles and the once-bright shibi that graced their tips.

Rashomon Gate was not a place one would want to hang about in the daylight, much less in the night. It would have been a curious sight, therefore, had anyone been watching, to see the wizened monk who came to the gate one midnight in summer.

He came up Suzaku Boulevard at a deliberate if staggering pace, strong legs tethered to age-twisted hips. His staff was more than an accoutrement. His robes, once a sober black, were faded and dusty from the road. It had rained fiercely the week before, flattening crops; the past five days, however, had seen a sun intent on desiccating the land.

The monk stopped there beneath the gate, scratched an armpit, hawked and spat. “No help for it,” he muttered, and began the painful climb up the red stairs.

Just to prove I haven't been skiving

Here's a snippet of the work in progress:

"This looks different from the other works," I said, and started, finding the woman suddenly standing close enough to whisper in my ear. You know, or stick a knife in it.

"Ah, yes," she said, not acknowledging my startlement or what had caused it. Her attention was on the mask in front of us. "An earlier work. Part of a series of eight."

"Where are the others?"

"Lost," she said, perfectly made up lips giving the ghost of a frown, "during the Cultural Revolution."

I let the silence build till it became uncomfortable, which took about three seconds. "What is it, anyway?"

"A death mask."

"I didn't know the Chinese were into death masks."

She shrugged, a minimal gesture. Like everything about her, it seemed. "Artists draw from many sources, many cultures. Insipration is where you find it."

"So who's this a mask of?"

"Unknown."

"Nobody ever asked this Deng guy?"

"If they did, there is no record of it."

"No record?"

"Deng Jian Rong shot himself in the head in 1987."

That uncomfortable silence again. This place needed Muzak. "Artists. Unstable types I guess."

She smiled politely in reply and made a card appear in her hand. Holding it out to me, she said "I'm afraid we're closing up now. Do please call on us another time, Mister King."

Shit, I thought, palms suddenly sweaty. How did she know my name?

A review

So the Speculative Book Review had some nice things to say about the story I had in the Flesh and Bone anthology. I think I like them.

we three dorks

for my children

high walls and a blue sky above
the wind shakes the trees, leaves fall,
skirl down around me
an imitation of autumns I have known-
that, in this place, you will never come to know

and the faces I have known
surround me, and some are gone
for good; some I will love for good,
for good or ill. Yours I will love for good
and all.

should you wonder about me, you should know
some part of my heart I set in a high place
to keep it clean of the muck,
long, long before you came along
but now I think I made a mistake-

I love you, I love you, with all my heart
though with these two hands I tore it apart;
I love you on the rise, but you must trust
I also love you on the fall.

How to cross the Uhwarrie River seven times in one night carrying a forty pound backpack, an M-16, a mortar bipod and a live chicken

There is a trick to crossing the Uhwarrie River in the middle of the night carrying an M-16 A2 rifle, a forty pound backpack, a mortar bipod and a live chicken. I know, because I did it seven times in one night, many years ago.

The trick is, you have to be very careful where you plant your feet, and take each step carefully, giving it your full attention, because you do not want to fall. You will be wet, all over, not just below the knees. All of your gear will be wet. The rifle and the bipod will be wet. The chicken will be wet (not that you much care, by this point). And while you will ensure all the things that can rust will become dry as soon as is practical, you will remain wet for hours in the chill North Carolina night. And being wet for hours in the chill North Carolina night is a special brand of misery.

So you place your feet very carefully, and you ignore the sergeant's bullshit direction about spacing, and you ignore the muttered complaint about your slowness from the guy behind you (he's not carrying a mortar bipod or a chicken, so he can just go fuck himself) and most especially you ignore the voice inside your head that says "Hey, you're crossing the Uhwarrie River seven times in one night carrying full kit plus a mortar bipod and a live chicken. That's, uh, that's... messed up? Funny as hell, if it were somebody else? Absurd? It's the live chicken that's the kicker, really..."

You have to ignore this voice, because this voice will not shut up if you indulge it even a little, and you will be inclined to listen to it, and chuckle along with its low wit, and you will forget to watch your footing on the slick river stones and in the moderate current.

Of course, the price you pay for ignoring the voice during the event is that, sometimes, the voice comes back years later. And then you are reminded all over again how you crossed the Uhwarrie River seven times &c. And then you are forced to blog about it.

Meet William Langston King, Monster Hunter

So I have been getting some writing done, a little here, a little there. I've gotten enough together on this work in progress to show you a teaser. Remember, this is just a first draft, and the part here is really just prologue.

 It's likely going to be a novel, and possible a series if the writing gods smile kindly. It's sort of a Dresden Files-esque doohicky, set in Singapore. This first story is tentatively titled Joo Chiat Blues.

*****

My name is William Langston King. Call me Will, please, or Bill if you must, but skip Billy or Willy unless you want me to call you something nasty right back. I currently live in exile in Singapore. If I return to the States, I'll be hunted down and executed. Ex-wives are funny like that.

Every man - every person - has two faces. There's how the world sees them, and how they see themselves. The truth may or may not lie somewhere in the middle. I like to think of myself as an ordinary guy. Average height, average build, nondescript face, pleasant but not handsome. Not someone you take a second look at. The perfect movie extra. I'm the guy that you don't notice walking down the street. I like it that way.

That's the outside, the surface. The most noticed and least important part of all of us.

On the inside I like to think I'm ordinary, too. In some ways it's even true. The little quirks of personality that make us individuals, but in a broader sense make us human, make us comfortably the same. After a hard day, I like to crack open a cold beer and sit in front of the television, not so much for the beer or the entertainment but because of the normalcy of it. I like cold pizza, and hate ironing. I think it's incredibly unfair that, as a man gets older, he loses hair from the places he wants it and gains hair where he doesn't. I like to sleep in on rainy mornings. I am, for all intents and purposes, your average Joe.

Except for the magic, and the monsters.

So. My name is William King. I am many things, just as we all are; good, bad, indifferent. But the words I had inscribed below my name on the plaque at the columbarium read MONSTER HUNTER.

If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, and in the case of final resting places, you need to do it in advance.

Christmas was better in the Eighties

Some of you may not know, not having been fully conscious during the eighties due to massive drug/alcohol intake or because you were still in diapers, but let me assure you that Christmas was better in the nineteen eighties.
For those of you who know, shed a tear and raise a glass for what has been lost to time. For those who don't, try not to let the knowledge that you will never experience a 1980s Christmas ruin what shallow joy is to be had in these latter days.

Also, George Michael and Andrew Ridgely get together for a drink. Wham!

The Grinding Wheels of Justice bunkbed

From the best of craigslist, the Grinding Wheels of Justice bunkbed.

Some people mistake my sense of fairness for weaknes.

Raymond Chandler on the detective as hero

"In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor--by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is in all things.

"He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks--that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.

"...If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in."

--from The Simple Art of Murder

when the eternal footman

holds my coat, and snickers, I want to be able to give him a cutting glance because my life meant something to someone other than myself.

Laundry List

• I see the urologist at Singapore General Hospital on Wednesday (I say that like there's only one, and like I know him/her). I look forward to bringing along the stone in a ziplock back and waving it around while saying proudly 'Look what I made!'
• I have promised the Son that I will buy the nicorette gum. And to drink more water every day. Nothing like a five year old to keep you honest. (by the way, I do not smoke around the kids).
• If I can survive the next six months, I may be able to eat something other than instant noodles.

That is all.

Sickness update

It was a kidney stone.

a personal discovery

tonight I realized that the relief of pain is a much finer feeling (to me) than the application of pleasure is. There is a clarity that comes as pain recedes, whereas pleasure just befuddles.

tomorrow I see the doctor, unless the pain returns in the night.

very, very sick.

been a long time since i had the kind of fever that gives me chills when I step into air conditioning. also have a cough that sounds like a rottweiler got stuck in my throat.

on the plus side, the whole world seems to be just a little bit lighter and fluffier. I even had some hallucinations last night as I tossed and turned in bed.

yay, sickness.

Now that it's over...

I can talk about the collision of Hari Raya and the Hungry Ghost month in Joo Chiat.

It was bad.

Hari Raya wasn't all that bad, actually. Lots of stalls set up, yummy 'street' food, pretty lights. The main problem was the traffic, and the rubbish. The main issue was that of the many, many, many stalls that didn't sell food, they all sold curtains. Curtains, curtains curtains. Would you like to buy some curtains? Why no thank you, I don't believe in them. Well how about some curtains then?

The Hungry Ghost month was less pleasant. Some lowlights:

• People burning bales of hell notes. I swear hectares of rainforest were burned here in Joo Chiat. I mean, is it love or fear that prompts one to remit billions of dollars to the departed? I shudder to think of the runaway inflation in the afterlife. Zimbabwe? Meh. The Weimar Republic? Pffft.
• The greasy coating of ash on everything, including my white tile floor. See, my back door doesn't close. Through a fiendishly complicated system of raffia connecting the back door to the rubbish chute, said door is always open. (I didn't create this monstrousity; it was like that when I moved in. Some people might say I'm just lazy, that I could cut it and be done. The truth is I'm in awe of the mind which devised the unholy mess, the unnecessary(?) tangle of pink raffia that connects handle to handle thorough a convoluted series of twists and turns. I suspect said mind was either brilliant or deranged, and to destroy its work would be almost sacreligious, and very probably dangerous.) Since my back door is always open (so to speak, if you can climb threee stories and squeeze through the wrought iron security bars (much like a former bosses' open door policy, come to think) and since the prevailing wind comes from the rear of the house, the ashes from all the burning billions ended up in my house every. single. day.
• The chanting monks. To the rear of my dwelling is an open field, which allows me an unobstructed view of, among other things, the Gateway Hotel, East Wind Foodcentre (Vietnamese Favourites!) and Pub 88 & Karaoke. None of these fine establishments has ever annoyed me to any extent comparable to the three chanting monks that set up shop in the open field outside my back door. In a cheerful little yellow tent, they chanted for hours one night- which would have been fine, actually, if they hadn't felt the need to use a PA system. Why (on earth? in hell?) would the dead need a PA system? WHY? They're dead, not deaf.

So. They're over now. I wonder what else Joo Chiat has in store for me?

8 days

8 days with the kids. It was good. I like being a full time dad, waking up with them, going to bed with them.

Now back to my regularly scheduled existence.

Interim

It feels as if my life is being crammed down into a haiku.

I'm sure you remember your school teacher at some point forcing you to write haiku; it seemed like a good idea to them at the time, a three line poem, the 5-7-5 structure. 'Yeah, kids can do this,' the well meaning English teacher thought, 'and more importantly, I can teach this.'

Only haiku are incredibly difficult to do well. You strip down the essence of one thought, one idea, one emotion to its purest form in 17 syllables. You ruthlessly sift and strip away everything that is not the business end of what you want to say. The beauty of a haiku is the beauty of survival- these words have survived to express my meaning; no others, out of the entire language, were fit to do so.

And in the end, it's all ephemeral. Desperately important, but ephemeral. Like life.