Teel – Page 60 – Teel McClanahan

Not going back to school right now

I don’t remember if I mentioned it here before or not, but after I left ICE to begin working on my own projects full time, one of the things Mandy and I considered was that one of us might go back to school full time. A major factor of this is that student loans / financial aid are designed to cover all the costs of going to school, from tuition and fees to transportation, room and board – if I could get sufficient financial aid, I could go back to school, finish my Studio Art B.F.A. (which I believe would help not only with creating art but with integrating into the ‘Art World’ and with selling art to all the people who keep asking where I studied), and have several years of lead time to get my projects paying enough to cover the difference between Mandy’s single salary and our living expenses. ie: I’d get an education, that fancy sheet of paper that so many people seem to think proves you’re worth something, we’d get the immediate financial assistance we need to get by right now, and we’d get the time to build my businesses up to a point where their income might be more steady and significant. It sounded like win/win/win/win/win, so I submitted my FAFSA and applied for re-admission to ASU.

Due to a “paperwork” problem (which is insane, since the entire thing is digital), my transcripts took several tries and over two months to get from PVCC to ASU, so I didn’t get officially re-admitted to ASU until a couple of weeks ago. I promptly went down to ASU for advisement and to submit some paperwork to their financial aid department, neither of which I could do before being re-admitted. The financial paperwork was a revision of our financial position, since the FAFSA was based on last year’s taxes and this year I’m not working full time and expect to make something like $20k less as a household this year over last year, depending on how sales go in the next six months. (Anyone want to offer $20k for a painting? It would be the height of irony, far better than buying ‘I Am Rich’ for your iPhone.) Show the change in financial status, write a letter about it, fill out a form, and they’ll re-consider your financial need and revise their financial offer.

While waiting two months for a file to be electronically transmitted less than 25 miles, we had time to consider -at length- many of the pros and cons of my attending school, and its feasibility. Notwithstanding the immense increase in our personal debt that the student loans would create (student loans being one of the least terrible forms of debt on your credit report), there was plenty to consider. If attending school full time, would I have [any|enough] time to work on personal projects, new art, new books, et cetera? How much money would need to be offered above the cost of attendance to cover living expenses, including the cost of driving back and forth to Tempe? What is the real value of a degree? Would I be able to cope with Academia on a constant basis for three to four more years? Would I learn anything worthwhile that I couldn’t just teach myself? On and on, back and forth, in conversation, thought, and prayer while we waited…

By the time I managed to get PVCC to actually send the relevant information to ASU and get re-admitted there, I had determined both what the financial aid offer needed to be in order to attendance to be financially possible (ie: without causing us to starve even faster) and that if re-admitted and appropriate financial aid was offered I would be attending this Fall. The initial aid offer was based on “zero need” from last year’s tax numbers, and was about 60% of what we would actually need, all in Unsubsidized loans (which means that interest accrues while you attend school). Friday I got the letter from ASU advising of their updated offer (which I had seen online this time last week, but wanted to wait for the paperwork, in case that wasn’t their final revision) of aid, which was based on a need which they had adjusted by almost exactly the amount more we needed to be offered to afford school. Except that despite the significant change in calculated need, the dollar amount of the “new” offer was exactly the same. A little over half of it was now in Subsidized loans (which means that interest doesn’t start accruing until you’re done with school) and the rest was still in Unsubsidized loans.

Well, fuck. That doesn’t help, not at all. Not in the slightest. Except that it does make my decision for me: I cannot attend ASU this Fall.

So I’ve already gone through, this weekend, and declined their insufficient financial aid offer and withdrawn myself completely from classes. I should probably send a couple of courtesy emails to my adviser and a professor in the Art Department I’d emailed to say I was coming back… thank them and let them know I’m not… But otherwise, that thought, that dream, is over for now. It’s back to the grindstone for me (not that I’ve really been away), back to trying to make enough to eat from my art and my books.

Working on a new novel

So last month, July, I decided to try to focus on writing. The goal was to try to get a new novel written before the end of the month. According to my calendar, I started on July 9th. I made reasonably good progress for about a week, and then my undisciplined nature began rearing its ugly head and progress slowed. Days would go by without writing anything. Writing a single chapter sometimes took several days instead of a few hours. I know I can write quickly, and during the first week of work I was estimating that I should be able to finish the first draft in under two weeks, second draft, layout, cover design, copy editing, and the rest done by the end of the month, and maybe have the new book submitted to my printer by August 1st.

Alas, it is now August 12th and I am only 120 pages into a manuscript I’m aiming for 300 pages with. And while I almost never know where one of my books is going until it gets there, the nagging feeling that I don’t know where this book is going just keeps pounding away at the inside of my mind. A couple of weeks ago I noticed that the book has no conflict. No antagonist. No plot, that I am aware of, so far. This is not a new problem; most of what I write seems to have these [features|problems]. Dragons’ Truth didn’t really have a plot, an antagonist, or much in the way of meaningful conflict until chapters 13 and 14 (of 15) – and many readers agree with me that it doesn’t really have a good ending; it just stops, after an anticlimactic confrontation of only words. Lost and Not Found has four main stories in it, none of which have any real conflict or antagonist beyond the protagonist’s internal struggles and a couple of catty women who serve as little more than a foil to same. The Untrue Tales series was my attempt to write what I thought people wanted, and is chock full of conflict, sex, and a wide variety of antagonists — and frankly, I don’t like writing it, much, though there are several more books required to finish what I’ve started there.

This new novel is actually set in the same world as Lost and Not Found, and one of its main characters is featured prominently in the first couple dozen pages of that book. Everyone else is new. The setting is new. The theme may very well be the same, though I am not the best judge of such things – in my books or in anyone else’s. If you’ve read Lost and Not Found (which is available at modernevil.com as a free eBook in, like, eight different eBook formats -including the Kindle, if you own one- so what’s your excuse for not reading it? Paying is just one of your options), the story starts with Paul, who was predicting a sort of a doomsday at the beginning of Lost and Not Found. If you read the whole book, you’ll see that his doomsday comes, right on schedule – in a way. This book follows Paul, shows where he went to try to escape that world-changing event, and the lives of some of the other people who survived it and who live where he retreated to. Since some of Lost and Not Found’s timeline overlaps this new book’s timeline (and some occurs years later) and most of the characters are not (at least, not yet) in this book, I’m wary to call it a sequel. But it’s definitely in the same world.

Okay, a little more info about that: In early drafts of the book which turned into Lost and Not Found, there was another section after what is currently the end of that book. Like, twenty-two thousand words. After leaving Haven, ten years after the main story of Lost and Not Found, the main characters travel on to a flying city called Skythia and take up residence. They find Paul living there, among other things. That part of the story was cut out -in its entirety- from Lost and Not Found. This new book takes place in between the first section of Lost and Not Found (ie: the last place we hear about Paul in that book) and the section that was cut. So far, we’re within a few months’ time, so nowhere near the point where Lost and Not Found’s main characters would enter the story – though I won’t rule that out at this point, since I have no idea where this story is going.

Anyway, mentally, the presence of Skythia in a part of Lost and Not Found that was cut completely puts a few restraints on what can happen in this novel. Not in a bad way, necessarily. More like, I know vaguely where Paul -and Skythia- will be in ten years, as though this was all something that had actually happened and I’m merely documenting it with these books. Maybe I’ll work the cut part of that book into the end of this one. Maybe I’ll start a future sequel with it. Maybe it’ll remain cut out forever (or until I’ve died and someone decides to publish a new “more complete” version of Lost and Not Found containing the “lost ending” … bleh. Oooh, or maybe when I feel I’ve got enough readers that it would be profitable to put out such an edition, like the ‘anniversary’ editions of The Princess Bride with a new foreward here and a new chapter five years later and a new cover and a new afterward ten years later and so on…). Any way it ends up, the presence of that part of the story in my mind, in the universe of my imagination, creates a constraint on this novel. Even if I introduce the supervillain character I’ve been trying to wedge in, the city cannot be destroyed (not without being rebuilt) and Paul cannot be killed (not without being resurrected) nor politically ruined (I’m not telling). The utopian nature of Skythia and the basics of their government cannot change significantly. Et cetera, et cetera.

So, that’s what I’m not writing right now. It doesn’t yet have a title, but it does have zombies, robots, a utopian flying city, drama, politics, many fantasy races (elves, faeries, Kwytzwyk, centaur, &c.), ooh, and maybe dinosaurs soon. I’m not sure when it’ll be done, but I’m now trying to aim for it to come out in paperback around the same time the Podiobook release of the Lost and Not Found audiobook is complete.

At least it’s writing…

I think I’m writing here largely because I was having trouble at my typewriter. You see, I’m writing another novel, and I’m doing the first draft on one of my typewriters. This novel happens to take place in the same world as Lost and Not Found, chronologically after most of the events of that book, though not actually a sequel as such. It’s been a few days since I’ve written anything – I was working on getting started on the audiobook version of Lost and Not Found, then on composing a musical theme for same most of the week ((If you want to hear what I have so far, email me or leave a comment and I’ll send you a link)) – and I set down and tried to pick up where I left off. Apparently something had interrupted me in the middle of a chapter, in the middle of a paragraph. I’ve been trying to write chapters for this book for a variety of reasons -people seem to like and/or expect chapters, they help create a structure for moving between or tying together different elements of the story, it makes it easier to stop and pick up again at another time if there’s a chapter break, because I don’t have to match the flow of what came before quite as closely- but for whatever reason (now lost to me) I was half-way through this chapter. I set down a while ago and tried to just start going.

I read the preceding pages. I looked at the sentence. My hands sprang into motion, the keys of the typewriter clacking away noisily as the words formed on the page, and then … well, then the sentence started giving me trouble. It got longer and longer and, as it grew, it became less and less coherent. Where did this sentence think it was going? In the time I can usually pour out a couple of pages all I had managed was to mire myself in the first sentence I’d attempted. I XX’d out several words, cut the sentence short and -relatively- understandable, and stepped away from the typewriter. I finished my research on Klein bottles (one of the things that managed inexplicably to wedge its way into the sentence (which you will now be able to look for in the finished book, to find the troubled phrase)) and then came here.

To blog. Because I’ve been meaning to write something here for a while now, but keep either having something better to do (sleep, work on my novel, sleep, et cetera) or not enough to say.

Although that isn’t really the case, is it? I always have something to say. And I’m working on a lot of projects right now, have a lot of things coming up, going away, et cetera. So what is it? One long post, or a lot of little posts? I think a lot of little posts. I’m making a list right now of subjects to cover, so I don’t forget them.

An idea about reviews for new media & independent publishers

Alright, so here’s a post about a concept that has occurred to me. It would probably serve me well to implement and participate in it, but -like so many of my ideas- it will probably not get further than this post. Depends on how ambitious I feel, I suppose.

It’s a pretty basic idea: Old media’s old ideas about reviews don’t work in the new digital world.

Not just because fewer and fewer book reviews are being published, and not just because the old media isn’t interested in new media, independent and self-publishers, and anyone who happens to use the ‘new’ tech of print-on-demand (unless they “hit it big”, sell out, and stop being those things). The old ideas don’t work for reasons I discussed here semi-recently: More books are being written and published than ever before, and more than could ever be reviewed in the old media without overwhelming everything else. Over a thousand new books a day in North America alone, last year. Heck, five of those were mine. So what’s the solution for getting all these new books reviewed? Heckifiknow. But I have an idea for getting some of them reviewed.

How about creators themselves -rather than just pro and amateur reviewers- review each other’s work? There could be some sort of central site where authors could log in and connect with each other and readers could come and see all the reviews in a central, searchable, well-organized location. The reviews could be done quid-pro-quo, ie: I’ll review yours if you review mine, and every book review then brings visibility to both works (because there’s always that “[name of reviewer] is the author of books such as [blah] and [bleh] and writes a blog at [blerg]” at the bottom of a review). Authors could exchange PDFs (MP3s, HTML files, URLs, et cetera), or probably, if they wanted a paper copy of the book, send them a pBook at cost (instead of full retail, since you’re getting a review, but also because none of us wants to go broke trying to get internet reviews). Reviews could then be cross-posted to the authors’ blogs, linked form their books’ sites, et cetera… Increasing the visibility of the review site. And the site would be able to scale better than most of the solo-blogger-reviewers out there, since every new author that wanted to be reviewed would have to become a reviewer. It should be media-agnostic, since we’re all internet people, here: eBook, audiobook, POD book, dynamic hyperbook, whatever, it’s all good. Lots of duplicate reviews are (I think) good, since different people have different opinions on different books – book reviews aren’t objective. A system similar to the one they use at MiniBookExpo For Bloggers could be used (except not just for Canadians), so one could be restricted to three (or so) pending reviews at a time.

Obviously, such a site would take a certain amount of work to be put up and maintained, but since it’s powered by the strengths of the network (each independent author / publisher handles their own distribution of the books, and is in charge of posting their own reviews, and for generating traffic to the site, and the more authors are involved the better the whole thing works), it’s mostly a matter of getting it off the ground.

Ooh, or does this exist already, and I don’t know about it? Point me in the right direction. I’ll sign right up. I should be doing more reading, myself, and adding the selfish motivation of getting my own books reviewed sure would help get me to review other people’s works. I bet it’d do the same thing for yours. Know anyone who could help put this thing together?

What interesting weather we’re having

It’s raining outside.

But that’s not what I wanted to post about. I had this dream…

I don’t want to say something as simple as “I dreamed about her,” because I’m not sure that’s true, though she certainly happened to be in the dream. But I suppose that is how it is said. I was woken from sleep a little after One AM, and found myself trying way too hard to get back into the dream, because easalle was there. As dreams do, the details are fading, but the basics I can remember are this: I was on a sort of walking tour with a group of people, going to see various people give presentations / speeches / readings in their homes, all on a common theme. I had the distinct impression that it was somehow related to NaNoWriMo, perhaps that it was, in fact, part of National Novel Writing Month’s activities that year. The “theme” or idea that everyone was supposed to have been presenting on -perhaps that they were supposed to have written their novel about, and were supposed to be presenting re: their novels- was “airplanes” or air travel or some such.. that detail has faded, but not enough to be gone, just … smudged. And the entire time I was following along with the group, taking one presentation after another, I was dreading that our tour guide would announce the next location was hers. And then, of course, he announced the next address and I leaned over to the only person in the group I knew -I have no recollection of who this was supposed to be; someone familiar with the situation, involved in NaNoWriMo, who doesn’t hate me and then apparently someone larger than I am, physically, both in height and moreso in girth- and said “that’s her.” It wasn’t the address she lived at when I knew her, three and a half years ago, but it was a valid address (now faded to incomprehensibility – 422 something’th place or somesuch) and I knew immediately that it was hers. My companion and I had a hushed argument on the way over about it (something along these lines, though the exact words are lost to the Dreaming: “you don’t have to go in, I’ll stay outside with you,” “you shouldn’t have to stay outside on account of me,” “you shouldn’t have to stay out either,” “I don’t want to cause any problems…”) and when we arrived, we were with the last of the group, hanging back, outside a classroom where she was presenting. There were a few other people outside the room; apparently all the desks had filled up already, but even as I tried to convince my companion to go in without me, not to hold back for my sake, I slipped into the back of the room and set in a desk at the back of the room in the corner by the open door. There she was, at the front of the class, and I don’t know if she saw me, and I was somewhat hoping she wouldn’t, and before long she crossed the room and sat down facing the same direction as the class so she could work a projector for her presentation. It was weird, because I thought she was using an overhead projector -the kind you use with transparencies- but she was showing photos from some sort of road trip, but the images were actually short videos, the sort you would take with a digital still camera, and I can’t remember hearing her presentation but I remember thinking it wasn’t about airplanes or air travel, and whose little blue convertible sports car is that, and who is that guy she’s with, that’s not her husband -it was some blond guy that looked like a celebrity I recognized but can’t think of the name of now- and so I was sitting in the back, in the dark, in the corner watching her give this sort of video/photo slide show and talk to this whole group of people about this thing and all these shots of her and this guy having a great time in this little blue convertible sports car on a road trip someplace nice, with trees and water and small towns, and I don’t know if it was the weather or my wife rolled over or what, but suddenly I was awakened. And I couldn’t get back into the dream, let alone sleep – I didn’t know what time it was, but it turned out I’d already had about 8hrs sleep.

And the curtain was a little open, so there was light coming in from outside, painted across the wall in front of me. The light was pink, which means weather to me, since I live in the desert, and then it strobed for a second or two – literally like someone nearby was using a strobe light, though it must have been lightning. I crawled over to where I could peek directly out the window at the sky, and yes- it did look like weather, a uniform pink sky -and I whispered to the cat who sleeps at the foot of the bed and was now inches from my head “what interesting weather we’re having…”

But I couldn’t get back to sleep, and I couldn’t stop thinking about her, about the dream, and my iPhone wasn’t in the room because I’d only just laid down for a nap, not “gone to bed” at 6PM, so I couldn’t just sit in bed and look her up. Got up, relieved myself, came out to the living room, went out the front door for a bit to look at the sky – looked like moments from rain, and it was. Came in, set down with my iPhone and googled easalle for a bit. Not a lot to see. Looks like she’s still alive, though, so maybe my irregular prayers for her safety are helping (admittedly, she is one “her” in a long list whose health and safety I pray for once in a while, but she has not been left off the list since I first loved her). And maybe she dreamt the same dream tonight, and maybe she saw me there, and maybe this is some other sort of sign, some other sort of reason, some other sort of omen, and maybe it’s nothing. Maybe [name removed] is reminding me about what happened between her and [different name removed] after the exorcism, so I don’t make the same mistake with the demons I’m confronting right now. Maybe the dreaming mind is random, full of happenstance, and ought not to be thought long on by the conscious mind. I’ll try to put this behind me; putting it down into words helps. Now it’s here, instead of in me.

The rain seems to have passed.

Time to get to work.