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So, yeah… I’m a little down lately.

This is either coincident with… or perhaps a result of …I learned recently that Laura has …weird issues with committment. Such that she is not sure she could be monogamous … or even go so far as to say that she will try to be ‘faithful’ to me. …And that there may be a measure of a shallow judgemental nature to her… by which I do not quite measure up.

Or maybe it’s this cold, confusing me by making me feel bad in a way that feels emotional.

Or maybe it’s because of my recent birthday… which actually went a lot better than I expected, overall… I mean, I got a lovely dinner, two cakes, a gift from Laura, a backwards sort of gift from Zoe that was just what I wanted, and these pants I’m wearing… but my whole life I’ve been not expecting to live past 50, and now I’m over half-way there, and … what is my life worth, after all these 25 years? I joke sometimes that I like to make people “suffer and cry” … that’s actually supposed to be Modern Evil’s “mission statement”: “Make people suffer and cry.” But I look back on my life, on the people whose lives I’ve intersected with, and rather than a net gain, I see a lot of suffering, confusion, and tears. And that’s just in the people around me. I’ve been trying to do better the last few years, to have a positive impact on the lives of the people I care about, to form worthwhile, lasting relationships with new people… but it’s devolved, I think. I don’t want to change the world, but I don’t want to be a total drain. And sure, I’ve got that novel written, but I think people are afraid to give me feedback on it, or … don’t know what to say at all. It isn’t a novel like anything I’ve ever seen, and apparently not like anything anyone else has seen, either. Who knows if people want to read something so different from what they’re familiar with? And I’ve sold a couple of paintings, but here’s my dark secret: I’ve never sold a painting (for money) to anyone I haven’t either been to bed with or who hasn’t expressed interest in same. It isn’t just my friends buying them (though it is just my friends expressing interest in them), it’s ex-lovers and potential lovers buying them. (I mentioned this to someone else lately, and their response was that I must be really good in bed. I guess. But I don’t really want to have to bed people to sell my art.)

It’s after ten now, and I feel like I should be downstairs, like maybe grandfather is getting angry… except I can’t remember ever seeing him angry, and I expect he’ll be calm and friendly whenever I get downstairs… but with a list of things for me to do.

My neck hurts. I think I slept on it wrong a couple of nights ago, and it’s been in pain since. Apparently there’s a glut of massage therapists in the Rim Country… but it doesn’t bring their prices down.

But mostly, I think it’s Laura. Not that she’s done something wrong, but that I hoped for too much, and I’m dealing now with my dashed hopes. I’m trying to deal, anyway. I’m trying to deal with convincing my mind and my heart that “pen pals” is the right phrase do describe us, nothing more. To figure out what that means. Mutual like, mutual lust, one-sided love, and … no committment, no expectations beyond the next letter or email, and apparently I was the only one who hoped that something more would or could grow out of this, to take us beyond pen pals. It’s my fault. I read too much into her words. I guess that’s one of the problems with letters is that I can read them again and again and again and think for hours and days and weeks about what she meant when she wrote this or that, and sometimes it doesn’t take long to see something that isn’t there… like when she says she doesn’t want someone else, she wants me… I accidentally read that to mean that out of her own desire she would automatically not pursue someone else… but I guess it must mean something else.

And part of my reaction has been that I no longer want to feel the way I do for her, I no longer want to feel like MY DESIRE has created committment in me to her, I no longer want to feel like I want more from our relationship than words on the page or the screen, I no longer want to feel like I shouldn’t go after someone else, bed someone new, I no longer know what to do… All of a sudden I don’t want to write to her anymore… I can write all of this here, publicly, but I can’t get myself to write it down on paper for her, or even in an email to her… perhaps because I don’t have a conclusion, because I am conflicted. There is something left … something, perhaps quite worthwile, which can occur between the two of us… on paper, in words, without committment of any kind or monogamy … friendship, I guess… but it’s so much less than I wanted, it’s so much less than my love wanted to grow to be, and I just have to figure out if it’s something I want, and if it is, what that means I ought to do, or if maybe I should just step back for six to eight years and see what’s going on with her then… and how that relates to … whatever it is I think I want by then, six or eight years from now.

You know, when I’m 2/3 of the way through the life I expect to lead.

I am supposed to be downstairs by now, I think. It’s one of those things. If my grandfather would call me to SAY he wanted me to come down and do something, that would be one thing. That would be great, compared to this. At least then someone would have said out-right what they want. As it is, I mostly just hear the occassional mean-spirited joke about my sleeping in… or nothing at all… when I don’t get dressed and ready for hard labor by the crack of dawn. Except … I know the crack of dawn is too early. Sometimes I do get downstairs by seven or even sometimes by eight, and more often than not my grandmother is still sleeping, and the door has a good chance of being locked because my grandfather woke up to take his pills at 4AM and has basically been resting or napping since. Other days I’ll get up and get dressed and down around nine and my grandfather has already been up and around and got a dozen things done, and he doesn’t say it explicitly, but he always makes me feel like I should have been up earlier to help him.

Or yesterday, my dad was up here… and I’d been out the prior evening hanging out with the only two people my age I know of up here until a little after 1AM, so I didn’t set alarms… normally my father will call when he leaves phoenix or when he gets to Payson, or at the least, when he gets here… and yesterday he didn’t call at all… I was woken by the sound of him running the big saw, cutting wood. And I certainly didn’t mind getting the sleep, I sure needed it, we’re all sortof recovering from a cold that’s been going around, and I’m not exactly a morning person when I’m down (I’m a little down right now; did I mention that?), so getting up late and staying up late make me feel a little … less bad, anyway, so … dad, if that was intentional, to give me extra sleep, then thanks, but … if you were secretly disappointed or upset that I wasn’t already up and around and working by the time you got here… you should have said something.

It’s all this … politeness … and not saying anything … but still giving me the feeling that I’m not meeting your standards … it gets to me. But maybe I’m being paranoid. I mean, stuff gets done. I try to get everything I’m told to do done in a reasonable period, and I try to do other things as well… Like, I can see that I should probably mow the grass, since it finally looks good to me, long and soft enough to want to lay down in it… and once I’ve mowed it’ll look neat and trim but … unappealing to me. I’ve always liked the look of ‘wild’ grasses, growing tall and wide and at various heights… tall enough that the wind can make waves across the lawn is even better… waves of green, undulating before me. But since the grass is just beginning to look good to me, I know in my mind that it is time to mow it all down. Because other people don’t think like me, I guess.

Where was I? Oh… frustrated that because it’s 9:30AM as I write this, I imagine my grandfather sitting downstairs wondering where I am, and at the same time I want to be back in bed, sleeping. I’m up because I set alarms to wake me up. … That’s so annoying to me… I don’t have a real ‘job’ I have to show up for on a set schedule, I merely have an obligation to do the things that need to be done around here, and yet … I feel obliged to set alarms to try to get myself out of bed and downstairs by about 8:30… too much earlier and sometimes I walk in on my grandmother naked… too much later and I walk in on a perceived attitude that I’m a disgrace for being so late. It’s frustrating to me that I’m living by alarms up here. Life should not be this way here. … Maybe I do it to myself. Maybe no one cares when I get up.

Because I’m just a quick call away. Press a couple of buttons on your phone and say the word and I can be up and dressed and downstairs in just a few minutes, and I can start the heavy lifting before I even eat, if you need me to. Of course, my grandfather will never see this, and I won’t talk to him about it, just like he doesn’t talk to ME about it.

What do you think we’ll do today? There’s a chance we’ll be building a box to put sheets of glass in, or maybe he won’t have the energy for that and he won’t give me anything to do. Which is good, but until he hasn’t given me anything to do, I feel like working on my own projects or interests is somehow a betrayal. Like, I couldn’t go do any work on a painting or my second novel right now because there’s this nagging feeling that maybe grandfather expects me to be moving 25 gallons of cat shit from one place to another.

Interest has been voiced to me in the last week or two (ie: 5-10 days) in ordering my novel. Alas, it is still being looked at for final review by a few faithful volunteers, has no cover design, and no copy written for or about it yet. Also, Cafepress, who I plan to publish it via, does not yet offer the “Perfect Bound” binding option which you know and love as “paperback”, which is a technology I am waiting for before I offer a print edition.

I expect to have a final edit done before the end of October (I’m planning on writing yet another novel in November for National Novel Writing Month, by the way, and I fully expect it to take up the bulk of my free time that month), and to have three formats available before year’s end.

First available, a PDF version of the novel, sent to you electronically via email.

Also, an audio version of the novel, as read by the author (me). I have already invested in the hardware and software necessary to produce a quality audio version of a book, and as soon as I have a “final edit”, I will begin recording. At this time I plan to distribute the audio version electronically as MP3 files, though I am looking into a CD distribution and other options.

Finally, the bound paperback edition of the novel, which will be available as soon as the publishing technology is worked out.

NOTE: PAYPAL LINKS HAVE BEEN REMOVED.
The novel is now available for purchase.
…

The PDF and MP3 versions will be emailed to the address you pay with as soon as they become avialable. (That is, the PDF first, and the audio later, as I will be recording it AFTER I finish the final edit.) The paperback versions will be available as soon after the final edit is done as Cafepress begins offering Perfect Bound binding, or through another vendor if necessary so all pre-orders are fulfilled (shipped out) before 1/1/2004. Hopefully, much sooner.

:UPDATE:
You can now order an Advance Edition paperback copy of Lost and Not Found from CafePress. The Audio version will not be completed before 2/1/2004 at the earliest, so pre-orders will not be fulfilled until February at the earliest. If you would like your copy now, click here to order the Advance Edition from CafePress now. If you choose to pre-order, you will not receive anything until February at the earliest
:UPDATE:

If interest is voiced and sales reach 500+ copies (or pre-orders reach 100+ copies), I will also look into making a hardback edition available at a future date.

Pre-order today and save!

(Note: Final prices are subject to change. Pre-order prices are based on current cost estimates, and do not imply or guarantee what final prices may be. Please send any questions or comments to teel@modernevil.com.)

By sometime Monday, 562.0 A.C. (9/28/2003 A.D.), Modern Evil will have been seen by over ten thousand different computers in one month, this month, September. This is more than the previous “high water mark” by three thousand computers. That’s a lot of readers. Page views, or the actual number of different pages loaded everywhere on Modern Evil, is over seventeen thousand so far, and may climb to over twenty thousand, depending on volume of posts and readers in the next couple of days. (Previous high month of page views: around fifteen thousand)

Ten thousand.

Wow. Ten thousand.

That’s a lot of readers. What I want to know is who are these people? Comments aren’t up, much, and FYTH still gets 50%-60% of all page views, so … I don’t know what that says. There aren’t any stand-out search terms (like we had for our previous high, around valentine’s day) directing people here, just miscellaneous stuff. There isn’t a big referrer like Penny Arcade or Slashdot driving traffic to us. I don’t get it.

Maybe people really do like reading me whine about my life and ramble about whatever bizarre topics come to mind.

Now the real question is, when my first novel is made available later this year, how many of those ten thousand will buy a copy?

Heck, if ten percent of ten thousand people bought a copy in one form or another (I am planning on releasing it in paperback, PDF, and audio formats), I would not only consider it a huge success, but would basically be guaranteed a publisher for my next novel (already in progress). Who wants to pre-order?

I’ve been reading Neal Stephenson’s new book, Quicksilver, and it’s slower going than some other reading I’ve been doing lately, but not too slow. The book is set … around … well, between about 1650 and 1720 so far… it keeps jumping forward and backward through time and back and forth across the Atlantic as it does so… which is fine, I can follow all the different paths of the same characters fairly easily (elsewise I would never have finished Stephenson’s last book, Cryptonomicon)… but there is so much to it…

Just now, as I turned to page 194-195 in my reading, I found myself throwing up my hands, waving them back and forth between my eyes and the book to stop me from reading on, muttering about it being too much history… please, no more history… Page 194 is part of the family tree of the House of Burboun, and the last third of page 193 was so complicatedly knotted that one of the characters in the scene was unable to follow what the other characters were saying about … I don’t even know… probably something about english relations with the french… and I can take endless amounts of science and even relish at seeing historical figures come alive such as Ben Franklin and Isaac Newton (among others), but there is something about the politicking and intermarrying and warring of all the royalties, between the kings and queens and dukes and earls and courtiers just of England I get lost, and here we are mixing in the Germans and the French and the Dutch and … you lost me.

Much as I hardly care that we have a “President” “presiding” over the US (I believe the position is a figurehead only, that actual decisions are made behind the scenes by people you probably don’t know the names of), the much-more complicated and melodramatic turns of the european theatre of royalty, especially in this time period (Cromwell, the reformation, Louis XIV in France, etc…) just … can’t hold my attention enough to grasp their workings. It’s meaningless tripe to me. So whereas in the next dozen pages, the character who was as befuddled as I am now will likely go through experiences that make it clear to HIM, it is likely that it will be in one eye and out the other… (Wait, does the expression work with reading?) … that I won’t understand or remember the political intrigues of the royalty, but instead the effect these intrigues had on the scientists of the time.

Sigh. Time for bed. Tomorrow’s reading looks to start off slow. But maybe after a couple dozen pages we’ll jump back forward through time to the pirate armada’s raid on a lone, seemingly defenseless ship! That is sure to liven things up.