My So-Called Life Archives

2009

• May 2009
• April 2009
• March 2009
• February 2009
• January 2009

 

2008

• December 2008
• November 2008
• October 2008
• September 2008
• August 2008
• July 2008
• June 2008
• May 2008
• April 2008
• March 2008
• February 2008
• January 2008

2007

• December 2007
• November 2007
• October 2007
• September 2007
• August 2007
• July 2007
• June 2007
• May 2007
• April 2007
• March 2007
• February 2007
• January 2007

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April 2009

    

4/28 - off to Winnipeg for WHC. I wish there were a non-stop flight.

4/27 – word from Matt Costello that THQ might be interested in Masque. We've been down this road before.  We'll see.

4/24 - email from Susan Chang that the copyedited ms of Jack: Secret Circles is on the way.

4/22-26 - the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention in Orlando. A busy, busy time. A panel with Kathy Love, Erin McCarthy, and Barry Eisler packs a large room. (Could the fact we were serving drinks have anything to do with it?) Piers Anthony and I receive Pioneer Awards from the convention; they call The Tomb the first urban fantasy. Is that true? I’ll have to look into that.

4/22 - Harry Morris has a strange idea of what a week is. It’s been only 24 hours and here he’s back with two revised concepts. The pyramid is awesome. Then he flips the pyramid to the front cover and it’s so awesome it’s sawesome.

4/21 - two covers concepts forJack: Secret Circles arrive from Harry Morris. I like one better than the other, but I ask him if he could add the weird old pyramid the kids find in the Pines to the back cover. Harry says he’ll get back to me by the end of the week.

4/20 - apparently the publisher agrees with my assessment of the Ground Zero teaser at the end of By The Sword. Hartwell tells me they’re adding the opening scene outside the burning towers just before they collapse.

4/18 - someone sent me this link to a recording of Joe Lansdale interviewing me back in the early 90s. Look at that photo - I’m an infant!

4/17 - I send emails to all the guests at World Horror asking for biographical info. I’ll be introducing them at the opening ceremonies and want to be sure I mention what they want mentioned, and leave out what they don’t (such as their felony convictions and the names of their mistresses and illegitimate children).

4/16 - here’s a video by Heather Graham talking about books she likes. It’s typical Heather: Let’s dress up and talk about books. But notice one thing: Nowhere is her name mentioned. If I didn’t tell you, you’d never know it was her. In this age of relentless self-promotion, she’s doing this solely for the benefit of other authors. That’s rare and supremely generous. I’d flag this for you even if she didn’t mention Jack.

4/15 - tax day. Mailed an obscenely large check to the IRS. Intended to attend the local tea party but the weather kept me away. It was up on the Belmar boardwalk - pouring rain, gale-force winds, 6-12-foot seas. I'd have made a terrible revolutionary. Give me liberty or give me death (just don’t ask me to be cold and wet)! I wimped out. Sorry.

4/14 - sent off “Performance” to be reprinted in the World Horror Convention program book. (It was one of the 3 stories we had to cut from Aftershock & Others.)

4/13 - Susan Chang says she’ll need the 3rd YA novel, Secret Vengeance, but October 1. And RJ #14 is due November 1. Swell. Looks to be a fun summer.

4/13 - the Romantic Times Convention says they’ll be honoring me with an award for being a “pioneer in the publishing industry.” Aw shucks. (Wait. This seems to be another way, like the HWA Lifetime Achievement Award, of saying, “You’re old - congratulations on surviving.”)

4/12 - word from Nanci at Horror World that the raffle for free signed copies of Aftershock & Others is on track to break the record for number of entries. Get in if you’re not. You have until 5/15.

4/11 - finish the BY THE SWORD mmpb proofs. A cursory run-through at best. By this point I'm sooo sick of a book. My deathless prose seems deadly and I never want to see it again. One thing I’m not happy with is the excerpt they’ve chosen as a teaser for Ground Zero. The opening paragraphs I previewed on the website last year are more grabby (grabbier? Whatever, you know what I mean).

4/9 - the script for Heather Graham’s skit for her annual vampire extravaganza at Romantic Times arrives. I play Van Helsing and I’ve got lots of lines. Ay caramba. (Oops. Accent fail. Van Helsing was Dutch, right? Great beers, tough accent. I’ll come up with something.)

4/8 - my plane tickets for the Stoker Weekend in Burbank arrive by email. Too much hassle getting from here to Burbank airport (no non-stops) so I’m flying into LAX and renting a car. Maybe I’ll stop in on the Beacon folks in Santa Monica on my way to Burbank.

4/6 - finished proofing the Ground Zero pages for Gauntlet and faxed back the ones that needed changes. Still have BY THE SWORD mass-market proofs waiting like a bad debt.

News this morning that Fast & Furious 4 grossed $72 million over the weekend. The current Repairman Jack script is by the same writer who scripted this: Chris Morgan. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

4/5 - after a huge Cajun feast of shrimp and crawdads and gumbo last night, the conference folks take us all out for brunch. I wish I could do this for a living: have people fly you someplace, put you up, feed you like a king, all in exchange for talking about stuff you love to talk about.  (Of course, within a year I'd be hte size of Cleveland.)

4/4 - in Houma, LA, for the Jubilee Jambalaya Writers' Conference. This is a unique and valuable day-long conference that includes multi-tracked talks on the craft, theory, and appreciation of writing and literature (even a presentation on the neurobiology of creativity). It’s amazing what they pack into eight hours (you are encouraged to bring your lunch to talks during the lunch break). Something for everyone. All that, plus the wonderful warmth and hospitality of the people down there in bayou country.

4/3 - I’ve been asked to fly to San Antonio in mid-May to sign books for the wounded vets at the Intrepid Center and Brook Hospital. Tor/Forge is supplying the books but the authors have to pay their own flight and hotel expenses. Fair enough. I can do that for these guys. Gladly. I’m there.

4/2 - received contracts to put The Keep back into print in Brazil. BestBolo is the publisher. (Yep, that's the name.)

4/1 - all the corrections are entered into the Secret Circles file off to Gauntlet.

                                                                                     

March 2009

Oh, swell. Just as I zap that off, the page proofs for the limited Ground Zero arrive from Gauntlet for approval. I still haven’t proofed the mass-market galleys for By the Sword. When am I supposed to write new stuff?

3/31- still working on the copyedited Secret Circles. Almost done.

3/29 - page proofs for the By the Sword paperback that just arrove. I'm supposed to proof them. Yippee.

3/26 - Wow. Checked my Booksurge account and "TPOTC&OE" has been selling like crazy since it became available again.

3/25 - wasted most of the day wading through a sea of receipts for my encounter with my accountant tomorrow. Yeah, I suppose I could have someone do it for me, but I have my own system of keeping track. (You know how it is.) Every year I swear I'm gonna keep up and every year I wind up under the gun. 2009…gonna keep up, I swear. (Again.)

3/24 - my author copies of Legacies arrove from Gauntlet. They look sweet.

3/23 - a box of Aftershock & Others arrove. Not crazy about the cover but the interior layout is great. But no copies of Black Wind. Hmmm…

3/21 - the copyedited ms for the Gauntlet edition of Secret Circles arrove. Need to go over that with the proverbial fine-tooth comb.

3/20 - drove all the way through East Baltimore. Shades of The Wire. Kept expecting Snoop or Marlo to show up.

3/18 - "TPOTC&OE" is back in stock on Amazon.

3/17 - St. Paddy’s Day. I rewrite the cover copy for Jack: Secret Circles and finish the day with corned beef, cabbage, and Irish coffee.

3/16 - the proof copy of the fixed-up “TPOTC&OE” (with Emporium” instead of “Emplorium” on the spine) arrives and I approve it online. It should be ready for sale again soon.

3/15 - I officially start the penultimate RJ novel. No idea for a title, but it will include a reworking of “The Wringer” as a subplot.

3/14 - finished the page proofs of Ground Zero and faxed back the corrections.

3/14 - the Ides of March. I realize that I finished "Piney Power" last week but forgot to send it off to the editor. Remedied that today. (It’s not as if I’m getting paid for it - it’s a donation to an anthology that benefits the International Thriller Writers and allows it to charge its members no dues).

3/12 - I think I’ve decided on February of Year Zero for RJ #14 (see the Secret History if you don't know what I’m talking about)

3/11 - Yoiks. First-pass page proofs forGround Zero just arrove. Have to find time for them somewhere.

3/10 - polished “Piney Power.” I’m happy with it, but with the 5k-word cap I'm wondering if I tried to squeeze too much into it. I'm too close to it now to tell.

3/7 - time to start start working on the outlines to the last 2 Repairman Jack books.

3/6 - after a slew of interruptions, I finish the young Repairman Jack short story. I’m calling it “Piney Power.” Gonna let it marinate for a while before I polish it.

3/6 - Remember the Alamo day - and the NECon sig sheets are mailed to the next victim - I mean author on the list.

3/5 - I sign sig sheets while watching Star Wars: The Clone Wars. The film wasn’t as distracting as I’d hoped.

3/4 - a smaller box of sig sheets for The Big Book of NECon arrives from Cemetery Dance.

3/3 - word from Joe Hill that a guy on his message board bought the deluxe edition of He is Legend, the one with all the signatures, but for some reason his copy came without my signature. Could we arrange a fix? Turns out it’s a fellow from the UK who already contacted me via the website. I’ve promised to sign it for him when I attend the 2010 WHC in Brighton.

3/3 - theGround Zero signature sheets arrive in a big box from Gauntlet

3/3 - uh-oh.  Email from a reader informing me of a typo on the spine of “The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling Circus & Oddity Emporium” ("Emplorium").  I contact Booksurge and they say they'll fix it, but meantime, they're taking the book offline until the cover is right.  This means if you already have a copy, you have something of a rarity. All copies ordered after today will have the error corrected.

3/2 - word from my publisher that the sales force has become concerned about author websites that link to only one purchasing option (typically Amazon). “This is becoming a problem, as buyers at other major retailers are paying attention to author websites and which purchasing options are made available, and they expect to see themselves represented.” Guilty as charged. I’ve found Amazon amazingly efficient and responsive, and so I’ve favored them. But I can see the point. The other chains and indies deserve a shot too.

3/2 - delays in restructuring Jack: Secret Circles pushed it into the winter season. It’s scheduled for February, so they're going to release Secret Histories in January to tempt mass market readers into springing for the hardcover the following month.

3/2 - I mentioned last month that I’d written a short piece for the Writers Corner at the Cemetery Dance website. Well, it’s up now. (And as I said before, unlikely to interest non writers) Here.

February 2009                                                                                 

2/28 - I start the short story I promised the International Thriller Writers for their YA anthology.

2/27 - well, I agreed to teach at the Pen to Press Writer's Retreat next year, and here's their website.

2/26 - spoke to the Maryland Romance Writers tonight. Good turnout and a good group. Put them through a self-editing exercise that they seemed to enjoy. They reward me with a zombie Tiki-god flashdrive.  How cool is that?

2/25 - word from Kevin J. Anderson that Blood Lite sold so well (24k copies of the trade paperback in print) that he want to propose another called Blood Lite: Bite Me. Would Joe Konrath and I like to contribute another collaboration? I contact Joe and he's on board, so we say yes.

2/25 - I dash off a short, thousand-word column for the Writer's Corner at the Cemetery Dance website. It concerns creating your own style sheet. Of interest only to writers, I'd think. I'll let you know when it goes up.

2/24 - finished the Secret Circles revision and sent it off to Tor and Gauntlet.

2/24 - word from the publisher asking for cover copy for Reprisal which is being scheduled for winter 2010. Whoa! Reprisal must fall after RJ 14 and before 15, (the events of Reprisal feed into RJ 15 - precipitate them, in fact) which means sometime in 2011. They get back to me that they'll schedule it for winter or summer 2011, before RJ 15 comes out that fall.

2/23 - word from the publisher that Harbingers has gone back to print again. Nice to know the backlist keeps selling.

2/21 - a little back-and-forth with the World Horror Convention. I'm finally getting a handle on what a toastmaster does (not once will I have to make a toast or singe bread).

2/20 - word from the book supplier for the signing at the Romantic Times con in April. I requested extra copies of The Tomb because they sold out in the first half hour last year, and they want to know how many. They also ask if I want copies of the Black Wind reissue and Aftershock & Others. I think Black Wind's love quadrangle gives it potential at a romance readers' convention, but I can't see any of those folks wanting a collection of my short stories.

2/18 - at the urging of people who should know about these things, I join Twitter. I hope I don't regret this.  Follow if you wish.

2/18 - word from Pierce Watters that Planet Stories has started a blog. One of the posts is a brief bio of John W. Campbell, Jr. by Ben Bova. Campbell bought my first stories and, through his rejection slips, taught me how to write. If you want to know a little about the father of modern SF, check it out.

2/16 - author copies of He is Legend arrive with "Recalled," my tribute to Matheson's "The Distributor."

2/15 - email from Dark Delicacies inviting me to a mass signing Thursday night of the Stoker weekend.

2/14 - a Valentine’s Day present from my publisher: an ARC of the forthcoming (July) reissue of The Touch.

2/12 - the first official copy of “The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling Circus & Oddity Emporium” arrove today. It’s now on sale at Amazon:

2/11 - I finish bringing the Word file for Ground Zero up to date with all the edits from both mss. This gets zapped off to Gauntlet. The limited edition will be set from this .doc so I want it as clean a possible.

2/8 - finally…the edits and changes in copyedited mss of Ground Zero are synched. I’ve been giving it a close read and adding a fair number of line edits along the way. The Forge ms gets FedExed tomorrow.

2/6 - spent pretty much the whole day at the NY ComiCon. Had some meetings, signed copies of The Keep, and finished on a panel of writers who feature NYC in their work.

2/6 - more from the foreign rights department: Fuso, my Japanese publisher, want to continue with the Jack series. They’d seemed to lose interest after Gateways, but maybe Japanese readers made some noise. Whatever, they want to pick up again with Crosscross.

2/5 - word from today from my agent’s foreign rights department that Russian publisher Exmo wants to publish The Keep, The Tomb, Reborn, Legacies, and Conspiracies.

2/4 - well, it's official…Jack: Secret Histories is on the VOYA Top Shelf list for middle school readers: VOYA

2/3 - "February made me shiver…" 50 years ago today, the music died. I remember the shock of hearing about it on the radio the following morning. The Big Bopper was a joke, but Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens…they were the real deal, among the earliest singer-songwriters of the rock era. I really liked their stuff. Never understood a word of "La Bamba" but I could mangle it phonetically, and "Peggy Sue" was one of the songs that made me want to be a drummer.

2/3 - David Hartwell sent me a jpeg of the cover for the trade edition of Ground Zero. Striking. Check it out here.

2/2 - finally got the date all set to participate in the Maryland Romance Writers workshop on May 16. It’s open to the public and I’ll post details when they’re available.

2/1 - 3.8 million hits on the website in January - another all-time record. December and November had held steady at 2.8 million, but now this…I can’t explain the extra million hits, but they’re there, a steady increase in the daily total all through the month. I repeat: awesome.

January 2009                                                                                                                                       

1/31 - can somebody tell me: Where did January go?

1/30 - I start a simultaneous read of both the Gauntlet and Forge copyedited mss of Ground Zero. I want the texts to be as close as possible.

1/29 - Susan loves the changes. Sprucing up the rest should take no time.

1/28 - the opening sections of Jack: Secret Circles seem to drag a little, so I rewrite/restructure the first 35 pages and send them off to Susan Chang to see what she thinks.

1/27 - copies of the German audio version of The Tomb (Die Gruft) arrive.

1/26 - somewhere between last night and this morning we passed 3 million hits on the website for January. Awesome.

1/23-25 - did my annual stint as instructor at the Borderlands Boot Camp for Writers. We had twenty talented grunts (they seem to be more talented every year) in the short-story track, and they all left as better writers. Every year people come from all over the country, but last year we had a fellow travel all the way from England and figured he'd keep the long-distance record. But no, this year a young woman came all the way from the Philippines just to have us dismantle her prose.

1/22 - my computer is back. The hard drive is fine. I get a lengthy explanation about printers and USB ports and such that makes no sense. I don't care. It's working again. After my hard drive crashed last summer, a reader wrote and told me, "Get a mirrored RAID - now!" Sounded like a good idea but I kept putting it off. No more delay. I'm going to get to it now.

1/21 - the first issue of the Dark Delicacies comic book (containing my "Part of the Game" and Joe Lansdale's "Dog") is released today. Covers and excerpts here.

1/21 - a call from HWA tonight that they've chosen Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and me for this year's Lifetime Achievement Award. This means I join King and Straub and Joyce Carol Oats and other luminaries of the field. Good company, but I'd have preferred they'd waited until I was 90. I’m ain’t done yet.

1/20 - the bound proof copy of "TPOTC&OE" arrives and it looks great…except the page headings. They looked fine in the .pdf version but they're intrusive in the final product. I request that they all be removed - both my name and the title - and leave the tops of the pages blank. This will delay release, but it's got to be done.

1/19 - yikes. The copyedited ms. of Ground Zero arrives from Forge and they want it back in a couple of weeks. Great time for a computer crash.

1/17- uh-oh. My computer won't boot my hard drive. I'm well backed up, but…not again! I take it to the local wizards. They say it will be days before they can get to it. All the Macophiles are saying, "Told ya so." Shuddup.

I'll work on Jack: Secret Circles on my laptop.

1/16 - dinner in NYC with my publisher, Tom Doherty. He'd been so immersed in meetings all day he didn't know about the US Airways splashdown in the Hudson earlier.

1/15 - copies of the new German edition of The Touch arrive.

1/14 - the ms of the second YA novel, Jack: Secret Circles arrives with Susan Chang's notes. Good timing. I'm free to sit down and give it a thorough going over.

1/13 - I delete the Joker post because bits and pieces - mostly out of context - are popping up all over the net, with headers to the effect that I say the film "stole" my Joker. I said nothing of the sort. You folks know me better than that. The post was meant to start a conversation on the RJ site, not to be misquoted elsewhere (but you can still download the story).

1/12 - io9 must have some readership. The Joker thread already has over 6k views.

1/11 - I'm invited to be an instructor at a writing seminar in NOLA in 2010. It will involve 2-1/2 days leading 20 budding novelists. I don't know if I have that much to say. Not sure if I'll accept.

1/11 - uh-oh. Email from a reader alerts me that io9, a sci-fi fansite (it looks pretty cool - great layout) spotted my Joker post and did a piece on it. Some of the fanboys (no sneer - I'm one too) appear to have taken offense.

1/8 - I tell the Booksurge design team that the "TPOTC&OE" .pdf proof is perfecto. Time to make that first copy.

1/7 - Stacy wants to know how much the new edition of The Touch is revised. I tell her I revised and updated it for the Borderlands limited edition (taking it out of the 80's, changing Ba to a war buddy of her father rather than of her husband, etc.). So this edition I've rewritten a few paragraphs to bring it into line with what is going on in Jack's world (The Touch is contemporaneous with By the Sword and Ground Zero in the Secret History timeline) but that's about it. So, to sum up, there's been a good deal of revision from the last paperback edition (Berkeley/Jove in the mid-80s) and a wee bit from the Borderlands hardcover.

1/5 - word from Susan Chang that her edits on the 2nd YA novel will be another week coming. No problem. Not like I have nothing to do.

1/4 - with Susan Lee's help I post an updated the downloadable bibliography to the website. It's for collectors or geeks who simply crave excruciating detail about every edition, foreign and domestic, of everything I've published.

1/4 - I start a thread on the website called "My Joker…their Joker." It gives background on "Definitive Therapy," the story I did for The Further Adventures of the Joker back in the late 80s, and how that darker, nihilistic Joker resembles the Joker in The Dark Knight. I also post a link so you can download the story. (Don't go looking for it - see 1/13.)

1/3 - hear from David Hartwell's assistant Stacy that "Dat-tay-vao" will arrive as a separate set of proofs that will be added to The Touch. I dash off a brief foreword to the story and send it in.

My contributor copies of The Hounds of Skaith arrive (I did the introduction). A handsome trade paperback.

1/2 - those Booksurge folks are on the ball. The final digital proof of "The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling Circus & Oddity Emporium" (why did I give it such a freaking long title?) arrive. After I approve this, they'll send me a hard copy of the final book as it will be sold.

1/1 - finally saw The Dark Knight. Folks have been telling me for months that they think the film's Joker was inspired by the Joker in my story, "Definitive Therapy." Now I know what they mean.

December 2008  

                                                             

2008 was a rocky year for many (most?) of us. So let's raise a glass of cheer and hope to 2009.

12/31 - finished proofing The Touch and it strikes me as pretty romantic - lots of longing and unrequited love between 2 soul mates in the beginning, developing into a passionate affair later. I think I made Alan a bit too much of a goody two-shoes for my current taste, but even after all these years, I still find Sylvia a sexy, tantalizing, enigmatic, and intriguing character. Too bad it won't be available for RT.

12/28 - finished the Legacies proofs and faxed the corrected pages to Gauntlet. Time to start on The Touch. I notice that "Dat-Tay-Vao" isn't in the proof. The story was supposed to be part of this edition - both to make it unique and to give the kids who've been reading the YA series a chance to see Weird Walt before and after his meeting with the Dat-Tay-Vao. I email the publisher but they'll be closed until January 5.

12/27 - 25 copies each of the new $4.99 editions of Implant and Deep as the Marrow arrive. I'm running out of room.

The "TPOTC&OE" proofs look good. Only a handful of tweaks and I emailed the corrections back to Booksurge.

12/26 - the joy continues: proof pages for The Touch trade paperback arrive. (Good thing I’m between books.)

12/24 - tweaked the Robots intro and sent it off to Pierce Watters.

12/22 - more joy. The copyedited ms. for the Gauntlet edition of Ground Zero arrives for my perusal.

12/20 - my annual invitation to Readercon in Mass. My annual turn down: It’s the same weekend as Thrillerfest this year. (Last year it was the same weekend as NECon - which I didn’t make anyway.)

12/19 - a pdf of the entire text of “TPOTC&OE” arrives from Booksurge. Oh joy. More proofing.

12/18 - the Legacies page proofs arrive from Gauntlet for my perusal. I’ll get to them soon.

12/17 - made my annual Christmas visit to the Tor/Forge publicity department, bearing chocolates and bubbly. (This makes 2 years in a row, so it’s officially a tradition.) Publicity is on the 13th floor – one of the many cool things about the Flat Iron Building is that it has a 13th floor. A couple of familiar faces were missing, replaced by new ones. Ran into Whitley Strieber there (haven’t seen him in a few years), and then the publicity people and I crashed the sales department party on the floor below.

12/15 - my contributor copy of the Impaler graphic novel arrove. My intro takes up one page.

12/13 - finished the intro to Robots Have No Tails. Obviously I don’t take these gigs for the money. When I count up the hours I spent reading the stories, researching the author and his times, thinking about what I’m going to write, then writing and revising, I’m earning minimum wage.

But while writing the intro I came to terms with the stories’ shortcomings and find they don’t diminish the wacky inventiveness and entertainment value of these tales. You must enjoy them for what they are: products of their times, prismatic glimpses into the early 1940s through a future imagined by one of the most inventive writers of the period.

12/11 - I’ve been reading the Gallegher stories in Robots Have No Tails and I have to say I’m disappointed. “You can’t go home again” is too often true with beloved fiction of your youth. I find the writing slapdash at times, suffering from polyadverbosis and digressions that would give Poe fits. The science is often suspect, the extrapolations occasionally sloppy. All would have benefited from a week or two of marinating in a drawer before careful revision. But Henry Kuttner wrote for the pulps and never had that luxury. Pulp writers were paid a penny a word (less in the down markets, two cents if they had a following), sometimes on acceptance, too often on publication. To maintain a living wage and a reasonably steady cash flow, writers were backed into sending off pencil-edited first drafts.

12/9 - word today from Susan Chang that Jack: Secret Histories has been selected for VOYA’s Top Shelf Fiction for Middle School Readers list. “This list is of books that adults and youth agreed were the very best of the best.” VOYA is a trade magazine for librarians and the list will appear in the February issue. This is a very nice surprise.

12/7 - amazing amount of traffic on the 405 at 6:30 on a Sunday morning. Where the hell are all these people going? On the plane I wrote much of what you’ve read so far, and spell-checked Ground Zero. Emailed it to David Hartwell when I got home.

12/6 - spent the morning finishing my revision on Ground Zero. Around midday, I headed out for the nearest In N Out Burger. Still in a pique over my verbal abuse the night before, Marge refused to speak to me, so I had to find it on my own. I had a Double-Double, animal style. (This has become a must-have on my California trips.) Thus fortified, I tackled the lengthy line (including Ken V and AlvinFox and others from the Forum) at Dark Delicacies. David Schow and Eddie McMullen showed up and we hung at Mucho Mas for drinks and Mexican chow. We broke up early because I had an early flight Sunday AM.

12/5 - took a prop commuter flight to LA and waited in a long line at Avis. (Didn’t anyone get the memo about the RECESSION???) Made it to West LA in time to meet with the Beacon folks at this tiny sushi place called Hamasaku that they all swear by. Good thing I had precise directions because it’s in a strip mall on Santa Monica Blvd that’s difficult to get into; once I was there, the place is tucked so far back in a corner that for a moment I feared I was at the wrong mall. (see The Repairman Jack he Movie for details.)

On to the Los Feliz afterward. In Ground Zero, the next RJ novel, Jack has to go to Los Angeles to find and question a fugitive. I’d asked David Schow to suggest an interesting locale for the confrontation. I didn’t want a bar or a coffee shop (didn’t need to go to LA for one of those); wanted something uniquely LA. Knowing Jack’s movie mania, he suggested Bronson Caves. Perfect! So I did some research and wrote the scene with rough descriptions of the locale, but I wanted to be there.

So I picked up David at his place in Beechwood Canyon in the Hollywood Hills (you can see both the big Hollywood sign and the Griffith Observatory from his back porch - neat) and he guided me on my Hajj to the Bronson Caves. What a rush. So many familiar locations: the Bat Cave from the Batman TV series to classics like The Searchers to class Z horror films like Night of the Blood Beast, the infamous Robot Monster, and dozens and dozens more. (Here’s a partial list.) Except it all looks bigger on the screen.

Here's a blurry photo from my phone.  From the right angle it looks like a cave (can't you see the Blood Beast standing there?):

It’s really a tunnel (below is the Bat Cave entrance - opposite end from above); they simply tarp off the other end when they shoot .

I pocketed a baseball-size rock from the cave as a souvenir. (Am I a geek or am I a geek?)

That night I tried to use Madge to take me to Barnes & Noble for my Glendale signing but she’d never heard of the street. Phone calls guided me to the Americana Mall and the largest B&N in California. Also the smallest audience. Maybe because (here’s where I save my ego) it was snowing outside. Whoever runs Americana (it’s an open-air mall) had set up a snow machine on a roof and people were literally running from every direction to catch some flakes.

Eddie Mcmullen of feoamante.com showed up and we had a beer after. Then I set Marge for my hotel in Burbank but she kept taking me east. I was SURE Burbank was west of Glendale, so I cursed her and reset her, but still she kept taking me east. I became foul with her, and finally called the hotel to show her up. They said, Yes, you should be heading east. Sheepishly, I followed her directions to the hotel where I promptly crashed.

12/4 - by the time I checked my email that night, the Booksurge folks were back to me with the revised layout - the headers look just right now. I sent back my approval. This has been ridiculously smooth and painless.

12/4 - Surreal moment at the end of my flight into San Diego: We left Phoenix at 8:50, and when we arrive, the head attendant announces, “Local time is eight-fifty.”

Set my Magellan (I call her “Marge”) for Mysterious Galaxy and she got me there at midday, no problem. I came mostly just to sign stock but a bunch of readers showed up and so I did about an hour of Q&A and signed a bunch of their books. Batton Lash (writer/artist of “Supernatural Law”) and Jackie Estrada stopped by and guided me to City Deli in Hillcrest. They said it was an authentic New York-style kosher deli. Yeah, right. But Bat is from Brooklyn, so he should know. And he was right. Yum.

That night I set Marge for the Borders signing but she delivered me to a Hooters instead. Normally this would not be a bad thing (a signing at Hooters…cool) but I knew I was due at Borders at 7. I called the store and they told me I’d missed them by 2 blocks. No problem. Made it on time. A decent turn out, good Q&A, signed a good number of books.

My hotel had a tiki bar (not a very good one, but any tiki bar is better than no tiki bar) so I grabbed a drink there (okay, two) and called it a day.

12/3 - Good flight into Phoenix and an excellent event, as always, at the Poisoned Pen. Barbara Peters knows how to get the word out. She and David Morrell (who call him “Rambo’s Daddy”) and I did a peripatetic mini-panel on writing and the bloodbath in the publishing world earlier that day. After that she took us out to dinner to a place that served her favorite dessert: olive oil cake. Pretty tasty, believe it or not. (Okay, not.)

12/2 - the Booksurge design team emails me the typeset first chapter of “The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling Circus & Oddity Emporium” along with 2 jpegs of possible covers - one using an image I provided (an empty circus wagon) and a cover of their own design. Well…their design is so far ahead of mine (like, light years) in quality and creepiness that I tell them to forget mine and go with theirs. As for the text layout, I have one quibble about the font size of the headers, and that’s it.

12/1 - 2.85 million hits last month - a new record. We were on track for 3 million when traffic dropped off for the 4-day Thanksgiving weekend. Must have been all that turkey tryptophan.

November 2008                                                                                                                                                             

11/26-30 - crunching on a stem-to-stern line edit of Ground Zero. It’s slow going because I’m finding and fixing lots of minor annoyances in the prose. Looks like I’m going to have to take it on tour with me.

11/25 - a couple of ARCs of Aftershock & Others arrive and I’m really pleased with the layout and design. Someone gave this some thought and I appreciate that. I write and tell Hartwell and ask him to pass it on. (I’ve made a point throughout my career never to pass up a chance to compliment someone on a good job. Why? Because a lot of people feel they’re operating in a void. They make an effort to put out their best work and the only time they hear feedback is when something’s wrong. It can mean the world to hear kudos. And what does it cost me? Five minutes. Yeah, I can spare 5 minutes for that.)

11/22 - I attended Philcon for the first time in at least a decade. They moved it out of Philly into Jersey this year so I thought I’d stop in for a day. Lots of familiar faces from NECon and my sci-fi days. Did a fun panel with Tim Powers on Secret History fiction.

Secret History is not to be confused with Alternate History. In the latter, a key event in history is changed (e.g., the South won the Civil War) and the political and social ramifications affect the story. In Secret History, all the surface events remain just as we know them, but the reasons why they happened and who made them happen or manipulated their outcomes are…secret. Secret History stories almost always involve vast, long-term conspiracies to keep the secret a secret. Alternate histories can be intellectually fascinating, but, for me, secret histories have a much more visceral appeal. My first stab at a secret history was BLACK WIND. Now I have a millennia-spanning Secret History of the World.

11/21 - I learn ARCs of Aftershock & Others are circulating but no one has sent me one. I remedy that. I'm a bit obsessive about having every state of each book I've written.

11/21 - the finalized schedule for the BY THE SWORD tour arrives. (See “Where I’ll Be”).

11/21 - while putting Secret Vengeance back together (after tearing it apart to revise Secret Circles), I noticed that I screwed up a time sequence in the latter; so I spent the whole day rewriting that. Glad I spotted it - not only because it needed correcting, but the rewrite allowed me to heighten the suspense of Jack and Weezy’s close encounter with a pine light.

11/20 - word from Stacy, Hartwell’s assistant, that production is get antsy for a final revision of Ground Zero. I promise them by the 1st of December - by the 8th at the latest.

11/20 - I agree to write a story to support ITW’s debut author anthology. I don’t know (as in: I doubt) if I’ll deliver, but I have till May, so who knows.

11/18 - word from Alexis that the NY ComiCon wants me for a panel with other writers on how NYC has influenced our work. Sounds good.

11/17 - David Hartwell sends me a jpeg of the cover of the trade paperback edition of The Touch due next year. I like it except for the “Book III” line. Take a look:

11/14 - a conversation with Beacon’s head of production. (see the movie news)

11/13 - Today I dipped my big toe into the realm of self-publishing: I took the first steps toward creating a POD trade paperback edition of “The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling Circus & Oddity Emporium.” It's something I've wanted to try - just once in my life - and this seems like a no-risk project. It will be a no-frills edition with simple cover art and no interior illos. Readers have been petitioning for an affordable edition, so that's what I'll be serving up. It should be available early next year.

Here’s the backstory of “TPOTC&OE”

 

11/12 - an invitation from Jon and Ruth Jordan of Crimespree magazine to be a guest next November at a gathering called Murder & Mayhem in Muskego. I met them at Bouchercon and liked them a lot. Blake Crouch says it’s well worth the trip, so I’m a-goin.

 

11/11 - Veterans Day

from All the Rage:

Jack was about to turn everyone around and head back when he saw an older man in a khaki Eisenhower jacket, blue twill pants, and a defiantly angled overseas cap limping toward them. Jack gave him a friendly wave as he came abreast.

“Hi. Isn’t there supposed to be a Memorial Day parade?”

The man frowned. “There damn sure should have been. I hear there’s a little one on Upper Broadway somewhere. Probably nobody watching it, though. We just had a ceremony on the Intrepid with hardly anybody there.”

Jack took in all the medals on the left breast of the old soldier’s bulging waist-length jacket. He saw a star that looked bronze and recognized a Purple Heart.

“You were in the Big One?”

“Yeah.” He looked at Jack. “How about you?”
Jack had to smile. “Me? In the army? No. Not my thing.”

“Wasn’t my thing either,” the guy said, his voice rising. “None of us wanted to be there. I hated every minute. But there was a job to be done and we did it. And we died doing it. My whole platoon, every one of my buddies, was wiped out at Anzio—everyone but me, and I just barely made it. But I did get back, and as long as I’m alive, I’ll show up to remember those guys. Someone should, don’t you think? But nobody gives a damn.”

“I do,” Jack said softly, surrendering to an impulse from out of the blue. He thrust out his hand. “Thank you.”

The man blinked, then took Jack’s hand and squeezed. His eyes puddled up and his lower jaw trembled as he tried to speak. Finally he managed a weak, “You’re welcome.” Then he limped away.

Jack turned to find Gia staring at him with red-rimmed eyes. “Jack, that was...”

He shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable.

“No, really,” she said. “Don’t shrug it off. That was nice. Sweet, even. Especially since I know how you feel about armies and governments.”

“He isn’t a government or an army. He’s a guy. No matter what you think of any particular war, you’ve got to feel something for some poor guy ripped out of his life and handed a gun and sent somewhere to kill other guys who’ve been ripped out of their lives and sent to do the same thing, and while they’re both shivering in their foxholes, scared they’re not going to see another sunrise, all the fat cats, all the generals and politicos and priests and mullahs and tribal elders who started the whole damn thing sit way to the rear, moving their chess pieces around.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder as he took a breath. “He got handed the dirty end of a dirty stick but he handled it. You’ve got to respect that.”

11/8 - the workshop goes swimmingly. About 50 people have signed up and that’s a perfect size. I start off with a line-editing exercise (a handout crammed with errors), followed by a discussion about putting a bit of a shine on your villain and a wart or two on your hero. Then, as a group, we design a villain and a hero. This whole workshop could have tanked here without participation, but this group dove right in and sent up a barrage of ideas. We developed two unique and interesting characters. After a break we worked on defining them through point of view. It seemed to go over well. In fact, two of the participants who weren’t members joined up.

That night a dozen FRW members and their significant others showed me a great time on Miami’s South Beach, which was so packed with diners and partiers, I had to wonder, What recession? All I can say is, FRW rules.

11/7 - a lunch meeting with Chuck Szachta and his business partner Walter on developing Masque (by Matt Costello and yrs trly) into a videogame. They’re gearing up to make a prototype to show to the big game publishers. Then dinner at a little Cuban restaurant with Veronika Levine (who’s mother-henning me for my stay) and her folks.

Between meals I’m working away on the workshop. I have to fill 3 hours all on my lonesome. Here’s the rub: I’ve never attended a workshop, never even taken a writing course. Yeah, I’ve been an instructor numerous times at the Borderlands Boot Camp for Writers where I’ve critiqued a ton of manuscripts, but I’ve never run a workshop. I see this as a good thing: I won’t be regurgitating a lot of stuff they’ve heard in other venues, because I’ve never been exposed it. My main areas of concentration are going to be creating full-blooded heroes and villains, and how to define a character through point of view (as opposed to the info dumps too many authors use). Out of the blue I come up with a neato way to link the two.

11/6 - down to Ft. Lauderdale for the Florida Romance Writers gig. This is my first experience with Jet Blue and I like it a lot. Significantly more knee room than Continental, my usual airline. The back of every seat is equipped with a TV screen and a Direct-TV connection. This is a good-and-bad thing. Instead of reading or doing something constructive, I wound up watching the World Series of Poker for 2 hours. (I guess that means I have to stop making fun of people who watch golf on TV.)

That night Heather Graham and her husband Dennis took me out to dinner at a steakhouse in the nearby Hard Rock casino.

11/3 - time to take a little break, take care of some neglected odds and ends, like writing the intro to Robots Have No Tails and finding a way to make available an affordable edition of THE PEABODY-OZYMANDIAS TRAVELING CIRCUS AND ODDITY SHOW. After I reread the wonderful stories in Robots Have No Tails, I may have a chance to pull a book or two from my huge TBR pile.

11/2 - finished the young adult revision. Very complicated. The second book is set in September 1983, Jack’s first month in high school; the 3rd is in October. In each, minor story points revolve around historical and astronomical events in those months. Culling out all such references and transferring them between the books was a lot more involved than I’d imagined. A lot of rewriting, but worth it, I hope. The 2nd book of the trilogy will now be called Secret Circles, and I think it’s a strong follow up to SECRET HISTORIES.

October 2008  

                                                                              

10/31- Ay, caramba! I did my Broadway panel / reading before the Perfect Crime performance (kind of fun), but had forgotten about the Greenwich Village Halloween parade - 2 MILLION extra people in the city. A guy on a corner was selling McCain, Obama, and Palin condoms (“Because no matter what happens, you’re gonna get screwed”) but no Biden condom. Someone (not me) said Biden is already such a dickhead that a condom would be redundant.

10/29 - a reader (thanks Greg) I met at the Deam Haven signing in St. Paul sent me a copy of six-panel illustrated teaser for THE TOMB. It's cute. Check it out HERE.

10/25 - a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and assorted chocolates arrive in an ice bucket (no ice) from the publisher. A little gift for making the bestseller list. None of that (except the bucket) will survive the weekend.

10/24 - much as I'd love to take a break, no time to rest. Started revising the 3rd YA novel so it can be published as the 2nd. It's a lot more complicated and labor intensive than I anticipated.

10/23 - completed the final edits and spell-checked Ground Zero this AM, then sent it off to David Hartwell. It needs another pass, but I'll wait till I hear back from my prelim readers and David before doing a final revision.

10/22 - advance word from the publisher that By the Sword will enter the November 2nd NY Times extended hardcover bestseller list at #31. I'd prefer to enter at #1, of course, but that's for the likes of King and Koontz & Co. Each book continues to sell better than the last, but with only 3 more left, we've no time to reach the critical mass or readership necessary for that sort of leap. And, true to the character's blue-collar nature, Jack's readers tend to wait for the paperback.

10/17-19 - my guest-of-honor stint at Arcana, a laid-back mini-con with an emphasis this year on Lovecraft. I didn't think I'd know anybody but I found a few familiar faces in the crowd. Good folks all, and a relaxing time.

10/16 - off to St. Paul, MN for a signing at Dream Haven Books, followed by . . .

10/15 - received my copy of Baton Lash's The Soddyssey. I contributed the introduction. This is intelligent, funny stuff, folks. You can check out a 20-page preview HERE

10/15 - I'm invited to appear on Broadway on Halloween. I'll be doing a reading before the 8pm performance of Perfect Crime. (I saw it years ago - it's been running for 21 years.) It's currently playing in Times Square at the Snapple Theater Center on 50th and Broadway. Don't know what I'll read yet. (Of course, this has all the makings of a disaster…but so what? At least I can say I appeared on Broadway.)

10/14 - the official street date of the trade edition of By the Sword.

10/9-12 - Bouchercon is pretty much like the World Fantasy Convention (which I'll be missing for the first time in decades this year) in that it's very well run and strictly book oriented - not a film for sale anywhere. Also, very international, with lots of Brits (hi, Ali) and Canadians. A fair number of publishers' parties (St. Martin's and Berkley, among them) plus Lee Child threw his own bash on the top floor of an Irish pub. I wound up on a panel about mixing horror and mystery (can't imagine why) and another on creating interesting/attractive villains. A few fans brought their collections to the signings so I was kept fairly busy - though not as busy as Ken Bruen whose line ran out the door. Great dealers room. The next one's in Indy. I might go again.

10/8 - My visit to the CIA writers group went pretty much as it did in '06: talk to the writers in one of the conference rooms in the OHB (the Old Headquarters Building with the huge CIA seal on the floor of the lobby), then grab some food and check out the very cool museum. I think I've mentioned before that if I knew back in my 20s what I know now about the CIA, I would have joined. Not for field work but for intelligence analysis (and planning black ops, of course). They've got an intriguing culture there.

10/7 - an interview I did with Lindsay Preston during Thrillerfest has finally been edited into 4 sections. Lindsay runs www.writingroom.com, a good place for aspiring writers. Check it out if your interests run that way. (Don't ask me why it's on a golf blog. Because I'm a Wilson?  Part 1    Part 2     Part 3     Part 4

10/6 - a while back I gave the folks at Starship Sofa the right to adapt "Faces" for their audio magazine. "Faces" starts about the 45-min mark: Listen

10/2 - word from the CIA that I got my security clearance and we’re all set for the 8th. Doug Winter, Brian Keene, and J.F. Gonzalez will be along too.

10/1 - voted last night on a local school board issue. I went in, they asked my name, I signed a book and a slip of paper, and was shown to a booth. I COULD HAVE BEEN ANYBODY. What a joke.

10/1 - word from the publisher: They’re going to send me through Phoenix, San Diego, and LA over December 3-7.

 

September 2008

9/30 - the CIA wants me back down to speak again to their writers group. I told them I can make it October 8 (I'm heading that way for Bouchercon anyway) and they think that'll work. But I need a security clearance first. DON'T THEY KNOW???

9/29 - finished the 1st pass on GROUND ZERO but there's much backfilling to do, so I'm not done by a long shot.

9/26-27 - the SIBA trade show in Mobile. Easily twice as big as NAIBA, with more publishers and booksellers. Took part in an excellent thriller panel on Friday that introduced me to a lot of Southern booksellers (the whole purpose of going to these things) and generated a lot of interest in the YA Jack series. Spent Saturday signing copies of Jack: Secret Histories and advance reading copies of By the Sword. They cleaned me out. In the end, 16 hours of traveling (counting the layovers in Atlanta, it took 8 hours door to door each way) in order to spend 28 hours in Mobile, but I think it was worth the effort.

9/23 - hit the 100k-word mark on Ground Zero.

9/21-22 - the NAIBA trade show seems to be getting smaller each year. I think that speaks to the state of the independent booksellers. They’re under relentless pressure from the chains and the Internet. They can’t afford the discounts the chains can give, and have to charge sales tax that most Internet stores get away with. But they’re a relentlessly upbeat group (at least in public) and great to sit and talk to. I signed and gave away all the copies of Jack: Secret Histories and By the Sword at the Sunday night Noir Bar. (That pairing doesn’t fit well with a Joisey accent: “Nwaw Baw.” Boston or Downeastese is easier: “Nwah Bah.”) That left nothing for me to sign on Monday, so I left early. Another trade show this coming weekend.

9/20 - wrote a 500-word piece on By the Sword and its connection to BLACK WIND for the Tor newsletter. I’ll probably use it as an Amazon plog when the book is released. (On the subject of BW: Looks like it will be a March 2009 paperback - same month as Aftershock & Others.)

9/19 - 11 pages today. I’m cranking.

9/18 - not much going on besides pounding away on Ground Zero. I tend to have no life when I get to this point in a novel. The end is in sight, the deadline is approaching, and so it’s all work and no play. I was supposed to attend a luncheon at the NAIBA trade show on the 21st, but I blew that off to allow more writing time. I’ll still be there for dinner and a later reception they call the “Noir Bar,” where a group of authors of darker fiction (can’t imagine why they wanted me) sign their novels for the booksellers.

9/17 - a little back-and-forth email with Alexis to set up some signings out West in early December.

9/14 - hit page 400-page / 90k-word mark on Ground Zero. Still a ways to go.

9/13 - faxed in the edits on Aftershock & Others.

9/12 - while proofing Aftershock & Others, I came to “(the answer).” [The story has indecipherable gibberish for a title, which I thought pretty cool at the time; but in the years since it was published, I’ve found that I can’t talk about it or write about it because I can’t pronounce or typeset it. So I wind up calling it “(the answer).” Another lesson (like my Joker story) in being too clever for my own good.]

My Joker story? Back in 1989 Marty Greenberg asked me to write a story for The Further Adventures of the Joker. I thought it would be neat if Batman did not appear at all and his name was never even mentioned. Talk about too cool for school, right? I think it’s one of the best stories I’ve ever done, but it’s never been reprinted in any of the numerous compilations of Batman fiction. Why? Because Batman isn’t in it…isn’t even mentioned. (I can hear the Joker laughing.)

Back to “(the answer).” A mysterious group called “the Order” is behind all the strange goings on in the story. I realized that the Ancient Fraternal Septimus Order of the Jack novels refers to itself as “the Order.” Why not make them the same? I didn’t change the story to say so, merely changed the color of the suit worn by the mystery man from the Order. He’s now dressed in white, and carries a cane.

9/11 - the 13th Jack novel, which now has the working title of Ground Zero, involves the 9/11 attack. So today was the day I chose to write about the attack itself. Like the rest of you, I remember that morning as clearly as yesterday.

9/8 - into NYC for a party for my agent, Al Zuckerman. He’s 77 today and in great mental and physical shape - still plays singles tennis, still can edit the hell out of a manuscript. We’ve been together for over 30 years.

9/5 - I spend an unseemly amount of time poring over my calendar, looking for free dates to go on the road for By the Sword, which officially releases mid October, and the Bloodline paperback. I won’t be touring as extensively this year, but the publicity folks want to send me to a couple of places out west.

9/4 - page proofs for Aftershock & Others arrove today, all 352 of them, awaiting my perusal and approval. 19 stories plus a ton of autobio-bibliographical interstitial material. Happy-happy joy-joy.

9/3 - a dramatized audio version of my grim short story “Slasher,” produced by the talented Grist Mill folks, is available for download at CD Baby

9/2 - a book trailer for Jack: Secret Histories is all over the Internet as of today. Go here for a wide range of viewing ops.

9/1 - a podcast of a recent interview I did with the Dragonpage crew is up and ready for downloading to your iPod or other players.

                                                                         

August 2008

8/30 - I’m writing this in Louis Armstrong International Airport, waiting for a flight out. I was a speaker at the breakfast chat this morning; we were halfway into it when the hotel manager interrupted. He told us that the city had proclaimed mandatory evacuation of tourists, so they were closing the hotel and we all had to leave. Gustav still wasn’t due till Tuesday but the city was gearing up for mandatory evacuation and we heard talk about the airport closing down tomorrow night. The conference was forcibly canceled. I managed to get my Sunday flight switched to today.

I can understand the city’s once-bitten-twice-shy attitude, but this seems excessive. I feel bad for the workshop participants who made space in their lives for this event and spent money on flights and hotel rooms in the hope of gleaning some help and direction in their nascent writing careers from all the blather we established writers would be huffing their way over the weekend. They came away with next to nothing. I feel sorry for Heather too. She puts a lot of work into these conferences. It’s not her fault - she was given no choice, and neither was the Hotel Monteleone.

I feel really sorry for the people in coastal Louisiana, especially my new friends in Houma - Terrebonne Parish looks like its in Gustav’s sights.

Sure, once Gustav’s course showed a definite hit on the Louisiana coast, the city should have advised people to evacuate, and maybe even made it mandatory at a certain point. But this is premature. At least that’s how it looks to me on this clear, sunny Saturday afternoon as I sit in a crowded airport (where some folks will be spending the night) and watch them locking up the shops and restaurants. Tomorrow afternoon I may eat those words.

8/29 - Heather wrote a pirate-themed musical for Saturday night’s dinner theater and today was supposed to be a rehearsal day for the band (with yrs trly as drummer). But the instruments didn’t arrive until late so we hung out, keeping an eye on the weather channel, watching Gustav's track. We had time for only a brief run through of the score, which is eclectic as all hell - ranging from "Anchors Aweigh" through "Drunken Sailor" to "Smoke on the Water (with new lyrics) and "Come Sail Away," closing with the inevitable and inescapable "When the Saints Go Marching In." We broke to go to a meet-and-greet affair with the workshop participants, followed by a reception at Muriel’s (a restaurant on Jackson Square that used to be a bordello). Gustav wasn’t due till Tuesday but voluntary evacuation of special needs folks was to begin the next morning. A couple of thousand national guard troops arrived in the city and rumors began to spread about mandatory evacuation coming soon. I was glad I’d changed my reservation.

8/28 - arrove in New Orleans intending to spend the Labor Day weekend at Heather Graham's Writers workshop. It coincides with the city's Southern Decadence Weekend (sort of a gay-pride event) which always adds a certain flair to the goings on in the French Quarter. I’d planned to stay until Labor Day but with Gustav threatening, I switched to a Sunday departure. Bar hopped along Bourbon Street with some of the other writers in attendance, heard lots of excellent cover bands, then called it a night.

8/27 - under sf, fantasy and horror, bookfinder lists Nightworld as one of the 10 most sought-after books. How 'bout dat?

8/26 - word from the Florida Romance Writers that my visit with them is up on their website. Come one, come all.

8/25 – I'm told the October issue of Romantic Times magazine is out. I interview Heather Graham in this issue.

8/24 - wrote up a brief introduction to Impaler, a graphic novel (actually a fix-up of six issues of the comic) about vampires in New York. Didn't want to give away any of the plot, so I mused on the nature of evil, and whether vampires are truly evil.

8/20 - I think I have a title for RJ-13. It's tentative, but I'm leaning toward Ground Zero.

8/15-17 - Horrorfind Weekend: a mix of the same-old same-old with some unexpected pleasures. Ian Fischer showed up for a screening of "Foet." For my reading I settled on "Recalled," my story from the upcoming Matheson tribute anthology, and served screaming orgasms (Kahlua-vodka-Bailey's) to the audience. More showed up than anticipated and we ran out, but at least a fair number of folks could say afterward that they had a screaming orgasm while listening to me read.

8/15 - word comes via "Empire" magazine that Michael Mann and Paramount have settled their differences and a DVD of "The Keep" movie might become a reality. We'll see. If so, the Wilson-Schow-Winter commentary track will be a reality as well.

8/14 - Silverfish from the website Forum created a wiki devoted to moi. I get verklempt every time I think of it: wiki

8/11 - a nice review of the "Foet" film at Dread Central. The director, Ian Fischer, has placed it in 21 festivals so far, from Cannes to LA.

8/6 - email from Eric of the Arcana convention regarding scheduling and such. Looks like they'll be keeping me busy.

8/5 - Alexis sent me a rough cut of the Jack: Secret Histories trailer. Not exactly how I pictured li'l Jack, but it looks great.

8/4 - word from Tor that the mass market editions of The Tomb and Legacies have gone back to press for yet another printing. Always nice to hear that the backlist keeps selling.

8/1-9 - some rest and research on Nantucket (I'm looking for a way to reuse that house from Harbingers). Not really a vacation since I wrote every day, both to keep up the narrative momentum and make the October deadline. Only a dial-up connection in the house we rented. Remember when a 56k connection was heaven? How quickly we become spoiled.

 

 

JULY 2008

7/30 - I'll be out of touch for the next week or so.  Doing a little R&R cum research where there's only dial-up connections.  Talk to you when I get back.

7/29 - not much going this week other than writing and writing. Heard from Stacy that BY THE SWORD's pub date is now officially 10/14, moved in order to take advantage of a promo opportunity with Barnes & Noble.

7/24 - Wow. Email from Stacy with 4 covers of special $4.99 editions of my backlist. I didn’t know this was in the offing. Or maybe I just forgot. Whatever, come January '09, Implant and Deep as the Marrow (with new covers) will be back in the racks along with Legacies and Gateways. This worked out very well with The Tomb, The Keep, and All the Rage back in ’06. No change other then the price tag on the Legacies and Gateways covers, but here's what the other 2 will look like:

                 

7/23 - finished up an interview with Joe Konrath for Crimespree Magazine. It’s scheduled for the October issue, I believe - to coincide with Bouchercon. It’s the most whacked-out interview I’ve ever done. Joe always manages to bring out the worst in me.

7/22 – somebody realized that the sword on the original cover for By the Sword was not a katana, so two new covers have been designed. I like the first because it has better pop, but it appears too short to be a katana.  I think they're going to go with the one on the right.

            

 

7/21 - Susan Chang and I have worked out how to change SECRET CIRCLES from the third book to the second in the young adult Jack series. I think it will have greater continuity from book one. The downside is that the delay this involved will mean pushing back the pub date back to early 2010. I’m not happy with that, but with the long production schedule, the due date for summer 2009 has passed, and we don’t want it out in the fall because that’s when the new adult Jack will be published.

7/20 - an interview done some time ago finally sees print HERE.

7/18 - when my hard drive crashed, I lost all the work I did for Susan Chang on the possibility of making SECRET CIRCLES the second young adult Jack instead of the third. I reconstruct it as best I can, and I think I've succeeded (although I'm sure some insanely brilliant idea has been lost). I make a day-by-day, scene-by-scene breakdown of books 2 & 3, then start revamping book 3 into book 2, trading certain events back and forth. This might work.

7/17 - finally finish approving the edits for Aftershock & Others. I’d put off writing the afterword until now, so I do that. I also swap in a later version of “Interlude at Duane’s.” Through the course of a number of public readings, I’ve tweaked it this way and that, and I want the latest version preserved in the collection. (My last collection, btw – short fiction no longer appeals to me. Can’t tell you why because I don’t know. Just one of those things.)

7/16 - email from Stacy, David Hartwell’s assistant, looking for the copyedited ms. Of Aftershock & Others, due back at production July 7. Yikes. Forgot all about it. I get cracking on that.

7/15 - spent much of the day reinstalling all my software onto the new hard drive, hunting up drivers for the hardware, and custom configuring everything. What a pain. Like I’ve got nothing better to do.

7/15 - email from Jon Land asking if I want to be on his thriller writers panel at next year's Romantic Times convention. What? How did he get involved? RT was Barry Eisler’s and my secret. If this goes on, RT might turn into another Thrillerfest.

7/14 - today I decided not to go to NECon. A whole lot of reasons that I don't want to get into combined into a perfect storm that's forcing me to miss my first NECon in 20 years - and it happens the year I'm the Legend. Yeah, it's turning into a Joe Btfsplk year.

7/12 - after hours of rehearsal, waiting around for the soundmen to mike the equipment, the program is changed and we wind up performing only a fraction of what we rehearsed. Unless things change, I think I'll say bye-bye to the KTB.

7/11 - I host a panel on "The Thrill of the Paranormal." It's reasonably well attended and we have some fun. Then a video interview for writingroom.com. Then a signing and I'm free to rehearse with the band.

7/11 - my computer guy tells me my hard drive is toast. Hey, it's only 3 months past his 3-year warranty. Lucky thing I'm pretty religious about backing up, but still it's a pain to reinstall all my programs and configurations.

7/10 - busy day.
- 9am: my computer crashes. I drop it off at my computer guy.
- 11am: I train into NYC for a lunch meeting with my adult editor, David Hartwell; there I learn that I'll have a few extra weeks

        to deliver RJ-13 in the fall. (Yes!)
- 3pm: a meeting with my YA editor, Susan Chang, who thinks that the third book in the trilogy will work better as the second.

        She may have a point. I'm going to see if I can make it work.
- 5pm: signing event at Books of Wonder.
- 7pm: grab a beer with my agent
- 8pm: catch the end of the welcome reception at Thrillerfest.
- 10pm: first rehearsal of the stripped-down Killer Thriller (Garage) Band. And of course, we suck.

7/9 - Steve Niles (“30 Days of Night”) and Del Howison are developing stories from Del’s anthology Dark Delicacies into a comic-book series. They want my “Part of the Game” for the first issue. And they’re paying money. This is known as a good thing.

7/7 - Carol Stacy of Romantic Times wrote to say the panel Barry Eisler and I proposed for the next RT convention is a go.

7/8 - email from Nikki R. that my Horrorfind reading will be at 4-5pm on Saturday

7/3 - a package from Hideo Kojima: the deluxe version of his latest game, Metal Gear Solid 4, plus the soundtrack. I’ve got to get a copy of By the Sword to him - I named a character after him.

7/1 - word from Alexis, my publicist at the publisher, that they want to send me to the SIBA (Southern Independent Booksellers Association) trade show in September. It's in Mobile, AL. I said I'd go.

 

JUNE 2008

6/30 - I've hit the 40k-word mark on the new book. I don't know if I can have it finished by October 1.

6/29 - finished up the Heather Graham interview for Romantic Times and sent it in.

6/29 - further word from Veronika Levine that things are pretty well ironed out for my speaking gig at the Florida Romance Writers in November. I'll let you know when the details go up on their website.

6/28 - word from Beacon films that they're moving from their opulent oceanfront offices in Santa Monica to more modest digs further inland on Olympia Blvd. Hmmmmm.

6/27 - knocked out a foreword to the Gauntlet edition of Legacies and sent it in.

6/26 - email from editor David Hartwell saying that the sales department wants to publish RJ-13 earlier next year - in September rather than November. Can I get it to him earlier? Like October 1 instead of November 15? Yikes.

6/26 - heard from the Eileen Koch company in LA. They want to tape an interview with me at Thrillerfest. Sure. Why not?

6/25 - email from Alexis saying Books of Wonder (a very cool children's bookstore in NYC) wants me for one of their Teen Nights. I'm going to take time off from Thrillerfest on July 10 to do an event there.

(See "Where I'll Be")

6/24 - NECon wants some fiction for its program book. I send them “Lipidleggin’.” Yeah, it’s an oldy, but it’s a goody that’s proving more and more prescient as time goes on.

6/21 - a pair of audio collections of Repairman Jack short fiction arrives from Germany. (He’s known as “Handyman Jack” over there.) The titles are “Der Letzte Ausweg” and “Schmutzige Tricks.” If you understand German, check it out here.

6/19 - word arrives today that ITW has sold its YA thriller anthology to Penguin/Dutton for a 6-figure advance. I’ll be donating a YA Jack story. Whatta guy, you think, helping out a writers’ group. Yeah, well, there’s that. But it exposes Jack to people who might not otherwise see him. I gained a ton of new readers from “Interlude at Duane’s” in the Thiller anthology. (A fair number of you are reading this now because of that story.) Doing well while doing good. Nothing wrong with that.

6/18 - the copyedited ms. of my third short-story collection, Aftershock & Others, arrives for my perusal. I’ve subtitled it: “19 Oddities.” The stories were published from 1990 to 2005. My short story output has diminished considerably over recent years. I’m not sure why. I’m not sure I care. The first story is “Dreams,” the piece I did for The Ultimate Frankenstein. Instead of checking the edits, I begin reading it - something I do not have time for. I’d intended it as an exercise in dramatic irony and I’m impressed by how well it works in that regard.

6/16 - contract day. The much-parsed contracts for the last 3 Repairman Jack novels arrive via email. All I have to do is print 4 copies, sign them, and send them off. Will do. By mail, contracts from a Romanian publisher, Editura Tritonic, for The Tomb, Legacies, and Conspiracies.

6/14 - re: RJ-13. The guy Jack dragged into the room (see 6/10) seems to be working out. He’s kind of blah, though. Need to give him some personality.

6/13 - I’ve done a cursory check of the BLOODLINE galleys and faxed in the corrected pages. I wish I had the time and the will to do a better job, but at his point I’ve read and reread that book so many times, I’m sick of it. And probably wouldn’t see the errors anyway. I’ll have to trust the publisher’s copyeditors.

6/12 - just in from Alexis, my publicist at the publisher: a 2-page list of radio stations from Sacramento to Long Island and everywhere between that will each be giving away ten free copies of JACK: SECRET HISTORIES. I didn’t even know this was in the wind. Cool.

6/10 - I’m writing RJ-13 without an outline. Not because I want to but because the outline simply won’t come. I have a deadline and if I sit around refusing to start till I have a completed outline, I’ll never make it. So I’m outlining as I go along, or simply going along. Raymond Chandler used to say something to the effect that when things get slow, have a guy with a gun burst into the room. Well, I just had Jack drag an unarmed guy into a room and now I’m going to see what I can do with him. This could be fun, or this could be donkey dooky. We’ll see.

6/9 - just got a look at the script for the JACK: SECRET HISTORIES trailer and I like it a lot. Can’t wait to see it.

6/9 - Well, well. Today's email brings a revision of the Thrillerfest release. And lo, they’re dropping "intellectual property" from the wording and clarifying another point. I do believe I hear the sound of one hand clapping.

6/7- the galleys for the paperback of BLOODLINE (scheduled for October) arrive for proofing. Oh joy.

6/6 - nice review of By the Sword up at Fearzone. 

6/4 - disturbing email from Thrillerfest requiring all panelists to sign a release to allow filming of the panels. Well, okay, except that the release mentions giving up intellectual property rights to the content.

I take one look at that and am ready to shoot off my mouth as I did last year about the expense of Thrillerfest and how it was pricing the debut and mid-list writers (the ones who could benefit most from the networking opportunities) out of attending. I ruffled a lot of feathers, gored a few cows, pissed off some board members, and didn't accomplish a whole lot. (This year's early-bird package made T'fest somewhat more affordable, and I like to think I played some part in that.)

I’m sure there’s no sinister intent, but uh-uh. No way. Whatever contract you sign, even if it’s with your best friend, should be parsed as if it’s going to be interpreted by your worst enemy. And I don’t sign away intellectual property rights to the opinions I express on a panel. Those stay with me.

But instead of opening my yap, this year I’m taking the zen-master approach and saying, "We'll see." A number of bestselling thriller writers are attorneys and I can't imagine them signing it. So I shall hold my tongue and listen for the sound of one hand clapping.

6/4 - proofed the galleys for “The Sound of Blunder,” the story I wrote with Joe Konrath for the humorous horror anthology, BLOOD LITE. It still gave me a couple of chuckles on rereading.  It’s one goofy story, but not as goofy as the cover.  What are they thinking?

6/3 - invited to co-present the short film of “Foet” at the Fangoria convention later this month but I can’t make it. Wished they’d asked me sooner.

6/1 - back from the Georgetown reunion. One speaker was talking about the number of world-class bigshots in our year. The best known would be Bill Clinton, but we also had 2 other heads of state: Alfredo Cristiani, former president of El Salvador, and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, current president of the Philippines. Another classmate, Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, was in line to be King of Saudi Arabia until his father, King Faisal, was assassinated in 1975. I guess we were supposed to be impressed with ourselves, but I couldn’t manage it. I knew Bill as well as I cared to: enough to say hello to when we passed in the dorm, but nothing beyond that. If I ever met the others, I don’t remember them. I do remember an excellent education, and I have a few dear friends from that past who enrich my present. The rest? Meh.

6/1 - we reached another all-time record level of activity here during May: over 2.7 million hits. As I’ve said before, some of them have to be coming from bots and spiders, but they alone can’t account for an extra 700k hits over the April total. The only reason I can think of is I picked up a lot of new readers at the Houma and Romantic Times gatherings. I mean, those were the only cons I attended in April. They must be visiting often (encouraged) and clicking around a lot (also encouraged) once they get there. The Forum is by far the most popular destination.

 

MAY 2008

5/27 - COMMERCIAL BREAK ABOUT JACK: SECRET HISTORIES - A NEW REPAIRMAN JACK NOVEL

…except he’s not Repairman Jack yet.

It's 1983. The Atari 5200 is the hot videogame console and Star Wars Death Star Battle is the hot game; the Apple ][+ with a whole 48K of RAM is state of the art in home computing; everyone's twisting a Rubik's cube.

And a fourteen-year-old boy is beginning to explore the talents that will lead him to become a man known as Repairman Jack.

Never saw myself writing for kids, especially since I already have a fair number of teen readers, mostly sixteen and up. But a motley array of forces converged to goose me into writing a novel geared toward the sixteen-and-under crowd – a so-called Young-Adult novel.

I say "so-called" because the writing process wasn't much different from my adult work and the style is virtually identical. I've striven over the years for a clean, lean style, tailored to the pace of the thrillers I write. Now, to my delight, I find it fits a younger audience equally well. At least that's what a focus group showed: Kids who often took up to a month to finish a book were polishing off Jack: Secret Histories over a weekend and looking for more.

But what surprised me most was how much fun I had. I delighted in peeking into Jack's past and populating it with people who would play parts in his later life, or arranging cameos of characters from other novels. The books practically wrote themselves. I'd agreed to write three and I had drafts of the second and third done before the first’s pub date. Like taking dictation.

Best of all was looking at the world again through fourteen-year-old eyes. I remember my own last summer before high school as a turning point in my life. So that was where I decided to pick up Jack’s story. Since I’d already established his birth year as 1969, I pretty much had to set the story in 1983. Not a bad year – lots of new technology, disco was dead, and MTV was on the rise.

Lucky for me, I’d already placed Jack’s hometown in Burlington County, which juts into the mysterious and fabled Jersey Pine Barrens. Perfect. It all came together in a glorious crash. I could work all sorts of magic in a million acres of wilderness with places no human eyes have ever seen, where strange lights jump from tree to tree and the Jersey Devil supposedly roams. I peopled his town with weird characters and places – like an old woman (with a dog) who's supposedly a witch, and the town drunk who's rumored to be able to heal with a touch but always wears gloves, and USED, the store that sells old…stuff.

From his start many years ago in The Tomb , I made of point of giving the adult Jack an Everyman background. He's not an ex Navy SEAL or former CIA black-ops agent, just a guy from New Jersey who dropped off the radar and taught himself a few tricks. But he has an innate knack for manipulating people and situations to his advantage. (Of course if that doesn’t work, he has his trusty Glock.) Here was a chance to show him discovering his talents.

As I said: Like taking dictation.

Jack: Secret Histories is the first of a trilogy. If comments on this site are any indication, adult Jack fans are lined up, waiting to dive in. If you know a 9-16 year old, male of female, try a copy. It's a good gift and, considering the deep discount Amazon is offering, a small investment that could pay high dividends if you turn a kid on to reading.

Check it out here: JACK: SECRET HISTORIES

 

5/24 - someone on the Forum who's reading the Gauntlet edition points out that section "11" is missing from the "Saturday" chapter of By the Sword.  Not missing - misnumbered.  It's misnumbered in the ARC for the trade edition too, but there's time to change that before it goes to press.

5/22 - remember my saying I’d like to see the website pass the 2 million-hit mark by the end of May? Well, we don’t have to wait. It just did. Today. Yeah, sure, some are due to bots and spiders; that’s expected and inevitable. But bots and spiders are always with us. They can’t account for this level of increase in activity. I guess The Voice was right: If you build it, they will come.

5/20 - I finish the introduction for the next collection of Batton Lash’s Wolff & Byrd comics. They’re well written with lots of wordplay, sly cultural references, and a subtle libertarian edge. Check ’em out. Wolff & Byrd

5/20 - a contract from Brilliance for an audio version of By the Sword arrives (coincidentally with a royalty statement that shows their audio version of Bloodline has already earned out).

5/19 - contracts arrive for online sale of some of my older short stories through the Sony ebook site. The rights are for English only and are non-exclusive, so I don’t see a downside. The upside is that a number of stories from my first collection, the hard-to-find Soft & Others, will be available again.

5/19 - email from Romantic Times magazine asking me to interview Heather Graham for their October issue. Mostly it’s promotion for her holiday trilogy in the fall - a novel a month for October, November, and December. (Unlike some other prolific, well-known authors, she writes every word herself. I don’t know how she does it.)

5/17 - in honor of my birthday (or so it seems), two states of By the Sword arrive: my author copies of the Gauntlet edition and a few copies of the Forge ARC. I’m completely out of shelf space. I’m going to have to start selling off or giving away some of my other books to make room.

5/16 - ah, royalty check day. Some are better than others. Today’s is pretty good. This is something most people don’t understand about the writing life. Publishers don’t pay royalties weekly or monthly; they pay every 6 months. This check was for royalties earned in the latter half of 2007. Advances are a different matter. An advance is money paid against anticipated royalties in =advance= of publication. You’re paid part when you sign the contract, part upon delivery and acceptance of the completed manuscript (the “D&A payment”), and part on date of publication. Once the book’s royalties exceed the amount of the advance, you begin receiving the aforementioned semi-annual checks. Most books never earn out their advance.

5/15 - Gauntlet starts shipping out the limited edition of By the Sword.

5/15 - my first author copies of Jack: Secret Histories arrive. A pretty nifty hardcover, though slimmer than my usual adult novels. (The cover's on the welcome page)

5/14 - email from Molly Bolden of Bent Pages bookstore, asking me back to the Houma Writers Conference next April. Ha. Try keeping me away.

5/14 - news from Susan Chang that they’re making a video trailer for Jack: Secret Histories. They expect the script next week. I’ll let you know when it goes up.

5/13 - Barry Eisler and I think we’ve come up with a cool panel idea for next year’s Romantic Times convention. Two romance pros, Kathy Love and Erin McCarthy, are going to help us out. Of course the con committee must agree, but I’ll be very surprised if they don’t go for it. (After all, we plan to serve drinks.)

5/13 - email from David Hartwell with a .jpg of the new cover of the 2009 paperback reissue of BLACK WIND attached. It’s very, um, nuclear. (Or nucular, as some say.) Here’s a peek:

5/13 - email from the Jefferson Railway in Jefferson, Texas asking if they can to use the title "THE PEABODY-OZYMANDIAS TRAVELING CIRCUS & ODDITY EMPORIUM" for their Halloween corn maze. I say sure, but there’s a price: They have to send me samples of any promotional materials bearing the name. I'll stick them in my collection.

5/12 - I’ll be drumming in the house band again at Heather Graham’s Writers for New Orleans Workshop over Labor Day Weekend (see Where I'll Be). She’s planning a pirate theme for her dinner show so we’re looking for sea songs. So far we’ve settled on “Come sail Away” and “Sloop John B.”

5/11 - got to listen to a final mix of the audio dramatization of “Slasher” (meaning they use actors, stereo sound effects, and a script as opposed to simply reading the story) and it sounds super.

5/6 - email from Pierce Watters informing me that, as per my suggestion, he has acquired the Henry Kuttner collection Robots Have No Tails for reprint. These are wonderful, whimsical SF stories written in the 1940s about a scientist named Gallegher who’s bright when he’s sober but absolutely brilliant when drunk. He’ll invent something while blasted and then his sober self must figure out what it does. Pierce asks if I still want to write the introduction. I inform him that he and all he loves will die horribly if he allows someone else near it.

5/5 - looks like there will be a stripped-down version of the Killer Thriller Band at this year’s Thrillerfest. For a while it was doubtful we’d have any band at all because of the exorbitant cost last year. Don’t know yet if we’ll have 2 drummers (as we did in Phoenix) or just yours truly.

5/1 - attended the Edgar Awards banquet tonight. Finally met Bill Pronzini (who received the Grandmaster Award). I’ve been reading his Nameless Detective series forever. As usual, saw a lot of my old friends from the mystery field. Talked to Lee Child for a bit, telling him that my 92-year-old mother is a Jack Reacher fan. (I suspect she might like his Jack more than her son’s.)

5/1 - we hit an all-time record of activity at www.repairmanjack.com during April: 1,991,004 hits. This beats the previous high back in October when I was on tour (and October has an extra day). With an extra day in May, we should be able to top 2m. Why do I want to top 2m? I have no idea. I do not allow advertising on the site, so it’s no help there. Maybe because it’s such a nice round number.

April 2008

4/30 - started the new RJ novel today - number 13.  The first chapters are always tough for me, but seem especially so this go-round.  I think I’m going to have to approach these last 3 books as one big novel divided into three parts.  I kn

MARCH 2008

3/29 - Simon Clark and I present the best-novel Stoker award at the banquet. I peeked into the envelope beforehand and knew Sarah Langan was the winner, so I felt free to harass her beforehand. (Someone later reminded me that BLACK WIND was nominated for best novel in 1988 – I guess it was, but who can remember that long?) You can see it here. And here you can watch Sarah do her impression of the Chef of the Future.

3/29 - back from the desert I have lunch with Stephen Lewis who has the world's most unique take on disease and healing. See for yourself: http://www.energeticmatrix.com/

3/29 - took a long morning ride out past Great Salt Lake into the desert. Strange, stark beauty out there. I can see why the prophets of old would lose themselves in the desert - and come back either wiser or completely mad. (I didn't stay long enough for either.)

3/28 - I hang a good deal with Heather Graham at WHC and, as mentioned elsewhere, I'm performing in her Vampire Ball on Friday night at the Romantic Times Convention. She tells me she has a suitably awful (and even embarrassing) death planned for me. I can hardly wait.

3/28 - the special JACK: SECRET HISTORIES bookmarks arrive today, too late to get into the convention goodie bags. I'll give them away at the signing.

3/28 - Harry Morris emails me 4 different possible covers for the limited edition of LEGACIES. I invite a number of writers at WHC to comment and the choice is unanimous.

3/27 - off to Salt Lake City for the World Horror Convention - all sorts of signings and panels and sundry activities planned. (Skiing is not one of them - I don't get skiing.)

3/23 - the Richard Matheson tribute anthology, HE IS LEGEND is on sale. I wrote a sequel to his "The Distributor" and couldn't resist involving Repairman Jack (though he's never mentioned by name). The prices are astronomical but will go up after it's sold out. It's going to be one hell of a collector's item. http://www.gauntletpress.com/

3/22 - first draft of SECRET CIRCLES completed. I’ll let it sit until the plane ride to and from World Horror next week.

3/21 - into NYC to meet with a young game designer who wants to develop MASQUE into a videogame. (Yes, we've been down this road before.) We have lunch at the Ear Inn in SoHo. (You'll learn all about the place in BY THE SWORD.)

3/20 - spoke to Alexis about the giveaway title for Romantic Times. Although THE TMB would be idea, HOSTS seems right too and it has plenty of copies in the warehouse, so we're going to go with that. This means lots of cases of books - a dozen or more - being shipped to the hotel. I hope they don't all wind up in my room.

3/19 - another great advance review of JACK: SECRET HISTORIES, this time from the target audience: an 11-year old.

3/18 - word from Alexis that the JACK: SECRET HISTORIES postcards are running a little late and will have to be shipped directly to the Radisson in Salt Lake City for the convention. This is not bad news. It saves me from schlepping them onto the plane.

3/17 - email from Thrillerfest wanting me to moderate a panel on paranormal thrillers. (Instead of "moderator" they prefer "Panel Master" - has a fascist ring, which is cool as long as I'm the Master.) Well, since the panel was my idea, I suppose I must.

3/15 - a nice advance review of JACK: SECRET HISTORIES from a respected librarian.

3/14 - I pass the 50K-word mark on SECRET CIRCLES. Beginning the grand finale of the novel and the whole trilogy. Gonna be a slam-bang finish, folks.

3/13 - Jo Carol Jones from Romantic Times writes to ask if I want to join Barry Eisler and Heather Graham for an author chat on Wednesday at Romantic Times. I'm in. Heather's one of my favorite people, and Barry's a good guy and an excellent thriller writer - check out his John Rain series. (But only after you've finished all the Repairman Jacks - let's keep our priorities straight here.)

3/13 - an email from Otto Penzler of the famous Mysterious Bookshop wanting to reprint the =Midnight Mass= novella in an upcoming anthology. Like I'm gonna say no? 3/12 - trading emails with J.A. Konrath and learn that he's had to cancel out on Romantic Times. Something about a wedding. Bummer. Joe's always good for a laugh and a beer. (He even buys.)

3/12 - a new paperback edition of my 1993 medical thriller THE SELECT arrives from Germany (where it's called DIE PRUFUNG). This is its umpteenth printing over there, and tenth incarnation with a different cover each time. It's long out of print everywhere else but hit number one on the German bestseller lists and keeps selling and selling. Go figure. You can rarely explain and never predict this kind of thing.

3/11 - hey, the April issue of =Romantic Times Bookreviews= magazine devotes a page to the men attending the convention. J.A. Konrath, Barry Eisler, and yrs trly are profiled among others under "Let's Hear it for the Boys." Only 7 of us on the page. Just 7 male authors? Yow. Our testosterone-fu must be strong lest we come home in drag.

3/10 - I hear from Alexis that Tor is printing up a bunch of SECRET HISTORIES postcards to give away at WHC. Let's hope they arrive in time for the con.

3/7 - Alexis gets back to me on the CD idea: Marketing would prefer to ship out 500 or so copies of one of the novels to give away - don't give 'em a taste of Jack, give 'em the whole damn book. Well, all right. Can't argue with that.

3/6 - I'm thinking of changing the title of the 3rd YA novel from SECRET LIVES to SECRET CIRCLES. A lot of circular themes running through it and connecting up from the first two books.

3/5 - email from Alexis telling me that NY ComiCon wants me on a panel on Saturday April 19. Then she remembers that I'll be at the Romantic Times con in Pittsburgh at that time. Can I do both? she asks. Only if I breach the space-time continuum which, as you are well aware, will end all life as we know it. (I confess to having a Stimpy big-red-button moment.)

3/3 - Dara from Gauntlet informs me that she's having problems typesetting some of the Kanji in the ms. We work it out.

3/3 - I email Alexis, my publicist, about this idea for a promotional giveaway at the Romantic Times con: a CD with a Repairman Jack story (I suggest "A Day in the Life") and an excerpt from THE TOMB to give the ladies a taste of Jack. "A Taste of Repairman Jack! Exclusive for Romantic Times Booklovers!" She says she'll run it by marketing.

3/1 - I fax the corrected galley pages of BY THE SWORD to Gauntlet. Shouldn't be long now.

FEBRUARY 2008

JANUARY 2008

1/31 - heard from IDW today that there's going to be a Spanish-language edition of THE KEEP graphic novel. Cool. (The French edition is due from Wetta in May.)

1/30 - a while back Pierce Watters of Paizo Publishing asked me to write an introduction to THE HOUNDS OF SKAITH by Leigh Brackett, one of the classic sf-fantasies in the Planet Stories line he's editing. We've corresponded for many years and finally met on the Seattle stop of my last book tour. Although I've done introductions here and there, nonfiction is not my thing. Still, because of the long relationship, I said I'd give it a go. I worked on it off and on and finally sent it in today. Brackett wrote some excellent space opera in her day, and a few of you may remember her name from the screenplay credits for =The Empire Strikes Back=. http://paizo.com/store/fiction/planetStories

1/25-27 - another rewarding stint at the Borderlands Boot Camp for Writers. There's always a bell curve of talent, but it seems to me that more of the grunts this round started off at the higher end than previous years. That puts extra pressure on us instructors to make the camp worth their while. The leap in quality from the pre-camp samples to the new pieces written Saturday night and presented Sunday morning is consistently amazing and gratifying.

1/24 - finish a first pass on the outline for the last YA novel in the trilogy (not sure of the title yet but it will be SECRET something) and zap it to Susan Chang.

1/23 - Ridley Pearson (longtime thriller novelist and recent big hit in the YA market) gives SECRET HISTORIES a generous blurb.

1/20 - I spend the NFC and AFC playoffs signing the stack of signature sheets for the limited edition of BY THE SWORD - a perfect, guilt-free way to perform this mind-numbing task. If I happen to be looking down during a big play, no worry - they'll replay it from 3 different angles. Also I get to compliment myself on my ability to multi-task. Shouldn't take too long now for the book to be bound and ready to ship.

1/18 - the votes are tallied and the Lifetime Achievement Award panel has decided to honor 2 people this year. I'll have to wait till HWA makes the announcement before I tell you here.

1/17 - very enthusiastic email from Susan Chang today about SECRET VENGEANCE. She'll have some notes for me, but she really loves the way it's structured so differently from SECRET HISTORIES. (In series fiction, writing a novel that's significantly different from the one preceding it is not always a good thing. Many readers have a let's-have-another-one-just-like-the-other-one mindset. I can't do that - just one of a number of reasons why I'm not a household name.)

1/16 - I'm chairing HWA's Lifetime Achievement Award panel this year. Time to start polling the panelists for a recipient (who must either be at least sixty years of age by May 1, 2008, or have first produced professional work in the field of horror at least thirty-five years prior to May 1. Oh, yeah, and he or she must be still among the living. Not sure how I'd feel about a Lifetime Achievement Award. I mean, it's certainly an honor, but it sort of implies (at least to me) that your best work is behind you. In many cases that's true, but I'm not there yet. (At least I hope not.)

1/12 - heard from Hank Wagner who's just finished co-authoring a Neil Gaiman companion and is now ready to start THE REPAIRMAN JACK COMPANION. Yay. I'll finally have a single source for looking up all the stuff I've forgotten about my own work.

1/11 - my Ron Paul piece on the Political Machine blog (see 1/5) garners nearly 160 comments, some thanking me for an insightful post, others calling me an idiot and a dickweed. Ha!

1/9 - okay, I didn't die. And the Ethink folks find an old backup from months ago that's missing only 800 or so of the most recent sign-ups. ("Only" - yeah, the list is that big.) As for the missing, all I've got to do is send out a special newsletter saying, If you don't receive this, resubscribe. No, wait...that won't work. Okay, if you know someone who subscribes to the "F File," ask if they received this. If not, tell them they need to resubscribe.

1/8 - some complaints have rolled in about difficulty signing up for the newsletter. I check with the hosting folks and they say the database got corrupted and they can't fix it. THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF E-ADDRESSES GONE! I suffer an acute coronary occlusion and die.

1/7 - I hear from the publisher that the HARBINGERS paperback is going back to press. Always good news, but especially this long after its September pub date. It means stores are still reordering.

1/7 - the Romantic Times Convention wants me on one of its thriller panels. Glad to oblige.

1/6 - I have an all-star flight crew on the way back from NH: The pilot looks like a young Anthony Bourdain, the co-pilot looks like Shakira (thankfully, said co-pilot is female), and the attendant is Winona Ryder. When we land I don't want to get off. (Let me rephrase: I don't want to deboard.)

1/5 - I hang out at the Liberty Forum and talk with Glen Jacobs (he's a pro wrestler whose ring name is "Kane" and he's the size of Hagrid's brother Grawp). He's here to speak on education issues. He has an education degree and used to be a teacher (bet no one acted up in =his= class). Really difficult to reconcile this intelligent, soft-spoken, articulate man with his troglodytic ring persona. 1/5 - my next stop is a signing at the Toadstool Bookstore in Milford where the turnout is light - McCain, Clinton, and Obama all have rallies in the area, so I'm definitely a minor attraction.

1/5 – I get to have breakfast with Ron Paul.

1/3 - hop a plane for Manchester, NH to do my thing at the Free State Project's second annual Liberty Forum. The shuttle to take me to the hotel in Nashua is late and I damn near freeze solid waiting for it.

1/2 – I finish revising the 1st draft of SECRET VENGEANCE (the sequel to SECRET HISTORIES) and send it off to my YA editor, Susan Chang. Now to start thinking about the final book of the trilogy.

1/1 - I can't believe I never mentioned last month that I collaborated with Joe Konrath (who writes the Jack Daniels thrillers as J. A. Konrath) on an insane short story for the comedic horror anthology BLOOD LITE. It's called "The Sound of Blunder" and is full of idiotic adolescent humor that somehow manages to make adults laugh.

DECEMBER 2007

12/31 - 2007 was a pretty good year for writing: 3 novels completed. (Okay, two of them were relatively short young-adult books, but that's still 3 novels.) We made some progress on the film. Life goes on. Can't wait to see what 2008 holds. Or can I?

12/28 - printed out a hardcopy of SECRET VENGEANCE and began revising. Writing is rewriting, folks.

12/23 - started reading / editing the writing samples for the Borderlands Boot Camp next month. The first couple aren't bad at all.

12/22 - ARCs of the Gauntlet edition of SECRET HISTORIES arrive and the wraparound cover by Harry Morris is stunning. (To get an idea of how badly some folks want an advance look at the book, check this out:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150198783158

12/21 - finished reviewing the edits in BY THE SWORD. It never ceases to amaze how many typos slip through the cracks. Four people read the second draft, each flagging muchos typos. I entered all those corrections before sending the ms. off to the publisher. Now it comes back with at least another 100 flagged. And I'm sure plenty are left. I don't think there's any such thing as a typo-free book. 12/20 - looks like I finished that draft just in time. The copyedited ms. for the Gauntlet edition of BY THE SWORD arrove today. Need to peruse that ASAP.

12/20 - finished a first draft of SECRET VENGEANCE: 56k words in 6 weeks. Wow. I haven't written anything this fast since SIBS. I'll let it marinate for a week before I start revising.

12/19 - watched =Meet the Robinsons= last night (a sweet, delightful, feel-good film, btw) and noticed Bill Borden's name on the credits as producer. (He and Barry Rosenbush are producing the Repairman Jack film.) I wrote to tell him how much I enjoyed the film; he responded by saying he didn't know if it would make me feel any better, but it took him 12 years to get it made.

12/15 - the ARCs of SECRET HISTORIES arrive from Tor. Stock art or not, I think the cover looks pretty good.

12/14 - email from After Dark Films wanting to know which of my books are not already optioned for film. So I told them.

12/13 - stopped in at the Flat Iron Building to spread a little holiday cheer - bubbly and chocolates - among the publicists. They took good care of me this year. Hung out a while in Tom Doherty's office talking anything but business.

12/10 - Doug Preston invited me to a party next month for his new novel BLASPHEMY. I'd love to go, but it's in Santa Monica. A bit of a haul from the Jersey Shore.

12/10 - email from my YA editor Susan Chang today, telling me she's sending me some ARCs of SECRET HISTORIES. She says she's not happy with the image on the front of the jacket - a piece of stock art - so they're commissioning an illustration to replace it. She says the illustration will be more specific to the book. The jacket illo I saw in the mechanical she sent last month looked pretty much in tune with the story. Curious as to what this one will look like.

12/4 - learned today that the CONSPIRACIES paperback sold out its stock of the old design. The good news is it now goes back for redesign along the lines of the other titles; the bad news is it won't be available for 6 months. 

NOVEMBER 2007

11/30 - the second YA Jack novel is flying out of me: it's only day 22 since starting and I'm almost to the halfway point.

11/29 - in connection with mentoring ITW's debut authors, here's a brief article about how I got started.
http://www.thrillerwriters.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=575&Itemid=200

11/28 - a box of 9 zillion signature sheets for SECRET HISTORIES arrove today. I'll put on the next "Heroes" disc and get started.

11/27 - I made some suggestions to Harry Morris for the Gauntlet edition cover of BY THE SWORD and he came through with another beauty.

11/27 - heard from David Hartwell. I handed in the new RJ novel with the working title, BY THE SWORD. David says the sales force loved the title at the pre Turkey-Day sales meeting, so that's what it will be. That means Paul Ramplin gets a credit line in the acknowledgments. As often happens, I'll write a novel with no idea of what to call it. Once again I asked the members of the repairmanjack.com Forum to help me out. Lisa Krause named HARBINGERS a few years ago. This time Paul came up with BY THE SWORD, and it stuck.

11/26 - a while back I volunteered to be a mentor for the International Thriller Writers 2008 debut authors. They chose me as their December mentor, and today I received a list of questions they'd like me to answer—mostly about how to manage a series character and how to sustain a career. Serious stuff. Doesn't anyone want to know my favorite color?

11/23 - Chris Ryall from IDW emails me that they've received an offer from Wetta Worldwide for French language rights to THE KEEP graphic novel. He wants to know if I accept the terms. Wait, let me check my door. Nope, no other French publishers waiting on the stoop. Guess I'll go with Wetta. (This is the last time I'll do this, I promise.)

11/20 - received word that an interview I'd done earlier in the month had been posted. Here 'tis (it's an audio download):
http://www.earth-2.net/podcasts/dreadmedia/episodes/dreadmedia_012.mp3

11/19 - attended my first SFWA editors reception in many, many years. I used to run these when I was Eastern Regional Director back in Jurassic Age. It was held at the Society of Illustrators on East 63rd St. Went out afterward for a bite with a friend and her agent and ran into thriller writer John Lescroart at the restaurant. Think about it: John and I are both in the Killer Thriller Band; he flies in from California to visit family for the holiday; I drive in from the Jersey Shore to visit my SF friends; we wind up in the same restaurant at the same late hour. Dude, like =how= does this happen? (I see the noodly appendage of the Flying Spaghetti Monster at work here.)

11/16 - received another invite to a special 25th anniversary screening of "The Keep" in London. I might have gone (just to hang with people who worked on the film) but I'm committed to the Borderlands Boot Camp on that date. http://www.fangoria.com/news_article.php?id=5457

11/13 - page galleys for SECRET HISTORIES arrove simultaneously from Gauntlet and Tor. That makes the proofing a little easier. Have to remember to change every Grainger to Connell.

11/12 - I decide to change "Grainger" to "Connell."

11/11 - while writing away on SECRET VENGEANCE I realize that the surname of the female lead in the series is "Grainger." Why does that sound familiar? Oh, crap Hermoine Granger from the Potter books. Must change, much change! (This is really odd, because I use a random name generator to name characters. Grainger popped up and I chose it. Could my subconscious have been thinking of Hermoine?)

11/9 - received an offer from Bulgarian publisher Riva for LEGACIES. Not a big offer. Wait, let me check my door. Nope, no other Bulgarian publishers waiting on the stoop. Guess I'll go with Riva.

11/8 - started writing the second Repairman Jack young adult novel. Working title: SECRET VENGEANCE.

11/8 - heard from Susan Chang that the Tor marketing department will be sending 450 ARCs of SECRET HISTORIES to indie booksellers via Book Sense. Cool. (I'll let you know when you can start watching Ebay. Heh.)

11/8 - I pitched David Hartwell on including "Dat-Tay-Vao," the prequel to THE TOUCH, in the reprint edition of the novel. 1) Obviously it will make for a unique edition 2) The character Walter Erskine, who transfers the touch to Alan in the novel, appears in "Dat-Tay-Vao" as well. 3) Walter Erskine is "Weird Walt," a major player in the YA Jack novels. 4) THE TOUCH / "Dat-Tay-Vao" combo will be appropriate reading for any kids who want to know more about where Walt came from and how he ends up. I didn't see how he could refuse. He didn't.

11/7 - received a jpeg of the full wraparound cover for JACK: SECRET HISTORIES today. It's gawjus. See for yourself.
http://www.repairmanjack.com/newsblog.htm#thelatest

11/6 - well, today I did it: I signed up for the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention. Do I write romances? Yes, in the classic sense (as opposed to mimetic fiction). But the audiences on my last tour drove home an important fact to me: I have a hell of a lot of women readers. When I started the series I figured the market would be 90% male, but at every stop at least half the crowd was female: teenagers, retirees, and every age between. Come WFC I'm hanging at one of the small press parties when Alexandra Sokoloff (her novel THE HARROWING is excellent, btw) says, "You have =got= to go to RT. They'll love you there." That starts me thinking how RT is a major convention for women readers. Yes, romances are their fave, but they read everything. I called Heather Graham (the author, not the actress) and she agreed with Alex: Go. So I'm going. I may wind up a fish out of water, or I may hook a whole new audience on Jack. We'll see.

11/5 - My other lost novel, THE FIFTH HARMONIC, is reviewed on a new-age video program. I don't know who sent them the book but I'm glad they did. If you want just the good stuff, start at the 21-minute mark. http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=dt8fpIVcYkg

11/1-4 - World Fantasy Con weekend. Saratoga Springs has its beauties, and lots of good restaurants within walking distance of the con. Loads of writers and publishing folk there.

11/1 - HOW I GOT PUBLISHED is a new collection of essays from Writers Digest Books. I have a piece in it, as do a who's-who of writers. For those of you interested in writing and selling what you write, it might be worth your while to check it out. (I get no royalties, so consider this a Public Service Announcement.)

October 2007

>10/31 - I make it back on Halloween and survive the riskiest leg of the trip: The NJ Turnpike.  It’s good to be home, but tomorrow I head out for the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs, NY.

>10/30 - Elizabeth T. picks me up in Portland and drops me at the hotel. The travel must be getting to me: I conk out for 2 hours.  Then it’s off to Beaverton for a signing at Powell’s books.  Nice crowd.  The store gives me a clip-on mic so I can wander as I read "Part of the Game" again.  Great staff, great crowd, lots of books to sign. 

I’m done.

>10/29 - a day off, sort of.  I get to spend 2 consecutive nights in the same hotel.  (Yay) Nothing to do until we start stock signings in the afternoon before heading to Mountain View, so I hang out, do some writing, and when the maid knocks on the door, a little wandering. 

After a few stops at the chain stores to sign stock, Cynthia drove me to Mountain View, CA, home of Google.  Looks like a nice little town, even in the dark. Wouldn't have minded wandering it during the day.

Books Inc. had the biggest space yet - big enough to need a microphone. Only a couple of empty seats. Read "Part of the Game" again. I'm not sick of reading it yet, mainly because it's so well received. (It's just the right length for a reading, is set on the West Coast, and, because it's a horror story, goes over particularly well this close to Halloween.)

Ran out another refill signing the collections people brought. Have yet to see a woman appear with a shopping bag full of old books. I get the feeling book collecting is mostly a guy thing.

>10/29  Greg Lamberson posted an interview on Fear Zone: http://www.fearzone.com/blog/f-paul-wilson

>10/28 - on to San Francisco where my escort, Cynthia F, dropped me off at the Palomar hotel to get settled in, then took me down to Borderlands Books in the funky Mission District.  Another SRO crowd.  Read "Part of the Game" again (had to: it takes place in San Francisco).  The Bloody Marys went over well here.  San Franciscans are my kinda people. Back to the hotel to watch the Sox take the series.

>10/27 - a 7am flight to Burbank where I was met by Elizabeth R.  She filled my morning with stock signings at chain stores, then lunch. Kevin Anderson once told me I had to stop at an In-and-Out Burger next time I was in LA, so we did.  Had a double burger/double cheese.  Elizabeth recommended "animal style" so I went for it.  Not quite up to the burger at The Ear in NYC or the Shack Burger in Playa del Rey, but it’s the best fast-food-chain burger ever.  On to Dark Delicacies where a very long line awaited.  Set up some Bloody Marys and Virgin Marys, but there weren’t a lot of takers. Two hours later, down the block to Mucho Mas for a margharita or two with some of the visiting writer folk (David Schow, Hal Bodner, and Eddie McMullen - check out his www.feoamante.com) who showed up.  Then out to dinner at a churrascaria place with Del and Sue, owners of Dark Delicacies. 

>10/26 - arrove in Seattle where I was picked up (I should rephrase that but I won’t) by my media escort Diane D.  No renown Seattle clouds or rain; instead, a pristine sky and a panoramic view of Mt. Ranier so breathtaking it had to be CGI.  She took me to the Mystery Bookshop for a stock signing and then we grabbed some dim sum and other goodies in Seattle’s Chinatown.  After taping an interview for the Evergreen Radio Reading Service (for the blind) we were off to the Redmond Library in Microsoft Country.  Not much of a crowd at University Books later on.  (But on such a beautiful clear Friday night, with a full moon hanging over the city, I wouldn’t stick myself in a bookstore either.)  An editor and publisher I’m working with took me out to a seafood restaurant called Elliot’s for dinner.

>10/24 - with my readers’ comments in hand, I did a final pass on the 12th RJ novel (title still uncertain) and sent it off to David Hartwell.  Now I can go on tour with a clear conscience.

>10/19 - an email from a reader asked when THE TOUCH would be reprinted.  I keep forgetting to discuss the rest of the Adversary Cycle with my publisher.  So I emailed David Hartwell about THE TOUCH, REBORN, REPRISAL, and NIGHTWORLD (explaining that the pub dates of the last two have to be synched with the Jack books).  (See "The Secret History of the World" - http://www.repairmanjack.com/works.htm#SECRETHISTORY)  He wrote right back, asking me if I had the rights and should he contact my agent about them.  (Well, that was easy.)

>10/18 - a brief article on BLOODLINE went up today on Sci Fi Wire:
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=5&id=44775

>10/18 - read "Interlude at Duane’s" to a packed SRO house.  Yes, it was near Halloween and I was sort of expected to read a horror story, but since this was my only New York City stop, I figured I’d never find a better audience for a tale about Repairman Jack trapped in a Duane Reade drugstore with a quartet of homicidal robbers.  (At least people laughed in the right places.  A few twits thought it contained "racial stereotypes."  They oughta get out on the street and remove their earbuds so they can hear how NYC people really talk.)

>10/16 - highly quotable mini-review in the current =Entertainment Weekly=.   Here’s the whole thing: "Private eye Jack - just Jack - is hired by a distraught mother to to investigate the skeevy older guy dating her daughter.  See, the first PI she hired has disappeared.  But when Jack finds his predecessor tortured and drowned in a bathtub, he embarks on a harrowing journey involving murder, an anarchist movement, genetic engineering and a suspicious mental institution.  In his 11th Repairman Jack thriller, Wilson offers a canny mix of sci-fi paranoia and criminal mayhem.  Despite a contrived end that baldly strains for a sequel, Bloodline starts fast, keeps the accelerator down, and defies you to stop reading.  B+ - Bob Cannon"

About that "contrived end that baldly strains for a sequel”…he’s not the first to mention it.  And he has a point.  Maybe you felt that way too.  Here’s my problem: I’m into the end game of the series.  I’m putting the pieces and the players into place.  I’ve got long arcs (4 books or so) that have to flow through in order to pay off at the end.  The only "straining" I’m doing is trying to tie up each book into a stand-alone.  But try as I might, it’s not happening.  The arcs are too big and too important to abridge.  So you’re going to have to bear with me here.  I don’t like it, but the story demands it.  In the end, I think you’ll agree it was worth the frustration.  But trust me, I’m not teasing for teasing sake.  It’s do it this way, or make you sit and wait four years for a 2000 page novel.

>10/25 - received word that a reading of "Lipidleggin' " is available here: http://www.davehitt.com/podcasts/QH_Lipidleggin.mp3 It's well read.  Take a listen.

>10/25 - arrove in Atlanta and driven around by my media escort (they should call them guides), Robert F.  Did a few stock signings at some chain stores, and then an SRO signing event at Eagle Eye Books in Decatur.  After being introduced by Dave Hinchberger, I read "Part of the Game" and reveled in the pained and disgusted grimaces on a few listeners.

>10/24 - with my readers’ comments in hand, I did a final pass on the 12th RJ novel (title still uncertain) and sent it off to David Hartwell.  Now I can go on tour with a clear conscience.

>10/15 - finished the last of the Harry Potter series on the train back from NAIBA.  A very satisfying read.  J.K. Rowling tells a mean story.  I still find her adverbs off-putting, but her storytelling is so compelling I stop noticing after a while.  An excellent end to the series - ingenious, I might say. Voldemort is brought down not by brute force, but by his inherent character flaws. (True to the Greek drama model, hubris tops the list.)  Excellent catharsis, lots of surprises, and many an "a-Ha!"  I recommend it, folks. I’m a picky, impatient reader, but I kept moving to the next book.  The second volume is the weakest.  Forgive her that and keep rolling.  Did I skim?  Yes - in many places.  But that’s me.  When I read I have the attention span of a Chihuahua after a double espresso. 

Yes, she's wordy, but then again she's creating an entire society living parallel to ours. It's quite a feat and it takes some wordage. Not as wordy as Rice, not as digressive as Straub. The 7 books run well over a million words, but she guides you through a richly detailed world you'd never see without her. She delivers on the promise of fiction: to take you places no one will ever see, let you experience things no one will ever experience.

>10/14 - trained down to Baltimore for the NAIBA (New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association) convention.  Mostly I ate - a banquet luncheon and a banquet dinner.  Later, I was a featured author at what they call the "Noir Bar" (for mystery-thriller writers) where I signed BLOODLINE for the booksellers.

>10/5 - Alexis sent me my finial tour schedule and mentioned she’d arranged escorts in every city.  I’m thinking, Wow, escorts! Here’s a publicist who really knows how to take care of an author.  Then I notice that my first escort is named Robert.  Whoa.  (Dress up in drag just once and people get the wrong idea.)  Alexis tells me they’re =media= escorts who’ll be transporting me to events and to other bookstores to sign stock.  Ah, well. 

>10/4 - added the final edits to the Repairman Jack #12 file.  DONE!  Printed out copies for my two first-look readers, Steve and Elizabeth.  When I get their feedback, I’ll make final changes, then it’s off to the publisher who needs it before the end of October. 

>10/3 - email from Alexis with the subject line: "EW!"  I thought it was going to be about a bad smell or the like, but it turns out =Entertainment Weekly= is going to review BLOODLINE soon.  Kewl.

>10/1 - sent back the copy-edited manuscript of SECRET HISTORIES.

September 2007

>9/30 - finished my edit of the first draft of CUTTING EDGE.  I’ll enter the changes during the week, send copies to my readers, and get the final ms. into the publisher before the end of the month.

>9/29 - back from NEIBA.  Typical bookseller trade show: met some booksellers, hung with the sales folks and other industry types, signed a bunch of books, yadda-yadda.  

>9/28 - before heading for the train I finished reviewing the copy-edited SECRET HISTORIES.  Not many changes.  My manuscripts go in pretty damn clean.    

>9/27 - printed out the first draft of CUTTING EDGE to take on the train to Rhode Island tomorrow.  (I’m appearing at the NEIBA - New England Independent Booksellers Association - trade show in Providence.)  Four undisturbed hours up and another 4 back on Saturday should allow for a good edit.  

>9/27 - did a radio interview with Gard Goldsmith again.  We ranged over a bunch of topics.  You can listen here: http://odeo.com/audio/16869033/view  

>9/26 - Alexis sent me my flight schedule for the tour.  This is going to be =very= hectic.  

>9/26 - NOW the first draft of CUTTING EDGE is done.  (I added a couple of brief scenes.)  

>9/24 - the copy edited ms. of the YA novel arrived for my review.  We’ve settled on the title.  It’s JACK: SECRET HISTORIES.  

>9/22 - readers have been bugging Gauntlet Press for years to do a limited edition of LEGACIES (the only RJ novel with no limited edition), so Barry asked me if he could publish a 10th anniversary edition.  Today I finished combing the ms for anachronisms.  I made a few minor changes (VCRs have become DVD players, etc.) but otherwise it holds up pretty well.  

>9/21 - email from Alexis about my tour details being posted on the Tor site.  They did a beautiful job - maps and everything.  Check it out and, if you have any plans of showing up, save the URL: http://www.tor-forge.com/Tour.aspx?Tour=579

>9/20  I recorded my Guest Host hour for Halloween night.  I was kind of lame because I had nothing prepared.  I’d assumed it would be an interview interspersed with music.  I wound up sitting alone at a console ad libbing.  I brought along a few Halloweeny songs: themes from =Godzilla= and =Psycho=, plus "Tubular Bells," "Voodoo in my Basement" by the Lovin Spoonful, "Sympathy for the Devil," and "Rasalom" by Brazilian metal group, Steel Warrior (I lasted only 3 out of that one’s 6 minutes).  They had stuff by Bauhaus and The Church and Bowie ready to go to fill out the rest of the hour. If you’ve got nothing better to do at 11PM ET on Halloween, go to http://90.5thenight.org/ and click the "LISTEN" button in the upper left corner.  (But I won’t mind at all if you don’t.)  

>9/19 - heard from Alexis that the podcast interview we recorded last winter is up in a zillion places across the net.  Here’s the YouTube URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi6J_0z8-YY  

>9/16 - okay, the last scene of the first draft of RJ-12 (I’m calling it CUTTING EDGE for now) is done.  108K words—shorter than most of the recent entries, but you know how I feel about padding.  Now to let it marinate a little before the ruthless first edit.  

>9/15 - a guy named Dave Hitt contacts me about allowing him to read "Lipidleggin' " on his podcast.  I say, sure, why the hell not?  (As long as I get a copy.)  I tell him to mention Dave Moore’s superb film adaptation on the =Others= DVD.  

>9/13 - Leo Zaccari from a NJ FM station (WBJB 90.5 The NIGHT) wants me to guest host an hour on Halloween night.  Since I’ll be on tour on Halloween, we’ll record it in advance.  Sounds like fun.  

>9/10 - the Borders store in Paramus, NJ has been added to the tour. (see "Where I’ll Be")  

>9/9 - finished the last chapter of the new RJ novel, but the first draft is still a ways from completion.  While writing through I created unanticipated situations and incidents that need setting up, and that requires going back and establishing new characters and circumstances to make the later events work.  I never stop in the middle of a book and go back - too disruptive of the narrative momentum.  I wait till I've written the story all the way through, then return and backfill.  That's what works for me: momentum-momentum-momentum.  

>9/6 - Deborah LeBlanc, who was at the New Orleans workshop, writes to ask me to chair the HWA Lifetime Achievement Award jury.  She doesn't offer money, but I say yes anyway.    

>9/6 - Molly Bolden of Bent Pages Books in Houma, who was at the New Orleans workshop, writes to ask if I'll be keynote speaker at a writer's gathering in Louisiana next spring. She offers money.  I say yes.  

>9/5 - Steve from the thehorrorblog.com wants to know what work of fiction has frightened me the most.  =The Exorcist=, of course.

August 2007

>8/30-9/2 - guesting at Heather Graham's New Orleans workshop. I agreed to this for a number of reasons. First off, I like Heather a lot - she's truly good people. Second, I'd get to drum in a pick-up band with a bunch of folks from the Killer-Thriller Band, and third, the attendees would be mostly from the romance wing, very few of whom would have read me or even heard of me. I liked the challenge of seeing if I could win them over. At this point I don't know if I did, but I had a great time, met a lot of nice readers and tyro writers (mostly women - lots of estrogen in those rooms). I meet Molly Bolden, who has to be the world's wackiest, most outspoken bookseller. Gotta love her.

>8/29 - well, I found out the reason for the BLOODLINE pub date change: some special promotion deal with Barnes & Noble that wouldn't have been possible with the October date. For some reason the B&N buyers and I have not been on the best of terms over the years - very little of my backlist on their shelves. This might change all that.

>8/29 - a forty-minute phone interview with Brice McVicar for =Rue Morgue=.

>8/28 - I learn today that the BLOODLINE street date has been moved up to September 18. Don't know why yet.

>8/28 - today's the official publication date of the HARBINGERS paperback.

>8/28 - received an invitation to the Midwest Booksellers trade show the first weekend in October, but I have to turn it down. I'm already committed to the Paperback Expo in NYC.

>8/27 - finish the Matheson tribute and am fairly satisfied with it. (It's got a nice twist.)

>8/24 - receive my author copies of BLACK WIND and they are stunning.

>8/23 - Monica Kuebler of =Rue Morgue= magazine emails asking for an interview for their Halloween issue. But of course. It's a cool mag.

>8/22 - Gard Goldsmith interviewed me on 107.7 FM in Concord, NH. Here's a RECORDING of the broadcast:   

>8/20 - send some ARCs of BLOODLINE to Nanci Kalanta of Horrorworld for a promotion she'll run in September.

>8/17 - Seattle is added to the BLOODLINE tour.

>8/15 - I'm invited to sign at the Northeast Independent Booksellers convention in Providence, RI on September 29. I accept.

>8/12 - I'm invited to a 25th Anniversary screening of "The Keep" in London on December 8. I remind the inviter that it will also be the 25th anniversary of my incessant whining and bitching about the film.

>8/9 - too far behind for Horrorfind . . . glad I'm staying home. Some folks there I'd like to see, but after Thrillerfest, NECon, and San Diego Comicon back to back, I'm conventioned out.

>8/8 - start my Richard Matheson tribute story - a sequel to "The Distributor."

>8/8 - email from Susan Chang. I wanted to call the YA Repairman Jack series "You Don't Know Jack" but the publisher thinks the pre-existing game of the same name will cause confusion. We may call it simply: JACK.

>8/7 - a call from Suzann Ellis, head of production at Beacon (see "Repairman Jack - the movie" below)

>8/7 - receive a link to a special area of the Dark Delicacies website which I will pass along. As many of you already know, Shocklines is going out of the bookselling business. (Don't worry, all pending orders will be filled.) Dark Delicacies will be taking over as the source of signed / inscribed copies of the Repairman Jack trade editions. They're taking preorders on BLOODLINE now: Signed Bloodline 

I'll sign them when I pass through on tour and Del and Sue will send them out immediately after.

>8/3 - email from Eileen Hutton of Brilliance Audio: the narrator for the audio version of BLOODLINE wants to know how to pronounce Rasalom. I write back: RAH-sah-lahm.

July 2007

>7/29 – glad to get back home.  No more trips until Labor Day Weekend.

>7/25 - 29 – off to San Diego for the Comic-con.  Panels, signings, meetings, and crowds-crowds-crowds.  (110+K attendees, I’m told.) Love San Diego.

>7/20 - 22 – off to NECon and, as usual, it’s a good ’un.  Like to tell you more but I’m restrained by the code of WHANSAN. (What happens at NECon stays at NECon.)

>7/15 – a 9am panel on “Horror as the Original Thriller” (or something like that), moderated by David Morrell.  People actually show up at that hour.  A signing later, then I’m outta there.

>7/14 – out to lunch with Eileen Hutton of Brilliance Audio.  I guide her and her husband Bob to the Ear Inn in SoHo where we feast on its superb burgers and Hoegaarden witbier.  (I love this place – look for it in the 2008 Jack novel.)

Later – I can’t make it to the auction (I’m with the band at a sound check and final run-through in the banquet hall), but a fellow named Tom O’Day is the winning bidder for the right to a horrible death in Repairman Jack #12.

Later still: Showtime: Except for a few miscues (one of them mine), we pretty much nail the songs at the banquet.

>7/13 – Friday the 13th – pretty much a repeat of Thursday.  The band is sounding better and better.

>7/12 – do some writing in the a.m., then another rehearsal mid-afternoon.  Everyone’s there and we sound . . . awful. The age span of the crowd will run from 30s to 70s, so we play it safe with classic rock: “Travelin’ Band,” “Proud Mary,” “Satisfaction,” “Brown-Eyed Girl,” and Stevie Ray Vaughn’s “House is a-Rockin’,” plus an original song by John Lescroart. (He gives me a CD so I can hear how it’s done.)

Later: Thrillerfest officially begins with a reception and signing of the THRILLER anthology paperback.

Later still: another rehearsal at 10pm and we sound . . . better.  Not good, but better.

>7/11 – reception at Mysterious Bookshop (=way= downtown) is holding a reception for writers early for Thrillerfest.  It starts to pour.  Can’t get a taxi so I subway downtown to Chambers Street inside a wheeled sauna called the 2 train.  I hang with the owner, Otto Penzler, for a while, then a bunch of us head up to Chinatown for some food. 

Later: first rehearsal for the Killer Thriller Band.  Only half of us there.  We run through Dave Simm’s original theme for Thrillerfest. I’m trying to channel Link Wray’s “Rumble” to come up with a drum part that sounds as dark and ominous as the tune.

>7/10 – Jackie Estrada wrote to ask me if I wanted to present one of the Eisner Awards at San Diego Comic-con.  Much as I’d like to, I’ve already got a dinner scheduled with my publisher that night.

>7/7 – I add 1400 words back into the text of the abridged edition. The first is a scene where Jack stomps a couple of obnoxious thugs bothering a pregnant woman on a subway. I crow-bar it into a different part of the book, but it's self-contained so it still works. The second is a scene in a bar when he deflects a drunk looking for a fight. Again, I move it from its original spot, but it works in the new one. I think it's important to keep these. I wrote them to illustrate two aspects of Jack's character. The first: his capacity for quick, decisive violence when it's called for. The second, conversely, to demonstrate his street cunning in avoiding a potentially violent situation. That's Jack: perfectly happy to use violence when necessary but, when not, preferring to use his wits to avoid it.

That night: Eileen writes back (on a Saturday, no less) that the word count is strict on the abridged version.  If I add 1400 words, I’ll have to cut 1400 words.  I go through and cut about 1800 – just to be sure.

>7/5 – Brilliance Audio has contracted to do BLOODLINE in both uncut and abridged editions.  I receive the script for the abridged.

June 2007

>6/20 – Later that same day I came back into Manhattan to the Flat Iron Building (where my publisher dwells) for a LongPen signing.  You can check out the technology via the link below, but I let me tell you: an amazing experience. I sat at the crossroads of Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street in Manhattan and signed books – actually signed the books – of readers at a tech convention in Anaheim, CA.  The title page would be transmitted to me on the screen of a tablet computer.  I would sign the screen with a special pen, then hit SEND.  Immediately this robot arm would pop into view and inscribe exactly what I written on the book’s title page.  We had an AV hookup where the readers and I could see and talk to each other.  Very, very cool.  The next best thing to being there. LongPen

>6/20 – did another location check.  Jack’s got to find somebody at Belmont Race Park, so I drove all the way through Queens, NY to check it out.  All for maybe 1,000 words.  Gotta say I was disappointed.  A thin, drab, sad looking crowd, mostly middle age or older, going through the motions.  No zim, no vim or vigor.  Where were the Runyonesque flashy dressers with style and attitude?  These folks have more in common with Willie Loman than Sky Masterson and Nathan Detroit.

>6/14 – lunch at The Ear Inn with my son-in-law – I needed an out-of-the-way place for Jack to meet with a customer in the current book and he suggested The Ear.  Cool place.  Arguably the oldest bar in NYC (est. 1851).  They serve a fabulous 8-oz burger and Hoegaarden on tap.  (We have a winnah!)

>6/13 – made the final tweaks on SECRET HISTORIES and sent it off to Susan Chang.

>6/6 – spoke at the 5th annual Wildwood Writers Conference.  I’m getting an hour’s worth of patter down pretty solid.  Maybe someday I’ll take it on the road.  (Like it isn’t hard enough now to find sufficient time to write.)

>6/3 – checked Ebay (as I always do after BEA) and found a listing for one of the ARCs I’d signed – put up for auction 6 HOURS after I’d signed it.  Went for $54 and change.

>6/1-2 – at Book Expo America.  Had 2 signings – one at the Mira booth for the paperback edition of THRILLER and another in what are known as the “chutes” for advance reading copies of BLOODLINE.  The ARC is paperbound but the same size and printed with the same cover as the October hardcover.  Met a lot of folks I knew, met some new ones, did some bidness, went to parties, had a flat tire on the way home.

May 2007

>5/31 – Tom Monteleone arrives tonight for a few days.  Book Expo America starts tomorrow and I’ve got two signings, and we’ve got a number of meetings set up on our graphic novel proposal and other collaborations.

>5/30 – cooking on the new RJ.  Those new complications and parallel plots I dreamed up give it a lot of juice.  I’m having fun now.

>5/24 – got a request from the ’08 World Horror Convention to contribute a reprint to their program book.  Dusted off “Muscles,” cleaned it up, and sent it off.  Originally in =F&SF=, that story hasn’t seen the light of day since I collected it in SOFT & OTHERS back in 1989.

>5/21 – received this link from the publisher’s publicity department today.  Recorded it back in January.  It’s a growing trend in promoting books. All in all, I think it works. Find the link here:
http://www.repairmanjack.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7153

>5/18 – lying awake at 4am (an unfortunate habit) I came up with some twists and complications for the new Jack novel.  Don’t know if they’ll work yet.  I’m going to have to sit down and map them out to see how they mesh.

>5/17 – my birthday.  Wow.  40 years old.  Bummer.

>5/12 – David Hartwell offered me a seat at the Tor table for the Nebula Awards banquet.  I started to refuse, then said yes.  (This means that the guy who never does banquets—I consider Brunch & Bullets a banquet—has been to 4 in 6 weeks.)  I agreed because I felt like seeing my old sci-fi friends.  MWA had been such a disappointment, I figured this had to be better.  I’m a lifetime member of SFWA and I write a science fiction novel once a decade (SIMS was this decade’s), so no one could say I didn’t belong (although Ellen Datlow implied it.)

Gotta tell you, it was great seeing that old crowd.  Took me back a quarter century or so when we young turks would hang out together at these affairs and gripe about the field.  These were people like Susan Allison and Betsy Mitchell (both now vice president and editor-in-chief of Ace and Del Rey respectively) and a bunch of others who are pretty much =running= the field.  (btw, my novel DYDEETOWN WORLD would not exist without Betsy’s nudging to take the story further.) 

So many of us started out of the same gate, but time thinned our ranks—some ran out of gas, some shot their wad in their first 2 books and had nothing left to offer, some simply didn't want it badly enough.  And of course, some died.  But a number of us hung in there through the hot times and the cold times because we loved what we were doing. There's a bond there. We may not see each other for years, but when we're in the same room, we're connected. 

Got invited to an après-dinner party at Showman’s Café, an old-school jazz and blues club in Harlem.  Would’ve loved to go but begged off.  The hour was late and I had to drive home…miles to go before I slept.

>5/5 – I was a guest author at the first annual Brunch & Bullets fundraiser for RiF.  A veritable who’s who of East Coast thriller writers showed up: Preston & Child, Michael Palmer, Joe Finder, Heather Graham, Carla Neggers, Steve Coonts, Jon Land, and others.  The food was good and the company excellent.

>5/3 – a long, laid-back web interview at (I’m not kidding) withoutyourhead.com.  These are good guys and we had a fun time.  You can play it or download it at: http://www.withoutyourhead.com/viewnews.php?autoid=133

>5/2 – a catch-up day: finished reviewing the page proofs for the HARBINGERS paperback and found a major formatting problem.  Wrote a brief intro to the BLOODLINE outline chapbook from Gauntlet.  Approved (or not) the final edits in the copyedited ms. of  “The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling Circus & Oddity Emporium.” (Now officially up for pre-order – see “In the Pipeline.”)  And finally got around to doing a little work on the new Jack novel (the grown-up Jack).

April 2007

>4/30 – heard from Susan Chang after she read the revision of SECRET HISTORIES: "I LOVE this book!" I’ll take that as a positive response.

>4/27 – and now the page proofs for the mass market paperback of HARBINGERS arrive. Try to imagine how tired I am of this book, even though it’s one of my favorites in the series. But I see that they’ve made a significant change in the formatting.

>4/26 – attended the Edgar Awards Banquet, thrown every year by the Mystery Writers of America. I used to belong years and years ago. My publisher had an empty seat at his table and offered it to me. Why not? (The man who hates banquets attends his second in less that a month. Go figger.) Shared a few words with Stephen King who’s receiving this year’s Grand Master Award…man, he’s so thin—painfully so. Someone should buy him a Big Mac. 750 people there and I knew 30 if I was lucky. Used to know damn near everybody. A couple of people urged me to rejoin MWA but that’s not going to happen. This is no longer my tribe.

>4/23 – sent the revised SECRET HISTORIES to Susan Chang. Now to get to work on the 12th RJ novel.

>4/22 – Matt Schwartz stopped by with boxes of VIRGIN and THE TERY to inscribe.

>4/20 – Bookgasm loves BLOODLINE: http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/horror/bloodline/

>4/14 – finished an interview with John Joseph Adams for SCI-FI Wire. You can find it at:
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=5&id=41352

>4/13 – finished a quick pass on the BLOODLINES page proofs and faxed the fixed pages into the publisher. I hope someone in-house does a closer read. I’ve simply no time and no inclination to immerse myself in it again.

>4/13 – I sent Susan Chang a précis of my fixes for SECRET HISTORIES (the young adult Repairman Jack novel) and she’s cool with them. I begin whipping the ms. into a final draft.

>4/7 – the page proofs for the trade edition of BLOODLINE arrove. Once again I have to comb through the text for errors. (At this point in the gestation of any book – after reading it and rereading it numerous times, proofing copy-edited mss and checking page proofs from two publishers – I am sick to death of the damn thing and simply want it to go away.)

>4/6 – an email from Craig Shaw Gardner telling me I’ve been chosen as the NECon Legend for next year’s gathering. I accepted, of course.

>4/5 – Russ Madden has an early review of BLOODLINE up on his website. Check it out:
http://www.russellmadden.com/Blood_in_Water.html

>4/4 – the repairmanjack.com webmail is up and running again. I have 407 emails awaiting me, most of them with "Tour" in the subject line. This is gonna take a while, folks.

>4/2 – Susan Chang got back to me with a few editorial notes on the first draft young adult Repairman Jack novel (which I’m titling it SECRET HISTORIES, though I’m not sure yet about the über-title of the series.) I think they’re valid (most were aspects I’d had concerns over myself) and I know ways to fix them.

March 2007

>3/29-4/1 – attended a very well-run World Horror convention. It had interesting panels, interesting people, and was held in an interesting city (Toronto). I had a wonderful time.

>3/23 – received a copy of OCP’s THE TERY and am very impressed. 'Tis a thing of beauty. The gold-stamped covers, the DJ, the endpapers, the layout - a class act all the way.

>3/22 – word came that HARBINGERS is a finalist for this year’s Prometheus Award. I don't see the book as particularly libertarian (in its protagonist, yes, but not much else), and I already have 4 Promethei, so I'll be happy to see a more deserving title win.

>3/18 – the ethink folks did a server switch (or something like that) that had the site down for a few days. Some of the Forum regulars went into acute withdrawal, but they seem okay now. (Not that they were ever really okay.)

>3/16-17 – I spent St. Paddy’s day in Fort Myers at the Southwest Florida Reading Festival. Signed a lot of books and met a number of long-time readers who drove in from all over the state. I appreciate the effort, folks.

>3/11 – began reading / revising BLACK WIND for the Borderlands edition. Loads of passive voice to deal with, but somehow – maybe because the novel is such a period piece – it doesn’t bother me as much here as in my other early fiction.

>3/9 – finished the first draft of the YA Jack novel. Came in at 65k words and I’m delighted with it.

>3/2-4 – the first spring Horrorfind weekend was nowhere near as jammed with B-movie fans as the August version. (Writers at these affairs tend to be looked on as vestigial appendages, but Nikki Reinhardt took good care of us.) I enjoyed it and made new friends. I moderated a Friday night panel about the effect of awards on writers’ organizations (I think it’s toxic) that turned out to be a lot of fun. (The gallon of Wild Turkey Elizabeth Blue brought along for panelists and audience alike might have had something to do with that.)

February 2007

>2/28 – passed the 50k-word mark on the YA novel. Will definitely wind up the first draft next month.

>2/26 – sent off Form 8802 to the IRS so that it can send me copies of Form 6166 which will eventually find their way to my foreign publishers to save me from double taxation. (Ain’t the writing life romantic?)

>2/24 – hit the NY ComiCon. Wandered around with my fellow geeks, did some bidness, and closed the day as a member of the "Masters of Horror" panel with Mick Garris, Stuart Gordon, Jeffrey Combs, Jon Landis, and Dennis Paoli. They asked me out to dinner with them afterward but I begged off – other plans.

>2/21 – put up Tom Monteleone for the night after his reading at KGB Bar. The NYC genre family was there to listen – like a mini-NECon. Steven King (in town for the NY ComiCon) had said he’d drop by but – surprise! – didn’t.

>2/20 – the BLOODLINE page proofs for the first edition arrove from Gauntlet. I’ll spend the next two days synching them up. (Copyediting is odd – Editor A will miss errors found by Editor B, who’ll miss errors found by Editor A. I’m convinced we’ll never see a perfectly edited book until we develop an AI that can read.)

>2/13 – the "Pelts" DVD is released.

>2/12 – the copy-edited ms. of BLOODLINE arrove from Forge. They want it back in 10 days, so I start giving it a close editorial read, making sure all the errors and corrections from the Gauntlet edit are flagged in this one.

>2/8-9 – my publisher flew me out to Chicago (actually a suburb called Romeoville) to sign paperbacks for Levy Home Entertainment, a major book distributor. I spent 2 days in their warehouse signing 1536 copies each of HOSTS, GATEWAYS, CRISSCROSS and INFERNAL. A total of 6,144 in 9:15 hours. A photo of yours truly with all the cartons of books here:
http://www.repairmanjack.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6736

January 2007

>1/31 – I’ve reached pg. 153 on the YA novel.

>1/26-28 – do the instructor thing at the 5th Borderlands Boot Camp. The level of writing skill is the highest yet. Some folks are so good I can’t give them a whole lotta help. Still, a very satisfying weekend.

>1/20 – got invited back as a guest author to the ICON convention out on Long Island in March but had to turn them down. In Feb and March I’m schedded for 4 conventions, a reading festival, and a 2-day stock signing at a major distributor in Chicago. I need =some= time home.

>1/19 – my trade publisher arranged for Expanded Books to tape an interview with me to promote BLOODLINE. So I meet up with them in a suite at the Park Lane hotel. We tape about half an hour’s worth of Q&A. This will be edited into a podcast, and that, in turn, will be cut to 3 or 4 minutes for venues like YouTube and iTunes, etc. I’ll let you know when it’s available.

>1/17 – a corrected version of BLOODLINE emailed to Gauntlet Press.

>1/16 – I pass the 100-page mark on the YA Jack novel. At this stage it’s practically writing itself.

>1/10 – I’m invited to speak at the fifth annual Beach Writers Conference at the Wildwoods Convention Center in North Wildwood, NJ on June 5 & 6. I was at the inaugural event 5 years ago and I guess I was so wonderful they want me back. (Or maybe they can’t find anyone else.) I tell them I can make the 6th only.

>1/8 – Jon Land of ITW emails me to see if I want to speak at a thriller-themed charity luncheon called "Bullets & Brunch" in Connecticut on May 5 to raise funds for RIF. I say, Sure.

>1/5 – Franks Festa, one of my German publishers (Festa Verlag), wants to do a collection of Repairman Jack short fiction. We discussed this during my trip to Leipzig. I finally get around to emailing him the stories.

>1/4 – Elizabeth Monteleone writes, asking how BLACK WIND is coming. I tell her it’s not. I won’t be able to start editing it until after Bootcamp. She says no problem.

>1/3 – I begin reading the novel chapters and outlines for the Borderlands Bootcamp at the end of the month. Usually I do short fiction; this will be my first time with the novelists.

VIRGIN goes to press.

>1/2 – my author copies of DOOMED #4 (containing "Faces") arrive. IDW editor Chris Ryall tells me this is the last issue in this large format. Apparently the title never caught on with the comic book crowd.

>1/1 – I start the first Repairman Jack young adult novel. I have a contract for three. We still haven’t settled on a title for the series, but I’m naming the first book SECRET HISTORIES. It’s supposed to be 60k words long, which is half the length of the adult books, so I should be able to make the May deadline. I’m psyched about this trilogy – lots of fun things planned, lots of cameos by characters from other books.