I got the first proofs of Rumored to Exist today. Unfortunately, the book block was paginated wrong, and I had to send it back. They put each “section” on a new page, always starting on the right, which meant tons and tons of blank space where it wasn’t supposed to be, and it made the thing read like a corny poetry book. So it’s back for a redesign, which will take a couple of weeks, and then the book will be out maybe six weeks after that. I’m nervous as hell that there will be problems, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

It does feel good to have an ISBN, though. Rumored will now be known as 0-595-23476-3. It’s also weird to see the whole thing in a book manuscript, with real fonts and layout and stuff. The cover also looks very official, with a bar code and everything. The price on this proof was $20.95, but that’s assuming a 384 page count, and this pagination fuck-up will bring it closer to the 300 mark, so maybe the price point will drop. I’d love to see it at or below 20 bucks.

I’m still going through this strange haze of not having the book anymore, and seeing it almost done freaks me out a bit. It’s hard to not have a steady project anymore, and I know I should be pushing The Device, but I haven’t been in the mood yet. I’ve got a lot of little shit to deal with first, so I don’t know when I’ll get moving with this thing.

Speaking of which, I have a couple of vacations coming up. At the end of this month, I will be flying to Las Vegas and then driving to my land in Colorado. The drill is this: a day at the Hacienda hotel just outside of Boulder City (I could not get a reservation on the strip if I arrived on a Saturday), then an all-day drive through the southwest, then four nights in Alamosa, then another hell-drive, then two nights at the Tropicana. The Vegas heat will be bad - I think it’s about 105 there right now. But the Colorado part will be decent, comfortable temperatures. And no, this isn’t the part of Colorado that’s on fire right now.

The second trip will be for my sister’s wedding in the beginning of August. It’s an in-on-Thursday, out-on-Tuesday thing. I haven’t been back to Indiana since I moved to New York, so this will be a first. I’ll be staying with Ray, and I have no idea what the itinerary will be, but it will most likely involve driving back and forth between all of the podunk towns in northern Indiana in which my family is scattered.

Not much else is going on. I have a dozen different books I want to be reading, but I’m currently going through a biography of Howard Hughes. It’s not bad sofar - I’m up to the point where his parents died - but I don’t know enough of his history to tell if it’s accurate or not. I am mesmerized by him though - something about his secretive and bizarre lifestyle makes me want to know more. Or maybe it’s because I like the Monty Burns character on The Simpsons so much.

Listening to the new Tony Levin solo album (Waters of Eden) which actually sounds a lot like a Shadowfax album, so It’s good for writing. I think I need to get out of the house though, go for a late night walk…

Sometimes when I look back at this much of my life in one place, it tends to freak me out.

For example, when I first got a designed, printed, final copy of Summer Rain and I saw and FELT how much the summer of 1992 weighed when it its final form, it made me realize how much could happen in three months. And to this day, I still can’t read the book, because a page or two into it, I start thinking about all of the events that I wasn’t able to capture in words, all of the laziness and intensity and all of the people whose paths I crossed who didn’t fit into that formulaic outline that I followed.

I recently finished my book Rumored to Exist and I’m now in this weird, post-partum funk, trying to figure out what’s next while also thinking that I have until September to figure out a way to sell this damned book when it hits the streets. After I zapped the final draft and other assorted submission form cruft to the publisher last week, I did some quick math and realized I’ve been writing this book for almost seven years. SEVEN YEARS! And this is the first time since before I left Indiana in 1995 that I don’t have a major open project. It’s like the kids have grown up and moved away. (Except I get the occasional $14 royalty check.)

I read a bunch of these old journal entries today, as I contemplated getting everything hooked up and operational again. I realized I really do like my old writing, aside from the strong nostalgia of Seattle it invokes. I really do miss Jet City, but I’m not sure if it’s that I miss the Pacific Northwest, or I miss the experiences of that time in my life. My leisure time and writing career are obviously structured much more differently now in New York, and I can’t say I feel it’s the most productive time of my life. But then, I used to say that back in 1996, and now I wish I could run things like that again.

I shouldn’t say I have no major projects - I actually have a few unfinished books and half-baked ideas. I started writing something for NaNoWriMo last year and got about 30,000 words into it. But I missed the first few days in Vegas, and then I got horribly sick when I got back. Somewhere during the trip to the ER, I decided I should fuck the contest and sleep as much as possible, and there it lay. It’s a bizarre sci-fi tale called The Device, about time-travel and a cross-country roadtrip, and it is partially similar to an older idea with the same name (but no roadtrip) that spawned from Rumored several years ago. So maybe that’s my next big thing.

Food’s here, Wyoming chicken burger from Rainbow Cafe. Hopefully, I’ll update this more, and shake out a few bugs in the site format at some point.