There are times I wonder if I can control the weather, most notably when I bitch about the heat and it suddenly becomes October in August. It’s been a very comfortable few days here, and I’ve slept like a baby with no AC or fans at all. It’s also put me in a strange mood, as I think fall thoughts and some part of my head thinks I’m back in Seattle and it’s 1997 again or whatever.
I’m still writing, still editing and trying to finish Six Year Plan, which is a collection of short stories about Bloomington. Some of them aren’t entirely stories, as much as general narrative about points in time. The whole thing isn’t meant to tell the whole story of when I was in school; it’s more of a survey of different points in time, different events or eras. I’m still trying to balance and even out some of the stories so they will all make sense in the context of one book. And some of them suck, so I need to work on them until they don’t. A percentage of the stories aren’t true, a lot like Summer Rain was not 100% true. I think I’ve said before it was maybe 80% true. I might twist some of the stuff in this book to be a little less accurate and a little more interesting.
I am dying to do another book on lulu.com. I want to do this book, but I wish I had something else ready to go, something small and obscure and neat and fun that wouldn’t sell many copies but that would look all official and cool in paperback and sitting on my bookshelf. I have been thinking about the glossary, but that would take a lot of time and work, and I’ll get to that later. I also had this crazy idea tonight that I should take all of my stories about Vegas, paste them into FrameMaker, edit them and drop in some pretty pictures, and make a quick book out of that. But I wish I had some more cohesive idea about that, like a good theme and different types of articles. Because all of my travel stories are basically me bitching about how my luggage broke and I can’t find a place to buy batteries or what problem is up with my laptop or whatever. It would be cool to have some actual STORIES about Vegas. Article-type things. Maybe that would be a good thing to do though, chop up the stories and have travel articles. Like “an article about skydiving in Vegas on your birthday”. Write 20-30 of those, put them in a book with a pretty cover, see if people will buy it.
Oh, John Sheppard has released another Lulu book, this one being both his books Midnight in Monaco and Carl Versus the Men From Mars. Both are great, and the combo is http://www.lulu.com/johnsheppard. Or download all of his books for free, as always, here.
Speaking of writing, I have to get back to it…