Rikoshi Writes

Author Page on Amazon.com

2009-06-26T18:14:00.000-07:00

So, I've got my own author page on amazon.com now!

I'm, er... not exactly sure how thrilling it's ever going to be, though. Right now, the only book I've got listed for my authorship is an anthology that I'm a part of (my own actual novel isn't listed by Amazon, so I don't even have that on there).

I'll play around with it a bit more in the upcoming days, though. See if it gets more interesting.

Darlings, and the Subsequent Murdering Thereof

2009-06-04T16:57:00.001-07:00

So, I've been doing some work on editing The Seventh Chakra for about a month or so, now. It's not going nearly as quickly or as smoothly as I'd like, to be honest, though finishing up by the end of the summer shouldn't be (too much of) a problem. I had originally had my birthday set as my target date, but I'm not sure that's quite as realistic, honestly.

By this point, the earliest chapters of the novel are ones that I wrote over two years ago, and it really, really shows as I'm re-reading things. I'm looking at sentences and thinking, "Wait, what does that even mean?" And when I'm the one who wrote it, that's a bad sign, and so out it goes. Honestly, some of it is pretty embarrassing and cringeworthy.

Character consistency has been one of the main things I've noticed. I'm looking at how all my main characters come off in these earlier chapters, and I'm alarmed at how, well, out of character they are. Again, you might think, "But if you wrote them like that, how are they out of character?" Well, just trust me: after writing the rest of the novel, I've got a much better grasp on what sorts of people these characters are, and in the early chapters, that's not who they're being. In some cases, it's actually enough to make my jaw drop, seeing how poorly-characterized some of them are ("Why does Il-Hyeong keep chuckling and smiling?!").

I also hit one of my little editing milestones yesterday: the first complete and total excision of a character from the narrative. It was just this minor side character who showed up once, was never mentioned again, and whose inclusion only served to slow down the story as I introduced him. So, instead, I conflated him with another minor character who already had a very similar (and small) role in the story anyway, and nothing of value was lost. So, yeah, minus one random skunk. Sorry, skunk-lovers. (Incidentally, the first character I stripped completely out of Thousand Leaves had a Spanish name, and so did this aforementioned skunk. I know for a fact that it wasn't intentional, on my part, but I find the coincidence kind of funny.)

Rewriting things, as I've mentioned, has been going slow and spotty, though. Chapter One got a complete overhaul, and I'm really happy with my new version. Later chapters, though, have had less sweeping changes and more just tweaks to fix poor characterization and bad writing. There's not a lot I'm cutting out, which is worrying me, because I can't tell if the stuff I already have in those cases is pretty good as-is, or if I just can't see anything wrong with it. But then, this is why I have editor-friends to look things over, too.

In the meantime, I'm starting to (annoyingly) get ideas for other stories to write, which threaten to slow down the editing process. Gah! I'm really bad at multi-tasking when it comes to writing, but I'll need to check my schedule and rate of progress before deciding anything for sure.

Back to the Grindstone

2009-05-04T16:10:00.000-07:00

Today I finally brushed the dust off of my first draft of my manuscript for The Seventh Chakra and I have begun the daunting process of rewriting.

For starters, I'm basically overhauling the majority of the first chapter (i.e., rewriting it from scratch) in order to better establish the sequence of events that follow for the next 300 pages--which, naturally, I didn't have a great grasp on before I wrote the book, first.

I've got a lot of energy and drive to do this, though. Hopefully, after two years of dragging my butt to get the first draft done, I can get the edits and redrafting done by the end of this summer.

Wish me luck!

(Also, this marks my 50th post to this writing blog. I'm actually surprised it took me nearly this long!)

Intra-Hiatus Hiatus

2009-05-03T02:46:00.000-07:00

So, earlier, I had mentioned that March was going to be my "month off," with my intention of returning to revising and rewriting my draft of The Seventh Chakra on April 1st.

Well, I tiny side-project I started on ended up taking a lot longer than I'd intended, and so not only did I take up all of March, but I took all of April, too.

Long story short, that's all done, now, and as of May 1st, I can get back to the novel thing, finally.

Sheesh!

Planning for Phase Two

2009-03-11T15:10:00.000-07:00

So, after finishing my first draft back in February, the remainder of the month was full of things like vacation time and, well, work as usual.

March has been my "month off" when it comes to The Seventh Chakra. Once April hits, I intend to begin my revisions and my first round of edits, with the intent of getting a full second draft done by the time summer is underway. Considering that the first draft took me about two years, I'm really hoping I can work a lot quicker on the second.

I've been quite excited, though, actually. Since completing my first draft and letting my brain just forget about it so that I could focus on other things (I'm working on a short story that I hope I can get finished by April!), the novel itself keeps coming into mind, offering me various hints on how I might want to consider improving it, and that's a very good sign.

I am, shall we say, cautiously optimistic, at this point. If nothing else, I don't hate the book with a seething, fiery passion like I did for a whole long time back there.

First Draft

2009-02-10T02:09:00.001-08:00

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009.
1:49 AM.

121,361 words.
17 chapters, 1 epilogue.

Done.

My brain goes on hold for a month or so, now. Then the real work starts.

Climax

2009-01-20T17:47:00.001-08:00

I'm partway through the writing of the climax scene of The Seventh Chakra.

To my surprise, there was a major change in one of the Big Moments that had been in my mind since before I'd even written the first word of the draft. It's not a change in what happens, but rather, a change in how it plays out.

In one sense, it's only a slight change, but in another sense, it's a change that completely changes the tone of the climax of the story, and one that I'm happy to have realized.

What comes after this remains to be seen. I look forward to it.

Culmination

2009-01-15T15:44:00.000-08:00

The very next scene I'm slated to write for The Seventh Chakra is the book's climax.

I'm kind of jittery just thinking about it. I've written all the things that build up to this scene, and this is where they all come together and the big, epic stuff happens and people finally get their answers as to just what the heck has been going on (people who have read early parts of my draft have said it had a frustrating, Lost-esque tendency to dump questions on top of questions without ever answering earlier ones).

But here I am, fingers perched on the keyboardy doorstep of the Big Moment, and I'm really happy that I made it this far. Happy, yet also nervous, because I don't want to "mess it up," even though logically and intellectually I know that I can go back and change and fix things afterwards.

The other thing I'm not quite sure of, yet, is the dénouement. It's looking like that might be a little on the long side, but hopefully I can make it interesting in its own right.

Hunnerd Kay

2009-01-13T10:35:00.000-08:00

Last night, while out writing at the neighborhood Starbucks with my fellow writer-friend, I finally managed to hit the vaulted 100,000 word milestone on my draft of The Seventh Chakra.

Already, this makes it longer than my first draft of Thousand Leaves, though I suspect that it might still end up shorter than Thousand Leaves did in the end (around 121K words); it may reach that length, as I think of it, though I doubt it'll be much longer, if at all.

As for the finished product, I find myself wondering how long that will be. I ended up cutting and stripping out huge chucks of my first draft of Thousand Leaves, and yet the final rewrite still ended up being 25,000 words longer. I can see something similar happening with The Seventh Chakra, for some reason.

I also feel compelled to point out that, by this point in the narrative, every major character has been shot at least once (not always on the actual page, but there you have it, all the same). Just to give you an idea of what sort of things you can look forward to.

Progressing Towards the Finish Line

2009-01-08T17:55:00.000-08:00

I mentioned previously that one of my resolutions for 2009 is to have my first draft of The Seventh Chakra completed by the end of March. Now that a week of 2009 has passed, it's looking like that should be an actual realistic goal.

Back when I was working on my first draft of Thousand Leaves, during the Spring of 2006, I was stalled around the 50,000 word mark. Then, one day, while I was at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, I had this beautiful epiphany where I suddenly just knew where all my plot threads were going and how they came together to reach the climax of the novel. To this day, it's one of the most amazing things that's happened to me as a writer. From that point, it took me just about a month to finish that draft (another 50,000 words or so).

With The Seventh Chakra, I've stalled several times, and I haven't had any more magical epiphanies (that'll teach me to rely on fickle inspiration!). At long last, though, I'm only about a chapter away from the book's actual climax, and from where I am now, I can see how the rest of the book plays out.

Well, for the most part. Today, on my way back from lunch, I actually had an idea for (what I hope is) an awesome scene with one of my characters. It's actually the very next scene in the sequence I'm writing, which goes to show how far in advance I don't plan things, sometimes. Despite having only just decided on this scene, though, it feels right, and I'm quite excited to write it.

That's the thing about being a writer that always gets me: surprising myself. It happens way more than you might think.

Farewell, 2008; Hello, 2009

2008-12-31T12:58:00.000-08:00

There's a lot that can probably be said about 2008. I'm not going to get into all that, though, because this post is just about me and my personal resolutions for the coming year.

Whatever else can be said about 2008, it was the year that I became a published novelist, something that I'd always hoped for and yet never in ~~a million~~ almost thirty years ever thought actually would happen. Not only did I write and publish a book, but as far as I know, it sold pretty well this year, and people have been mostly favorable in reviews, which hopefully means that I wrote a good book.

Of course, while Thousand Leaves was published in 2008, I actually did the writing itself far earlier. In fact, most of my writing in 2008 (and late 2007, actually)¹ was spent on my second novel, my working title for which has been The Seventh Chakra².

Now, I've mentioned before in this blog that this sophomore novel of mine has been... problematic. While I certainly wouldn't say that writing Thousand Leaves was at all easy, this time around, it's just much more difficult. I'm not sure if it's because I'm holding myself to a higher standard, or if it's because of the content of the novel itself, or what, but it's been fighting me every step of the way (and, in fact, I've gone months at a time without even wanting to look at the damn thing).

Well, that's all going to change. The steps have been tough, sure, but while progress has been slow, it's still been progress, and having gotten to where I am now, I can see the finish line.

My major resolution, then, for 2009, is as follows: I'm going to finish a first draft of The Seventh Chakra by the end of March, and I'm going to have a complete revised draft finished by my birthday (July 25th)³.

I think I can do it, too. I have momentum. And when you're a writer, momentum can often be the single most valuable weapon in your arsenal.

1. Checking back on my records, I actually started writing it sometime in either late February or early March of 2007. Curse you, book!

2. This is just my title for it. Currently, I have no concrete plans as to when or by whom or even if it will be published, so please don't ask for those details. Right now, my focus is solely on writing the damn thing.

3. This way, it also doubles as a handy birthday present to myself!

The Wagon

2008-11-30T00:13:00.000-08:00

I was just about to comment about how I'd once again not posted to my blog is almost forever, only to see that it's only been a month and a half--way less time than I thought it had been.

Anyhow, to update on things:

Not a whole heck of a lot of writing done lately. I wrote a few really short stories on the side, but overall, I've been really busy for the last month or so with a lot of things. I have finally gotten back to working on that pesky second novel, however.

I'm just past 80,000 total words on what's (still) my first draft. By comparison, the published draft of Thousand Leaves is somewhere around 120,000 words (with the initial draft coming in at 95,000 words, roughly).

I know I've mentioned it before, but the actual work on this novel has been going agonizingly slowly. Seeing that I've come a full 80,000 words, though, fills me with hope that an end is in sight. Really, my biggest fear is that the edits and rewrites will be just as bad to get out, but I'm hoping that once the story is out and on paper and in physical form I'll be able to 'get it' more easily and therefore fix it with more efficiency than it initially took me to write it.

Maybe the Sophomore Slump applies to novelists, too, I suppose.

Repurposing

2008-10-16T14:19:00.001-07:00

I've got a short story I've been tinkering with and tweaking, lately. One of the side-characters comes across particularly well, and the folks I've shown the early drafts to really like her and think she's pretty neat, but that she doesn't have a lot to do in the story.

My main thought, then, is, "Well, I'll give her more to do in order to justify her place in the story." Simple, right?

Some of my fellow writers, though, have suggested, "You could always just cut her and use her for a different story, instead."

And for some reason, that feels really weird to me. Intellectually, I know that if I pulled her from Story A and placed her in Story B, nobody (well, nobody who hadn't read any drafts) would know that I'd done it, and if I did it right, her place in the new story would be fine and natural and dandy.

Maybe someday I'll be brave enough to try something like that. In this particular case, though, I'm trying to get the character to work for the story she's already in, trying to justify her existence in that special way that we writers so often have to.

The Affliction

2008-10-12T00:14:00.000-07:00

After finishing a first draft of my most recent story (the one with the weird narrative structure that I mentioned earlier), I was all set to go back and edit and retool some of my other recent works that are in desperate need of such editing and retooling.

...except that, well, on Friday morning, during my commute into work, I got hit with the spark.

Yes, out of nowhere, I was hit with the idea for another new story, and over the next twenty minutes, as I went on with the rest of my commute, the ideas grew and congealed, and...

Yeah, I ended up with a full-on story idea, and I knew that I had to write it or it would drive me crazy.

Luckily, I knew it was going to be a short story, so I devoted my lunch break Friday, my free time later on and most of my free time Saturday to working on it, and now that it's just past midnight, I've managed to churn out a pretty tight first draft.

My first impression is that I'm happy with it (which, as a writer, always makes me wary). I'll probably tool with it for the rest of the weekend before finalizing it. In many ways, it's just a silly little thing, so I don't want to spend too much time on it when I've got other things to work on.

Still, for a quick story that came literally out of nowhere, I'm glad that it happened to me.

Creative Control (and lack thereof)

2008-10-02T15:35:00.000-07:00

A surprising number of short stories have been popping out of my head and onto the page, lately. This means a bit of a delay in my eventual return to novel-writing, but I'm mostly happy just to be writing. The majority of these stories are for publications and other things that have deadlines; most of them are going to require additional drafts, too. I'm happier with some of them than I am with others, but if it's any consolation to myself, the ones I'm happiest with are the ones I personally consider the most important.

I'm working on another story right now that's actually intriguing me a fair bit in that I'm not sure what I'm doing with it.

Allow me to explain: I don't mean to say that I don't know where to take it or don't know how I want to write it--I literally mean that I'm doing something with the actual writing and I'm not entirely sure what it is.

It's something artistic. Probably artistic, at any rate. It's something I doing with the narrative structure. I'm just not sure how to define it. I mean, I'm doing it on purpose, and I have a feel for what the nebulous 'something' is, but I can't put it into tangible terms, even inside my own head. It's just kind of happening as I will it to, in a subtle way, and whatever it is I'm doing, it's making it out onto the page.

When I go back and rewrite the earlier parts of the story, I hope I can keep it up, since I appear to be getting better at this 'something' the deeper into the story I get. Which, in and of itself, is kind of neat. It also furthers my belief that the compulsion to write really is something beyond a writer's control, even down to the actual stylistic level at times.

I hope it all makes sense and sounds good once it's finished. To someone other than me, I mean.

Oh, and there's another review I found of Thousand Leaves here. It's mostly pretty positive, if somewhat lacking in focus at times.

Checking Back In

2008-09-17T12:05:00.000-07:00

Haven't updated in a while, but August was a busy month for me due to moving, and September has been busy as well with both post-move stuff as well as work.

Writing has been spotty in the meantime. I haven't gotten any new work done on my novel-in-progress, but I have been poking at some short stories and getting them to come to life. While I don't have any specifics to announce just yet, it's looking like there should be a few more of my stories in print by the end of this year and early next year, which is exciting. The feeling of knowing that someone likes your work enough to spend the effort to give it physical form never really lessens even after it's happened a few times It's very self-affirming (and it keeps me from succeeding in convincing myself that my writing isn't worth the time I try to spend on it).

Right now, I'm debating whether I want to try to crank out another short story or two before tackling another chapter of my novel or not. I know that, in the meantime, other pieces of mine are going to require editing, so whatever I start will likely get interrupted anyway. I suppose I just need to put my feelers out inside of my mind so that I can see what I have the best "feel" for.

Emotional Wrangling

2008-08-01T17:09:00.000-07:00

I was talking to one of my fellow writers earlier today, and in a discussion about one of his stories, he apologized for being "manipulative" in a particularly emotion-driven scene.

Now, I suppose it could be debated whether or not it's actually manipulative to do something specifically to get an emotional reaction out of a reader. On some level, I think that's pretty much the writer's job: after all, why do people read stories at all, if not to experience some sort of emotion, be it sadness or joy or terror or even a cheap thrill?

Of course, I do think that it's possible for the writer can pull a cheap shot for no real reason other than to get a reaction that might otherwise be unwarranted, and nine times out of ten I'd probably oppose that. There are times when even that can work, though, I think (a certain character death in the second season of Buffy springs to mind). Like everything else a writer does, though, one just needs to be careful with it, I suppose.

On the whole, though, I think that the entire premise of writing "fiction" is that we take situations that need to be carefully massaged so that they can be masked as something that would actually happen. That's pretty tricky in and of itself. But in the end, the goal is still to convince the reader that what they're reading is real, and to instill an emotional response based on events and actions and people who aren't actually real.

Is that manipulative? Maybe on some level, I suppose. Perhaps one of the bigger tricks in writing is to also mask the manipulative moments so that those aren't obvious, either.

(And I still maintain that the scene in question that started this thread of thought wasn't manipulative. Or, if it was, no more than the situation demanded of it. :3 )

Stroke of Not-Quite-Genius

2008-07-30T10:14:00.001-07:00

This morning, on my drive into work, I was thinking about some of the recent work I've done of my novel-in-progress, and I had what was initially a horrifying realization: I'd accidentally introduced a glaring plot error into my most recent chapter.

What had happened, basically, is that the line between what I knew as the writer and what the characters knew had gotten blurred (this is what I get for having been away from the story for so long). So, I mentally kicked myself, and then started thinking about how I could take those bits out and smooth them over so that the error would be repaired.

And then it hit me: what if I used this to my advantage and actually let the characters deal with this information that they weren't supposed to have?

To make a long (and vague) story short, after even just a few minutes of brainstorming, I realized that I could turn this once-error into what's actually (in my opinion) a pretty awesome plot point, and one that propels this section of the story along in a way that, embarrassingly enough, makes more sense than what I'd originally planned.

I'm not sure what to make of that, if only to just let it reassert my assertion that, as a writer, you very often discover the story more than you actively create it.

Swept Up in the Currents of Creativity

2008-07-23T10:11:00.000-07:00

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I thought I'd finally gotten past whatever strange block was preventing meaningful progress on my new novel. Over these last few weeks, I've done a pretty good job of staying focused and I'm actively excited to sit down and write more of it (which was decidedly not the case for several months). Even better, the more I write, the more motivated I get, because I see that I am writing, and that makes me happy and excited and more likely to write more. Honestly, the only reason I haven't written even more than what I have in the past month is that I've been too busy to find more time.

Back when I was working on my first draft of Thousand Leaves, I had a similar experience: I was just over halfway through getting the draft on paper, a process which had taken the better part of a year, and then, one evening while I was sitting waiting for a flight at the Burbank Airport, I was struck with this bizarre epiphany that just made the rest of the book make sense inside my head. I hastily and hurriedly scribbled out a series of notes in my little writer's notebook, and I managed to write the second half of the book over the course of the next month.

With my current project, I don't quite have that level of intensity when it comes to getting it all out, but I do know that I can see the end of the story on the horizon, as well as all the plot landmarks along the way. I'll discover the individual details as I make my way through those, and it's a journey I'm excited about taking. (Of course, once that's done, I've got edits and redrafts and rewrites to worry about, but Key Point One is to get the damn story out of my head and onto paper, first.)

The catch to this (and isn't there always a catch?) is that this is all happening while I'm currently also already committed to two short stories for a pair of anthologies. I don't want to kill the momentum I've got going with my novel, but at the same time, there are still other things I need to write.

In all likelihood, I'll probably finish up the current chapter I'm working on, and then take a break to write at least one of those stories (ideally, the one that has the earlier deadline). Besides, I don't want to burn out on the novel, either, and with the end in at least semi-feasible sight, I'm not as worried about losing my grip on it a second time.

Prescriptive Descriptions

2008-07-18T10:17:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine once had a discussion with me about what one can and can't get away with it modern writing. Not in the sense of writing "rules" of style or syntax or that sort of thing, but just in terms of what readers are willing to put up with, as it were.

The example he cited was an eight-page description of a kangaroo. Now, back in the 1800s or so, when people didn't have things like television or photo guides or the Internet, an eight-page description of a kangaroo was probably a fascinating thing.

Nowadays, though, your average person knows what a kangaroo looks like, even if they've never been within a few thousand miles of Australia. We modern day folk have a mental picture in our heads of what a kangaroo looks like, and it's doubtful that any of us would want to read on for eight pages of exacting detail of something we already know.

Describing things can be a tricky thing in writing, anyway; I already know that I tend to err on the side of less description when it comes to my own work. Depending on one's style, the balance between description and narration can, in some cases, be a tricky one to strike.

What can be trickier, though, is when you need to describe something in a way that requires you to not rely on real-world knowledge that the reader already has.

I tend to write in a pretty tight third-person limited point of view, and that's how I'm also writing my current novel(-in-progress). The story doesn't take place in the real world, though, so if (just for example) I wanted to talk about how big a particular city was, I can't just compare it to L.A. or Paris, because with the tightness of the narration, even though the text itself is directed at the reader, the character perspective can't 'think' in those terms. This opens some unique challenges in making sure that you're able to convey something easily to the reader without being able to make use of knowledge even if you know the reader already has it.

In the chapter I'm in the middle of writing, I got to (or is that 'had to'?) spend a few pages describing the details of both an architectural style as well as a type of cuisine that we do actually have in the real world, but which are completely alien to the characters encountering them. Writing about that was actually a whole lot of fun, and I found it to be a gratifying and inspiring challenge. It would have been far easier to just gloss over things, but that wouldn't have been fair to reader and it wouldn't have been as honest to the narration, and in the end, I think I've got a better chapter for it.

So, yes, I'm not writing eight-page descriptions of kangaroos (readers of my books, especially, most assuredly know what kangaroos look like), but I am getting to stretch my literary fingers by showcasing something that might ordinarily be unspectacular in a spectacular light.

My Writing Journal

2008-07-07T17:03:00.001-07:00

Back in May, I started keeping a little writing journal. Not a journal that I use for writing, but rather, I journal I keep that keeps track of my writing.

Essentially, on days that I write (or, if I happen to forget to update it, after a couple of days of writing), I just make a short entry that goes over what piece or pieces I might have worked on and how I felt about the project(s) in question. I'll also make notes if there's something I should be working on that I haven't gotten around to (yet or recently).

Mostly, I guess I'm using it to keep track of myself, making sure that I'm writing as much as I might like, and checking to see if the time I do write are productive and/or enjoyable. In a way, I suppose it's like one of those journals that dieters keep in order to keep themselves motivated.

We'll see how it works, in the long term.

Reviews for Thousand Leaves

2008-07-04T17:36:00.001-07:00

It's only been a week, but already, I've got my first two actual reviews for Thousand Leaves! For an initial review buzz, they're both quite positive, and that makes me really happy.

Tim Susman has a review on his blog, and there's another review by a fellow on LiveJournal that's been posted over here.

They both offer different insights about the book and the writing itself, which is good (especially for me) in that people aren't all just saying the same thing. Also, they both get into specifics in terms of feedback and critique, which I really appreciate, since it's those specifics that help me learn what I do wrong and what I do right.

Novel Milestones

2008-07-02T12:43:00.001-07:00

This past Friday, my debut novel, Thousand Leaves, finally went on sale. The following day, I got to do an actual book signing. From what I heard and from what I saw, the book sold pretty well for its opening weekend, too--I wasn't nearly as concerned about that beforehand (I was just thrilled that the book was out, really), but now that I know that that's how it went down, I won't deny that I'm feeling a certain amount of glee.

So yeah, now I... have a book. It's still kind of weird to think about. I've already seen one review that someone wrote, and I'm wondering if, down the line, people might start sending emails and whatnot telling me what they think.

I'm finally past the crest of a big emotional wave, though, and I think I'm finally starting to settle. This is fait accompli, now; nothing can take this away from me.

What is not yet behind me, of course, is my second novel, the one I'm working on now and the one I mentioned where I felt I might be close to having an epiphany. I think I have. For the first time in the better part of a year, I'm excited to work on it. Something must have "clicked" in my head, because the words are finally flowing, for once.

I really hope I can keep this up. Hell, I did it once before; I should be able to do it again, by that logic.

Closer

2008-06-17T13:57:00.000-07:00

I think (or possibly I merely hope) that I'm getting close to an epiphany regarding the novel I'm working on right now.

It's a fundamentally different story than Thousand Leaves, and I guess that, in a lot of ways, I'll never be able to shake the fear that "it won't be as good." That being said, despite being written by the same person and being set in the same world, comparing the two is close to comparing apples and oranges.

My fellow writer Tim has given me some good advice regarding my own writing style, in that I usually include a bit of levity in my writing, even when the story itself gets serious or even dreary; in this current novel, I don't have anything like that, which might explain part of why I have a hard time connecting with it.

Whether or not that's directly related to my current brain clog, I'm not sure. I do get the sense that I'm near a breakthrough, though. My fingers remain cautiously crossed.

Godspeed

2008-05-12T15:36:00.001-07:00

Over the weekend, I gave my official buyoff to (what should be!) the final proof for Thousand Leaves.

So, this is it. If all goes well, the book will be ready to go on sale as planned at the end of July.

It's kind of trippy that this is all finally coming together. It's been a long road to get to this point, and I'm almost at the end of it.