Frustrations in the life of the young novelist...

I stopped at a bookstore yesterday and left my phone number with the folks at the information desk in the center of the store, hoping to arrange a signing. I came out of work today and checked my cell phone and WOOHOO! I had a message. Alas, it wasn't from the bookstore. It may be that other writers have vastly different experiences, but my experience as a novelist who isn't yet a household name is that people at bookstores routinely ignore your emails and disregard your phone calls if you're interested in discussing possible signings. I suspect the reality is they are probably swamped with dozens of people on any given day looking to arrange signings. There are probably more novelists in America than there are bookstores. I knew of at least a dozen local writers when I lived in Greensboro. Off the top of my head, I can think of three bookstores. So, the competition is probably pretty fierce to catch the attention of the people who arrange signings.

After I leave a message, I feel uncomfortable about calling back. I hate to feel like I'm hassling people. Fortunately, Bitterwood is still a few months away. I'm not in panic mode yet about unreturned phone calls.

Of course, tempering all this is the fact that I'm not sure that booksignings do all that much to boost sales for new writers. If I happened to be in a store when a reading and and signing of a book and an author I'd never heard of was going on, I might wander over and check it out. But, if I saw a poster about it, and didn't know the author, it probably wouldn't register as something I should go to. The signings that catch my eye are signings by authors I already know about, promoting books I've already heard about or read. It seems like a good way of supporting an existing fan base, but as a way of building a readership, I'm slightly dubious of a signing's value.

Does anyone have any different experience? Have you ever bought a book by an author you had never heard of simply because you heard about a reading at a local bookstore?

I just got back from Ravencon. It was a terrific con with nearly 700 attendees and I highly recommend it for any of you con attending types. You can read a more detailed report about the con at my Bitterwood blog.

Abortion Ruling

The reactions to yesterday's ruling by the Supreme Court upholding the partial-birth abortion ban passed by congress have been interesting. I visit a lot of liberal sites like buzzflash and see a lot of talk about the Supreme Court having outlawed a certain type of abortion. I'd like to point out that the Supreme Court didn't outlaw anything in this ruling... it merely upheld a law passed by congress. And, if democrats are upset by the law, it seems to me the answer is obvious. Now that they control congress and the senate, pass a law legalizing this abortion practice. If the president vetoes it, muster the votes to override the veto. For a congressman or senator to blame the court for upholding a law seems to me to represent a dodge of their own responsibility as lawmakers.

The thing is, I've always thought that Democrats would benefit if Roe v. Wade were overturned. I truly feel like there is a pretty solid majority in this country that supports a right to abortion. Making the issue a court-protected issue instead of a legislative issue meant that Democratic voters could be complacent. It didn't matter if they voted or not, or who controlled congress, because abortion was a constitutional right according to the court. Republicans have gotten very good at hammering out restrictions that have popular support... things like parental notification, waiting periods, and now this partial birth abortion ban. Democrats are scared to vote against these things (though, no doubt some support them because they truly believe in them). But, if I were a Democrat, I'd be introducing pro-abortion legislation that Republicans would have a hard time opposing. A broad-based legislation that states that no woman can every be subject to prosecution for deciding to travel between states to obtain a legal abortion, for instance. (I don't think this is illegal now, but codifying it in law would be a huge symbolic victory.) Or, legislation that guarantees a legal abortion would be made available in cases of rape or incest. Plenty of people would oppose this, but I think it would be easy to brand the opposition as outside the mainstream.

The fact is, it seems like only Republicans have bothered to use the legislature as a political tool to change the law to reflect their wishes. Democrats haven't been introducing pro-abortion legislation that I'm aware of, they've only been opposing anti-abortion legislation. They should pick up some tips from the Republicans and actually pass some laws that support their values instead of always playing defense.

I suspect, if this battle is decided via legislation instead of via court fiat, what we'll wind up with will be laws that make abortion widely available, perhaps even publicly subsidized, but with comprises like waiting periods and parental notification. It wouldn't be a constitutional right... it would be statuatory law that would require constant vigilance to maintian and reflect the will of the public... you know, democracy.

Ismail ax

I read this morning that the phrase "Ismail ax" was a hot phrase for search engines yesterday, for obvious reasons, since the Va Tech gunman had it written on his arm and no one knew what it meant. I also immediately jumped on google to hunt the phrase. Nothing. I also tried to rearrange the letters, anticipating this might have some hidden meaning. Nothing makes sense, though "Islam ax I" should invigorate the handful of folks who want to tie this into Islamic terrorism.

House renovation goes external

My house is fairly bland when seen from the street. The landscaping of my yard is best described as minimalist, with no trees, bushes, flowers, etc. Mostly, just grass and weeds. I want to do a few things to enhance the appearance but I don't want projects that require a lot of time, energy, or money, since I'm short on all these things.

My first project has been to install a flower bed along the side of the house. The tricky part of this is, I didn't actually plant much in the way of flowers... just three azalea bushes I bought for 2.50 each from a Kiwanis' fundraiser in a bank parking lot. They were something of an impulse buy. I'd gone out to by mulch for the bed. My budget for the entire project was $20. I knew I needed about $10 worth of mulch, so encountering the bush sale at such a bargain basement price seemed like a good omen.

I'd bought the curvy brick edgers from walmart two weeks ago. They cost about $30. So, the whole project cost about $50, and took about 3 hours total labor. Hopefully, the azalea bushes will do okay. As the summer rolls on, I'll probably be adding some more plantings. My friend Cheryl said she had some free stuff she could give me from her garden.

Any way, here are the before the mulch and bushes shot and an after shot:

People celebrate the redesign of my blog by breaking into spontaneous dance...

Local weather. And I do mean "local."

When I got up this morning I discovered it had snowed, leaving a light but quite thorough dusting of the white stuff all over my yard. Snow in April in North Carolina is a little strange but not impossible. What is strange, though, is that it only snowed in my yard. Above is a picture from my front porch showing snow in my front yard extending to the street, then, beyond that, nothing. The street is snow free, and the yards across the street are snow free.

I've always thought my house was cooler than most, and I finally have some empirical evidence.

I'm not sure my voice is the strongest selling point for my book...

If you're interested, here's a link to Gail Z. Martin's site for her novel "the Summoner." She has a feature called "Ghost in the Machine," where she'll be holding conversations with fellow authors, and the author currently on deck is me. You can find the link here:

http://www.chroniclesofthenecromancer.com/page/page/3827767.htm

I confess, I'm not sure I come off well in interviews over the phone. I did several of them back when I was promoting "Nobody," and something about the telephone leaves me slow and halting. On the other hand, I think I'm pretty good at conventions on panels. When I can actually see the person I'm interacting with, I'm much better at reading them and listening to them and being able to play off what they are saying. On the phone, I feel more like I'm constantly figuring out what I'm going to say next.

Which isn't to say you shouldn't go listen to this thing... fortunately, Gail holds up her half of the conversation well.

Our Health Care System Makes Me Sick

I have very complicated feelings about the American health care system. I was talking to a friend of mine this week who's been buying health insurance through a COBRA plan that's about to expire. He's willing to purchase his own insurance... except he has diabetes and the cheapest plan he's been quoted--a bare bones, catastrophic plan--is $2000 a month. How many people can afford $24,000 a year for an insurance plan that barely covers anything? And, at least he can get insurance. If he had stage 4 cancer, he wouldn't be able to buy a plan.

I am, at heart, a free market libertarian who opposes government intervention. Toward the end of Laura's life, she was dealing more and more with the government and every single encounter was Kafkaesque. Agencies that were supposed to be geared toward assisting her were consistently staffed by people who seemed indifferent, incompetent, and downright hostile. The thought of the government taking over our health care system leaves me with a heavy lump in my gut. I honestly think they would turn our system into a beaurocratic nightmare.

And yet, as my friend Greg would be quick to point out, has the private system done any better? I recently spent several months dealing with Labcorp, disputing a charge for a test I'd had the previous year. I'd had some tests in December of 2005, gotten some bills in January 2006, paid them, and that was that. At least, that was that until August, when I got a bill for $150 from Labcorp. I called them immediately, wondering what this was, but on that initial call I never got to speak to a human being. They had an automated system, and any sequence of buttons I followed wound up taking me to an answering machine. So, I left my phone # and told them to call me. A week later, with no return calls, I forgot about it. I figured somebody had taken a look at the bill, realized, "Oops, he's already paid this," and moved on. I am an eternal optimist. Of course, a month later, I get another bill. This time I write a letter questioning the validity of the charges and send it back. Then, helpfully, a week later somebody calls and tells me that this charge for $150 was disallowed by my insurance because I hadn't met my deductable and I still owe the full amount. I was, bluntly, skeptical. These were for tests in December... I'm not a heavy user of healthcare, but I was pretty sure my deductable had been met. And, I asked why they had waited to August to bill me for the test. The representative told me that the insurance company could sometimes take a month or two to respond to the claims. I told her that the insurance company had responded to everything in January, and I'd paid anything left over. What had happened between January and August? She again said it took a month or two for decisions to be made. I pointed out that, a month or two would be a bill in February or March. She never did concede that August was anything but a month or two after December.

I told her I would check with my insurance and call her back. Blue Cross Blue Shield proved to be quite helpful. One phone call and I had the information I needed... they hadn't paid this bill, but they had negotiated a new charge... $19.95 instead of $150. They offered to mail me a copy of the paperwork. I said okay, then called back Labcorp. I spoke to someone new this time. I had the name of the rep I'd spoken to earlier, but was told by the new person I spoke to that she knew of no such person and that there was no record of me having ever contacted Labcorp about my past due bill. She told me that the $19.95 was only a rate for people who had insurance. When I pointed out that I did, indeed, have insurance, it seemed to throw her off her game. She said she'd have to call me back.

Then, another month passed and a bill collector for Labcorp called, telling me my credit card had been declined and they were about to pursue legal action for the $150. I was utterly baffled by the credit card claim, since I had no memory of ever giving them a number. (Though, it turned out I had given the doctor who ordered the test a credit card #, and they'd attempted to bill it. Why it was declined, I don't know. The number I eventually saw on the paperwork was perfectly valid. A little too valid, as my monthly statements will attest.) I was also frustrated to again be starting at ground zero, talking to someone at Labcorp who wouldn't admit that I'd ever contacted them before.

Then... well, it occurs to me that this is a long and tedious story. The whole point of the story is what a long and tedious process it was to handle a bill for this one stupid test. But I don't see why I should punish my readers with every blow by blow detail. Let's just say that a lot of faxes were sent back and forth and I eventually found a supervisor at Labcorp who had a name and extension # and I was able to harrass her until they finally sent me a bill for the correct amount.

In January, everything was, finally (I hope) resolved with me sending them a check for $19.95. I suppose it will be August before I really know if this has been taken care of.

Anyway, my point was that the beaurocratic nightmare I fear would befall us if the government took over health care is already here now that corporations run our health care. Mortality statistics tell us that people die of heart disease and cancer and trauma... but I wonder just how many people actually pass away just to avoid the paperwork.

The thing that's got me thinking about this was the news that John Edward's wife has stage 4 cancer. Her diagnosis is almost identical to Laura's after her time of being cancer free. I have an x-ray of Laura's torso with the tiny black tumors circled; I imagine Ms. Edward's x-ray looks pretty much the same. It gives me a personal connection to this story; I've always wondered if Laura had lived another five years if they would have found a cure. Ms. Edwards probably has those five years, so I guess I'll find out. I also always wondered if Laura would have gotten a different level of treatment if she'd been wealthy. I've noticed that there are an awful lot of Supreme Court judges who get cancer and survive it for many, many years. John Edward's is filthy rich, a hell of a lot richer, probably, than any of the Supreme Court justices. And yet, here's my second personal connection to the story: Ms. Edwards has the same oncologist that Laura had, Dr. Lisa Carrey. So, the former senator's wife is getting the same doctor treating her as the former preschool teacher. Maybe money isn't dividing up the treatment as unequally as I thought.

I wish I had some potential solution to offer to the mess that health care has become. Government intervention seems like a path to disaster. On the other hand, the status quo seems to be that you can get decent healthcare as long as your employer is paying for your insurance, until you get too sick to work, at which point you lose your insurance at the time of your life where you actually most need it. On the other, other hand, as horrible as our system is, and as wonderful as a Canada and England and Italy's system is (according to my liberal friends who want the government to take over healthcare), I presume that, with the Edwards' wealth, if better treatment for cancer was available in Canada, they'd be seeking treatment in Canada.

If a cure for cancer emerges, it's probably going to emerge from the horrible, screwed up, unaffordable American system.

I'm up!

I finally figured out the right combination of words to type into google to get an answer on my non-loading sign-in page. I downloaded the newest version of Explorer last month, and apparently its more aggressive security features view the scripts on the blogger sign in screen as potentially hostile code. It never warned me about this or asked if I wanted the script to run. Very annoying.

Any way, now that I'm up, I have nothing to say. Actually, that's not even mildly true. I have dozens of things to say, mostly news about Bitterwood. And yet... not yet. Soon. Right now I'm in the middle of writing two short stories at once, plus reading the latest PDF version of the Bitterwood manuscript. I'm so busy it's even eating into my computer solitaire time. So, keep watching this space. Good stuff coming, I promise.

Please stand by...

For some reason, I can no longer sign into blogger from my home computer, either in netscape or explorer. The sign in page simply never loads for me. I'm trying to figure out why. When I google for this problem, I turn up hundreds of hits for people experiencing the same issue, but I have yet to find a solution. Quite frustrating, given that I have all sorts of nifty Bitterwood news to post. You can find some of this stuff at the Solaris website (a link to their blog is on the side, which will give you a link to their main site). Currently, an shared interview between me and Gail Z. Martin is linked to on their main page. Hopefully I'll figure this out soon. In the meantime, thanks for your patience.

Things Few People Know About Me #5: The True Origin of Nobody

I wish I could claim that the ten-day gap between my fourth secret and my final one was some attempt to build suspense. In truth, I've spent most of the last ten days immersed in the galleys of Bitterwood, hunting for typos and fine-tuning the prose. If my count is correct, this is the sixth time I've read this novel cover to cover in a year. It's disturbing to think that I'm still discovering mistakes and infelicities after so many passes. Of course, Nobody Gets to Girl made it to print with what I consider a pretty glaring problem in the second chapter. I call my hero by the wrong name on page 17! The protagonist is named Richard Rogers, and 90% of the time I call him Richard, but on page 17 I slipped up and called him Roger. The book was in print before someone pointed it out to me.

This isn't my fifth secret, by the way. But, I've been struggling to figure out a fifth secret that met the following criteria: 1. It should be something I haven't wanted people to know about me. I think this exercise is only of use if I'm pushing the limits of what I'm comfortable revealing about myself. 2. It should be PG 13. My family reads this blog sometimes after all. 3. I shouldn't take anyone else down with me.

The last criteria is a real stumper. Because, so much of the stuff I don't talk about is stuff that happened between me and someone else. I've been divorced twice. There are dark and juicy mines of secrets in both those past relationships. I could conceal the identities of my fellow students from college twenty years ago with fake names, but fake names wouldn't really work in concealing the identity of my ex spouses, since there are only two possible candidates.

Still, I think I'm going to break the third criteria and reveal something that very few people know about the creation Nobody Gets the Girl. I owe this novel to the collapse of my second marriage. In the fall of 2000, I'd been married to Anjela for about five years. Our marriage had been through many rough patches prior to that fall, but, still, around October things were taking an especially dark turn. I won't go into the details of what was going wrong with the marriage since I would like to respect Anjela's privacy at least a little in all this. But, during this time, I was having a lot of trouble sleeping. I actually went to a doctor about my insomnia. And, when I did sleep, I would sometimes have the most vivid dreams. Some writers really mine their dreams for inspiration. I seldom remember enough of mine to find them useful, and the few I do remember seem too incoherent to shape into fiction.

One common thread of my remembered dreams, however, is that they are usually set in the same house. This house is no place I've ever lived, but I know it well... it's my dream house. It's a big, Victorian mansion, full of secret passages and hidden rooms. It sits alone in a field, with no neighbors in sight. The layout of the house is nothing I could ever sketch out in my waking moments, but, in my dreams, its a very tangible place, and I move around in it with a certain familiarity.

But, one night in October of 2000, I had a very vivid dream about a woman wrecking my dream house. The woman wasn't Anjela, or anyone I could immediately identify. But she was moving through the house, reaching out with fingernails like swords and ripping the walls. The strangest detail of the dream was that she was traveling along a heavy iron rail, wearing elaborate wheeled boots that had long iron spikes shooting out from the ankles. I remember in the dream chasing this woman, watching her tear the house to pieces, until suddenly the whole front half of the house collapsed, leaving what was left of the place looking like an enormous dollhouse.

In retrospect, it's easy to interpret the dream as my fears about my own house falling apart, at least metaphorically. At the time, though, when I woke up, I took the time to jot down some notes about the dream. Due to my having sought medical help for my insomnia, I was keeping a sleep log of when I woke up at night. The following day, I held on to that strong and strange image of the woman with swords for fingers and spikes on her heels. I began to think about who she might be and what her story was.

Also, it was around this time that, grasping at straws, I decided that the reason Anjela no longer seemed to be in love with me was that I had stopped writing. When we met, I'd been at a very productive and creative stage in my life. I'd finished my second novel, a very bad book called Dragons. And, I'd started my third novel, a much more promising book called Bitterwood. The first year we were together, I was writing all the time, churning out chapters and stories at a rate that I look back on with a certain degree of envy. Of course, back then, I could crank out story after story because I didn't really have a sense of what was a good story and what was a bad story. I would just take any cliched idea, pop in some cardboard characters, drive them toward a twist ending, and call it a story. As I grew as a writer, I found my output slowing. It took time and thought to write a good story, not just an afternoon's whim. I went from writing a couple of stories a month to writing a couple of stories a year. So, in October 2000, I felt like the reason Anjela had lost interest in me was that I wasn't the person I'd told her I was when we met. I'd told her I was a writer, but I'd evolved into someone who was only tinkering with the craft. I worried I was a poser, and she'd found me out.

So, I decided that I'd win her back by writing another novel. And I wouldn't screw around with this and drag it out for years like I had with my previous novel efforts. It was November. I'd finish my book by the end of December. I told people at the time that I was doing it in honor of the new millennium. If I started a book in November and finished it at midnight of New Years 2001, I could claim I'd written the first novel of the new millennium. But, the real drive behind my writing was my desperation to prove to Anjela that I was still the same creative writer that she'd fallen for a few years before.

I had plenty of ideas for novels when I sat down on November 15 to start writing my next novel, stories I'd thought about for years, and put a lot of planning into. But, when the actual typing started, I decided I'd tell the story of the girl who'd destroyed my dream house. The woman became the character Rail Blade. My protagonist was a wannabe stand-up comic who never was quite brave enough to quit his day job and chase his true dreams.

There was some good news/bad news with my plan to make Anjela love me again. The bad news, duh, was that it didn't work. She moved out sometime in December without having read a word of the book. To this day I'm not sure if she ever read it. The good news is, before that novel, writing had always been a very intellectual pursuit for me. Suddenly, I was writing in a state of high emotional stress and it all comes out in the pages of the book. I felt like my life was being taken from me by forces I had no control over... which was, of course, the same problem that Richard Rogers must confront as his entire life gets erased by a time machine accident. All of my existential angst found a voice in Richard.

There are other hidden parallels, things that no one probably ever suspects are drawn from real life. Right before Anjela left, we had a cat named Easter put to sleep. Easter had long had serious health problems. We were there with her as the vet slipped a needle into her veins and put her down. A night or two later, I wrote the scene where Dr. Know kills Rail Blade with a syringe of the same poison. Dr. Know is crying in the aftermath, claiming he killed her because he loved her and didn't want to see her in pain anymore. I know that Dr. Know is sincere, even if Richard doesn't believe his motivations in the book.

As fate would have it, a few days later I arrived home and found Anjela packing up her truck. The doors of the house were wide open so that people could cart off her furniture. I walked into the freezing house as an icy rain was starting to fall and found that the furnace was only blowing cold air. She drove off with me sitting in the rain removing the cover from the exterior furnace trying to figure out what was wrong. I didn't solve the mystery of the broken furnace. I eventually gave up and went inside broken home and wrote the next scene in my book... the scene that had given birth to the whole novel to start with, the scene in which a woman with spikes on her ankles rides a rail through a house and destroys it.

On that cold December night, it sucked really bad that my cat was dead, my furnace was broken, and my wife had left. Still, I wrote that scene that night, and the next scene the next night, and kept going until my book was finished. The whole time, my brain felt full of lightning, like the story was an electric current and I was merely its conductor. It was a deeply satisfying creative experience, worth the price I paid for it.

And, once it was on paper, I slept like a baby.

That's it, the fifth thing almost no one knew about me. Thanks again to Eric James Stone for tagging me. Now, it's time for me to turn this over to five people. So, Nancy Fulda, Oliver Dale, Vylar Kaftan, Rick Novy, and Gail Z. Martin... tag! You're it!

Things Few People Know About Me #4: My Most Regreted Words

I worked late tonight. It was almost dark when I left, pitch black a half hour later when I arrived at the graveyard. I placed some tulips on Laura's grave. It was a little tricky to find in the dark. If it weren't for the little trinkets placed at the marker by her friend Anke I would have had to resort to attempting to read the little placards by the light of my cell phone.

I didn't stay long. It was dark and cold, and I had the galleys to Bitterwood in my car waiting to be proofread. I've told my publisher I'd get my notes to him by next Monday. I keep hearing this ticking clock in my skull now. I went to a restaurant and ate some hot wings while I proofed another two chapters. All of it had a very familiar feel.

Because the last time I spoke to Laura when she was awake, I had a copy of Bitterwood in my hands. This was back in May; Solaris had told me in March they wanted the book but it needed to be expanded. I waited a few months while the details of the deal were hammered out, but at the end of April I printed a copy of the book and started a read through making intensive notes, trying to figure out where I was going to put 40,000 new words into my tightly plotted novel. Of course, right around this time was when Laura started getting really, really sick. Every other day there was some new crisis. So, I hadn't made much progress when we made out last trip to the emergency room. I took along the copy of the manuscript. My hospital experience was that there would be long hours of waiting while they had Laura off for x-rays and exams. We went to the ER at night. They checked Laura into a room after midnight. They were having trouble getting her oxygen levels to a safe zone. Then, they put her on an oxygen mask and she started improving. I went home that night and slept, then went back the next morning early and spent the day sitting in her hospital room. It was a nice room, one one of the upper floors of the hospital, with a terrific view. The room was also private, unlike the last room she'd had which she'd shared with a person with a very concerned, and very large, and very loud family. We joked that the room was better than some of the hotels we'd stayed at.

I spent a lot of that day reading Bitterwood. Laura's friends and family came by in a steady stream. I'd sit in the corner and read while people talked. My focus that day was really more on the book than on her.

Around 6:30 that night her friend Cheryl came buy and planned to stay the evening. Laura seemed to be doing pretty well. She hadn't eaten anything all day, but her oxygen levels were just barely below normal; it seemed like the oxygen mask was going to make a difference. I wanted to leave. I had spent all but maybe 7 of the previous 24 hours in the hospital. I told Laura I was going to go eat, take a shower, get some rest. They had actually offered Laura the opportunity to be discharged that night, since her vital signs were okay. It seemed like the immediate crisis had passed. She decided she'd feel better if she stayed one more night in the hospital, just to be sure the oxygen mask was doing the trick. I told her I'd come back in the morning to bring her home. She be on oxygen from then on... it would be an adjustment, but it wasn't the end of the world.

I left... and went to my Writer's Group, which always met Wednesday's at 7:00. I didn't tell Laura I was going to the group; I told her I was going to eat, then go home. It seemed okay to tell her I was leaving because I was hungry and tired. It seemed shameful to tell her I was leaving because I wanted to go hang out with other writers and talk about writing for a few hours rather than sit around in that hospital room for another evening. It wasn't a straight-up lie, only a lie of ommission, but it currently stands as the thing I most regret saying, or not saying.

It's not that Laura valued me for my honesty. I think, really, I was often useful to her when I was there to lie to her. Doctors would come in with bad news and once the doctor left the room I'd be able to spin it into good news. The doctors would tell her that a tumor had grown by 2 millimeters, for instance. I'd show her how tiny that was; if her tumors only crept along at millimeters per month, she had a long time left, I assured her. There was a long line of medical report over the years that kept telling her, in more clinical terms, "You're screwed!" I was there to read the same reports and look Laura straight in the eye and say, "You know, they are paid to be pessimists. This really isn't bad news at all. You're going to beat this thing." And sometimes, I meant it. Sometimes, I believed it myself. But, a lot of the time, I knew she was losing the battle, and I still chose to tell her she was winning. I don't regret those lies at all.

But, I wish I'd stayed that night. Or, I wish I'd just said, "I want to go to my writer's group, then I'm going to eat, then go home. " But instead I acted on my own hidden agenda, ashamed that I had something I wanted to do that evening more than I wanted to spend time with her.

I know, intellectually, that no matter what I did or said that night, Laura still would not be here to share this Valentine's Day with me. But, on a deeper level, I really wonder if I could have changed things, if I'd stuck around and held her hand through that night, and told her everything would be okay, if maybe she would have pulled through, probably not this long, but maybe a few more days, a week or two more, a month. I'm told that she got very frightened that night, that as her vital signs started to decline she was scared, asking if there was hope. I wished I'd been there to tell her yes--even if there wasn't. I wish my last lie to her had been one I could be proud of.

Things Few People Know About Me #3: I'm Damned

There's an article that just went up at World Net Daily that is so cringingly blasphemous even I feel bad about it. Read it here, if you dare. The short summary of the article is that a science student named Samuel Hunt has "proven" the literal truth of the creation account in Genesis and that, quote, "the construction of everything in the universe begins with a) the Holy Spirit (magnetic field); b) Light (an electric field); and c) that Light can be created by a sonic influence or sound." The article then goes on to talk about sonoluminescence, which is a real scientific phenomena, in which soundwaves moving through water can create light, and since Genesis starts with spoken words, water, and light, viola, the absolute truth of the Bible has just been created under laboratory conditions!

All of requires so many mind numbing leaps of logic I don't even know where to begin with arguing about it. Yes, if you shout at water loud enough under the right conditions, you can get a little light. I'm not sure, however, that there's been any corresponding demonstration that you can shout at the water and get a planet out of it, or shout at clay and have it come to life as a variety of creatures. Wake me up when they get that into a test tube.

The sad thing is how badly certain people of faith want the scientific stamp of approval. It's almost a confession on their part that science equals respectable and believable. Rather than admitting there's a tension between science and the Bible, they turn to science as proving the Bible true. As a former fundamentalist, this just seems sad. If you want to base your world view on the Bible, just do it. Dedicate yourself to the proposition that every word within its pages is 100 percent true and tune out or reject any evidence to the contrary. It's really not that hard, there are plenty of people who manage to do this. If you have to go outside the Bible to find evidence of God, you've already let in that little sliver of doubt that's going to doom you come Judgment Day.

What does this have to do with something that few people know about me? After all, I've publicly stated my atheism many times, and publicy talked about my fundamentalist upbringing. There is, however, a pivitol moment in that upbringing I don't talk about much. When I was was 12, in Sunday School, the teacher introduced us to the concept of the unpardonable sin, blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. It come from Matthew 7:31.
"Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men; but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men." This turns out to be a highly debated Biblical passage, since Jesus isn't always the best person at defining his terms. But, my Sunday school teacher wasn't into debating meaning, he just told us that if we called the Holy Ghost a mocking name, we were damned. Game over.

So, of course, my twelve year old mind instantly thinks something like, "So, if I call the Holy Ghost a pig, I'll be damned." Then, I froze, mortified. I'd just thought about calling the Holy Ghost a bad name. And, in Sunday School, they were real big on the idea that just thinking about a sin was the exact same thing as doing it. So, for instance, if you wanted to murder someone, really played out the scenario in your mind, it was exactly the same, sin-wise, as actually killing somebody. By thinking of an insult, it was exactly the same as saying it.

I was 12 years old, and I was damned.

This isn't a problem I find that most people can really sympathize with. There really aren't that many people in the world who take the Bible as literally as I did when I was 12. But, I honestly saw no way out back then. I couldn't even go and talk to people about it. I assumed my family would disown me. I assumed the church would kick me out and tell me never to return. I really had no choice but to suffer in silence for a couple of years until I went atheist. Suffer is really the right word here. Obsess is also accurate. There wasn't a moment of my waking life where this wasn't on my mind for those years. Really, even up until college, I would wake up in the middle of the night and be afraid to open my eyes because I knew, just knew, that one day I would open my eyes and the devil would be there, ready to take me down to Hell and just skip the whole Judgment Day thing. The whole point of life, as I understood it from my church, was to be born damned and learn the truth about the world and accept salvation then remain vigalant until you died, so you could go to heaven. If you short circuited that process, well, there really wasn't a whole lot of reason for you to go on living. I was never suicidal, but, in a lot of ways, there was no point to suicide. I'd already killed myself spiritually with a stray thought at the age of 12.

I'd planned to include my damned status in my list of five things, making it my fifth item, since it's really the single most important secret I've ever kept. I thought it would be the climax to to the list. But, the article led me to bump it up a notch. Because, the 12 year old fundamentalist that still dwells inside me cringes, just absolutely curls up into a little fetal ball, to read a statement in which someone tries to say that the Holy Spirit is a magnetic field. I mean, what? That's in the Bible where, exactly? Redefining the Holy Spirit to fit into your flakey little quasi-scientific mumbo-jumbo seems much more blasphemous to me than anything I imagined.

Anyway, that's it. That's my darkest secret. Maybe five people in my life have ever known this about me.

Hopefully my last two secrets will be easier to explain....

The second item on both lists....

It occurs to me I can combine the number two slot on my list of ten good reasons to move to Hillsborough with my number two slot on the five things few people know about me.

Reason to Move to Hillsborough #2: The Wooden Nickel Things Few People Know About Me #2: I take pleasure in pain, at least in food.

The Wooden Nickel is a pub located on Churton Street, right in the heart of Hillsborough. It's intended to be more bar than restaurant by it's owners I think, but they have a wizard in the kitchen that makes the food the main draw for me. And, the food out of the kitchen... when you first walk in you are likely to notice all the peanut shells on the floor. They give you buckets of unshelled peanuts and you just throw the husks wherever they may fall. I'm not sure what's different about these peanuts from your typical Planters, but whatever brand they use they are really, really good. Maybe they are just always fresh. They must go through a hundred pounds a night.

Good items on the menu: An oyster po' boy, tater tots, and an "egg burger" which is a hamburger with a sunnyside-up egg on it, an unusual condiment that turns out to work really well on a burger. But, when you go in, look at the chalkboard behind the bar before you bother with the menu. They rotate through a lot of specials that are only available on random nights, a really broad range of stuff from cheese sandwiches with tomato soup to steaks. But the rotating item to watch out for is the fried banana peppers. Oh my god, these are good. They are cut into rings and batter fried and they taste something like a fried pickle but with a kick to them. They are my favorite side dish of any restaurant anywhere and are so good and so obvious I can't believe they aren't available at every fast food joint in America. But, the Wooden Nickel is the only place I've ever seen them... this alone is worth a dozen trips to Hillsborough until you arrive on a night when they have them.

But the star of the Wooden Nickel is the buffalo wings. I go with the wings known as "nickel hot." These are pretty darn hot, but they heat comes from chipoltle instead of the more typical cayenne based wing sauces, which gives them a smoky flavor to go with the heat. They are still hot enough to cause you to sweat and open up your sinuses, but not so hot that you can't appreciate the other flavors you discover in the sauce, the smoke and the salt, and even the chicken is still present, and they use good chicken wings, big, fat, meaty things that make six of them an actual meal.

Which leads to the second thing few people know about me: I'm a food masochist. I'm drawn to a lot of foods that just flat out hurt me. When I go into restaurants, I usually find out what the hottest thing is on the menu and order that. I'm almost always disappointed. Over the years, I've perverted my sense of taste to the point that only the most extreme foods satisfy me. The level of heat where most people call it quits is barely enough to catch my interest. I make a chili that I normally heat with a couple of different heat sources, usually starting out with habanero as my base heat, cayenne as my "high note" heat, and fresh jalapenos and onions soaked in lime juice as my last second topping "kicker" heat. This chili is, to many people I know, inedible. It is the equivalent of eating kerosene and lit matches. You don't so much break out into a sweat while you're eating it as a steam. And, the funny thing is, I'm usually thinking, "this is okay, but I wonder what it would be like if I doubled the habaneros?"

I do have limits. I occasionally find hot wings where they are so hot they have no flavor at all, they are simply pure heat, and these tend not to be my favorite. For instance, the Wooden Nickle has a level of hot beyond "Nickle Hot" that is so hot that it blots out all the subtle flavors that make their hot wings so special. I can eat their hottest wings, but it's not a pleasurable as the next step down.

I also frequently will make compromises with my chili depending on my audience. For family gatherings, I usually avoid the habaneros.

Now, it could be argued that my love of hot food isn't really something "few" people know about me. Probably, hundreds of people know it about me. But, what "few" people know about me, a legitimate secret, is my chili recipe. I've never even written it down before. So, here it is, the key to my award winning pain stew:

James Maxey's So Good It Hurts Chili

Two to three pounds of stew beef*
Three habaneros**
One big red onion
One big can of stewed tomatoes
One big can of dark red kidney beans
One pound of ground beef
One regular sized can of stewed tomatoes
Cayenne powder***
One big white onion
Three or four fresh jalapenos
A couple of limes.

Start by searing your stew beef in a tiny bit of oil, then throwing it and the habaneros in a big pot with enough water to cover the meat by an inch or two. You don't need to do anything fancy to prep the habaneros, just toss them in. Also at a few teaspoons of salt. Bring everything to a boil, then turn the heat down to a simmer. Scum the surface a few times during the first two or three hours of cooking. Once it seems like all the scum is gone from the beef, chop your big red onion into quarters and toss it in, add some black pepper, then put the lid on the pot and walk away. The key now is that you will let the beef, habanero, and onion cook for 24 hours. This is going to spread the flavor of the habaneros completely through the beef. The reason you don't need to do anything fancy to the peppers is that, after a day of cooking, they just fall apart. You might find the stems, but usually even these vanish. The meat after 24 hours is mostly mush. If you did a good job of searing the meat, a few of those seared bits usually still hold together. Drain your kidney beans and pour them into the mix, and also pour in the large can of stewed tomatoes. Stir everything up. At this point, what you have looks a whole lot like chili, and tastes pretty good. Habeneros are among the hottest of hot peppers, but by cooking them with the beef for a full day, the heat is really spread out. You can get the beef into your mouth without a violent assault on your tongue by the habeneros. Instead, the heat sort of spreads slowly with each chew.

Yet, this isn't where the chili ends. Now you are going to break out a big cast iron skillet and start frying your ground beef. Season it with salt and pepper and put in a tablespoon or so of cayenne powder. Also, chop up about half of your big white onion and throw it in. In normally cook this until all the meat looks done and the onion is translucent. If the ground beef was really fatty, I'll drain it, but I like a little fat to still be in the pan for the next step. At the spice level I like, the fat is noticeably red, colored by the cayenne. Now, I turn the heat up high and pour in my regular sized can of stewed tomatoes. I know you aren't supposed to cook tomatoes in cast iron, but if you've got a good level of fat down the tomatoes won't hurt your skillet. Cook everything on high, boiling off most of the water in the tomato juice, until the tomato juice and beef fat combine into a thick red sauce. After a few minutes, the mix should look like hotdog chili. It tastes a good like hot dog chili as well, with a noticeable cayenne heat and a good meaty taste. If you've burned the beef a little I find that this gives the whole mix a little complexity.

If I'm making hot dogs, I use this as my final product. But, for my big chili, I now mix together this cayenne flavored, ground beef chili with the habanero flavored stew beef chili. I cook everything together on a low heat for a few minutes. I do a lot of last second tweaking with salt, pepper, and cayenne. If the mixture looks too thick, I might add a second small can of stewed tomatoes, drained. I also sometimes add more beans. If it looks too thin, I just cook it on a medium heat until it thickens up. I'm usually making this chili for some big event, so frequently at this point the event is still a day away and I will place the whole mixture into the fridge for the night. This lets the flavors meld together. Then I just heat it up slowly the next day for an hour or so on a low heat. The mix is really easy to burn, so patience is the key to reheating.

The final touch is a salsa made from fresh jalepenos and the last of the white onion. I typically seed the jalepenos--the white pithy part of the jalepeno is where the real heat is, and at this point I don't want to make my salsa the dominant flavor. There's still plenty of heat in the seeded jalepenos, especially if you chop them into very tiny cubes. Give the white onion the same tiny cube treatment. Mix them together in a dish and begin chopping limes and squeezing the juice over the mix. You want enough juice that the whole thing is close to the moisture level of restaurant salsa.

Spoon this fresh mixture onto a bowl of the chili. Now, when you take a bite of the chili, you should have three heat experiences. First, the mild but sharp hit of the jalepeno relish is going to hit your nose and tongue and really wake up your senses. Then, your tongue is going to get a nice spanking from the cayenne. Finally, as you chew, the habenero is going to start coming out of the beef fibers and give the whole experience a very satisfying lasting burn that should spread through your whole body.

Keep telling yourself that whatever doesn't kill you will make you stronger.....

* The actual cut of the beef isn't that important, since after you cook it 24 hours it all turns into strings. I usually buy based on price. A good chuck roast is my most frequent cut, but the last time I made this I actually used two pound of beef heart which cost, like, fifty cents a pound, and was really pleased with the results. I'm guessing this would work well with beef tongue, but I know the food wimps in my life would chicken out if I told them they were eating tongue.

**The number of habaneros is up to you. These are insanely hot peppers, but you are diluting the flavor through a couple of pounds of beef. So, the more peppers, the more heat. If I'm making this at the beach and know that kids will be tasting it, I only use one. If I'm doing it for work and know it's all adults, including some fellow heat lovers, I'll go with three or four. I've also sustituted a half dozen jalapenos when I couldn't find goodlooking habaneros.

***The cayanne powder can be swapped or mixed with various other dried chili powders. I've also gotten very satisfying result with a can of chipoltles at this step. Be warned, though, that if you go the chipoltle route you will wind up with a level of heat that only the most rugged chili eaters will be able to appreciate.

Finally, I have one last optional ingredient: Cactus. The big green pickled strips you see in jars in the Mexican food section. Napolitos I think they are called? These are basically cactus pickles. They have absolutely no heat, but, since they are big long green strips, they provide an interesting visual element to the chili. A lot of people mistake them for some sort of big green pepper. If anything, they actually help fight the heat, since they have a vinegary taste.

Okay, one last finally: I know that some people are opposed to beans in chili. I actually wasn't a fan myself, but I think that the whole chili turns thicker and even meatier with their addition.

Five things few people know about me, #1

I've been "tagged" by Eric James Stone on his blog (www.ericjamesstone.com) and now have to write five things that few people know about me. I normally don't do stuff like this--it strikes me as sort of a chain letter--but I'll play along. These aren't going to be five short, funny things about me, though. These are genuine secrets, or near secrets, things I normally have to trust a person pretty well before revealing. So, it will probably take more than one blog entry. I know, I know, I just started a list of 10 Reasons to move to Hillsborough, and now I'm starting a list of 5 Things Few People Know About Me. I promise that both lists will come to fruition soon.

My first secret involves the most premeditated act of cruelty I've ever committed. I've probably done crueler things than this, but usually they've been casual cruelties, even accidental cruelties, or cruelties that simply spring up from the circumstances of the moment. But, there was one instance where I just decided I was going to really cause somebody a little psychic pain and wound up getting results better than I even dreamed of. So here goes:

Five Thing Few People Know About Me #1: That Guy We Killed

There was this guy in college I'll call Bravo who a lot of people hated. Bravo had been in the army and had this mini-Rambo thing going on. It wasn't so much a macho act as it was an exaggerated sense of his own competence in everything. He honestly believed he was the best at anything he set down to do. If you played chess with him, he would warn you up front he was an unbeatable chess player. If you played cards, he'd tell you he never lost at cards. He was, in fact, fairly mediocre at just about everything... his bravado was unwarranted and really got on people's nerves (although it probably would have gotten on our nerves even worse if it had been warranted).

On the second to last day of the semester, right before Christmas break, there were only a few people left on campus, those of us unlucky enough to have exams scheduled for the last day. We few stragglers were playing cards. We started talking about Bravo and everyone agreed he was really annoying. We thought it would be cool to get him into a poker game and take all of his money, especially since he liked to talk about how much money his dad had. One flaw to this plan was that we didn't have any money of our own to gamble. The second was, we really didn't know that much about cheating at cards. So, I proposed a second plan to take his money... a plan that involved murder.

One of the people in on the plan was a guy I'll call Cowboy. Cowboy also had a mini-Rambo thing going on. He carried a Rambo knife (you may remember these... they were a foot long and had a hollow hilt filled with survival items like matches and fishing line), dressed in fatigues, and always had a fake handgrenade clipped to his belt. (All things that would get you kicked off a campus these days, I'm sure.)

Cowboy went to Bravo on that second to last day of the semester and confessed a terrible secret: He was in bad trouble with a drug dealer. He owed the guy $500, and the dealer told him if he left town for Christmas without paying, he'd track down Cowboy at home and do something bad to him or his family. Could Bravo loan him the dough? And, would Bravo come with him to the deal that night, to serve as his bodyguard? After all, Bravo had combat training, and was the only one Cowboy could trust with this important mission. Bravo, of course, stepped up to the job.

That night, just before midnight, Cowboy and I meet Bravo at the checkpoint. Bravo is in full combat mode. He's wearing fatigues and has camo-make-up smeared all over his face. He's carrying nun-chucks. And, he says, he might need them... because his Dad would only loan him $50. Cowboy says that, between Bravo's $50 and what I've chipped in, he hopes he has enough to buy some time from the dealer.

We drive out into the country, up mountain back roads until we come to this darkened church. We sit in the parking lot and wait. Soon, a big black car pulls up in the lot above us and flashes its light.

Cowboy tells us to sit tight. Don't make a move unless he yells for us. He goes back to the car and starts talking through the open passenger-side window. We have our windows down, but can barely hear what they're saying. Then, the dealer starts shouting. Apparently, he's not happy with the partial payment. Suddenly, a hand pops out the window, holding a pistol to Cowboy's gut.

Before Bravo can react, Cowboy springs into action, knocking the gun aside and grabbing his rambo knife. He plunges the knife into the open window and a scream cuts through the night air. Then, he jumps back and pulls the fake grenade from his belt and throws it into the car. The driver of the car bolts out and dives to the ground as Cowboy runs back to our car. He jumps behind the wheel and tosses a bloody knife into Bravo's lap.

"I stabbed him in the heart!" he yelps. "I killed him!"

By now, the driver of the car has realized that the grenade is a dud. Cowboy peels off down the back country road as the driver gets back into the black car and goes into pursuit. For a lot of the chase, we seem like we lost him. Then, he catches up. Cowboy drives even crazier down the mountain road, gaining distance, until, nearing a gas station closed for the night, he flips off his headlights and skids to a halt behind the dumpster. Twenty seconds later, the black car flies past.

We head back to campus. I repeatedly tell Bravo, "We can't tell anyone. Cowboy killed that guy. We have to keep this a secret. If anyone finds out, he'll go to prison." Bravo swears he'll never tell.

We drop Bravo back off at his dorm and go back to Cowboy's room, where we meet the "dealers." The whole thing, duh, was a set up. We had choreographed the car chase to the last curve... though, it turns out that the dealer driver almost blew it at the start by spinning his car 180 and nearly putting it into a ditch, which would have been tragic, since it was my dad's car. But, he recovered, and the chase ended as scripted. The combat scene had been close to flawless. It was very convincing when my friend Greg (name not changed, I have his longstanding permission to tell this story) pulled the 99 cent toy pistol. It was Hollywood flawless when Cowboy stuck a fake knife into the car and grabbed the real knife sitting in the cup of stage blood in Greg's lap. We took Bravo's fifty bucks and went and had dinner at an all night diner. We had money left over to divy up. Fifty bucks could actually by something in 1983. All in all, we were feeling pretty good.

We got back to the dorms still laughing, and in the middle of the night, the phone rang. It was Bravo. He was crying. He'd gotten back to his dorm... and he'd lost his keys. His RA had to let him into his room. Bravo was freaked out because he had blood all over his clothes.

I felt really, really lousy at that moment. We'd had a lot of fun, but Bravo was a wreck. The right thing to do would have been to tell him the truth.

I told him to try to get some sleep and reminded him not to tell anyone.

The story doesn't end there. The whole scam actually lasted several weeks past the Christmas break. We discovered, on returning from break, that Bravo had told his girlfriend and at least one other person about the murder. We dragged on the whole murder story for a long time, feeding them little clues here and there about the vast drug ring on campus, as well as the undercover cops, and honestly, it's still really hard for me to believe they bought it, yet they did. Bravo continued to look haunted, his friend seemed excited about being privy to this amazing adventure going on around him, and only the girlfriend showed the occasional sign of suspicion.

The final humiliation came when the scam was revealed. It was a Friday afternoon and Bravo had gone home to see his folks. We were sitting in the lounge, getting ready to feed his girlfriend a little more elaboration on the drug ring and undercover cops, when I confessed. I just came out and explained the whole scenario. I was sick of the lies. And, it turned out, I was also just plain sick. There was a flu outbreak. An hour later, I realized I had a fever. I wound up spending the weekend in the campus health center, along with a crowd of other vomiting sickos. By Monday, I was feeling a little stronger.

Then, Bravo burst in. His girlfriend had called him with the truth. "Maxey!" he yelled. "I know what you've done! I went to the cops and they're on their way right now to arrest you for contortion!"

The whole sick ward grew quiet.

I sighed. "First of all," I explained, "contortion would be me sticking my foot behind my head. The word you want is extortion. And, I'm not guilty of extortion, I'm guilty of fraud!"

Bravo just sagged. His one opportunity to put a little fear into me, and he'd blown his lines. He left in defeat. The cops, as I expected, never arrived.

Twenty-five years out, I can tell this story, and it's a funny story with a funny puchline. And, twenty-five years out, I can still find myself standing at that dorm hall phone, listening to Bravo absolutely freaking out about the blood on his clothes, knowing I was responsible for that freak out, and knowing that I possessed the one piece of information that would have calmed him down, or at least changed his fear and panic into anger. It's even possible if we'd all gone over and yelled "gotcha" that night, he would have been laughing about it the next morning.

The sense of warm satisfaction I had when I hung up that phone still gives me the occasional sleepless night.

Solaris Books Now Available

I've caught my first real cold in ages. I used to get colds all the time, but my last few years with Laura I somehow managed to avoid them. Since she had a weakened immune system most of the time due to chemo, I was just much more careful during the winter time, washing my hands constantly. And, if encountered people who were sniffling or said they felt sick, I got away from them as quickly as possible. My vigilance paid off. Alas, I've slowly been letting my guard down, and last week I had a sore throat that just stuck around. Monday night, the sore throat went away and I started sneezing. I went to work yesterday but left after a few hours. I've spent about 18 of the last 24 hours asleep.

In the time I have been awake, I've been lying in bed reading the new releases from Solaris. Solaris is a "new" publishing house from Britian. I put "new" in quotes because Solaris is actually a new imprint of a larger publishing empire, Games Workshop. It's being run by people who actually know a thing or two about publishing books and getting them into bookstores. And, sure enough, when I went to Barnes and Noble last Saturday, they had several face out copies of each of the first two releases from Solaris. The first is a novel called the Summoner by Gail Z. Martin. I read the 40 pages or so this morning. Quite promising, fast paced, set in a fantasy world I didn't feel I had to work too hard to understand. I read some of the reader reviews on Amazon and a few people were rating it poorly for being built on cliches. But the cliches they mentioned (a prince being robbed of his rightful throne, or magic having a dark side and a light side, for example) strike me not so much as cliches as archetypes of fantasy. If every story that has a prince or a princess as a protagonist gets labeled unoriginal, then pretty much the whole fantasy genre has to take that hit. Admittedly, I'm just 40 pages into a book that's over 600 pages long, but so far the slightly familiar feel of some of the characters (the tom-boyish sister, the happy-go-lucky bard, the stern and skeptical soldier) just helps me to orient myself in a book with a plethora of characters and subplots. Quickly knowing who the characters are and what their agendas are likely to be makes the book more readable.

My one complaint so far is that, amid a long list of purely made up names, Martin's named the villian Jared. Jared seems like a pretty sinister dude and I think he'll live up to his villianous potential, but I still can't help but see him as the guy from the Subway commercial.

If you want to read a sample before you go out and buy a copy, go to www.solarisbooks.com. They've got the first chapter there as a pdf for you to read.

The second book I picked up is the Solaris Book of New Science Fiction. This is an anthology that so far has gotten nothing but good reviews. I've only read two stories so far, both solid little SF tales. Unlike the anthologies Phobos attempted to launch with full of new writers, this anthology is full of new stories by well established pros. Brian Aldis, Stephen Baxter, Paul Di Filippo, Mike Resnick, David Gerrold, and Ian Watson to name a few.

Ten good reasons to move to Hillsborough

This will be the first in a series of cool things about my new hometown, Hillsborough, NC. After Laura died, I started searching for a new place to live. I wanted to stay within a half hour commute of RTP, which meant my choices ranged from downtown Raleigh, all of Chapel Hill, all of Durham, Cary, Apex, and, on the far fringe of that half hour drive, the small town of Hillsborough.

If you had asked me when the search started where I'd wind up, I'd have probably told you Durham. Durham was close to where I work, has some of my favorite restaurants in the area, and some other shopping destinations I like to frequent. And, the selection of housing in Durham in my price range was almost overwhelming. If you do an MLS search for houses under 80 thousand in the Triangle, you can get fifty or more hits out of Durham, and you might be lucky to see even five hits from Raleigh, and maybe one or two in Chapel Hill, almost always from the same awful condo communities. Durham has a reputation as a city with a lot of crime, but I figured that, with dozens of places to choose from, I'd eventually find one that wasn't too bad. I mean, the murder rate is high in Durham, yes, but it was also high in Richmond where I used to live, and I never had any real trouble in Richmond except for a once having my car broken into. (They stole the box in the backseat that held the dice I played D&D with... it was at that moment I converted to believing in the death penalty.) Alas, once I actually started looking at houses in Durham, my optimism soon faded. I kept going to houses that were obvious crime scenes. I looked at a house in a neighborhood in Durham called Bragtown that was a lovely brick house with hardwood floors and a fenced in back yard. Alas, every window on the ground level had been smashed in and was boarded over. Also, the kitchen door had obviously been kicked off its hinges a time or two. And this was a house I actually considered buying. It seemed much, much nicer than another house I looked at in Hillsborough where the door had been kicked in and nobody had bothered to replace it. The house was sitting open to the elements, and inside the place had been stripped of everything including light fixtures and the kitchen sink. Honestly, how much money can you make selling a second hand kitchen sink?

Eventually, I had to give up on Durham. Besides, by that point, I'd started falling in love with Hillsborough. I didn't know much about Hillsborough at this time last year. I'd come here infrequently to go to the Walmart which was newer and nicer than the one in Durham. But, it also would usually have a couple of houses in my price range, and they were usually nicer than what I was seeing in Durham. This isn't to say they were without flaws. Hillsborough is an old town, dating back to colonial times, and there are houses on the market here that were built long before such modern niceties as electricity or plumbing. I looked at one place over a century old heated only by fireplaces... I actually was giving it serious consideration, but the fact that you could stand in the middle room and look up and see sky through the holes in the roof discouraged me. Also, there was the four foot long snake we saw crawling into the house....

Eventually, I discovered my current abode, which was ugly, but solidly built (really solid--it's a cinderblock house), and, to my delight, was only a half mile from...

GOOD REASON TO MOVE TO HILLSBOROUGH #1: The Village Diner

When I moved to Chapel Hill, I was disappointed by the restaurants. I found most of the good places overpriced and crowded. But when I started househunting in Hillsborough, I started sampling the restaurants and felt like I'd stumbled into some marvelous alternate dimension where all the restaurants had character, great food, and good prices. My top 10 reasons to move to Hillsborough will contain a lot of restaurants on the list, but the restaurant deserving the top spot is, hands down, the Village Diner.

The Village Diner is on King St, which is runs right into the heart of the historic district. Go to the end of King Street that intersects with Churton, and you are at the very heart of Hillsborough. But, if you travel down King Street one mile, you leave behind the huge colonial and victorian houses and enter an area where all the houses are small and have tin roofs. Here you will find the Village Diner. It would be easy to ignore when you drive past it. It's in an unassuming brick building I'm guessing dates from the sixties. There's nothing particularly funky or eyecatching about it, except for the word "buffet" on the sign. I'm a sucker for buffets, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

When I walked in, I didn't have high hopes. The tables and booths look like they've probably been there since the place was built. They are clean, but slightly battered. The buffet bar itself isn't very big, and is curiously short, with a brown sneeze guard that makes it tough for a person of my height to see the food without hunching over. Everyone I've taken there to eat has commented on how hard it is to see the food.

My first good vibe about the place came when the waitress came to my table. When I told her I wanted tea, she didn't ask if I meant sweet tea. It was simply a given. Then, when she left the pitcher at the table, I knew I was in the company of people who truly understood my tastes.

And then, the food: the small buffet proved size doesn't matter. At a larger buffet, I might get ten choices of entrees, but only two or three are going to appeal to me. Here, the normally have four entrees, and I usually eat some of all four. They always have chopped pork barbeque and fried chicken. Both are terrific, especially the barbeque. The first time I ate there they also had beef ribs and saurkraut and sausage. You can't go wrong with saurkraut in my opinion, and the beef ribs were something I would willingly go into a restaurant and pay fifteen bucks for a plate of them. The meat was cooked till it was falling off the bones and the sause was perfect, spicy and savory without being the least bit sugary. And, it was all I could eat! For $6.99!

The side dishes are sort of a home cooking greatest hits, with mashed potatoes, green beans, lima beans, squash, corn on the cob, and various other items that rotate through. All are good, but the real stars are the main dishes. If you show up on a night with the beef ribs, you've definitely hit the star of the show. But, there are other dishes to look for that are terrific: Fried fish, chicken pot pie, brunswick stew, and country fried steak in gravy all stand out. There really is nothing among the main dishes they will have on any given night that has disappointed me, with one caveat: get there early. Because, after six, when some of the dishes run out, they just run out. I've been there plenty of times and seen the tray that once held beef ribs now holding nothing but sauce and a few meatless bones and felt the bittersweet twinge of opportunity lost.

And, as long as we are on the subject of disappointments, let me tell you the one item on the bar that is so consistently awful that it's worth sampling for the comedy value: the rolls. With all this homestyle, killer southern cooking, you'd think this would be the sort of place you'd find killer buiscuits. Instead, they always have rolls on the bar that have obviously been dumped out of a bag sometime around lunch, and by dinner time these rolls have turned into dryed out, crumbly lumps that taste like dried out, crumbly lumps. They aren't even useful for sopping up gravy. Yet, somehow, even these bad breads lend to the charm of the place; unlike some higher priced restaurants, you didn't come here to fill up on the bread. The Village Diner is one of a kind and it's only here, in Hillsborough, folks. Check it out.

Room for rent scam.

Sorry for the silence here lately. I've been busy with line edits of Bitterwood, plus work on a new novel called 13 Nails, plus actively hunting for a roommate. The roommate hunt had an interesting twist this week when I almost got scammed. A woman who said she was from London responded to my ad on Craig's List and said she was coming to the US for 4 months to teach seminars in Raleigh. I wrote her back aswering her questions about he room, but also explaining that Hillsborough isn't actually that close to Raliegh. She wrote back immediately saying she would take the room and asking for an address so she could have her boss cut me a money order for the deposit. I thought this was odd. Also, she didn't answer some of my questions like who she worked for or whether it was a problem that the room was unfurnished. So I googled "craig's list room for rent scams" and discovered that there's a scam where people will agree to rent your room or buy an item for sale sight unseen. Then, they send you a money order for an ammount with an extra zero in it. So, you get a money order for 2500 instead of 250 say. You of course email them back saying there's been a mistake. They tell you to deposit the money order and wire back the difference. And, of course, a week later the money order turns out to be counterfiet, and you're left holding the bill. I wrote the woman back telling her I was concerned this might be a scam. I didn't hear from her after this, of course. Still, it's funny how close I almost came toward falling for at least the upfront part of this and giving her my address. If she'd answered my question about an employer with a company I could have googled, and said she was teaching in Durham or Chapel Hill instead of Raleigh, I might not have had alarm bells go off.

The photos posted her, by the way, are of my house now that I actually live in it with furniture and everything. Potential thieves, please note: No TV and my computer is about 5 years old at this point and maybe worth $25 on ebay. The most valuable items you could snag would be my washer and dryer and, really, if you are willing to lug around a washer and dryer for crime, you may as well go ahead and get a real job. Moving appliances is a pretty marketable skill.

Soon, I will be posting a lot of information about Bitterwood. Lots of exciting developments. Also, I'll soon start talking about other Solaris Books. The first ones are hitting stores any day now. Amazon is showing The Summoner by Gail Z. Martin is now shipping, though the Solaris website shows it's release in February. I'll post a review here once I get my hands on it.

Useful spam

"In the worst incident, masked men burst into a bar in Uruapan and flung five human heads onto a crowded dance floor in an apparent warning to a rival drug gang. I didn't get to start writing until night time!"

Actual quote from a bit of spam that was in my email today. I'm not in the habit of reading spam, but my eye caught the words "human heads" and "dance floor" and my darker instincts drew me in. The spam was trying to sell me stock in some company, which makes me curious about the link between the human heads and the company. Just what, exactly, are they selling? In any case, I'm glad I read it. If I ever blow a writing deadline, I now have a pretty good excuse in waiting.

Body parts

These are pictures from my premature New Year's Party last Friday. It was a fun little affair with about a dozen friends over to help break in my new house as a party site. Around midnight I was a little concerned about the party. I had just spent a half hour expounding the virtues of my new Roomba. We turned it loose in the bedroom and later I emptied the tray and said, "Look how much cat hair it picked up!" At that moment, I thought, "Am I really showing vacuum cleaner waste to my guests and expecting them to find this interesting?" Luckily, my brother Joseph and his girlfriend Becky rescued the party with a beer run. I had vastly underestimated the amount of alcohol that would be consumed at my party and had run out of margaritas by around 10pm.

Later, Lynne Allen broke out a really fancy digital camera and started taking time exposure pictures of my disco ball lights on the ceiling. The body parts you see belong to Lynne, Jesse, and Cheryl. I ended the night feeling deeply satisfied with the party. Any event that produces some art is a success in my book.

Bitterwood news

Solaris has started promoting Bitterwood on its website and has a preliminary cover posted here. Of course, while you're there, check out the other upcoming Solaris releases. They certainly look prepared to be an important force in the world of fantastic fiction.

I like the concept of the preliminary cover, and the teaser line "the legend lives." Solaris certainly seems to have their act together when it comes to putting together an attractive package.

In a related note, Bitterwood is now available for pre-order on Amazon. I've known about this for a few days now but was keeping quiet until I felt more prepared to promote the book. I've been told I'll be getting copy edits the first week in January. Hopefully it won't be long after that before I start posting some teaser scenes here.

I haven't felt up to the task of promoting Bitterwood til now. I've had my writing brain turned off for the last few months. After I finished the last draft of Bitterwood back in August and cranked out my Halloween story "Silent As Dust," I immersed myself in house renovation, then moving. Now I suddenly find myself working on several projects at once. I'm writing outlines for two different novels, and trying to decide on a Bitterwood related short story to write for an upcoming Solaris anthology. I'd like to do something with a tatterwing... a dragon who's had his wings slashed in punishment for some crime. But, I'm also attracted to the idea of writing a story about the the dragon king Albekizan, Bitterwood's chief antagonist, in which he's unquestionably the hero of the tale. Albekizan thinks he's the hero of the novel and that Bitterwood is the antagonist. It might be fun to play around with this notion further. Then again, written right into the novel there's a story that is told about how the wizard dragon Vendevorex came to raise a human child. In the book, the story is told through overheard dialogue. It's a fairly dramatic story, though, and could probably stand well on it's own, though it might be a spoiler if people read it before they read the novel.

I'll figure something out. For now, though, it's nice to feel like a writer again. Two months ago, I felt more like a drywall hanger... which isn't a terrible feeling, but, trust me, writing is much easier on the back.

God Smites My Scanner

I was reading the paper yesterday when an ad caught my eye. The headline of the ad read "Which of the Following Sins Would Most Likely Send a Person to Hell?" The four choices were 1) Murder, 2) Stealing, 3) Adultery, and 4) Homosexuality. You were then invited to engage in free Bible correspondence to discover the answer. The bottom lines of the ad read, "No time limit. Certificate upon completion."

The reason the ad caught my attention was that beside the words "Send a Person to Hell" there was a drawing of a bearded man in a robe that I'm guessing is meant to be God. God in medieval art is frequently portrayed with a stern, serious expression, but this God is drawn with a broad smile. The juxtaposition of words and image implies, to me at least, that God is gleeful at the thought of sending a person to Hell for one of the above sins. He looks like he's laughing at his own joke. "You want to get into Heaven? Well of course, come on... NOT! You're going to Hell! HAHAHAHA!"

It's not so much God as an authority figure as God as a supervillian. Which, I'm doubting was the intent of the ad.

I tore the ad out of the paper and brought it home. I intended to scan it and post it on my blog. I launched my scanner and got the preview image. I hit the scan button... and my scanner died. It's kaput. My computer doesn't even recognize that it's plugged in any more. It seems to have no power to it at all.

When I took the ad off the scanner, I kind of expected a FIFTH ANSWER:

5) Scanning God's image with the intent of mocking him on the internet.

Oh well, when it comes to Hell, in for a penny, in for a pound, I guess. Because, if I understand the Christian theology of my youth, the answer to the checklist in the ad is both "All of the above" and "None of the above." "None of the above" in the two ways. First, you can do all these sins, and worse, then repent and accept Jesus and get your get out of Hell free card. Second, if you don't do any of these sins, but still don't repent and accept Jesus, you're going to Hell anyway. You are born, after all, with original sin. You could slip and hit your head as a toddler and live 80 years in a coma and ZOOP, off to Hell with you when you die. Going to Hell is the default position... it requires an active decision to change that fate.

This all or nothing element of damnation is one reason I'm mystified by conservative Christian stands against certain sins in particular. Homosexuality, for instance. If you talk to conservative Christians who oppose homosexuality, they will tell you that they are just trying to save the fags from Hell. Homosexuality is listed as a sin, after all. But, of course, so is eating pork, and you don't see them running through McDonald's smacking bacon cheeseburgers out of people's hands. And don't get me started about coveting. Coveting is right there on the big ten list of no-no's. Unfortunately, it seems to me, especially during the holidays, that the entire American economy is built on coveting. People want the hottest toys and gadgets so much they get into fist fights in the parking lot. Why aren't conservative Christian's standing in front of Walmart warning people that excessive desire for a material thing is a sin?

I should probably write in and ask the free Bible correspondence people. I'm thinking that certificate would look nice on the wall.

A banjo quilted

I've been playing around with altvista.com's babelfish translator and just tried translating the opening lines of my story Silent as Dust. I randomly chose Portuguese as the language to translate to and from. The results were interesting:

The Company That I remain myself. I am judging a sample of talent in the attic of seven chimneys. We are close to the chimney master, we enter one maze of the boxes, gray with grime. Moonlight through the round window serves as spotlight for ours contestants. First above of it is Dan, a fulled hart dirige with five antlers of the point and startled the look in its glass eyes. Dan sings of the "a rock jailhouse" as if one was ballad blue of the gram, folloied for Binky, a monkey of sock with a banjo quilted. It comes after that the professor To blink, a bear of teddy 65-year-old with an eye and half of its original skin. The professor To blink is to juggler, keeping in high a rammer of crochet, a light bulb broken of washes, and ceramic manger of the decorations of christmas. When all the three articles are in air, grasp an old sphere of bowling and launch it in the cool mixture with one grace that points gain it.

The original, for comparison:

The Company I Keep. I'm judging a talent show in the attic of Seven Chimneys. We're near the master chimney, amidst a maze of boxes, gray with grime. The moonlight through the round window serves as the spotlight for our contestants.
First up is Dan, a stuffed deer head with five point antlers and a startled look in his glass eyes. Dan sings "Jailhouse Rock" as if it were a blue grass ballad, accompanied by Binky, a sock monkey with a quilted banjo.
Next comes Professor Wink, a 65-year-old teddy bear with one eye and half his original fur. Professor Wink is a juggler, keeping aloft a crochet mallet, a broken lava lamp, and the ceramic manger from the Christmas decorations. When all three items are in the air, he grabs an old bowling ball and tosses it into the mix with a cool grace that earns him points.

How did I ever waste the precious hours of my life before the internet?

Long shot Hail Mary

Tonight, I sent my first ever submission to the New Yorker. A few months ago I wrote a story called "Silent as Dust" for the Codexwriters Halloween contest. This was my third time entering the contest. The first two years, I came in second place. In fact, I split second place one year with Tom Pendergrass, so if you are a glass half empty kind of person, I tied for third the first year. So, this year, I was hungry to win. I'm not positive why... it's not like there's money involved. The stories don't get published. (At least, not a guaranteed publication... several contest stories have gone on to sales at various outlets.) But, my short story output has waned over the years. I find, as I've become a better writer, I have a harder and harder time finding stories I can get excited about writing. Ten years ago, any idea I had seemed like a pretty good one. Now, if find I'm much more picky. There are professional writers who can sit down and write a story about just about anything. They could take the headings from the spam in their email boxes and find inspiration. I don't have that kind of drive. So, the Codex contests keep me cranking out short fiction. Of the four contests I've entered, I've sold two of the stories, one of them twice, and have faith that the other two will find a home eventually.

Silent as Dust was my submission this year to the contest. I had a vibe when I submitted it that it would probably win. It turned out to be a landslide. In the aftermath, I had half a dozen people tell me I should submit the story to some prestigious market like the New Yorker or Playboy. And, I figure, what have I got to lose? It turns out the New Yorker takes email submissions. It can't even claim I'm wasting postage.

Still, the New Yorker rejects about a thousand stories for every one they accept. Pretty lousy odds, but better than the lottery. And, I don't exactly write a lot of stories that would fit in the pages of the New Yorker... I'm not positive this one does either, but it's a quirky little ghost story with very subdued supernatural elements. It's a more likely fit than, say, Final Flight of the Blue Bee.

Speaking of Blue Bee, I got my copy of ESLI with the story in Russian. It's utterly bizarre to open a magazine and not even be able to read my own name. I can only recognize my story by the illustration and the copyright containing the Asimov's first publication acknowledgement. I hope it eventually appears online and I can translate it using babelfish.

Talk the Talk

My friend Luc Reid has recently published a book called Talk the Talk. It's a dictionary of subculture terms, examining specific phrases unique to groups such as rock climbers, role play gamers, drug pushers, and homosexuals. It's being pushed by the publisher, Writer's Digest, as a reference book for authors. But, I think it's also going to be of interest to anyone with an interest in slang and obscure cultural references. It's well researched and attractively packaged, and would make a good coffee table book, or, let's be blunt, excellent bathroom reading. Also, I think it would make an excellent gift for a crossword puzzle fanatic, since I bet crossword puzzle editors dig through books like this for fresh clues. Check it out.

I'm moved! For real this time!

I carried in the last boxes from my car tonight. Everything that used to be in my old apartment is now either at my new house or in the dump. Next time I move, I hope I'm in a strong enough financial position to pay someone to do it for me. I sincerely appreciate all the people who've helped me move these last few weeks, but dragging it out over the course of weeks has been exhausting. When you hire pros, they sweep in a box everything in a few hours, whether you want it boxed or not. There's a certain appeal to this.

Gridlock! I hope. Maybe.

It's been ages since I've done a political post. I think there's been one since Laura passed away. I find that my interest in politics has waned during the last year. Part of it has been the unrelenting sameness of the news. During the Clinton administration, I was fired up over what I saw as government abuse of power. Things like the slaughter of children at Waco, the Clinton's pulling the IRS records of their political enemies to dig for dirt, the allegations of government monitoring of international traffic, and the involvement in a war against a country that posed absolutely no threat to us (Bosnia) seemed like the beginning of the end of what we think of as democracy. So, of course, all these practices continued, and were often taken to a whole new level by the Bush administration. Worse, Clinton had faced a hostile congress and actually was unable to pass any huge new spending initiatives like big health care plans. Bush with a friendly congress went out and spent money as if it was just some imaginary number on a government spreadsheet. And, he did it while cutting taxes, more or less. (Tax revenues are actually increasing, so I'm hesitant to call his tax cuts tax cuts. When the government has less money to spend next year than it did the year before, I'll call that a tax cut.) Bush and the Republicans are spending like a typical American consumer... they are living on credit cards, buying a lifestyle they can't afford at present by mortgaging the future.

I don't think the Democrat takeover of congress will signal an end to any of this. But, maybe it will slow it down with gridlock for at least a couple of years. Bush and the Dems can be like squabbling spouses arguing whether or not to use the credit cards for a big screen TV or to send the kids to summer camp. Maybe in the end one of them will end up sleeping on the couch and neither purchase will get made, though I recognise the risk that maybe they'll make nice and buy both.

I confess, though, I have lost most of my interest in politics due to a growing despair that we'll ever see the birth of sensible government. (I won't say a return to... when has our goverment ever been sensible.)

How would I define sensible government? Here are three things I'd like to see government do:

1. STOP KILLING PEOPLE. Seriously, the world just doesn't pose that big of a threat to us. Canada isn't going to invade, Mexico IS invading, but as near as I can tell their takeover mainly involves lawncare and hanging drywall, and the Chinese aren't going to mess with us because they are too busy selling shoes. And how, exactly, was Iraq supposed to invade us? Did they even have a navy? Using our military to try to stop terrorism is a bit like trying to use a sledgehammer to kill a nest of fireants. You can flatten that anthill, and probably kill a lot of ants, but it's not going to solve he problem on anything but a temporary cosmetic measure. And, was it a problem? Yes, terrorists had a big symbolic hit. They hurt a lot of people. But sending our troops out to stop a future attack has killed more American troops than the people who died on 9-11, and cost a lot more economically. Not to get all Christian on you or anything, but there is a certain strategic wisdom, at times, to turning the other cheek. We would have made much more of a blow to the passion of the terrorists if we'd just carried on with life.

2. STOP PORKING US! Okay, I'm a realist. I know that the big money in government is being spent on big projects... Social Security, Medicare, Defense, and paying interest on the debt. The money being set aside as earmarks for local projects is relatively trivial. But trivial adds up in the long run. If we have to spend federal money, we should be spending it on national projects only. Sending money that benifits only one district by building a bridge or a museum or a golf course is a misuse of Federal money. State and local money should finance state and local projects.

3. FLIP HEALTH CARE. Okay, here's why I'm not strictly a libertarian anymore. My close involvement with the health care system during Laura's illness has made me think that, yes, maybe there is a government role to be played here. But, I think that all government schemes I've seen for "universal" health care are awful. I think that any scheme that has the government getting involved in all aspects of health care is doomed to be wasteful. Some will argue that if we cover the costs of the small stuff, the preventive medicine, it will save money in the long run. This is such nonsense. Money isn't the main obstacle to people getting preventive health care. An annual check up, better diet, and excercise cost a couple of hundred bucks. It's not lack of funds that are keeping people away from the doctor, it's American's natural apathy towards their own health, which doesn't have a government solution. So, let's get rid of government plans that concentrate on the small scale spending, and pay attention to catastrophic illnesses.

The details of the plan can be worked out by people with actual facts and figures. But, one approach would be to set an arbitrary number and decide that government would pick up costs beyond that number, no questions asked in the case of life threatening illness. So, the first fifty thousand bucks of a person's illness would be the responsibility of the sicko and the insurance company. Or maybe the first 1oo grand. Or the first ten grand. A second approach would be to scale this number based on the persons income. Major illnesses shouldn't bankrupt people, but it's silly for the government to be picking up the bill for Dick Cheney's heart attacks. Trust me, Cheney can pay for his own health care. My dad, on the other hand, would probably not survive the economic hit of Cheney's health problems. So, maybe the scale should be based on a person's most recent tax return. If you earned $20k last year, the number where the government would step in would be low, maybe $5k. If you were Bill Gates, maybe the goverment wouldn't step in until you were.... well, let's be blunt. If you had a health condition serious enough to risk your wealth at Bill Gates level, the most merciful approach to your health care might be to drag you out behind the shed and hit you with a sledgehammer.

The odds of getting this passed, by the way, are precisely zero. But, thought I'd toss it on the table anyway.

Email working again

My earthlink email account was accidentally deactivated when I switched by cable internet from my old address to my new address. I had a very frustrating experience Thursday trying to reactivate it without success. But, this morning I tried again, got the right person, and had the whole thing taken care of in ten minutes. I was going to post the transcript of the first chat I had with the sucky customer service, but at this point, the good service this morning cancels the bad earthlink karma. I've gotten calls from people wondering why their emails were bouncing. If you were one of the people who tried to email me, try again. I'm back.