Some Stuff

I spent the past weekend in Manhattan, visiting family and enjoying the sights. I had the pleasure of taking my daughter to see Neil Gaiman perform with the Knickerbocker Chamber Orchestra. They did a rendition of Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. It was a wonderful production, and my daughter and I enjoyed it very much.

After dropping the kiddies off, we headed over to Keat's on 2nd Ave for some cocktails and karaoke. If you missed my butchering of Empire State of Mind, then you missed a real treat. Oddly enough, I've frequented Keat's plenty of times, but this was the first time I realized that right next store is the steak house Palm Too. Haven't heard of it? It's the restaurant Stephen King refers to in On Writing when he discusses description. What a weird and smallish world.

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Happy 201st Birthday, Edgar Allan Poe. Some articles of interest regarding His birthday.

Nevermore? Mystery birthday visitor to Poe grave is no-show, breaking tradition

Poe and the Philadelphia Gothic: An Interview with Ed "Philly Poe Guy" Pettit

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A New Gig

It's official. Meet the newest writer for the Bram Stoker Award-winning newsletter Hellnotes. The title of my monthly column is Gray Matter, and it will focus on the craft of writing horror fiction, a subject I absolutely love to discuss. I've recently submitted my first article, and it may be available as soon as tomorrow for your viewing pleasure. I'll post it on the right under a section called Gray Matter when it becomes available.

If there are some particular subjects you would like me to focus on, please let me know.

I suggest you include Hellnotes into whatever your choice RSS reader is, but I'll also be posting the articles on this blog, as they become available of course.

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During the Great Blog Shift, I forgot to put back those free short stories available on Scribd. They're back.

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Typewriters vs. Computers

I imagine you're all busy sticking to your resolutions, Dear Readers, so I'll keep this post short and with a sugar substitute.

I've managed to plow through the first draft of my apocalypse novel, and though there's some good stuff there, most of it won't make the second draft. Better stated: My first draft is Crap. That's okay though. It's how I write. Some writers can put down a first draft that is almost complete. Look at Kurt Vonnegut. Guy would only write a page or two a day, but when the manuscript was finished, the book was finished. And while Vonnegut is an exception, I sometimes wonder if his discipline, at least in part, comes from a typewritten mindset. My first two drafts, sometimes even the third, are complete rewrites. By about the third cut I got something I can work with. I can't say for sure why that is, but I suspect it has to do with the ease in which manuscripts can be edited on a computer versus a typewriter. Maybe the seduction of the keystrokes, like some writers suggest. Or perhaps a computer is like a thruway, and a typewriter is like a horse & buggy. You can drive the same thruway a hundred times before you realize you pass an airport. On horse and buggy you know the color of every stone you pass.

So what do you think, Dear Reader?

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