I won't be blogging for a bit

I will be editing and revising WHEN THE WOLVES QUIT.

I got a lot to do this month...a lot.

Soon I will emerge from this non-posting phase.

Love, J.

It's my day off.

And we're probably headed out to Richmond Beach. This is Indie's favorite spot! She's even waded in the shallow water a bit...without knowing it...

We were planning on possibly going to see THE EXPENDABLES with Dave, but probably not till next week. That movie looks reeeee-diculous!

I just paid my deferment fee at Columbia College. All told, I paid a decent amount of fees--one to accept my spot, the second to defer--so when I start next year I'll have a big chuck of my first semester's bill out of the way. Not bad. I'm really excited to go, but I'm also really excited to be here. The baby's coming soon and we're gonna have almost a year to be around our friends and family in the NW. I think that this choice is really been good for us, and it'll be good for our little boy. It WILL suck having to move when fall comes, but hey, I gotta finish grad school. I don't want to be teaching comp and working at a front desk for the rest of my life. I got bills to pay!

I've been writing a lot of new stuff and revising the shit out of WOLVES. Right now I'm mapping out the letters. There are about 15 or so, but I'm gonna turn that 15 into twenty (though I'm cutting about four, so I got a lot of production to do). The time I have to finish this draft seemed like a lot in theory, but when it comes down to it, it's not a lot of time. Though, I know what I have to do on that end. In terms of the main narrative--the preacher vanishing and all the murders surfacing--well, I need to make that arc present, and I need to make to it the anchor arc that is filled in by the CUE BACKDROPS and the letters. I think the book's organization is going to change a lot based on how the letters end up...and how much I bring the sheriff's search into the foreground (which is something the editors really want).

I'm thinking about ways to promote this book when it comes out (if it comes out). I'm probably gonna do a series on this blog about certain characters, murders, things...I'll probably get a twitter account (I know, but it's a way to promote...maybe I won't), and I'm gonna try to set up a blog tour. Any ideas? Throw 'em my way!

I'm kinda hungry so I think it's time for lunch.

Oh, the New Season of Mad Men is chugging along...if you're not up on the show, get there.

Bye bye boys and girls

J to the oshua

Yep

I got the adjunct job at ITT-TECH, unless my background check brings up something bad. It won't. I'm clean as a whistle (whatever that even means? how clean in a whistle anyway...all the whistles I know are gross and caked in dried saliva). So, once I fill out the paper work and turn it in, they make an offer and I will sign, and I will have a teaching job. I rocked my demo-teach. It was fun talking about composition (yeah, I know). I talked about Dave and my little bro, Jordan. It was cool. I got ten thumbs up (five people in the room--not counting my boss, who did not count her own thumbs which would've made 12). Anyway. Rad.

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I'm revising and rewriting and writing for When the Wolves Quit. It's hard work, but it's great going back into a project that's been done for a year and opening that shit up: "there's a slick rumbling lathering through my chest. the party broke hours ago, and all my friends left debris in all my rooms...all that's left is a girl in the shaded corner of the room. i hear a piano ringing out from behind her, notes lifting, as though her breaths have let them into the room....the room seizes and buckles when she looks at me and says, 'can you hear that cadence?'"

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Later,

Joshua

New Book Excerpt

ANOTHER GHOST-KILLING

in the pines and cedars we give chase. there is only one soldier left after the ghost-killings, and he’s sobbing—his gun jams when he tried to fire on us, so he drops it and runs. ahead—we hear him crunching and crying through the forest, and in a clearing, he spins around and shouts, “what do you want?” we want to know why he’s setting fires. “orders,” he says, then asks us why we killed his platoon, and why we want to kill him. we tell him it wasn’t us. “who was it?” we tell him ghosts don’t like fires. he faces goes still and wind pushes against him. the tops of the weeds slap his thighs and he collapses. the wind retreats and ghost hair floats between us and the body. there’s no need to check his body. we know what this means.

Hello!

So, I've started to realize that it's a real struggle to blog everyday (now that I'm a working man--not in Grad School), but I need to blog because it forces me to write on days that I don't. Yeah Ian, there are days I don't write. So, I've decided that on days I don't write, I'll post something I've written recently, either from Wolves, or my new poetry project, or The Story Thief Book 2. So, hopefully, I'll get a rhythm going, so that I log in and post something.

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I was listening to The Hold Steady as I ran today. I just can't get enough of that band. But what really draws me to them is that when I listen to records (I only have two and need the rest), I get to revisit characters I've come to know listening to both records. For example, on their third record Boys and Girls in America there's a song about a girl who is clairvoyant (or is she?) and the speaker and her bet on a horse named Chips Ahoy (this was their first single for that release), with their winnings they spend the weekend getting high, but the speaker feels the distance increase and realizes that this girl is fucked up, or at least, not someone he can love...or something (you listen to it and tell me what you think). Now, in their latest release, the speaker reminiscences about "the whole weird thing with the horses" and continues "they [the listener/audience/reader] know exactly what happened, i don't think it needs any explaining..." the song writer is acknowledge that he trusts his audience to make the connection, to continue with the story of these two people. That's just one example, but there are tons of those kinds of connections...and the reach goes back record by record. So when I finally get the funds to listen to all of them, I'll have more to say.

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In publishing news, I just received my editorial notes from Ooligan Press. They're really great notes and I'm looking forward to my revision. I also have notes from Richard Greenfield, and think that the Ooligan notes directly relate to Richard's in great ways. Once I revise I resubmit and the editors at Oolgian (if they like the changes) will take it the executive board. I'm really stoked my editors are really great and the press is totally NW and have some wonderful titles. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

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In hiking news, I'm going hiking with Ian tomorrow. We're taking Indie. So, I may have pictures. Ian deserves props for reading and re-reading and making notes for The Story Thief from DAY ONE and through this summer (That's over three years of reading and notes!!!). I owe him big! But also, he deserves props for dealing with how many times we were supposed to hang out that I either forgot about or just got too busy.

Ian: You are the man. I'll miss you when you go back to Hampshire with all those richies.

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I haven't been reading enough. Right now I'm reading Ishmael. It's slow going, but not because of the writing or the book, but because my mind is thinking about revisions and new projects.

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I have no pictures to post this time.

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Later duders,

Joshua

Music?!

Don't be fooled by this douche-baggery! This is a great band. Their lives shows are rad...why?...because they don't EVER play the songs the same. There's always something different. Sometimes, they mesh songs together. Sometimes, he sings a melody that sounds more like Colorblind, than Mr Jones. Sometimes, they're loud as shit Sometimes, they're playing quiet.

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Personally, I'll never pay to see them again. But I'm glad I got to see them once (They were wedged between Maroon 5 (yeah, I had to sit through that shit!) and John Mayer (We left when he started playing)) I'd rather listen to their records anyway, because they're loose, but perfectly made, perfectly created.

Everyone knows my love of the Counting Crows is unconditional...no matter how hard they sold out from day one, or how many soundtrack songs they write are fucking cheesy (yeah, the one from Shrek), how many commercials they're on. They are a great band, and Adam Duritz (though kind of a big douche) can write a song. A write good songs. But there's something literary about his song writing and the band's sound (yes, I hate when people call bands literary because they sing about literature (though the Hold Steady does this and it's brilliant, there's more to them as well) and think that a band being literary is their use of narrative thread and lyric arms reaching between songs, albums, and decades...sometimes). Durtiz's lyrical and song writing doesn't make nods to Mark Twain or Faulkner or anything like that, but he talks about his life, his women, his friends, his problems, and he's brutally honest and sometimes really fucking sentimental (sometimes it's toooooo much for even me), but Goddamn when pick up August and Everything After, then later listen to This Desert Life, and here about the same things, but those things are seen through different lenses (either more mature or more immature or more inconsiderate than the last song about Maria or Elizabeth or California or what have you). There's change and struggle and wavering doubt and wavering hope, and it changes from song to song, album to album, year to year, listen to listen.

Order of Favorite CC records:

Recovering the Satellites (THIS ALBUM IS BRILLIANT! FUCKING BRILLIANT!)

The Desert Life (A very close second, just centimeters behind Satellites)

August and Everything After (Step Out the Front Door like a Ghost into the Fog where no one notices the contrast of white on white. In between the moon and you angels get a better view of the crumbling differences between wrong and right... BEST opening to an song, album, band, EVER. Top it and I'll buy you a Popsicle. There might be some ties, but I doubt there are lines that beat this...)

Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings (could be one if the second half was as gutsy and ripe as the first half)

Hard Candy (has great songs (like "Holiday in Spain," but is uneven and clearly the work of a band struggling to write songs together after years of touring and playing the same songs)

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I was gonna keep writing about other bands...writing about The Hold Steady's narrative threads, and then the band the New Year, but maybe next time. I'm tired.

Later dudes and girl-dudes,

Joshua

Hey.

So, my grandpa is dying. Actually, he's been dying for a while, and every time we think we say goodbye, he hangs on. He keeps pushing through.

I wrote an part of an essay about this, and continue to write about it to this day. My relationship with my grandpa is complication to say the least. I love him, but I really don't feel like I know him. Hell, I don't even know much about where he came from and what he did with his life.

I feel bad 'cause I was just talking to Chelsea and didn't mention this to her. I don't know why, but I'm thinking that maybe I've gotten used to the whole "Grandpa is dying...oh, wait, he's not really dying yet." And now, I'm in the state of not making a big deal about it. I mean, it IS a big deal, but that man can fight, and he's hanging in there. I asked my dad how much time he had, and he said, "With my Dad, you never know." So, we're hanging in there with him, thinking about him, and hoping that he stays comfortable and taken care of.

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So, that's been going on. And I've been working the front desk at a hotel in Redmond. Not a bad job. Writer's. If you ever feel like you need some inspiration, go work at a hotel. I'm not kidding, I've already got ideas, AND found some ways around problems I had in a screenplay that was going nowhere and a novel that I had put behind me. Anyway. It's been good. The people are different. I don't know how to explain it, but it's people who take their job and themselves way too serious, and don't realize that there's a way of doing things. In fact, I was told I "had" to break a labor law the other night. It wasn't a big deal, so I did it. But I went home and double-checked it. And yeah, I was told to break a labor law...awesome. When I told someone about it, she was like, "No, you didn't have to--I don't know why they told you that, but it's just easier to do it this way, and no one gets in trouble." Uh, OK.

Whatever. It's what's expected of the pay. I'm not complaining. I just want to laugh and some of the shit. And the uniforms. Ugh. Maybe I'll take a picture and post it.

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Em and I are going to hang out, maybe in Seattle today. We're just gonna go do something. It'll be fun.

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Whatelse. Whatelse. Whatesle.

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Lots of stuff. But I haven't been reading a lot. Just not enough time. I've been sleeping in. But I want to get on it, so I'll be getting up an hour earlier, just to read. I think. Maybe write. We'll see.

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