For those of you have give a flying fuck, I have five grad schools lined up for my MFA pursuits: two in California (Irvine and San Francisco), one in Oregon, another in North Carolina, and Rutgers–Camden as a backup. I’m pretty keen on all of ‘em, though RU-C remains my least preferred pick and North Carolina is the last placeI’d care to wind up. Regardless of where I end up, there is something scary about having just shy of a year to get your act together. A year, I might add, that will come and go quicker than I care it to.

In other news, I think I’m finally on the verge of kicking off the Onomatopodcast. My writing friend/cohort/compadre/student Roland will join me for the pilot. After which I have some creative writing teachers lined up to participate. From there? Who knows. But I do so miss podcasting.

Other than academic struggles and finding the focus an drive to get my act together as a writer, life is fairly good. I’m beyond happy with the new apartment, and have no intention to leave until fall 2013 (which is when, prospectively, I might me skirting on over to one of the aforementioned grad schools). I love the apartment, the location.

Anyway, I’m going to wrap this rambling up now. I thought it would be fun to write a blog post with one eye shut tight courtesy of inebriation. Rest assured, however, that I aim to start posting more writing samples and excerpts in the near future. I’m going to strongarm Roland into joining me with the writing samples. Hopefully that will not only improve us as writers, but challenge us.

For the sake of not making this post a total kvetch fetch, I’m going to post part one of an enjoyable Richard. K. Morgan interview he took part in shortly before the release of The Cold Commands. I think it’s fascinating. Granted, my man crush on this particular Brit is the stuff of legends. But still. Sage advice and insight from an extremely accomplished author that’s invaluable for those of us hoping to follow his footsteps:

Watch this video on YouTube.

◊

Naphtali slipped back through the slums until she found herself on the far end of West Nazca, a few blocks shy of where the city abruptly ended and the Wasteland began. She stood outside the hovel she was last sure Ky kept. She entered without fuss, the front door not even locked, and climbed her way up the splintered, dilapidated stairs to the fifth floor, to the cubby hole where Ky used to flop. The hallway was all warped rotted wood and broken glass. She found Ky’s door at the far end. It was cracked open. Suddenly she wished she’d swung by her place for her sword. She approached quietly, reached out and pushed the door open a bit further, rusted hinges whining in strain, and slipped inside.

Kizler’s apartment was a wreck. Tables and chairs were knocked over, books and lamps and various possessions strewn about. Either Ky’s problems started here last night and ended back in that alley or someone had turned this place over, looking for money, perhaps, or something of value to hock if Ky was in as deep with the bindwa trade as Reyne suggested.

As she crossed towards the center of the apartment, she heard the faint creak of a floor board come from Ky’s bedroom. She looked up, felt her muscles tense instinctively. She approached the door slowly, crouched low.

The door burst open in storm of wood splinters and broken framing, and threw Naphtali on her back. She got upright just in time to see a dark-dressed man, face masked by a bandana, coming at her with a short sword. She rolled to the side and kicked one leg out, brutally striking the attacker’s ankle. He cried out and fell to his knees.

He got up fast, just as Naphtali was rising, and rushed her. He swung his sword in a flat arc, which she narrowly evaded. When it cleared she closed the gap between them, locking his blade arm between their bodies. Grabbed his sword arm’s wrist and twisted it viciously until she heard his wrist bone snap. The sword dropped.

Naphtali swung her elbow, a bone-jarring strike to the man’s temple. He stumbled away, but not before throwing out a wild haymaker that clipped Naphtali’s mouth. She fell to the floor, reaching out on impulse and wrapping her fingers around the spine of what felt like a leather-bound book. Sprang back up and smashed it into her attacker’s face just as he thrust his fist into her solar plexus. She felt the air explode out of her lungs. Dizzy, disoriented, she staggered away frantically, putting space between herself and her attacker. He came at her straight on. She knocked aside his sloppy punch and delivered a series of short blows to his neck and face. Another burst of pain as his boot crashed into her chest, sending her flying back in a heap.

She flipped to her stomach, hands scrambling across the torn-up wood floor in search of something to use as a weapon. Found purchase on the handle of the attacker’s lost short sword. She pushed herself upright, adrenaline cranked high. The masked man was back on his feet, a small, pocket-sized knife in his hand. He came at her with a series of wild swings. One of them caught home, slicing through her shoulder. But as the blade cleared the attacker left his midrift wide open.

Naphtali threw all her weight into the thrust and sunk the short sword into his stomach at an upwards angle. Felt the hilt jolt to a halt against one of his ribs. The attacker coughed blood, soaking his bandana with a deeper, wet stain of black. Naphtali wrenched the blade free and dropped down on one knee, burying it into his femoral artery. He toppled back, choking and gurgling on his own blood.

Naphtali fell back on her haunches, breathing heavily. She prodded the wound on her shoulder and hissed in pain. Turned over on her hands and vomited fiercely. She allowed herself to catch her breath, wiped her mouth with her duster’s sleeve, then with a bit of struggle, rose to her feet and approached the dying man, who looked past her, seeing only what the soon dead can see. She fished through his pockets, searched him thoroughly. Tore off his bandana. Nothing stood out to her. Just your average merc at first glance—and an ugly son of a bitch at that. Then something caught her eye—a marking. A tattoo poking just above the collar of his tunic. She tore the section of the tunic away.

Malrain—Malagan rebels. She recognized their insignia. The ink on his collarbone was indistinguishable.

“Bindwa my fuckin’ ass,” she spat in a hoarse cough. “What did you get yourself into, Ky?”

I do have a fairly stable WIP of “Nazca City Blues,” but I don’t think I ought to post that in its entirety, especially as a WIP. So perhaps a snippet in the near future? No promises. Have to play some cards close to the chest. I’m sure you understand.

In the meanwhile, I s’pose this is good as any time to flex teacherly—to begin to embrace the reality that I am not your average student, that I am, in fact, on the  verge of making the transition from student to teacher, and as such, ought to start posting more pedagogically—that is to say, start teachin’ what I’m preachin’. So for a debut? A short sermon on the importance of proofreading, editing, drafting, and preparing a piece for workshop (read: preparing a piece for publication).

The short and the skinny is: If you’re a creative writer, or writing minor, or anyone who takes their writing remotely serious, please, please, please treat the item you are submitting as if it were being submitted to a publisher. Show it to friends, family, whomever—just make sure it has been looked at by eyes other than your own, and please draft it a minimum of three times. The grammatical side of writing is a lot like clothing—it is the superficial layer upon which we judge others. The more chaotic and messy your grammar is, the less likely your readership is to become engrossed in your story. By no means am I prescriptivist. I simply believe that in order to break the rules, as creative writers are wont to do, myself included, you must first have a firm grasp of the rules. So do yourself a favor and pick up any of the countless grammar books that exist out there (except Strunk & White, whom oppose to “they/their” as a singular pronoun in favor if “he/him/his”—fuck their archaic sexism) or take Doctor Epstein’s Modern American-English Grammar course.

Also? Writing is revision. “The first draft of anything is shit” (according to Ernest Hemingway). Hence: My three-draft minimum.

Naphtali Archeron knelt on the cracked surface of the Wasteland. Her splayed fingers barely touched the ruined earth as though she feared its corruption would spread to her. Nazca was to her back. Its monolithic buildings abandoned by the Ancients stood sentinel atop the horizon. The distant city wavered like a hazy mirage from the distance and the heat that baked the Wasteland. The Wasteland was all around them. The city. Naphtali. Her crew. They were all that decorated the seemingly endless stretch of dead land.

Ahead of Naphtali rose the remains of the archaeological dig site Samara had enlisted her misfit crew to escort her to. The site was dominated by a half-buried Ancientech drill that resembled a massive centipede lashed to the ground by wires and cables protruding from its sides. More technology that did not belong to them. It was the Ancients’. But the New Nations saw only the supposed advantages of the Restorians, reverse engineering Ancientech and magitech. Not the dangers. Even after the catastrophe at Zarephath. Dig sites continued to sprout up anywhere a hint of ‘techs appeared. This particular dig site had already been used to explore what lay beneath the Wasteland. It had been abandoned by the archaeologues like the Ancients had abandoned Nazca. And Zarephath. And all the other lingering cities still left on the face of Phaedrana. What they left behind were like toys in a sandbox. Toys that the New Nations had no business playing with.

Samara Granseal continued to set up her equipment. Her work consumed her. As far as Naphtali could tell now that she had reached the dig site her escorts no longer existed. There was only the machine. Her work. Whatever magitech score she was so sure she would find. Such lust for a vanished civilizations scraps was beyond Naphtali’s understanding. She could be no help to the archaeologue. Which was fine by her. She wanted no part in this stupidity any more than she had already signed up for against her better judgment. But money was a bitch to come by for her and her ilk. Turning down work was just as foolish as venturing out to the Wasteland in search of ‘tech.

So instead she fished out a pre-rolled spliff of hinas from her duster. Lit it with a crude match. She took a long draw from it then made her way to Wyatt. He looked at her from behind his cobbled together spectacles as she approached. She looked like a desert phantom with her black military duster flapping chaotically in the sandy winds. When she reached him she knelt down beside him and looked at the device he was tinkering with. It was a slender electronic device with a series of unlit rectangular lights on one side. Wyatt had popped the back off and was realigning the wires. She spoke to him in a whisper so quiet the winds threatened to steal her words.

Is it operational?

Should be.

Wyatt made one last adjustment and snapped the plastic back on the device on and flipped a switch. The lowest three rectangles glowed to life. They were bright green. Wyatt whispered back to Naphtali.

That’s the sound of the wind.

How much louder can we get before attracting any metal demons’ attention?

Not much. Their sense-nets are. Well. Sensitive to say the least.

Naphtali said: Test. A fourth green light blinked awake. She said it again louder. She spoke in her normal vocal range. A yellow light flicked on above the four green lights. She waited. She hesitated. Then she said loudly: Zolom.

A second yellow light appeared. Then a red light blinked to life ominously above it. There was only one light left unlit on the device. She looked at Wyatt.

Two reds are too many. Two reds is toast. Two reds is Zolom.

Naphtali shook her head.

We shouldn’t be here, Wyatt. Noise limit is too low. And somehow I doubt that metal bug back there is going to stay quiet.

It was your call.

She sighed

Let’s just hope the high winds keep up. Mask our activity. Keep your specs on.

Naphtali pushed herself upright and moved away from Wyatt and turned to face Ky Kizler and Kuran Fenrir. She performed a series of hand gestures to warn each of them to keep quiet. Real quiet.

Just as she did Samara’s monstrous metal centipede stirred to life. With it came the grinding roar of sand-choked metal on metal and the hum of whatever powered the machine. It shook the ground as it shuddered back to life. Naphtali looked to Samara. The fucking thing’s sound dampeners had failed. Samara looked back at Naphtali in horror. Her hand dropped to her holster.

The device in Wyatt’s hand was lit fully. The final two red lights shined brightest.

Behind Naphtali the Wasteland burst open. The sky filled with slate grey dirt that turned into a cloud of dust as the hardened earth crumbled apart. Another cry sounded. Gears and machinery clicked and whirred and thrummed with a life far more awake than the drill. Naphtali turned. She felt the surge of combat training flood through her like a dormant creature stirred to live. She rode the familiar rush of adrenaline and spun about. Her revolver and sword were already in her hands. Her lifetime’s worth of training took command. She shed herself one of Naphtali and became Zarephath’s Naphtali now that she faced another remnant of the Ancients: the Zolom. The machine-worm dwarfed the centipedal drilling device. It twisted in the air and snaked upwards. It emitted a screech that silenced even the winds. Its tubular body constantly shifted and blinked with the unmistakable activity of Ancientech advanced machinery. All blue lights and organic shaped metal casing. The metal worm looped in the air and blotted out the sun. Naphtali and her crew became one organic unit. Weapons drawn and prepared for battle as the shadow of the Zolom spread over them. Washed them in darkness. The Zolom let out chilling inhuman machine screech and curled directly towards Naphtali and her team.

–Shown to me by Katherine (father’s wife), posted on her Facebook.

A few years ago, my grandmother, Tracy, died. A few years before that, my uncle Tony, father to the blood-relative I am closest to, also died. Was, as far as I’m concerned, murdered in a DUI-related car crash (in which he was not the driver under the influence, but rather the victim. Naturally, the piece of shit who got behind the wheel all hopped up and twisted on meds that night survived). These are the only two deaths in my family close enough to affect me. And I never got to say goodbye to either of them. In the case of my uncle, neither did his wife or children. All we got was a phone call that grew into a chain of phone calls.

My grandmother, unfortunately, suffered through the very worst final stages of a cancerous death. She was, like her daughter—my mother—a woman unaccustomed to showing vulnerability. She developed a membranous armor over the course of her difficult, colored life. She was not emotionally detached, but she could weather the worst of storms. But when my brother, Jason, and I went to see her in the hospital she sent us away. We never got past the curtain that hid her from us. Never caught a glimpse of her. Only heard her plead that we not see her “like this,” that we not see her weak. Vulnerable.

I can never decide if this was noble or selfish on her part. On the one hand, I’m somewhat. Grateful. That the lasting image I have of my grandmother, from whom I suspect I inherited many of my traits, is of her at our kitchen table, smoking a cigarette, a two-liter bottle of Diet Pepsi on one side of her, a book on the other, and a Scrabble board laid out in front. As odd as it may sound, this is a beautiful image to me. I’ve tasked my sister to sort through the considerably large collection of photographs—classic, developed, physical photographs—that my mother has amassed to find a picture of her like this image, or at least one that’s as close as possible to that image. I suspect, how it was introduced into my life aside, that my newly developed smoking habit is on some subconscious level a nod to my grandmother—a means to keep her alive in whatever you want to call it. In spirit. In my spirit. I suspect I owe her much more than I’ll ever fully realize.

But I never got to say goodbye. And now she’s gone. She’ll never read my ramblings. She’ll never read my fiction, and she was quite the avid reader. So is my mother. It’s why I’m a reader, and why I’m an English major and a writer. This much I am certain of. There is on some genetic level a tenuous link to a writer on my father’s side, but to a man I never knew. A man I never met, but whose name I was given and by sheer coincidence also share a passion of his.

I apologize for the heavy-handed emotional gravitas of this post. It’s a tad uncharacteristic of me. But after a phone conversation with a friend who is more than just a friend, who, for good or bad, did get to make contact before losing someone forever, I found myself compelled to write about the importance of saying goodbye—perhaps without even saying goodbye—as a means of catharsis. The last attempt at connection, conversation, interaction is especially important to folks like myself, who don’t believe there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. No heaven, no hell. No nothing. And please don’t espouse some hokey religious bullshit to me. I don’t subscribe to it. I don’t take comfort in it. I don’t believe in a “better place,” I believe in no place. Respect that.

This diatribe is raw. Unrefined. I’m not going to comb through it with a meticulous eye and repair sentences and tweak and revise and edit. This is stream-of-consciousness, laid out on the table, stripped down and laid bare. And so is the poem that follows, written on the fly, a writer at his desk sipping on green tea (a tad early for rum, despite the need for it) watching a cigarette smolder and decay into ashes like some discomforting and ill-timed metaphor for life.

A slender cigarette dangles

From the chip in a bowl the color of blood.

Its tip burns red,

And when I take a pull from it

It glows with the red-hot intensity

Of life.

~

I watch the curlicues of smoke

Drift from the very same tip,

Marking, with each passing second,

The short time on earth this cigarette has.

The cigarette is me. I am the cigarette.

And a part of me wants to simply lean back

And watch it slowly burn away,

For to put it to my lips is to shorten its lifespan

As well as my own.

But I do so anyway,

And admire the intensity with which it glows,

Hoping that my own short time

On this ugly ball of mud and water

Is at least half as bright as the cigarette.

~

Some might say that those lost to me

Died young. Well, I can’t disagree,

But I do. For in my opinion,

Their respective lives glowed with admirable intensity.

And what they left behind, though they cannot see,

Is beautiful. A son whom I admire,

And whom we’re all proud of.

A grandson who, flawed and behind as he may be,

Will continue to write with great intent and purpose,

If only to keep something I hesitate to call her “spirit”

Alive.

Original Poem “John & Mary” by Stephen Dunn.

~ Ernest Hemingway

September 1st kicked off the start of the new fall semester at Rutgers. Lots of interesting classes taken and taught. As is to be expected, well, to anyone who has witnessed my rapid and ravenously-driven interest in detective fiction develop over the past year or two, Detective Fiction—the course—is of course of major interest and a blast. There are a handful of linguistics courses that have me enthralled as well, and the obligatory writing course—Advanced Creative Writing—to help tighten up my prose and give me an excuse to write and work on MFA submissions.

On that topic, there are two primary contenders for my (minimum) 20-page MFA submission. Both stories involve my fantasy noir armchair detective, Naphtali Archeron. The first is a straight up whodunnit murder mystery. The second is something harder to articulate with just a few words. It involves archaeology, more world building, and more Metal Demon combat than sleuthing. I hope to have a solid draft of the latter story completed by the end of this semester. The former is presently on its third or fourth draft.

There is also the matter of a local writing contest that a small, Philadelphia-based publisher is holding. Due date is October 31 and the only stipulation is that it be set in the City of Brotherly Love. I’ve decided to take a shot at it—deviate from my usual fantasy and sci-fi stomping grounds (although, the document I received made no mention of when in Philly it had to take place … ). I’ve actually been kicking around the idea of writing a short murder mystery story set in Philadelphia for a while now, mostly inspired by the film Brick. Well, I’m nine pages in so. Fingers crossed! If I win, my story will be included within the anthology and published, which would go a long way to bolstering the ol’ self-esteem and assuaging personal concerns over whether I’ve got “it” or not.

As for the new apartment, which is wrapped up in this whole “new life” thing, the place is great. We—that is, my roommate, Eric, whom I’ve known for several years now, and myself—occupy the entire third floor of an apartment building a half-block down from 40th and Market in Philadelphia. It’s a welcome change of aural and visual stimuli compared to the doldrums of South Jersey suburban hell. I’ve actually lived in this area before, one street over and a few blocks back, so I’m already familiar with this part of the city and am very much a fan. There’s a certain texture to the outlying parts of a metropolitan area that its core just doesn’t bring to you. It’s that texture, those unseen or disregarded or perhaps even shunned shades of life I hope to soak up while living here.

Oh, right, the website! D’ya like? I’m quite the fan. It’s still a work in progress, but I really think it exudes a minimalistic, elegant, noir vibe. Just the right tone for the kind of fiction I’ll be producing and posting here (or directing y’all towards from here). I hope anyone reading this is as fond of it as I am.

Well, with that said, I s’pose I better mosey off to more productive activities—like working on my goddamn stories!

I take my science fiction and fantasy very seriously, heh (thesis work).

Actually, they’re also part of my–albeit premature–attempt to create a syllabus for a Science Fiction course. You see, Rutgers–Camden offers the course, but according to the English department’s secretary, she can’t remember the last time it was taught. So I’ve taken to reading these, as well as the classics–Bradbury, Clarke, Asimov, Le Guin, and whatever else the course description mentions–in my efforts to pretend I already am a teacher and design a course (which will, btw, include “middle school” and “new school” writers, not just old school ones: Philip K. Dick, Iain M. Banks, Octavia E. Butler, recent short story collections, and Richard K. Morgan if I can squeeze him in).

Yeeup. This is what I do with my spare time.