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A few nifty piece of news to report:

1. Issue One of Loquacious Placemat is now available online at www.loquaciousplacemat.blogspot.com

2. I won the Purple Prose category of the 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Contest.

3. I will soon be writing as the Allentown Coffee Examiner for www.examiner.com

Indeed I am keeping busy.  I've noticed a bump in traffic to the site (undoubtedly related to at least two of the a

Brad McKay over at ceanalysis.webpress.com recently published an interview with me about Loquacious Placemat and the world of publishing!

Indeed, Loquacious Placemat should be making its grand entrance within the next week or so!

Anyone who follows Thaumatrope on Twitter can look forward to a work by yours truly to be published on 10/27/09.  You can check out what they're all about at http://thaumatrope.greententacles.com/. 

They are dedicated to fantasy/SF/Horror/Slipstream work and the product seems to veer strongly towards the surreal.  It got me to thinking about the surrealists and the dadaists.  Trying encapsulate a moment in 140 characters (not words, mind you, characters including spaces) is a provocative thought exercise.  Clearly this is not for epic tales (though they do serialize longer works).  This is for those fleeting instances that tell a larger tale.  It's kind of like looking at a painting, then asking the artist to say the same thing but with a single brushstroke.  I think the dadaists would totally get off on that kind of thing.

As I looked at my slate of projects, I figured a general update was in order.  New short fiction is being put on the back burner for the moment.  I've got a couple of stories that just need to be polished up until they're shiny enough to catch an editor's eye, and then it will be on to two slightly larger projects.

Indeed, the Y/A fantasy piece I've been working on looks like it will end up as a novella or longer.  I will also be adapting it into a screenplay.  This is a unique project for me in a couple of ways.  It is really my first time writing for a younger market.  It is also my first time getting immediate active feedback as the piece evolves.  It gives the writing process a sense of progress and urgency when you have someone chomping at the bit to see your new pages.  A very good motivator.

The other project I'm working on is an editorial one.  I am one of the editors of Loquacious Placemat, a new literary publication from Twisted Thistle Productions.  The concept itself is rather interesting and could end up making a pretty big splash if all goes well.  So feel free to submit and get in on the ground floor of the Placemat revolution!  (Just be sure to read the submission guidelines, as we've gotten some rather inappropriate material).

I'm a recovering conspiracy buff of sorts.  I wouldn't go so far as to that I ever really believed in the wackier extremes such as the Illuminati, the New World Order or the worldwide cooperation between the ruling elites and alien civilizations.  Instead, I've always looked at conspiracy theories as a kind of extensive thought game where it is the player's task to incorporate each new and interesting event into the overarching tapestry of their world view.

Any new law, economic development, military action or terrorist attack can be seemlessly assimilated by the truly dedicated conspiracy theorist.  It can be truly breathtaking to watch, and absolutely humorous when you consider the maxim that you should never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence. 

The 500 lbs gorilla of the conspiracy world is the prospect of the big One World Government.  Known by many names, the prospect of the loss of national sovereignty to a presumably malevolent central authority is one of the biggest drivers of borderline insane conspiracy theorism. 

The thing is, everyone who puts any effort into thinking about such things is worried about the supposed imminent rise of the New World Order. They fancy themselves the freedom fighters in this grand drama; those voices in the wilderness shedding harsh light on the bogeymen in the closets and keeping the Illuminati at bay by depriving them of the secrecy that is key to their success.  They feel this way because they assume that these Ruling Elites would inevitably become brutal and oppressive should their plans come to fruition.

This got me to thinking: What would be the benefit of such malevolence once these ill-defined Powers That Be came to power?  Most of the really heinous crap engaged in by despots and demogogues over the centuries has been in the interest of aquiring or forcefully maintaining power. At the same time, the conspiracy theorists are fond of pointing out the fact that the dark forces at work behind the scenes are able to get away with their various shenanigans because the general population of "sheeple" are kept fat, happy and stupid.  Wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that the soft oppression of consumer culture would be far more viable than any kind of traditional draconian measures?

And beneath the surface of any trite consumer culture, there will always bubble the undercurrents of art, culture and philosophy.  Those who seek redder meat than the mainstream offers are always able to find it.  So really, what's so wrong with the prospect of the world being enveloped by this centralized control?  In such a world, people would still be able to do what they wish so long as it does not mean toppling the power structure.  One could live quite happily under such circumstances.

Then again, a one world government would cause one significant problem: the end of war.  After all the manufacture, distribution and forceful delivery of bullets and other munitions is a multi-trillion dollar a year industry worldwide; employing hundreds of thousands of people from iron miners and steel manufacturers to computer programmers and vehicle designers.

Even if a centralized government was able to come to power they would still need to present the illusion of separate nations, if only to keep the Military-Industrial complex relevant.  They would need to fabricate a wide variety of conflicts in vary stages of development.  They would need active wars to use up bullets, tanks and humvees.  They would need theoretical conflicts to fuel speculative technologies such as missile defense.  They would need ideological conflicts to appeal to humanity's territorial tribalism by fueling the world's marquee religions.  They would need some sort of an ongoing "war" against an enemy that could not be defeated like maybe an abstract concept so that they could perpetuate fear.

Really, wouldn't a world controlled by a centralized authority look a heck of lot like the world we live in today?

At the request of my stepson, I have started writing a young adult fantasy piece.  I dived in with the intention of a stand-alone short story, but if his reaction is any indication this thing might have legs . . .

For me, writer's block is always a weird thing.  It almost always has more to do with a glut of ideas rather than a lack of them.  The current bout is no different.  I have a screenplay moved up from a back burner due to the realization that it will continue to be relevent for a good long time.  I also have a speculative fiction short with a 3/30 submission deadline and a bizarro short which has once again caught my eye.

The writer's block tends to come from the fact that each of these pieces require a considerably different voice/approach so working on them concurrently is a near impossibility.  At the same time, they fight for precious real estate in my mind.  Of course, the 3/30 deadline should push the spec piece to the forefront, but I've also been filled with this weird hot iron urgency on the screenplay.  This urgency is probably because creenplays tend to have a lottery ticket allure: they offer the remote possibility of a big pay day (no small consideration for the new parent). The bizarro seems to be the best candidate for postponement, but it's so good that I feel an obligation to see it through.

Then again, the bizarro short story may have the legs to become a novella which would make it an even better candidate for the wait list since that could get quite time consuming.

You see my quandry.

But this post is about the side effects of writer's block. Specifically, I tend to veer off into relatively unrelated projects; ones that do not engage the same skills as writing but are usually related.  This time around, I found myself researching performance spaces for one-acts or spoken word pieces.

Turns out that three night stand on the lower east side of Manhattan is only about a hundred bucks more than the same time in a suburban Pennsylvania dinner theater type venue.  This, of course, sets my mind to spinning and numbers to crunching and I end up with more ideas for performance projects. Next thing you know, I'm inventing a fictitious production company complete with web site.

It's not exactly like I have time for this.

I'm sure I get back on task shortly. It's just a matter of focusing on that which is most viable.

Until later . .  .

Quite the lull between posts.  New fatherhood will do that to a guy.  Indeed, my longest and strangest adventure has just begun, and my wife and I couldn't be happier with the new arrival.

That said, life has not stopped on the writing front.  My copies of Going Down Swinging No. 27 have arrived in the mail at long last.  An absolutely gorgeous tome!  Having read over the rest of the magazine, I can say I am in very good company.  I would highly recommend picking up a copy.

Several additional shorts have been sent out into the ether.  I will be announcing here should they stick anywhere.  In the meantime, the Short Story Collection is typeset and ready for publication once the various rights are sorted out.  Cover art should be previewed here within the next few weeks.

Until later . . .

It's remarkable the weird ripple effect that an impending birth has on your thought processes.  Any day now, my wife will be bringing our infant daughter into the world.  You would think that getting the immediate needs taken care of can allow you a little piece of mind; that having the nursery, wardrobe, diapers and what not taken care of would allow you to relax.

In a way, that is correct.  I have no worries about the months to follow her arrival.  It's the long view that strikes panic into my heart.  Things need to explode career-wise and I'm not just talking about the day job.  As such, I am going to be taking matters into my own hands.

The short story collection that I have mentioned in this space before has a tentative title: 'The Devil Yearns for the Perfect Denver Omelet' and Other Revelations.  The current plan is for it to be made available as a Print on Demand and Kindle/eBook title through Amazon.com in October of this year. 

The delay is due to the fact that several of the featured stories are still pending with a number of magazines, and I need to make sure that the rights are properly handled while giving the individual stories the opportunity to find their own audiences. I did, however, spend this past weekend cranking out the electronic pre-press work on the text, so publication will be swift once everything else is taken care of.

Now the POD/Self-Publishing route brings up a whole other realm of concerns, questions and debates.  Self-Publishing (known in some circles as "Vanity Publishing") is still looked upon as a ghetto of the literary world, and there are countless arguments for and against this point of view.

Ultimately, I think the key difference between Vanity Publishing and Self-Publishing is what the author defines as success.  Those who consider the physical presence of their book on a bookshelf or two as success, are engaging in so-called "Vanity Publishing."  Those who seek to use the existence/availability of these books as a means for a legitimate business venture are Self-Publishing.  I will not look at the mere existence of my book on Amazon as success.  I will consider substantial sales of the book as success.  I will consider offers from conventional publishers as success.

What is comes down to is the economy.  Big publishing houses are hitting some hard times.  There have been massive lay-offs and there is sure to be more restucturing and corporate weirdness as the economy continues to bewilder and entertain us.  Editors who value the idea of having jobs in 2010 will be looking for sure things.  First novels, short story compilations and strange tales do not offer the prospect of rapid profit that the big companies are looking for.

Likewise, the smaller publishing houses are just as pinched and may not have the resources to promote a new book beyond that which an industrious author is capable.

The logical conclusion is to self-publish in a way that allows me to retain all my rights, and opt in to conventional publishing should the possibility present itself.