The Literary Game

12. August 2007 · Comments Off on The Literary Game · Categories: General, General Nonsense, Literary Good Stuff, Site News, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Is that the right word… literary? I’m not at all sure it applies to me, really. I fled academia years ago, whimpering softly to myself. Especially after the one Mod Lit class that I was forced to take… well, not forced, exactly. It just fitted in with my schedule, and I thought maybe I ought to be a little more conversant with the Giants of English Lit who had published something after 1940?

Well, it turned out to be a bad move, and I never made that mistake again. If it’s in the approved canon and published after the Depression then it’s probably a tedious and politically correct wank-fest, passing laborious to read, and generally about as much fun as do-it-yourself root canal surgery. Life is just too short, and I am an equal opportunity fugitive anyway. I’ll run just as fast from “The DaVinci Code” as I will from “The Corrections”. Oprah’s Book Club be damned… unless she picks one of my books, in which case I will cheerfully play along. (Scribbling notes to myself… Oprah Book Club… is there someone I have to sleep with, or something? Will they accept decorating advice or home-baked cookies, in lieu?)

Just don’t pop off the name of the literary wonderkind-du-jour in front of me, and expect any response but a blank expression, and the question. “Umm… who is that?” Look, I read all of Raymond Chandler, once. Surely that counts for something.

So… I am not literary. I tell stories. I tell stories about people, and interesting times, with a bit of vivid color and a lot of historical research, and I try to explain about how things were, and how they happened the way they did, and how it all felt to the people who had to cope with the resulting messy situation. If I identify with any literary heroine, I’m afraid it would be Flora Post, who hated team sports and untidiness.

If that works for you, it works for me. Buy a copy of the current book, or go here or here to read about the next book plus three. Give me interesting feedback, interesting factoids… be amused. So far, I need to sell another 1,999,992 copies before I can even think about moving into the castle next door to J.K. Rowlings’. I have mailed out a number of postcards to selected museum book stores, posted some flyers in various places, and scrounged a couple of links here and there. (OK, so I have blog-fans in interesting places, ‘kay?)

I am also waiting for a check from the local magazine that I did a version of this article for, so I can order a humongous quantity of copies for review and to send to people who have ordered copies, or to whom I owe copies. The more I order at one time, the better the price break for me, you see. I expect the damned check this week, having gotten the assignment in March, done the work in April, turned it in by a June deadline, for publication in July. Really, I wish I could stall my creditors at the rate that my creditors stall me.

So, that’s where it stands. Stay tuned… I’m sure it will get more amusing.

At Play in the Fields of Book-Marketing

08. August 2007 · Comments Off on At Play in the Fields of Book-Marketing · Categories: Domestic, General, General Nonsense, Literary Good Stuff, Rant, Technology, Working In A Salt Mine...

After giving myself a year of trying to get published the old-fashioned way, which involved getting the notice of a literary agent who would be able to attract the notice of a traditional publisher, I finally said “the hell” and took “To Truckee’s Trail” to a POD firm. The truly mind-boggling thing was that everyone who had read the whole thing had two reactions: “Wow!” and “Why hadn’t I ever heard about these people before?” I’ll not delude myself by that into thinking it’s great lit-ra-chure on that account, though. It’s an agreeably well-written story about a minor historical event, and reasonably accurate.

There’s a ton of books like that down at the local Barnes & Noble, along with tons of other books of a suckage so total as to pull in asteroids and small moons. So one may rightfully wonder how on earth the writers of those latter managed to get agents and publishers. The judgment of the literary gatekeepers looks to be pretty iffy, all things considered. By the end of a year I could blow off receiving another rejection letter pretty well… especially those spotty fifth-generation photo-copied ones cut three or four from a sheet of copy paper. (Quelle classy, people. Really.)

After perusing a collection of blook-blogs, including this one, I am wondering if writer-driven publish-on-demand isn’t the wave of the future, or at least a jolly great shake-up to “the way things have always been done”. Sort of like how the news and comment blogs were a shake-up to the news media complex over the past five or six years, which gives cause to wonder if the literary-industrial complex isn’t on the same Titanic-vs-Iceberg track. Writers who have way more experience than I have also been wringing their hands in lamentation at sclerosis of the literary-industrial complex, and venturing all sorts of reasons. Like the torrents of manuscripts flowing upstream towards their traditional spawning grounds, at traditional publishing firms.

Once upon a time, they tell me… there weren’t quite so many people who thought they had a book in them somewhere. Traditional publishers could evaluate and accept submissions in a timely and sympathetic manner. If a manuscript had any sort of merit, it might knock around for a bit… but would eventually find a nice literary niche. Not so now; publishers are drowning in the floods of submissions. I am told that screening them is now farmed out to agents… who have pretty much the same problem. Unless a specific manuscript pushes all the right buttons of that one agent who has to be in just the right sort of mood… frankly, I was starting to think I’d have better luck playing the Texas Lottery. And like any other sane person, an agent would like to have the biggest pay-off for the smallest work possible, so ix-nay on something that doesn’t slot into an easy category, or be likened in one sentence to last week’s big block-buster. Just safe business, after all, but it has the result of narrowing the field and reducing the odds for the next out-of-category big literary wonder. (See above, suckage, and attraction to small celestial bodies.)

Lottery… which reminds me of something else; even getting an agent, and a traditional publishing deal isn’t any guarantee of happily-ever-after. I am told that most traditionally published books don’t make any sort of money. Like Hollywood, the literary-industrial complex really wants blockbusters, and the non-blockbusting writers tend to get treated pretty much like hired-help that can scribble… all the while being reminded that they are lucky to even have agency representation and a book deal to start with. So, a couple of more petty tyrants to appease, and to make the scribbler’s life even more miserable; yes, I think I’ll have another plate of that delicious filboid studge.

Oh, and it seems that the literary-industrial humongous publicity machine only gets into high gear for those few blockbusters anyway; the lesser scribblers have to do their own marketing anyway. May as well do POD, and have complete control, rather than be nibbled to death by the petty minions.

Progress report on “To Truckee’s Trail” to follow.

Crescendo for the Writers Life Waltz

20. July 2007 · Comments Off on Crescendo for the Writers Life Waltz · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Site News, That's Entertainment!, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Just a quick update on the current book, scribbled between slaving over a hot computer, a couple of job assignments, and mundane things like… oh, I don’t know, cooking meals? Taking the dogs out for a walk. (Er, drag-around-the-block. They. Drag. Me. Just to make that point absolutely clear.)

The text is uploaded to the printers, and the cover is finished and approved… it has all taken nearly two weeks to accomplish this; much longer than I expected. I hope this might be some kind of indication that business is absolutely booming with the POD houses. I was clawing the walls with impatience all this week, but the cover is well worth the wait, thanks to B. Durbin’s very generous offer to let me use one of her photos of the Truckee River. (Appropriate credit is given, natch!)

So, once I have a hard copy in my hot little hands, and approve the whole thing, “To Truckee’s Trail” will be in the booklocker.com catalogue, all 272 pages and eighteen long chapters (with notes!) of it; a gripping read of adventure and discovery along the 19th century emigrant trail to California. I’ll be doing some more marketing, and scrounging for reviews and ad space here and there, and generally trying to sell a good few copies of it. At the very least, I can claim to write fewer clunky sentences per chapter than Dan Brown, of “The DaVinci Code” fame! (That blasted book was unreadable, to me… I kept tripping and falling headlong over sentences that sounded like entries in the current Bulwer-Lytton Bad Writing Contest!)

And I’ll be scribbling away on the Adelsverein saga, or “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and a Lot of Sidearms”. Going by my latest chapter outline revision I’m about halfway through volume two, although as complications and side-stories develop, this is guaranteed to expand to epic proportions, so to say. There are just so many interesting people, and fascinating scenes, dramatic and historic events; a kid in a candy store has nothing on me! Of course, I can’t help writing about them, I tell stories, it’s what I am driven to do. I just completed a tension-filled account of the local Confederate provost-marshal’s men searching a house for a draft-evader… on Christmas Eve… the searchers being unaware that the man they are looking for is dressed as Father Christmas. (In the parlor, with his family… and everyone who knows what is going on is frantically pretending that nothing is the least bit out of place.)

But three volumes of about twenty chapters each… and my chapters seem to clock in at 6,500 to 7,000 words each… that will mean 400,000 words.

So, back to slaving over the hot computer keyboard…

Later: Just realized upon consulting the archives, that today is exactly one year to the date that I was fired from (Boring Corporate Entity Inserted Here) and decided to try for that “best-selling writer brass-ring-thingy”! With the very book that is about to be launched upon a hopefully breathlessly-anticipating world. So, I have way to go to beat out that Harry Potter book… still, funny old world, innt it?

End Run

05. July 2007 · Comments Off on End Run · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, Technology, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

The crescendo of the writers’ life waltz, as I have been calling it, is yours truly making a determined end-run around the established behemoths of the literary industrial complex, thanks to contributions gratefully received from fans and supporters… and from Mom and Dad. I have been able to pull in enough to start the process rolling for “To Truckee’s Trail” with those nice people at Booklocker.com. I have sent them the formatted text, and in a short time, they will have one of their contracted artists do the cover, and once I approve it, they will include it in their website and catalogue… and there you go, Sgt. Mom’s next book. It’ll be available on Amazon.com, of course.

It’s not just going to stop at that, though. It just doesn’t. I will be buying a box of copies, to use to generate reviews in various websites and magazines. Once I have a nice collection of kind words, then I will use the cover art and the kind words to purchase advertising space, and to print up some folders or flyers to send to various bookstores. Do you know how many museums there are, along the Western emigrant trail, and how many of them have bookstores? You may not, but I am making a concerted effort to build a list of each and every one, and I’ll know when I am finished. I’ll also know about any independent bookstores anywhere in towns of note along the trail… especially if there is any kind of trail-related tourism in that town. All hail Google, the avatar of the DIY advertising campaign!

It’s been dawning on me, that perhaps the world of book-publishing, or as I have begun to call it, the “literary industrial complex” is beginning a slow downward spiral in the face of the POD revolution, the internet and DIY marketing, and even the availability of quality color printing at Kinkos. All those processes that were once owned by a big publisher because the technology involved was huge, complex and expensive… now they are reduced, pared down and available to anyone who cares. Once upon a time, doing a book on your own used to be called a vanity press, and it cost a bomb, but now self-publishing is within reach. The resulting books aren’t any more dreadful than what is churning out of the traditional publishing houses; so much for the sneering about vanity presses, and writers so pathetically eager to be in print.

It’s been kind of curious, to hang around in the book and publishing blogs, and read what insiders say about it: that agents are harried and harassed, and have only enough time for a tenth of the good-quality stuff that crosses their desks. That publishers are risk-adverse… and like the producers of block-buster movies, want that sure-fire good thing that is just like the last fifteen or twenty sure-fire good things that came down the pike. It’s a crapshoot for writers; even if you do grab the brass ring, and get a deal from a traditional publisher, you’re likely to be treated like dirt anyway… and wind up doing most of the marketing yourself. So, POD looks more and more like a viable alternative.

And I am wondering if the literary-industrial complex is going to start feeling the pinch of competition, and considerable dissatisfaction from the consuming public… just like the major news media is feeling now. Old news stalwarts like the NY Times, Newsweek and the CBS evening news are all beginning to tank. Bloggers like Michael Yon can do news reporting from a war zone, expert analysis comes from someone like Wretchard at Belmont Club, and the dreaded Mo-Toons o’Doom were featured on more blogs than were published in newspapers. The entire news industry looks fair to going down like that enormous spaceship in that old Disney movie that spiraled down into a black hole, emerging in the fourth dimension as something entirely different… what was the name of that flick? Anyway, I wonder if current technology is going to send traditional book publishing in the same direction.

And Now to Plan B

25. June 2007 · Comments Off on And Now to Plan B · Categories: Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, Media Matters Not, Working In A Salt Mine...

After gamboling playfully in the literary trenches for much of the last year trying to get some official interest going, as far as rewarding my own literary ambitions with… I don’t know, the odd spot of cash and acclaim, I have somewhat mixed results to report. It takes the form of a sort of good-news, bad-news joke.

The bad news is: Tor Books (or their subcontractor who actually has to plough through the submissions showered upon them) have rejected both “To Truckee’s Trail” and “Adelsverein, Pt. 1” (or as we like to call it “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and a Whole Lot of Sidearms”)

The Good News is that they have done so just this last weekend, instead of when I expected to hear from them, which according to my original calculations was September… which means that I can briskly move on to Plan B now, without wasting another two months.

What, you didn’t think I had a Plan B? My dears, I was a single parent and a career NCO, I always had a Plan B. And a Plan C through M, N, O and P, too, come to think of it.

It’s not been a wasted year; I am becoming as insouciant about brushing off rejection letters as if they were mosquitoes. Really. I am seriously amazed at how little impact the usual sad little SASE envelope with the rote rejection form or letter enclosed has on me now. The depression lasts for about ten seconds, and then I throw it into the file I keep for them with a cheerful comment along the lines of “Your loss, dickweed!”… And then forget about it as I go on and write another half chapter. I used to be quite crushed by this, but now… as the T-shirt says, “I’m just amused”.

I’m also obsessed… but as I am a pretty OK writer and a not-to-bad storyteller, this is a somewhat useful quality. The race is not always to the swift or the strong; sometimes it goes to the persistent and/or obsessed. And sometimes I do come up with a right pretty turn of wordsmithing.

During this last year I have been scribbling madly, some of it even for work that I got paid for. OK, so some of was for laughably small amounts, but I have made some connections, and credentials along the fringes of the scribbling game that will — I hope — help quite a bit as I carry out Plan B.

It’s been pretty educational, also to lurk meaningfully in the comments neighborhood of a lot of book and literary-industrial blogs. Such interesting and fascinating nuggets to be mined out of the gravel there, some of which confirm what I suspected from the beginning… like whenever I set foot in Barnes and Noble and took a good look at the shelves… which is that there is a hell of a lot of dreck out there. The traditional publishing world seems to be swamped up to it’s gorgeously nipped and tucked neck, which kind of seriously affects how they can handle the not-inconsiderable quantity of fairly OK to Pretty Damned Good. It’s still a numbers game, as the head of the consulting firm that I worked for, something like four or five jobs ago used to say.

So, maybe if only 5% of the manuscripts floating into agents’ offices, and publisher’s submissions sub-sub-sub contractors are good for anything other than landfill. Everyone thinks they have a book in them, and the fact that in most cases it should have stayed right there is beside the point. The OK to Pretty Damned Good stuff is still an absolutely unmanageable quantity. All the competent and ethical agents seem to have about all they can do to look at hundreds of similar OK to Pretty Damned Good submissions clamoring for their attention and time and make a snap decision on accepting and managing the tiny percentage that will pay off with the least amount of effort on their part.

Yeah, they kept sending me these letters admitting that they just didn’t feel the passion for my book that they felt was necessary to represent me adequately. So, apparently no one feels sufficiently passionate about “To Truckee’s Trail” except for me, and about a dozen people who have read the entire thing and loved it passionately as well.

Unfortunately, all those people were just readers and other writers… so, here goes Plan B.; a fund drive to do a POD version, to buy advertising, and put review copies where they will do the most good. I think I can promise an autographed copy of “To Truckee’s Trail” to anyone who contributes over a certain amount. *

Hey, it works for Public Radio, doesn’t it?

*Later – suggestion from commentor Peregrine John on amount: A paperback copy – autographed! – for donations north of $30

A Mad Gallop

21. June 2007 · Comments Off on A Mad Gallop · Categories: Domestic, General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Old West, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Or more measures from the accelerating writer’s life waltz! One day of paid work at the office yesterday, but two weeks left to myself on such projects as a couple of reviews, and a couple of books to read for upcoming reviews…. And a CD that I simply must listen to and come up with some cogent observations, even though I have never heard of any of the artists. Even Blondie hasn’t heard of most of them; it’s a soundtrack CD for the TV show Kyle XY. So far the only ready observation that has come to my mind is “gosh, where does the poor lad put the salt when he eats celery in bed?” which will only amuse people about a third of a century older than the main demographic for the music.

I’m here all week… try the veal, and don’t forget to tip your waitress

I am galloping away on the Civil War segment of the current epic, having completed the first six chapters, slowly building up to the tragedy which drives the rest of the book (and the subsequent volume) , the murder of a fairly major character by a vigilante gang. And no, I would not be talked into a reprieve; I had always planned this, since I began jotting down notes on various striking incidents and people, and working out how to weave characters and a plot around those particular points. The death of this character sends everyone around – friends, family, and distant connections off on various abrupt tangents… and that accounts for about 75% of the rest of the plot. I have more than just the bare-bones idea on conversations, subsequent incidents and scene descriptions, so I expect the rest of the first draft will move along pretty briskly. This is the Civil War… when the story starts to drag, I can always arrange to have someone in a battle. Or to sneak around on a dangerous mission, or something… the possibilities are nearly endless. I suspect that if I hadn’t broken it out into three parts “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and Lots of Side-Arms” would be about the thickness of a concrete block when finished. The Fat Guy, who has read some bits of it insists that it would sell in Texas like $3 a pound chicken-fried steaks, and asks what are they thinking of that I don’t have any more nibbles from publishers than I do?

I ran across another writers’ webside, who does historical fiction also (different period) and was amused to note that she also sets out a humongous chart, tracing incidents and accidents, and character’s development, and when children are born (or conceived!)… when you are dealing in a story that spans several decades, and pivots around historical events, keeping track of it all is absolutely key! I have a chart that contains about six different historical time-lines, from national down to local, maps out three different families, four romantic pairings, two towns, one feud… and the rise of the Texas cattle industry. At the very least this means that when two characters meet in an Austin saloon in March of 1847, I know what their small talk would have been about!

But as soon as I finish the draft, then I will need to sit down and read… a lot. If the chart and my chapter outline are rather like the bones, and the first draft is the inner organs and muscles and skin and all… then the final draft is getting it into shape, doing a bit of nip and tuck, and applying the couturier outfit, manicure makeup and hairstyling. All these details that show, and I like to get them right; as a matter of pride and of not wanting to be nibbled to death by those ducks who are mad for that particular event or period. I can’t imagine anything more embarrassing than having an expert enthusiast look at a particular episode and say, “No, it didn’t happen that way, it’s quite impossible,” and then refer me to about a dozen authoritative tomes that would have set me right to begin with. And this applies to smaller stuff, as well: what was the name of the fanciest retail store in Austin, on the eve of the Civil War? Who did daguerreotypes, and where was that studio, or was there more than one? When did the various militia troops recruited by the Committee for Public Safety begin to wear gray uniforms, and who supplied them? Where was the stage stop in various towns, and how often did the stages run… and what was the average travel time? What were people talking about, after church on a Sunday, or in a tavern, or on a long scout into the Llano? All this and a thousand more questions potentially come out of just about every paragraph, when you are trying to write it looking through the lens of a different century than the one you know first and best.

All this is part of making a convincing venture into the past, and showing it to the present, making it real and breathing, dust-covered and glorious… which is a way of saying that I need some books now, either that the library doesn’t have, or that I will need for months longer than they will check them out to me… should any of our readers want to help me make it a little farther down this trail. I posted a list here, and will add to it as the need occurs, or subtract as I am able to buy them myself. More happy blogging this weekend. I promise.

Slightly Accelerating Waltz

08. June 2007 · Comments Off on Slightly Accelerating Waltz · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Home Front, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Kind of a scrambled week, overall: Saw William off to California after his long visit. T’was ever thus, just as I get accustomed to him being here, he is off again. Blondie started her summer term of classes, and my part-time employer is off and away most days showing properties… so I spent most of this week chained to a hot computer, metaphorically speaking, writing away. I’m well launched into the second book of the “Adelsverein” saga, or “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees”. Four chapters drafted, covering the lead-up to the Civil War, which here in Texas turned out to be more than usually interesting. Especially as not everyone bought enthusiastically into the noble gallantry of the Confederacy. I had a notion to stage a family wedding at the same time as the secession crisis came to a head in Texas, which will allow me to do a sort of “Duchess of Richmond’s Ball on the Eve of Waterloo” set-piece, all swirling crinoline and gallant men being called away to rejoin their militia units, while the women bravely wave their lacy handkerchiefs… oh, yeah. 19th century drama by the cart-load. Margaret Mitchell, eat your heart out!

The anticipation of writing this almost makes up for receiving another regretful rejection letter; this from the agency that wanted to review the first fifty pages of volume one , a detailed synopsis, a copy of my original query letter, a copy of their reply, etc…(and I think they wanted a small sample of belly-button lint. That would have been in the very small print at the bottom.). Their letter thanks me for sharing, and says that the story just doesn’t send them into the transports of excitement and enthusiasm that are necessary for them to take it on, blah-blah-blah, wishing me luck with another agent blah-blah-blah. I have enough of these letters in the last year to see the pattern forming; it’s one of the polite ways to say ‘no, thanks and while your book may or may not suck the paint off a Buick fender there’s a hundred like it on my desk every day and I can only pick one by some whimsical and mysterious process of personal taste and cross my fingers that you don’t get a deal somewhere else and I’ll look like a chump for having given a pass on a best-seller in case you save the damn letter’.

As you can see, I’ve gone lurking among some of the book publishing blogs lately… reconnoitering the territory, so to speak. What is really amusing is that the publishing and lit-agent bloggers insist that while there are piles of dreadful slush for them to wade through, in search of the potential pearls… those pearls do stand out! They gleam with a holy light, and the publishing world is just aching to discover them, and it’s not that hard to do! (Blow loud raspberry here.) I’d put more credence into that… if the so-called pearls thus discovered didn’t actually suck so badly themselves. If that’s the immediately obvious good stuff in the slush pile, the bad stuff must be so bad it’s toxic. Like Love Canal, Chernobyl or Michael Bay movie toxic.

Oh, well, hope still for me, anyway: another agent asked for the whole manuscript of “Adelsverein”. I am assured that the secret is to grab them in the first chapter; what could be more grabbing than a leading character escaping a massacre, I ask you?

In the meantime, while I await word from that agent, and any of the other agencies and publishers I have applied to, I am doing reviews for Blogger News Network… for the exposure (and to score free books and CDs!) and for a local monthly magazine of quite stupendous glossiness: also for the exposure and for what they pay, which is a tidy little sum. Not a fortune, but an amount well worth the time. I have proposed a handful of other article ideas for upcoming issues to the editor. I’ll hear which ones she would like me to pursue for publication towards the end of the month. I seem to be viewed with favor though being totally professional and ego-free as regards editing and rewriting on request. The essay on Hot Wells that I posted this week was the stuff that didn’t make it into the final draft. Blog material is not magazine materiel, but nothing goes to waste, as far as I am concerned. And one of my book reviews is actually now posted on the author’s website, along with a couple of reviews from the major media outlets; something to feel a little flattered about, even if it is for a book that is not yet published in the US.

Stay tuned… I am still taking donations, towards doing “Truckee’s Trail” in the fall, as a POD, and marketing it myself.

Weekly Update

25. May 2007 · Comments Off on Weekly Update · Categories: Critters, Domestic, General, That's Entertainment!, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Ok, so this is one of those sort of weeks… although I did get a dividend check from the auto insurance company; a paltry sum but actually very welcome nonetheless, and another agent sent the usual SASE reply saying she is intrigued and can I send her the Whole Entire Manuscript, Please…getting a print of all 336 pages and mailing it will still happen in something less than toot-suite time, and probably cost the whole of the dividend check! Well, things happen for a purpose, I guess.

William is here, a week before I was really expecting and ready for him, missing his flight last night… which I only found out about after I had been waiting at the airport for an hour, this after putting in three hours putting together some brochures for the current occasional employer, the worlds tallest ADHD child. So, out of bed at four AM, doing four circuits of the airport pick-up area; honestly, if I weren’t so fond of him and if it hadn’t been so long since he was here last, I would have just told him to get his ass into a taxi at the airport and I’d have breakfast ready by the time he got to the house.

And I have to re-write the Hot Wells article, it just didn’t suit the editor… but I think I have racked up bonus points for being agreeable about re-writing I was complimented on being completely professional about the criticism… which inclines me to think that a lot of the other writers must be… I don’t know; high maintenance? Prima Donna? Temperamental, even? Eh… if you are paying me enough for bespoke word-smithing, temperament is something I can’t afford to indulge in.

I was worried about Spike the Shi-tzu, AKA the Poop Factory for a couple of days, too. Plenty of input… no observable output. Given that every disgusting thing she comes across goes straight into her mouth, I was afraid it was only a matter of time until she ingested something that would expensively obstruct the old alimentary canal. Not to worry, though. The evidence of normal digestive function was fresh on the doormat last night. The smell of it would have gagged a buzzard, though. (What does that little wretch eat? And do I really want to know?)

I am sure that Spike was the one who dragged Williams boxer-shorts out into the living room around mid morning and left them on the sofa. Blondie to me; “Jeeze, Mom, can you consider that I live here too?” She only rolled her eyes when I said Spike must have dragged them in. From the pile of laundry that William carelessly left on the floor.

Wrote up a book review, over at BNN… is anyone reading me at all this week, or is it just my imagination?

The Writer’s Life Waltz: Accelerando

19. May 2007 · Comments Off on The Writer’s Life Waltz: Accelerando · Categories: Critters, Domestic, General, Home Front, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine...

Blogging at a minimum this week due to a confluence of other literary demands, and just no enthusiasm for writing about something suitable for here. The WOT is the same old mouthful of well-chewed gristle, ditto for the prelim-presidential-campaign… jeeze, if I feel that way about it now, I’m going to be hiding in a bunker by next year. People, can we give it a rest? Ditto for American Idol (who?) And as regards Paris Hilton; this may be the only time I shall ever mention her.

Over the last month, we have had a very demented bird, a female cardinal who has taken to perching on a branch of the almond verbena, just outside the window to the living room, and flying repeatedly into the glass window. She will do this for fifteen or twenty minutes at a stretch; regularly thumping against the window, as if she is either fighting another female cardinal reflected there, or trying to land on a non-existent branch. We have named her after the stupidest celebrity we know: Paris Hilton.

The pictures of Hot Wells came out very much as I hoped, so finish polishing the article to a high glossy shine, and edit the pictures suitably. I have a thick book to read and a review to write for BNN, ditto a DVD to watch and review… and there is another book on the way. Just when I worked out how to lead into events around the election of 1860 and the secession crisis in Texas, as they affected the characters in part two of Adelsverein; or as a reader described it “Barsetshire with Cyprus Trees”. So I am getting ready to plunge into the operatic drama of the Civil War; murder, lynch mobs, treachery brother-against-brother and all that.

I did get a response from the agent who wanted a look at the first 100 pages; a regretful pass. The first four chapters just did not send her into the transports of enthusiasm necessary to take on representing it, and a paragraph of the usual blah blah blah saying that it was a terribly subjective business, wishing me luck in getting representation elsewhere blah blah blah.

I have sent out fifty query letters for “Adelsverein” including a SASE for response over the last two months, but only gotten back twenty or so letters which usually begin “Dear Author/Writer” and apologizing for the form response. Which leave me wondering where the other queries are, and if they are peeling off my stamps and using them for something else!

Back to work, on Chapter Three, Volume 2. (First chapter posted here)

Southside Shades

15. May 2007 · Comments Off on Southside Shades · Categories: Domestic, General, Local, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Blondie and I spent a good chunk of Monday wandering among ruins. By prior arrangement of course; do I look like a trespasser? Frankly I am an exceeding law-abiding person because I don’t have the steely nerve and towering sense of entitlement required to be otherwise. We were there with permission and had the assistance of the caretaker, who took us around to all the most attractive and poignant spots on the grounds of the old Hot Wells Resort, pointing out all the relics of the original landscape plants, keeping us off any bits that were structurally unsound (although it was fairly obvious which those were) and generally sharing her own fondness for the place. And it wasn’t a bad place to spend a spring midday, with all the wildflowers growing tall around the crumbling brick walls and butterflies staggering erratically from plant to plant, the birds singing happily… and the caretakers’ dogs in vocal outburst with some of the feral dogs which live in the ruins of the old tourist cottages, back in the thickets where the old hotel building was, before it burned to the ground in the 1920ies.

This junket came about because a friend put me in touch with the editor of a local monthly magazine (which actually pays rather handsomely) who liked my writing samples. The editor asked me to pitch her some story ideas, and the one she liked was about Hot Wells… especially if I could do pictures to go with it.

Many years ago, a contractor digging a well near the San Antonio State Hospital had the water come up hot and steaming, and smelling of sulfur. Entrepreneurial local gentlemen put their minds and money into taking advantage of this happy chance. There was constructed a lavish brick bathhouse with three pools, elaborate dressing rooms and an imposing entrance. Off to one side there was an equally ornate and luxurious hotel, set in lushly landscaped grounds, the whole fitted with every modern convenience and offering every amusement that the late 19th century offered. There was a private railway spur, to facilitate the millionaires who came to take the waters and traveled in their own parlor car, a grand avenue ornamented with a fountain and palm trees, a grove of pecan trees by the river, which ran along the back of the grounds… all in all, it was the premier spa in this part of the country for many years, and fondly remembered by many. Because, alas, Hot Wells seemed to be cursed. The various buildings burned no less than four times. The grand hotel burned completely to the ground and was replaced in the late twenties by tourist bungalows. The bathhouse came to house a restaurant called the “Flame Room”, as the once-grand resort degenerated into a scruffy motor-court motel on the South Side, dreaming away among the trees and memories of better days.

The current owner/developer hopes to develop it into a sort of Community Park, with the bathhouse ruins a central jewel. It is a strangely serene place, lightly haunted… but in a happy way, which is my theme for the article. I took lots of pictures, trying for that “ruins of the Roman Forum with plants growing all over everything” look. I have only one days’ work this week for the worlds’ tallest ADHD child, so plan to finish the Hot Wells piece well ahead of deadline, pound out another chapter of “Adelsverein” now that the first chapter of Volume II is posted here… and generally hope to hear from an agent that they love the whole thing, and may they read the rest of it, pleasepleaseplease?

More here, about Hot Wells.

The Writers Life Waltz: Divertimento

10. May 2007 · Comments Off on The Writers Life Waltz: Divertimento · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Somewhat diverted this week by simultaneously beginning the first chapter of the second book about the Texas Germans (see the website, in a couple of days I’ll post the sample chapter there) and by actually having nearly a full week of work with my some-time employer… or as I call him, the worlds’ tallest ADHD child. I’ve now been working for him long enough that I have said this to his face, and he knows himself well enough that he can laugh… mostly because it’s true. I’ve been working a half day, two or three days a week, just doing basic office admin, filing, data entry, doing letters and brochures and reminding him about things like… oh, I dunno, answering telephone queries about properties for sale, and paying the bills regularly. And finding things. Very important, that…being able to find things. My personal tendency is to put things away, and remember where I put them. Therefore, it will tend to appear like the deepest sort of black magic when I can produce them almost before he can finish asking “Where is….??!!!”

His preferred method, BTW, is to just let it accumulate on his desk— notes, bills, reminders, reports, correspondence and all, and when the piles get too deep, scoop it all into a file box, stick it in the corner… and then wonder why he can’t find anything.

Hey, that’s why I get paid the big bucks. But wait, there’s more.

Dave the Computer Genius had installed a very workable little scheduling and data program on the office computers, and showed me how it functioned: it’s called “Time & Chaos” by the way… the nonconformists answer to “Outlook” I think. Up until this week it was just another funny icon on the bosses’ desktop, but last week I commandeered his Palm-Pilot and transferred the client and contact information and sorted them neatly into various categories. Nearly 500 of them… but hey, who’s counting. Data entry… it’s the office workers version of ditch-digging.

Beginning this week, I stood over the boss with a whip… no, not really, but the thought was really tempting… and I showed him how to open the program, and the field where he could enter reminders and notes for himself, link them to his client/contact data base, prioritize them, and check them off as they were done. And to enter appointments… and even to enter new contacts, instead of scribbling them on post-its and bits of scrap paper, or on the backs of envelopes or pieces of junk mail… all of which were prone to being thrown away, lost or misplaced, accidentally stuck to a completely unrelated file, gathered up and dumped into a box, played with by one of the cats, or eaten by the dog… (Yeah, it’s that kind of office. 4 office cats, one office dog.)

So, the boss is as nearly organized as it will ever be possible for him to be, and meanwhile I have been working away in my own little office, cunningly disguised as the south-west corner of my bedroom, sending out query letters about “Adelsverein” to an assortment of agents. There is a website that lists the fairly legitimate, reputable agencies, and I have been methodically working my way through it. I sent out to all the ones who accept email submissions months ago; now I send out about five to seven query letters every week, sometimes with a synopsis or sample chapter attached if requested, and the always-required self-addressed-stamped-envelope. This has taken on the feeling of a necessary chore, like putting out the trash cans. As this blogger sympathetically noted, “Writing it is easy. Selling is the hard part”. Honestly, I put the submissions and the queries out of mind as soon as I send them; somehow it just feels mentally healthier that way.

I do own to being mildly curious about one thing; I send out five or six letters and submissions a week, each with a self-addressed-stamped-envelope. I’ve been doing this since about October of last year, so I would normally expect back about the same quantity to come trickling back… but I never seem to get more than three or four in a week. (Although I did get four of them in one day… bummer!)

So, what is happening to all the others? In this best of all possible worlds, the submission is sitting on someone’s’ desk, or being reviewed by a committee and I might hear back months later. Or, they are peeling off the stamps and using them for their office correspondence?

I have had an email request from one agency for 100 pages, as they were somewhat intrigued by the premise… and just yesterday I opened the usual little return envelope and barely glanced at the letter before throwing it into the reject file… but no! They want to look at the first fifty pages, a detailed chapter outline, a copy of my original submission letter, a cover letter with a current telephone and email, another self-addressed-stamped-envelope… and way down at the bottom in teensy print I think they are requesting a small sample of belly-button lint, also. I’ll send it off, of course (all but the lint, I was joking, people!) and forget about it the minute I drop it in the mail.

So, that’s were it stands this week. Same Stuff, Different Day.

My Current Project

26. April 2007 · Comments Off on My Current Project · Categories: Domestic, General, Site News, Working In A Salt Mine...

Without further ado, may I present the project that I have been working on, all this week, courtesy of my friend, Dave the Computer Guy; the website to market my books.

Well, the one that I did a couple of years ago, the one that I finished and which will be published (one way or another!) by September… and the three-part saga which I am currently working on. I am doing all this under the pen name that I began with… just to keep things tidy, and maintain my families’ assorted and respective privacy.

www.celiahayes.com

I am still working on some of the bits… like closing each page when you go to another one. And the “interview” page is still under construction… and my brother has promised some original art for some of the elements, rather than the bits supplied with the template.

This site is currently piggy-backed on Dave the Computer Guy’s site, so my next expense will be paying for a year of hosting, and for Dave to do some additional marketing. Feedback and suggestions are invited.

So are donations- (Paypal button over on the left, under the link for the first book.)

In the Interests of Pure Research

15. April 2007 · Comments Off on In the Interests of Pure Research · Categories: General, History, My Head Hurts, Rant, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

In the interests of pure research, over the last couple of days, Blondie and I have ventured into deepest, darkest downtown San Antonio… and also to a point well beyond the city limits. I can report that I have returned with a dozen pages of notes indecipherable to anyone but me, and Blondie came close to having her leg humped by a wolf. OK, so a wolf-dog hybrid. About fifteen percent dog, eighty-five percent wolf, said the owners and proprietors, who also said that he was very friendly. Yep, we figured out that much right away. He was chained outside a vendor of frontier clothing and accessories at a re-enactor’s event, on the grounds of a ranch in the Hill Country. Some people we talked to at the event said that something set him off howling, night before last, which was a sound enough to make your skin crawl. We figured that any coyotes in the vicinity must have been a) scared out of their next years’ growth and b) decided after careful consideration, that discretion was the better part of valor and removing to the next county was therefore an excellent career move. For the duration of the event, of course.

This all came about because I emailed The Fat Guy a couple of weeks ago, asking if he (as an enthusiast and Texas history buff) could put me in touch with any collector in San Antonio who owned an 1830s model Colt Paterson revolver… and who would be kind enough to show me how it was loaded, sighted and broken down for maintenance. So he gave me a link, which led to an e-mail addy, which led to a club-wide appeal from a certain organization, which led to some contacts… which led to the owner of a matched pair of replica Colt Paterson revolvers, the only person in San Antonio who possesses such, apparently. We set up a meeting at his place of employment on Friday afternoon, and Blondie drove me there after her classes. We spent a very informative hour or so, in a locked and windowless conference room. This is not exactly the sort of event where one welcomes the casual kibitzers. Even in Texas, someone walking in and discovering three period revolvers and the necessary tools are spread out over the conference table is obligated to make a comment to the building management. The fact that there was no ammunition involved would not have ameliorated the resulting excitement.

So, I was actually able to examine very carefully, all the resulting broken-down bits and pieces of a period revolver. It was necessary for the plot and character development to do this, so that I could write about it with authority and attention to tiny detail, and I am extraordinarily grateful for having had the opportunity to do this… all hail the power of the fully functional internet! It was rather a curious experience, because I had been able to write about it and get things mostly right, just from looking at diagrams and reading… but still, nothing beats the experience of actually holding the real thing.

Oddly enough, it was a rather small weapon, dull matte metal with a polished wooden stock. It fit my hand comfortably, and I have rather dainty hands. Blondie’s fingers are about half an inch longer than all of mine, when we match hands for comparison; when I did M-16 training, and side-arm training, I found that my hands were too small to grip and still reach things comfortably on the issue M-16 and the Beretta. And the Beretta was hard for me to hold steady after a while, even with two hands. So, the revolver that made things equal in a fight between Jack Hays Rangers and the Comanche was actually… rather small, especially in comparison with the next iteration, the Walker Colt. The collector who generously took time from his workday to show us all this told me he has a pair of those, as well. The Walker Colt is a massive weapon, weighing about four and a half pounds. After expending all six shots, anyone armed with one would have still had a dandy club/brass knuckles. No wonder they were immediately popular. But after wearing a pair of them on a gun-belt for a whole day of re-enactor events, he really, really felt every ounce of them, in a considerably painful way.

And after the re-enactor event, we went on up to Fredericksburg, where I bored the heck out of Blondie at the Pioneer Museum, talking about the early Fredericksburg settlers. I wanted to take a look at the various household implements on display. And the wooden trunks they brought them in. And the corner town-lot that I willfully assigned to the fictitious family that I am writing about, at the corner of San Antonio and Adams. There is a one-story, stucco professional building on that particular plat… but strangely enough, I described my fictitious family as leaving two trees on their townlot, shading the back of their house… and there are two trees, shading the back of that building.

Really, sometimes I do scare myself. It’s scarier than Blondie wanting a wolf-dog hybrid… well, one that doesn’t try to hump her leg.

Donations being accepted, via the Paypal button, to the left, underneath the ad for the memoir. They will be used to set up a website to market the books, and if I don’t get an agent and a traditional publisher, I plan on doing a POD book of “Truckee Trail” and the “Adelsverein Trilogy”. I just listened to a story this morning on NPR about how best-sellers are decided upon by the publishing industry, so I am feeling particularly sour about the whole literary-industrial complex.

The Writers Life Waltz: Lento

12. April 2007 · Comments Off on The Writers Life Waltz: Lento · Categories: Domestic, General, Home Front, Site News, Working In A Salt Mine...

A little slow this week; working on revisions and rewrites to “Adelsverein Part One”, or as one of the regular readers calls it “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees”. I have begun sending out query letters on it, reasoning that by the time I hear from an agent who wants to hear more, I will have finished the revisions and polished it all to a high gleaming shine.

I also put together all the materiel necessary— basically, the first fifty pages and an expanded outline— for “Adelsverein” and “To Truckee’s Trail” both, and submitted them to Tor Books, which is just about the only one of the big publishers who condescend to review un-agented submissions. They take four to six months to make any sort of decision, by which time I’ll be well along in finishing “Adelsverein Part Two”. Part Three, maybe… depends on how fast I can research and write. (links here, here, here, and here, for those who are new to the site.)

At this point, three separate agencies have looked at “Truckee” and have turned it down. They all liked it, said nice things about it, but… and this is the Big But… sorry, no. Either it is too hard a sell, defies easy categorization, or there is no place for it in their current collection of offerings . But they all wished me luck in getting it published, and threw in some blah-blah-blah about it being a subjective business and perhaps another agency blah-blah-blah.

This is the book that just about every who has read it in full has loved, and at least three-quarters of those people are not related to me at all. Sooo… the fallback position is that if Tor turns it down, I’ll do POD, and hire my friend Dave The Marketing & Computer Genius to set up a website specifically for my books, AND do some serious marketing. Even if Tor does think it worthy (and you’ll be able to hear my jaw hit the floor all the way across several time zones if they do) or I do manage to get an agent, I will still do a book website of my own.

Hence, the Paypal donate button, over on the left, just under the link to my first book. The PJ ads support the site, donations will help me get the best book about the most incredible wagon-train story you have never heard about get out there in the mad world of books.

YOU KNOW YOU’RE AN AGING DISC JOCKEY WHEN…

05. April 2007 · Comments Off on YOU KNOW YOU’RE AN AGING DISC JOCKEY WHEN… · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, General Nonsense, Working In A Salt Mine...

(Courtesy of the FEN news group: One of those nostalgic things going around. I do, in fact, have scars on my fingers from miscalculated cuts, while editing audio tape with a razor blade. Just call me Miss Butterfingers)

– You were first hired by a GM who actually worked in radio before becoming GM.

– Radio stations were no place for kids.

– You excitedly turn the radio up at the sound of “dead air” on the competitor’s station.

– Sales guys wore Old Spice to cover the smell of liquor.

– Engineers could actually fix things without sending them back to the manufacturer.

– You worked for only ONE station, and you could name the guy who owned it.

– Radio stations used to have enough on-air talent to field a softball team every summer.

– You used to smoke in a radio station and nobody cared.

– Engineers always had the worst body odor, not because they worked too hard, but because they just didn’t shower that often.

– You know the difference between good reel-to-reel tape and cheap reel-to-reel tape.

– Religious radio stations were locally owned, run by an old Protestant minister and his wife, never had more than 20 listeners at any given time, and still made money.

– You have a white wax pencil, a razor blade, and a spool of 3M splicing tape in your desk drawer – – just in case.

– You can post a record, run down the hall, go to the bathroom, and be back in 2:50 for the segue.

– You knew exactly where to put the tone on the end of a carted song.

– You only did “make- goods” if the client complained. Otherwise, who cares?

– You can remember the name of the very first “girl” that was hired in your market as a DJ.

– Somebody would say, “You have a face for radio”, and it was still funny.

– Sixty percent of your wardrobe has a station logo on it.

– You always had a screwdriver in the studio so you could take a fouled-up cart apart at a moment’s notice.

– You always had a solution for an LP that ‘skipped’. (usually a paper clip or a dime on the tone-arm, somewhere)

– You would spend hours splicing and editing a parody tape until it was “just right”, but didn’t care how bad that commercial was you recorded.

– You still refer to CDs as “records”. (really old hands refer to them as ET, or electrical transcriptions)
– You played practical jokes on the air without fear of lawsuits.

– You answer your home phone with the station call letters.

– You used to fight with the news guy over air-time. After all, what was more important: your joke, or that tornado warning?

– You knew how to change the ribbon on the Teletype machine, but you hated to do it because “…that’s the news guy’s job.”

– You know at least 2 people in sales that take credit for you keeping your job.

– You have several old air-check cassettes in a cardboard box in your basement that you wouldn’t dream of letting anyone hear anymore, but, you’ll never throw them out or tape over them. Never!

– You can still see scars on your finger when you got cut using a razor blade and cleaned out the cut with head-cleaning alcohol and an extra long cotton swab on a wooden stick.

– You still have dreams of a song running out and not being able to find the control room door. (I have nightmares about the various players not working, or the control board has magically reconfigured itself)

– You’ve ever told a listener “Yeah.I’ll get that right on for you.”

– You have a couple of old transistor radios around the house with corroded batteries inside them.

– People who ride in your car exclaim, “Why is your radio so loud?”

– You remember when promotion men brought new LPs to the station – and you played them the same day.

– You have at least 19 pictures of you with famous people whom you haven’t seen since, and wouldn’t know you today if you bit ’em on the ass.

– You wish you could have been on “Name That Tune” because you would have won a million bucks.

– You even REMEMBER “Name That Tune”.

– You were a half an hour late for an appearance and blamed it on the directions you received from the sales person.

– You’ve run a phone contest and nobody called, so you made up a name and gave the tickets to your cousin.

– You remember when people actually thought radio was important.

Why I Write, Continued

03. April 2007 · Comments Off on Why I Write, Continued · Categories: General, History, Home Front, Working In A Salt Mine...

Over these last five years, people who blogged on the side, or got bitten by some other bug have moved on, in various forms and manifestations. Some have even decided that they had said all they wanted to say and moved on to some other enthusiasm. One of my very favorite early bloggers, Stephen Den Beste, packed it on over health issues, and three others (Cathy Seipp, Acidman, and Mother Bear) died in harness, as it were.

Others are focusing on things that just do not pull my interest as much; only fair, because I have gone wandering off on a tangent of my own, back into the 19th century. It is the pursuit of literary creation that drags me there, at least as much indulging my own interest. And it’s a damned fascinating century for all that: it made America, in all it’s contradictory glory, over the span of a single person’s lifetime. The beginning of that century of marvels and wonders saw a just barely post-Colonial nation, clinging to the land between the Atlantic coast and the spine of the Appalachians, a rural nation, where necessary things were manufactured by craftsmen working by hand, cooking was most likely done over an open fire, and heavy cargo moved by horsepower, or the wind caught in the sails of ships. It took two months to cross the Atlantic, six months or a year to get a letter from halfway around the world. Water turned the wheels of mills, garbage was thrown into the streets of cities, and two states away was practically a foreign country. The early part of that century looked much like the century before, and the century before that, at least in the way that people commonly lived.

Yet, within a bare hundred years, electricity lighted the cities, telegraphs sent the news instantly from halfway around the world, factories churned out a constant stream of goods and materials and it might take a week or so to cross the Atlantic on a luxurious steam liner… and another week to cross the United States from one ocean to another. In a theoretical single lifetime, over that bare handful of decades, the United States spilled over the mountain barrier, rushed headlong across the plains and the desert to the Pacific, while new intakes of hopeful immigrants filled up the spaces between, built and filled up cities where nothing but woods and clearings had been before. The States fractured, nearly fatally and fought a desperate Civil War, reunified and kept on building, inventing, innovating.

Again, it was a century of marvels, and made us in many ways what we still are… but we need to keep the memory of it green, but not in that self-flagellating, politically correct wank-fest sort of way so beloved by the modern academic bean-counters, so busy with finding fault that they miss the grandeur of the whole creation entirely. More than the grandeur that needs to be brought to mind, also the optimism, the hard work and the sheer stubborn courage. My first book was about a pioneer wagon train, the first to bring wagons all the way over the Sierra Nevada, and I am sure there is some snotty academic historian somewhere (probably whole departments of them, actually) who will whine nasally that my pioneers were grasping, land-hungry and bigoted, careless of the pristine environment, unsympathetic to other cultures, and embarrassingly unrepresentative of our multicultural society that… et cetera, et cetera.

So what? They were 19th century Americans, some of then native-born and some recent immigrants. Some of them were barely literate, others not even that. They chewed tobacco and spat in the street, didn’t care much for Indians, barely tolerated Catholics, and didn’t give a toss what Europeans thought of them. Most women of the time wanted to be married to a good provider, and thought going to church on Sunday was a good thing. They probably had pretty rank BO, and ate crackers in bed, too. But held against all those 21st century high-culture misdemeanors… on a day in 1844, they stood on the back of the Missouri river, and looked clear-eyed at two thousand miles of trackless nothing. With no one but themselves to rely upon, they took their families and everything they owned… and walked out into the wilderness.

This is where we came from, what we need to remember, even if most of our forebears came a little too late for that part of the American adventure. So this is what I do: reclaim our saga and our heroes, against the day when we will need them again. And I am afraid we will need them again, and sooner rather than later.

Why I Write

01. April 2007 · Comments Off on Why I Write · Categories: Domestic, General, Memoir, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Because I breath, and I can tell stories, and stories are important. They connect us to our history. Those stories are a shining path in the tangle of that amorphous mass loosely known as popular culture. Stories are a guide and inspiration for those of us who must find our way through the tangled jungle, for those of us who would rather not sleep-walk along a perilous knife-edge… and certain stories are also a warning of danger

“The story of the Fall of Singapore has exercised a powerful influence over my imagination, because it was in its way a dramatic re-enactment of the tragedy of the Titanic on a much vaster scale. Singapore was a place where the assumption of the British hereditary right to rule was so strong that even the obvious advance of the Japanese Army down the peninsula could not waken social circles which had known nothing other than ineffable superiority to the new reality.

The British governor told his army commander, “oh I suppose you’ll see the little men off.” Only after the Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk in an afternoon did it begin to dawn on them that they were all of them doomed. Doomed.

They simply couldn’t imagine what doomed meant. People accustomed to teas and dances, deference from the natives; accustomed to snapping their fingers and parting crowds at the bazaar simply couldn’t come to terms with the idea that in a little while they would beaten, raped, and starved. If they were lucky. This effervescent bubble of oh so clever people even organized something called a Surrender Lunch, during which they were supposed to gorge themselves in preparation for the privations ahead. It was beyond sad. It was pathetic.

And as I said, Singapore has exercised a powerful influence on my imagination because this forgotten incident is the nearest we can come to past as prologue. That is what awaits the liberals when Islam takes over. They will still be yelling for their rights as they are led away to be flogged.”

Comment, Wretchard, at The Belmont Club

Wretchard’s example of the fall of Singapore is an example of an historical event that I also circle back to, along with a handful of others. Writers have our favorites, apparently. Certain events, times and places force a recognition that all things are transient, that all flesh is grass, that these things shall pass, as immutable as they might seem to the casual glance. The apparently unsinkable ship can sink out from under you. We aren’t at the end of history, after all. Maybe this might be a good time to retrieve into active consideration certain of our historical memes.

I started writing on this blog when it was still Sgt. Stryker’s Daily Brief, when the original creator of it put out a call for more writers, active duty and veterans both, round and about July or August of 2002. A lot of things changed in five years. My first post here is now three jobs (not counting temp assignments), and three posts weekly times 52 times 5 years more or less, plus a whole change in professional focus ago. When I started, I thought of myself as an office-manager/administrative assistant who wrote on the side, but as of last July I began to think of myself as a writer who did a little office managing/administrating on the side. So, for a few years, I wrote about mil-bloggy matters, interspersed with entries about my admittedly eccentric family and non-conformist childhood, about living in Japan and Europe as a military member, and about my daughter’s doings as she was deployed with her Marine Corps unit to Kuwait and Iraq, early in 2003.

I looked at writing for this blog as a means to educate and entertain the general reader about the wonderful, wacky world of the military. But on the way to that end, a lot of other stuff happened. First, there are other military blogs now, veteran’s blogs, family-of-military blogs. We stopped being unique in that respect quite some time ago, in blog years. (Which must be somewhat like dog years) Writing for the blog was always supposed to be about the writer wanted to write about. Current events, politics, war, military trivia, and popular culture. Whatever… just make it good writing, sparkle a bit; and someone will find it interesting. Which is good, but nothing stays the same for long.

I pretty much milked the family stuff pretty well dry. (It’s all in the book, mostly, be a sport and order a copy if you want all the scandalous details). The same for my various cross-Europe junkets; I wrote all about that, don’t want to repeat myself. I can only extract so much amusement out of the menagerie of dogs and cats, and the maintenance of my house. So… I moved on.

Everyone does. A lot of the bloggers that I used to read regularly in 2002-2003 have done exactly that. Other interests, other lives, they had said all they wanted to say on a particular subject, they wanted to write a book, they had health issues, family issues, other interests, another job. Some of them turned to writing seriously about things that they felt were important to them. And so have I.

(More to follow. Of course. Would I leave the regular readers hanging?)

Once Bitten Twice Shy

07. March 2007 · Comments Off on Once Bitten Twice Shy · Categories: Domestic, General, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine...

Blondie’s insurance company rep confirms; her little car is totaled. Last rites will be performed by the insurance company sometime this week, and we will bury a little box with a damaged tail light in it, this weekend. The insurance rep told her that she was amazed that Blondie walked away from the crash with nothing other than bruises. Being a professional connoisseur of auto wreckage, she told Blondie that the degree to which the Mitsubishi was smashed usually meant that people in it were either injured or dead. So, Blondie is still quite shaken, and insists that quote “ It will be a nipple-y day in hell before I get behind the wheel of a compact car again!” unquote. The rental is a Jeep Cherokee; her next vehicle will be something similar in the sport-utility line. Bigger, anyway. And sitting farther off the ground

She was off to classes driving it this morning, driving the rental car; she plans to ask the rep if they will pay for another three or four days, to give her time over spring break to line up a replacement car.

The bruises are spectacular, by the way. Dark technicolor purple, with some red streaks.

Beer, Rock and Roll, and European Bureaucracy

10. February 2007 · Comments Off on Beer, Rock and Roll, and European Bureaucracy · Categories: Eat, Drink and be Merry, General, Working In A Salt Mine...

I just returned a few days ago from Munich, having had to respond to a Summons for Oral Proceedings at the European Patent Office. It was quite an experience – much more formal than the equivalent process in the USPTO. The issue related to a patent application that has been wending its way through their system for several years, and has been repeatedly rejected for a lack of inventive step. After about 3 ½ hours of debating the topic they finally conceded that it was indeed patentable. We don’t win them all, but a victory in the EPO is particularly sweet.

I had planned on doing some blogging while there, but could not bring myself to pay an additional $25/day for broadband access. Watching TV was not much of an option either given that the only English language choice is CNN International. I am completely burned out on the left wing bias of US MSM, but it is nothing in comparison to the Hate America tone in Europe. The release of the UN study on global warming had the European media in a frenzy over US refusal to sign the Kyoto accords, particularly ironic given the concurrently running story of China bringing on something like 5,000 coal fired generation facilities over the next few years.

Oh well, the beer was good. Red Haired Girl asked me to get a souvenir to give to her (yikes!!) boyfriend. I had a craving for a decent burger and fries anyway, so I headed to the Hard Rock Café to kill two birds with one stone. While there I struck up a conversation with a group in the midst of travelling to thirty some-odd cities to collect HRC guitar pins. These people are passionate about their hobby. In any case, I persuaded them to help out with some free Daily Brief publicity. Hopefully at least the gentleman holding the sign will be a new reader.

HRC - Munich

I will likely be travelling to Romania in the next several weeks, so I will try to get some new pictures with a vampire theme.

In the meantime, I am anxiously awaiting the onset of spring weather. There is a fine brisket in my freezer with an appointment with the smoker.

Mission and Metamorphosis

10. January 2007 · Comments Off on Mission and Metamorphosis · Categories: General, Site News, Working In A Salt Mine...

So here we are then, we few and happy few at the Daily Brief, standing in the middle of a cleared space and wondering where everyone else has gone. I looked back into the archives, and realized that I have been an active blogger for nearly four and a half years. I posted my first entry at the Brief’s predecessor, Sgt. Stryker, in August of 2002, after having been a semi-regular reader of it for a couple of months. When the war began in Iraq a few months afterwards, Stryker was one of a handful of military blogs, and readership soared. I am not sure exactly to what heights, but pretty far up there, and not at an altitude to be maintained consistently over a long period. Nothing in this world remains static; everything evolves.

Blogging is a hobby for most people, even those who take it seriously. Like all hobbies, people get bored and drop it, or find the discipline of providing content on a regular basis all too much. Or the persona they have developed is a bad fit, or they have changed and outgrown, or said all they wanted to say; mission accomplished. The original Stryker had other interests; he still blogs at another location, under another name, but many of first generation of contributors, and the second as well… they did it for a while, and moved on: Sparkey, Group Captain Mandrake, Kevin Connors and others, some of whom only contributed for a couple of months. Joe Comer, “HerkyBirdMan” died. It was the same with other blogs, some of which I read devotedly: Stephen Den Beste and USS Clueless, Diplomad, the Gweilo Diaries… and who was that movie producer, who was blogging most amusingly from Budapest, or Prague? They stop updating, and poof! They are gone, flying “forgotten as a dream flies at the opening day.” Vodkapundit is ill, and so is Cathy Seipp, Cori Dauber is on hiatus and writing a book, Rob “Acidman” Smith died. Nothing stays the same, everything moves on.

Which is not a circuitous way of saying that I am pulling the plug also… certainly not! Not after all the hassle of changing over to a new domain name! I don’t deny also that sometimes I am stuck for something to write about: after four years, I have pretty much covered all the endearing stories about my grandparents and my family, about Blondie as a child, and our adventures living and traveling in Europe. Practically everything I could write about current politics, and the war, and the military in general I have written before: three entries a week for four and a half years, it does add up. I hate to think I am repeating myself… especially when it was pretty good, the first time I said it.

As of this month though, I am ten years retired from the Air Force and Blondie is a year out of the Marines. We are milbloggers only in the sense of being veterans. We have both moved on, my daughter to college, and me to… well, that’s the point right there and the reason I am carrying on with The Brief. If I had quit every time I couldn’t think of something to say, in an interesting way, I’d have done it eight or nine times by now. Everyone has moments like that. I am sure James Lileks has moments— certainly he blogs about them… but he carries on. He’s a pro.

The thing that I came to take seriously over the last year was that I thought of myself as a writer, and not an office worker who did a little writing on the side. I upped my writing to a whole other level thanks to The Brief, and those readers who thought enough of what I wrote to encourage me. So, I can’t quit, it’s just that I am interested in other stuff; stuff like… oh, where Americans came from, and the people and events that shaped us, a hundred and more years ago. (Oh, yeah… and getting published by a real-live dead-tree no-kidding publisher,) My personal strength is telling stories. It’s what I do, what I want to do. If it’s what you want to hear, stick around, I’ve got some doozies. If not… there are a million stories in the naked blogosphere.

(PS Oh, I’ll do popular culture, and such events as catch my notice and interest, and the other contributors— Proud Veteran, Dragon Lady, Radar, and Timmer (Wow! That was the shortest long break in the history of this blog)— they’ll cover their own interests. It’s the way we’ve always done things here.)

Lifestyles of the Struggling Writer

10. December 2006 · Comments Off on Lifestyles of the Struggling Writer · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Working In A Salt Mine...

Last week I nerved myself up to actually call the literary agent who was reviewing the entire manuscript of “To Truckee’s Trail”. He had e-mailed me at the beginning of November that he was savoring every word and would let me know “soon”… but I had already begun to sense what the word would be, when I didn’t hear anything by mid-month.
And the word was, no, he didn’t think he’d be able to “sell” it to one of the big name publishers; although he was very complimentary— it’s a terrifically gripping read, very nice characters, and researched down to the third decimal place— but…

And this is what I have come to think of as the “Big But”; it would be a hard sell, harder than he wanted to dive into. It’s not quite a genre western, definitely not a romance, since the passionate relationship is between two people who have been married for a decade at least, and it’s not the sort of historical novel that seems to sell these days, which as he explained it, is about an unknown aspect of an event or person that people have heard about (Sigmund Freud, the Civil War). He floated the Stephens Party in a couple of casual conversations, and drew an absolute blank every time… which I thought would have been a selling point, but never mind.

No way does this put me back to square one: I’ve been applying to other lit agencies all along; so far, three form rejections which are about what I’d expect, but…

Another “Big But”… a friend of a friend who is a writer himself and coached me through writing up a proper proposal, and sample chapter, etc, is going to put it straight to his publisher. He is not one of the really big names, but he has made a regular living at it for a long while, and moreover is a big fan of my stuff. I’ve tweaked the manuscript again, in response to feedback from knowledgeable readers, and he will review it one more time, and send it in after Christmas. Apparently, nothing happens in the publishing world over Christmas.

Over the last month or so, I sent out a number of proposed articles to various magazines; rewritings of some of my best blog entries, actually. One of them is being considered by a history magazine, and two of them have been rejected…. But with a hand-written note of encouragement from the reviewing editor, expressing profound enjoyment of them, and apologizing because the publication had no budget for free-lancers this quarter.

This represents a step up for my rejection slip collection, actually; yeah, they’re rejection slips, but they are nice rejections, and give evidence that the submission was actually read and considered. It’s all about progress.

I’ve started the next book, too: the one about the German settlements in the Texas Hill Country. Now, that will have positively operatic levels of everything: the wild frontier, lust, cliff-hanging danger and sudden death. I might even put some sex into it, too.

Custom of the Season

27. November 2006 · Comments Off on Custom of the Season · Categories: Domestic, Eat, Drink and be Merry, Fun and Games, General, Working In A Salt Mine...

I did, on one single occasion, spend the entire Friday-after-Thanksgiving in the mall and department store. Not because I had a yen for joining the yearly Christmas-shopping exercise in masochism… but because I was working retail that year. I was on terminal leave, and job-hunting in a desultory fashion, and took a temp position in a department store which paid a salary plus commission on sales. (If nothing else, this arrangement will guarantee attentive sales staff… and besides, the employee discount was totally generous.) It was rather fun, at first; If you truly enjoy shopping, and hanging out with other women, and people-watching, who wouldn’t get a kick from hanging around a department store? But the day after Thanksgiving was all that and doing a sort of sales-floor triathlon; we were at top speed all that long day. Not much more than half an hour for lunch, no times when it slowed down long enough that you could sit down in the back room and put up your feet.
Dense crowds in the mall, cars slowly rotating the parking lots looking for that rare species, a parking place, long lines at every cash register, and workdays that stretched out so long that another sales associate lamented that the only place she could shop for Christmas, besides the store we worked in was Walmart, because it was open twenty four hours a day. I had my fill of holiday retail madness after that experience, and truth is, I usually don’t need to shop for Christmas presents during December.

That is because I am one of those tiresomely organized people who shop for Christmas throughout the year. I didn’t start out that way, honestly… it came about because of being overseas for so long. The mail deadline for sending parcels to the States, and getting them there by Christmas was routinely in October, which meant that I had to be done with shopping by the end of September. Sometimes opportunities to shop were limited, which stretched the shopping season out for a couple of months, and bumped back even thinking about what to get everyone to… oh, say early summer. Spring, even. This set the habit for me, of buying things with an eye towards Christmas… especially if they were on sale, whenever I saw them. “OOhhh, that would be perfect for (insert name here)!”, so add it to the collection in the box on the top shelf of the master suite closet. Christmas… it comes every year, just like April 15th. Putting off doing anything about buying gifts or doing the income tax return will not, will not make either of them go away. Trust me on this.

This has the advantage of being extremely easy on the pocketbook… as long as you remember who the heck you bought something for; a disadvantage with a large family. So, all I have to do during December’s retail madness is to take out the box with the gifts bought throughout the year, and wrap them… in the paper that I bought the week after Christmas of last year when it was marked down 70%.
And put up my feet and have another glass of Chablis. You’re welcome – I live to serve.

(next: Sgt. Mom’s specialty gift Christmas baskets)

Presenting Amazing Skills of Balance and Control!!!

04. November 2006 · Comments Off on Presenting Amazing Skills of Balance and Control!!! · Categories: General, Technology, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

One of the things that I saw in Korea that I wish more than anything else I had taken a picture of was a young man who must have had enormous confidence in his own sense of balance, and in the strength of his (reinforced!) motorcycle, for I spotted him one day tooling confidently down the avenue outside Yongsan’s Gate #1 with a full-sized, American-made, 19 cubic foot refrigerator, lashed several times around with ropes and bunjee cords ,balanced and standing upright on the back of his motorcycle!

Let’s not even imagine how he got it up there, would be getting it down, and what would happen if he toppled over on a turn… but for your amusement and education, I present the Lords of The Logistic !

(link courtesy of 2 Blowhards)

Lifestyles of the Income-Challenged and Relatively Unknown

01. November 2006 · Comments Off on Lifestyles of the Income-Challenged and Relatively Unknown · Categories: Domestic, General, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine...

So, having bills to pay, and realizing that any return on writing for pay will be a while in coming… I am wading in the waters of employment again, after filing for unemployment benefits a couple of weeks ago. Texas is kindly but stern in these matters, insisting that good-faith efforts be made on a regular basis for remunerative employment. They are also enormously helpful to veterans; yesterday I had to go down to the state workfare center for a briefing, afterwards those dozen of us who were veterans had an opportunity to meet with a jobs counselor. I didn’t need to, as I had two interviews immediately after the briefing, blam-blam, just like that. Hence, I was in full interview drag; conservative suit, silk scarf, matching jewelry, stockings and shoes that matched the handbag, tasteful makeup and all. (My mother trained me well.)
The first was over at the airport, very much a last-minute thing; they called the night before, having pulled the resume I send them the day before that. It turned out to be a preliminary round. Full-time, two-weeks paid vac, salary OK, small office, varied duties. Additional amusement provided by the fact that it was a brokerage selling executive aircraft, and was housed among hangers on the east edge of the airport… with small aircraft coming and going, and being maintained in the same area where the employee parking was located. A single-engine AC yielded the right-of-way to the VEV as I left. This sort of thing would have made the commute rather interesting… if I had pursued it to the second round.

But I didn’t. I went on to the second interview. This was a referral, from the person who fixed my computer two weeks ago, to one of his regular clients who sells very specialized real estate all over South Texas out of a home office. The client has a need for a multi-talented office manager-assistant-secretary with a wide variety of sales-support skills and a facility with computers. It is part time, pays at the bottom of my range, is a small office and probably bound for a rocky ride… but it’s barely twenty minutes away, in a neighborhood I know and like, and I would be entirely in charge once I got up to speed. And I still owe the computer guy, anyway.
I’m a sucker. I accepted the offer, which was tendered about halfway through the interview. I start tomorrow. The fact that I am not the least bit interested in real estate, per se, is probably a plus, from my new bosses’ point of view; I am in no danger of going out and setting up on my own, once I have gotten experience of the field. I want to write, and this would let me do it, in the afternoons… and also pay the bills, until the latest book hits the big time.

Por Favor

21. October 2006 · Comments Off on Por Favor · Categories: General, Home Front, Site News, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine...

My computer, upon which I am now depending upon more than practically every other non-living thing in my life besides air conditioning… inexplicably crashed on Thursday night.

It is fixed now, mostly because the local computer consultant/expert/wonder-worker who sold it to me originally, and to whom I have steered a lot of business, made a house call and sorted it all out, knowing how much depends upon this, now that I am trying to work the free-lance writing thing, and writing for this site and for Blogger News Network. Besides my (miniscule pension) and a pittance for working at the radio station on Saturdays, that is my only income.

He also fixed the wireless modem that allows Blondie to use her laptop, had a stab at sorting out what has been wrong with my printer, swapped over all my important files to the newer, faster computer with more memory that he had sold to the office which closed down last year and which my employer generously gave to me. (There were two other computers in the office, like how many others did my former employer really need?)

He took my old computer in swap for an hour of work, but I still will owe him for a good chunk of time, although he is in no hurry for payment… which is good, because I cannot afford it. The just-completed book sits on the agents’ desk, and a lot of other proposed work has been sent to various pubishers. I have a promise of income from it, someday…. but I need to pay the computer expert soon.

So, I am blegging for small donations to pay for this work and to keep my internet connection. We were doing OK, but this has us stretching our resources to the snapping point.

Paypal is fine… e-mail me for particulars… and my thanks.

So You Heard…

13. September 2006 · Comments Off on So You Heard… · Categories: Domestic, General, Pajama Game, Working In A Salt Mine...

…The one about the guy who was down in the dumps, and they told him…”Cheer up, things could get worse!” So, he cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse!

Well, it’s not that bad… actually it is, if not bad, at least semi-OK. I am coming down the home-stretch on the “book” first draft, which is the hardest part, I think. Just half a chapter and the present-day bookend-closer to go, explaining what happened to everyone. I think I will have it done by Friday… and then I will go back and polish vigorously. There are some people and sub-plots I want to flesh out a little more, and some characters who really started to come clear in the last half, so I must go back and fill out their terribly sketchy introductions, and make a more concerted effort to juggle a few more characters: there are eight or nine male characters who are extremely significant to the story, four female characters, ditto, and one child. Three, if you count the babies. And a cute bit with a dog. Then there are another dozen supporting characters, as it were, fleeting glimpses of certain historic places along the trail, and a lot business about wagons and ox-teams, though I don’t think I will need to include a recipe for fox, pot-roasted in a Dutch oven. (Excellent eating, by historical accounts, although that may have only been in comparison to coyote, which apparently was totally vile, no matter what the method of cooking employed.)

Everyone who has read a couple of chapters has said, “Omigawd, what a terrific story… and why did I never hear about these people, before?” This is a rather gratifying reaction. It means that it is not one of those things which as been done to death, and thus would have the charm of the unusual. Or, so I hope. So far, though, only Dad has read the entire manuscript to date, and has provided much useful feed back on the flora and fauna of the Great Basin, and the Sierra Nevada. (Note to self: write in some observations about pinon pines. And sage. Lots and lots of sage.) Dad also wants to know a bit more about the half-dozen or so hired men, who were working their way as drovers, or as teamsters. Since they didn’t have the wherewithal to buy a wagon, stock, and the necessary supplies, they worked for their food and board for those who did. Pre 1849 Gold Rush, emigration to California and Oregon was a fairly expensive enterprise; those who ventured it were usually pretty solid and stable citizens… in contrast to many other stereotypical frontier types. (Note #2 to self… put in a bit about the hired men.)

The last month, as I work away on the story have been the most terrific fun, and I am enormously grateful for having been let go from the last job… the one I had for all of seven months. I’ve temped a couple of days here and there, but came to realize that I… Well, I don’t hate it…I just don’t care for it any more. I want to be at home, sitting at the computer in the corner of the bedroom, immersed in the 19th century, with the Weevils sleeping on the floor and Sammie and Perce on the bed. I can only think my last employer perhaps was picking up on this attitude. Certainly, I was very close to snapping “The copier is over there, and you’re legs aren’t painted on!” whenever someone asked me to make a couple of copies of this and such.

I’ve still got the weekend shift at the radio station, and a couple of hours paid work three times weekly, writing for another blog-enterprise… plus the pension, and Blondie’s VA and GI Bill benefits. She started school at the beginning of the month, at a local community college which reportedly is a feeder into the veterinary medicine program she wants. So far, so good. Most of the professors seem to have high standards, and be fairly exacting; I have always entertained the suspicion that a junior college may be actually, the best place around to, I don’t know, maybe actually learn something? It does not have the cachet of the acclaimed institutes of higher so-called-learning, but it doesn’t have the price-tag, either, and Blondie is enormously happy to be in school, working toward the goal of being Dr. Blondie, DVM, at long last.

September has been a sort of holding month for us, a time for me to work away on the completed first draft, which the interested (and legitimate) literary agent has indicated would be sufficient proof of my commitment as a first-timer to actually producing a finished manuscript. It seems that August is the silly season in publishing. The publishers come back from their summer holidays in the Hampshires, or Nantucket or the Cape, or wherever during September, and look to have something brilliant on their desks, so the literary agents are working like dogs throughout August, polishing their best efforts like big shiny apples. He loved the sample chapter, though. And I feel good, about the whole project. I am just a long way down on his pile of stuff “to do”.

Oh, and the “things got worse” bit. Some idiot took my bank card information, and tried to charge $10,000.00 worth of merchandise to some on-line enterprise I have never heard of, much less done business with. Being fairly sharpish and observant when uncharacteristic charges are made… my bank very swiftly put a stop on my card. I can only wish that I could be in the bracket where this kind of thing would pass unnoticed, but I am not. It was damned embarrassing, at Huge Enormous Big-Ass Grocery, when my card wouldn’t go through for $20 bucks worth of dog-food, when I was fairly sure I had more than enough in the household account to cover. It will take a week or so to sort it all out, and not only restore the funds that I had, and send me a new card, but restore my access to the household account funds. In the meanwhile, another reason to stay at home and work away on “The Book”.

The Cubicle Farm

17. August 2006 · Comments Off on The Cubicle Farm · Categories: Domestic, Fun and Games, General, Working In A Salt Mine...

So, last week I was back at the Enormous Corporate Behemoth, for about the fourth time in a year. I was guessing that the temp service staff was living in the hope that if they only threw me often enough at the E-C-B that eventually I would stick. Their hopes are alas, a triumph over my experience. To them it is a mystery why I wriggle out of the E-C-B’s smothering but very well-paid embrace: “But you were military, you should love it!” they cry… well, yes I was and I still don’t. I flee, screaming (softly) at the end of every assignment, putting off my contractor ID badge and tearing up the parking permit, and swearing that this time, it will be absolutely the last time… really!

The E-C-B is one of San Antonio’s munificent and magnificent employers. I have met many people who seem to be quite happy, and enormously fullfilled, they smile in the corridors, and laugh in the lunchrooms, and decorate their cubicles with stuffed animals and family pictures, and little banners and awards for this and that… and most of them show no sign of having had lobotamies… but there are so many of them. I have never seen anyone from a previous assignment, again, the place is that big. The ranks of cubicles go on, and on, and on, as far as the eye can see.

Their main complex is a huge edifice, sprawling across the length of a ridge in the middle of a wooded and beautifully landscaped park. From a distance, the place looked like one of those sprawling and crenellated fortresses. A number of ponds and a resident herd of very tame and slightly undersized deer heighten the likeness to one of those rambling castles or palaces in the middle of a European city, or maybe a stately home in it’s own parkland. Employee appointments and convieniences are lavish: There is a Starbucks at either end of the mail building, and another Starbucks in an adjacent facility, an on-site gym, a daycare, cafeterias, snack bars and little lounges wedged in wherever there is a nook big enough to fit two cushy chairs and a table, and a bit of original art… and the place creeps me out, completely. It is just too big.

I have worked for big firms since I retired, and small ones, too. The small ones had a disconcerting tendency to either treat you like family— and in a dysfunctional and abusive family way, either that or fold underneath you. Bad sign, when the employer starts letting contracted services go, and stalling on cutting checks for work already done. Almost as bad as having employee paychecks bounce. That last hasn’t happened to me yet, but I did have an acquaintence who came to work one normal morning, and found it padlocked and empty of furniture and all the employees owed a paycheck. No, the smaller places have their perils, and even the medium-sized firm most recently on my resume had a creeply way of suddenly shedding long-time employees without warning…. to them or anyone else. Usually our first clue was the next morning,w hen the combination to the employee door wouldn’t work: we’d all be whispering to each other, “Hey, the combo is changed… OK, who got the sack this time?” This made all the slightly forced jollity of company picnics and events ring just a tad bit hollow.

Frankly, I’d rather spend my days at home writing, with Spike the Weevil I Know Nothing Of sitting under my chair, and just temp for a week or two here and there: there may be a fair amount of crap going on where I work, and I have pretty definitly lost my capacity for enduring it… but a week here, and a couple of days there pays the bills and I pack up my stuff and go well before it gets to me or I piss someone off. Or look around and realize that Ihave spent several decades in the cubicle farm.

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