If there's a particular subject of interest, click one of the tags below and you'll get a list of relevant, irrelevant, and sometimes irreverent postings.






Want updates about the latest E.E. Knight releases? I send out broadcast emails through the social networking forum Knightreaders. I hate spam as much as the next guy, so I don't plan on doing much broadcast emailing.

There is also an E.E. Knight fan site on Facebook.

You bet. Woke us up and set the cats and Sprog to howling. I thought it was a bad accident -- a snowplow hitting something, or maybe careening into our building over on the east front, but then it went on for a few seconds.

We've also had a lot of snow the last couple days, but that's something we're used to.

I came across this obit of Hollywood producer David Brown, by one of the men who learned under him, William Katz, and I thought a few paragraphs about writing and his experience were worth recording here:

Writers loved him because he loved them. There are plenty of producers who will work with a writer, then never take his phone calls again. David would not only take your calls, he'd often pick up the phone himself. He'd also call writers regularly to let them know the progress of their projects. Once you'd worked with David Brown, you didn't want to work with anyone else. I think he knew that, and rather enjoyed it.

He was an educated man - a graduate of Stanford and Columbia. But he was never his university degrees. He never mentioned them. There is a whole army in Hollywood today that believes that talent comes from taking English 101 at Princeton. David knew where it came from, and knew it had to appear on the written page. And he didn't care to know what degrees appeared after the writer's name, or if any appeared at all.

Some people were quoted in the obits as saying that David Brown was the last gentleman producer. That's ridiculous. There's no "last." There will be others. The question is whether Hollywood will know what to do with them. The signs today are not encouraging, but Hollywood hobbles from era to era, crisis to crisis, and there will someday be another David Brown to remind youngsters that three things make a great movie - story, story, and story - and that three things make a great producer - taste, taste, and taste.

He did Jaws and The Sting and Driving Miss Daisy, among others. I'd put The Sting in my top five for all-time great scripts (Paul Newman was less equivocal, he called it the best script he'd ever read in his whole Hollywood career).

In other news, the Sprog is working on taking his first steps. He's "cruising" now, which means standing up and then moving around in a limited fashion while bracing himself against something. The little cuss is very headstrong, since he first rose to his feet it's all he wants to do any more. He's going to conquer this walking thing and he works at it until he drops on his bottom and falls asleep. Of course we make him take a break to eat and so on.

The first two Vampire Earth books are now out in German. I've nothing to go on other than Amazon.de and no data points to match those numbers against, so I'll just have to wait and see. If they buy more books, I'll know they did well. VE seems to be languishing in France, but the Age of Fire books are still galumphing along and the publisher keeps buying more.

Saw this at booraven22. I'm always stealing stuff from her LJ.

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	7.7
Mind:	6.8
Body:	6.1
Spirit:	6.8
Friends/Family:	6.9
Love:	9.1
Finance:	9.1
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

While I think self-assessment is useful, I'm not sure how it calculates some of these. I'd rate both body and mind a good deal lower. It must weigh stuff like having a degree more heavily than it deserves -- a degree's more of a test of hoop-jumping and a certain amount of perseverance than fitness of mind. Of course you can't expect the Minnesota Multiphasic from somebody's online quiz. Still, it was a fun way to take a break for fifteen minutes.

I feel genuinely bad about the Vikings losing. But this crap about the officiating in OT. Please. If you put 12 men in a huddle after a timeout with one of the best game-winning field goal kickers warming up in the hopes that you'll place the ball for him, you're not going to get so much as a nod of sympathy from me.

KNOBS! YOU PUSHED THE TEAM RIGHT OUT OF RYAN LONGWELL'S RANGE. CAN'T YOU FUCKING COUNT TO TWELVE? WILL YOU GET TO THE SUPERBOWL AGAIN BEFORE I'VE GONE COMPLETELY GREY? MY BALLS HADN'T EVEN DROPPED THE LAST TIME YOU WERE IN IT. OH THE HUMANITY!

That's better.

Still, I'll be the curmudgeonly old guy saying "Yeah, Flash Newbie is great, but he's no Brett Favre." I've been working on my curmudgeonly since about 29 and it's down pretty pat by now.

I had a killer sinus infection last week. Gunk just pouring down the back of my throat.

"Syfy" is running a contest where you get to name their new movie. Win valuable prizes! I was so tempted to go sarcastic with my submission, like It's Never Sunny in Vancouver or One of Orwell's Kaleidoscope Writing Machines Could Have Done Better but then I watched Wyvern. Barry Corbin and Elaine Miles made me all nostalgic for Northern Exposure and I lost what little edge I have. Sigh.

Got my royalty statement for Choice of the Cat with last summer/fall's sales on it. I'm down a shocking 25% off of the 2008 statement, but that one reflected the first time my mm titles had been in a riser where Cat filled two pockets. Why the drop off? Probably some combination of the economy and diminishing returns on the second riser. I'm still selling more than enough to stay in print, which is what really counts, so I'll take it. While I"m on the subject of numbers, ebooks are still under 5% of the royalty pie, but up a little over the previous year.

Back to work. I'm also thinking I can pick up a Vikings Favre jersey on Ebay cheap this week.

Robert Parker, author of the Spenser novels, is dead at 77.

http://bostonherald.com.nyud.net/entertainment/books/view/20100119spenser_novelist_robert_parker_dies_in_cambridge/srvc=home&position=6

Jeeze, haven't talked here forever.

It's just because I'm behind on everything and feel guilty blogging. But I can let you know what's going on.

Sprog's great. He's a perfect baby: busy active and good tempered in the day, very sleepy at night.

I've been taking some cooking classes and this neat little local cooking school/kitchen supply store. They have a core faculty, but they bring outsiders for special classes. Ferinstance in Feb I'm going to take a class with a French saucier. They do a lot of fun stuff too, like cooking with kids classes, and the other night I did a "Trader Joe's" seasonal class, with some clever use of TJ's exclusives. I'm a decent cook, I made money for college doing it, but I'm more of a "how" guy than a "why" guy and I want to learn my whys. I've picked up some really good recipes, but more importantly my technique is improving across the board.

Sprog will have some grammas visiting in February. Chat's mom will be here over V-day so Chats and I can go out. Then my mom comes at the end of the month for a week and on into March. I'm fortunate in that I get along well with Chats's family, and I'm quite close to my own. I pretty much talk to my mom and dad every other day (they want updates on the grandchild, but don't think it's a burden for me, I love talking about him).

I don't know much about how Dragon Rule is doing. I'm thinking more about AOF #6 at the moment, to tell the truth. It's probably going to be the longest book I've every written to date by the time I'm done, lots of loose threads to wrap up.

Go Vikings!

Okay, Fox, here's my pitch:

The show's called Pole RePosition.

It features three veteran pornstars and/or exotic dancers who go to troubled strip clubs and try to execute a business makeover, turnaround, whatever you want to call it. I'm thinking they'd be like ZZ Top's "Eliminator Girls," only a little more weatherbeaten and cougarish. Give 'em a nice pink Jag or something. They'll be directed, rather like Charlie's Angels, by a veteran titty-bar tycoon with a confrontational personality who makes Gordon Ramsay look like David Niven. He'll shout down the gotties while the Eliminator Girls do their stuff. Staff and talent changes, redecoration, new lighting, music updates, Amateur Little People Night, whatever it takes to put troubled strip bars back on their eight-inch clear platform heels.

Any stripper fired can get her job back by going 2-for-3 at oil wrestling against one of the Eliminator Girls, or sudden death one-fall rollerderby.

All I ask is a small royalty and the pixelization contract.

Thanks to the new DVR that came with the cable, a first for us, I was able to watch the highlights of the Twilight Zone marathon.

(No, I wasn't just sitting on my butt watching contrived ironic endings. I was also working.)

A few thoughts:

• How come the teens in the button-down, conformist, McCarthyite 50s got The Twilight Zone when I, from the open-minded, free-and-easy, explorational 70s got The Love Boat?


• Rod Serling really had a woodrow for beautiful, disheveled, silent women. Viz Nova in Planet of the Apes and Elizabeth Montgomery in Two.


• Given his half-hour time frame, he had to do an awful lot of telling rather than showing. There are certainly worse places to learn when and how to use telling.


• CBS must have sold off all their Twilight Zone music cues. Kingdom of the Spiders got most of its music from the Zone.


• Good thing Shatner did Star Trek or he might have gone the Anthony Perkins route and been typecast as the go-to guy for borderline mental illness.


• It's too bad Serling smoked roughly three thousand cigarettes a day. I would have liked to see what he came up with in his (dare I say) twilight years, had he not died at 50.


• I really have a woodrow for beautiful, disheveled, silent women. Viz Nova in Planet of the Apes and Elizabeth Montgomery in Two.

Fingers crossed...






Wonder if there's a chance in hell it'll get on the big screen over here.

Everyone else is doing one. Now it's my turn.

I know 2009 was tough for a lot of people on and off my flist. I've had tough years too, but this wasn't one of them. The birth of the Sprog made it one of the best years of my life. After years of quiet heartbreak this little miracle showed up. Our trip down the rabbit hole began.

He brought a lot of joy and worry. Joy is self-explanatory. I'm not a fan of worry, however, mostly because I'm intimately acquainted with it. Over the years I've taught myself that when I'm worried I either have to do something about it or let it go as beyond my control. I respect, embrace, and make use of fear, fear is a great motivator and guide, but worry is just funking and a timewaster.

In my relationships I've had a tough time keeping up with friends. Chats has to know that she's still #1 even as she steers the child-raising ship. I'm sure we've neglected way too many friends since he was born. I even did a shit job with Christmas cards this year.

Career has been going pretty well, but I let too much slide in favor of watching the Sprog gurgle and explore. I just have to accept that

condSprogmoreinterestingthanWork == TRUE;

always will be until my trip to the Undiscovered Country, and build my life around that conditional statement, finding ways to get the writing and other career-related stuff accomplished. Sales appear to be chugging along, though I won't know for sure how 2009 was until about nine months into 2010 because that's the way royalty reports work. I'm even seeing some money from overseas. 2009 was the first year I received royalty money from another country over and above my advance (merci, France). Getting into audio helped matters a great deal. I'm hoping I can launch a new book project in 2010 to carry me after I've finished up the Age of Fire series. Though of course if #6 takes off like gangbusters I'd find a way to continue it.

Minor triumphs include giving up my penismobile in favor of a family-friendly wagon. Saying goodbye to the Pursuit Special was tough, especially since it still had an unknown number of great years in it. The Pursuit Special was the first car I ever owned I couldn't drive into the ground. I just did my regular maintenance and she purred even at ten years old.

I also used getting the new kitchen appliances for a fresh start with my cooking. Chats and I were living off carry-out, last-minute stir-frys, Indian-in-a-can, and other glorified student cuisine for way too long. All my fault as I'm the alleged cook in the family. So I'm rebuilding from the ground up. I've even been taking classes at a small local cooking school and kitchen supply store. I'm open to relearning everything I thought I knew, starting with omelets and moving on from there. I'm proud to say I'm doing a lot more with fresh veggies, beans, rices, nuts, fruits and so on, studying vegetarian stuff from all along the silk and spice roads. It's been rewarding in many ways.

What most disappointed me this year? Letting too many deadlines slip, and slip again. Ignoring my friends. Not getting to the wonderful gym we belong to often enough, despite the great child-care facilities that make getting a workout in even when you're in charge of a child a breeze. Some of these are easy fixes (chucking the Sprog in his carseat and getting to the gym). Why are bad habits so much easier to start than good ones?

All in all, a great year. 2010 will have a tough time even coming close enough for horseshoes or hand grenades.

Last night was diaper delivery night. The guy comes rather late, like after eleven. I expect he's used to just stopping at a house and doing the pickup and dropoff on the porch like an old-fashioned milkman. Not an option for us. The condo is porchless and even diapers get stolen. Oak Park must be on some weird portion of his route, like the very tail end of it (his van, from what I can see as he chucks the yellow bags, looks really full). After that, I totter into bed and crash. Sometimes fully clothed.

Well, last night I found out there was assorted baby stuff under me, binkies and bottles and whatnot. The best way to get the Sprog to take a good long nap these days is to lay down with him (either Chats breastfeeding or me giving a bottle) in our bed and let him doze and nurse. We call them "nursie-naps." But the Sprog is like a great civilization, he leaves distinct evidence of himself wherever he inhabits for others to find later. I kept rolling onto baby items, or moving my pillow and finding my ear resting against a teether.

As you'd expect from my life, it wasn't fresh or original. The whole night could have been on an old Jackie Gleason Show kinescope, if not a Stooges short. Totally cliche. Just me pulling objects from under my back, looking at them, and then setting them on the nightstand. At least my performance was low-key. I didn't overplay it or make ridiculous expressions or engage in light banter with da wife.

I would hope that had I been writing it I could have livened it up a little by getting up and going to the toilet and having Chats notice that there's a tiny soft plastic spoon stuck in my hair like an antennae thanks to the unexpectedly strong bonding powers of applesauce, or waking up sucking on a binkie, anything but "dad rolls over, gets annoyed at baby paraphernalia trapped under his butt."

While the weather created some difficulties, it was a pretty great Christmas. Chats got me a beautiful Saddleback messenger bag. The perfect rugged look, although most days I'm about as rugged as a bowl of oatmeal. Looks like something a Pony Express rider might have carried. I've been wanting an easier-to-navigate-the-urban-jungle "vertical" bag for a while for holding the laptop, books, etc. and as usual da Wife really came through. Chats really does great gifts.

The Sprog bought me some comfy new lounging pants. They have log cabins, pines and moose on them.

My friend Howard bought me the HeroScape starter set, which looks frightfully addictive.


( Sprog pics, plus my cake )

We have a gorgeous White Christmas going on out there.

Right now, the highly weather-dependent holiday plans are to have our first Christmas as a family mostly at home. We'll keep Christmas on Christmas Eve, then visit relatives in Wisconsin Christmas day. If the sky holds back. I enjoy going out in winter weather, but not while it's coming down on me. Could be we'll be camped here until Sunday. Fortunately we have enough butter-baked calories to supply a Vasco de Gama cruise.

So, a little more cooking and baking today, and lots of Patrick Swayze movies. Nothing like a viewing of Roadhouse to keep you company as you wrap presents. I had some "New Christmas Classics" going this week, like A Very Brady Christmas and A Carol Christmas with Tori Spelling and William Shatner. Not to mention Patrick Stewart chewing the bed-curtains that have been miraculously returned from the rag-and-bone man in A Christmas Carol (for the record, my favorite version is Alistar Sim's). I'm more than ready to see a few JD bottles broken over people's heads to some blues rock.

Sprog update: he's crawling around army-style and briefly getting up on hands-and knees. I predict he'll be hands-and-knees crawling by the New Year.



Merry Christmas, all.

This is kind of interesting:

http://news.yahoo.com/video/world-15749633/smart-octopus-can-use-tools-17147361

Things are beginning to gel for our first Christmas with the Sprog. Chats's sister will fly in to Chicago Friday night and stay with us for the weekend before going up to see her dad in Wisconsin. I'm looking forward to her being here.

Have to get some Christmas cookies and a few other goodies going.

We're planning to spend Christmas Eve here, just the three of us. Christmas Day will be in Wisconsin for a big family meal. I'll make some pies. Which reminds me: stock up on butter.

Speaking of Christmas, I'm really, really sick of a couple of Christmas songs. One is the old high-school romantics who meet by accident Christmas Eve and end up drinking a few beers together in the car, reminiscing (Fogelberg's "Same Old Lang Syne"). She, of course, admits that she doesn't really love her architect husband. If an old girlfriend admitted that to me fifteen minutes after an accidental meeting I'd be suddenly remembering a dental appointment. Anyway, yadda yadda yadda, they both head off to their respective Christmas celebrations smelling of canned beer and whatever air freshener he uses to cover up the smell of Jennifer Lopez signature perfume from his grocery store pickups.

I have two problems with that song. First, it's boring. Sitting in a car and drinking reminds me a little too much of my own high school years. That's not a good thing. Second, slice-of-life songs like this should have a meaningful resolution. This one just peters out with a line about the snow turning into rain.

The other song that has me punching the radio power button like I'm deactivating a DUM-series Pit Droid is "The Christmas Shoes." This one always brings to mind Oscar Wilde's line about it taking a heart of stone not to read of the death of Little Nell without laughing. Were it just a nice song about a kid in hand-me-downs who wants to buy his mom some shoes but he doesn't have enough change, so the guy behind him helps him out with a few bucks -- I'm a big fan of Random Acts of Kindness -- I'd say great. Touching, heartwarming. But they pour on the glurge with this one. The kid's not just poor, he's poor and dirty from head to foot (poor people never wash, remember. Also, they smell). His mom is dying. He wants her to have new shoes in case she goes to meet Jesus Christmas Eve.

Oh please.

The only thing that could possibly redeem this song is to have it end with the guy standing behind the child pointing out that with most caskets, you don't even see the corpse's shoes, so maybe he should look into an inexpensive bracelet. Alas.

Of course they made a movie version of the song. Show's you my flawless instinct for pop culture. I'm just more of a "Holly Jolly Christmas" type guy.

No doubt I'm not the first to notice this, but cable TV cooking shows would be a lot more realistic if the phone was ringing, the seven-month-old screaming, and the cats jumping on the table to see what you're up to with all that delicious-smelling butter.

Julia Child-style drinking while cooking helps.

Chats and I rejoined both the late and the current century, technologically speaking. AT&T finally got U-verse set up. Internet is faster. Phone is working again.

I'd kind of forgotten what it was like to watch television. I fed the Sprog this afternoon with some History Channel going in the background (they were doing Pearl Harbor stuff, of course). Later we checked out some Alton Brown. Mmmmm Christmas cookies.

We're both looking forward to the Graham Norton Show this Saturday night.

I'm already sick of those Old Navy mannequin commercials. That didn't take long.

Saves you a couple hours and ten bucks:

http://microsuede.blogspot.com/2009/11/movie-review-twilight-saga-new-moon.html

Well, there were technical difficulties with the cable install.

Living in a vintage building has its advantages. High-ceiling, light-filled rooms, a vast and beautiful fireplace with flanking built-ins, decorative moldings, surprisingly little noise filtering through from the neighbors, air flow that minimizes the need for air-conditioning. . .

But I can't run the microwave and an air conditioner at the same time in the kitchen without blowing a fuse and the wiring for the phone is ancient. The basement looks like a Borg cube of grafted-on technology.

Anyway, long story involving multiple service calls and me on the cell daily to customer service short, the new cable isn't installed yet and our phone service disappeared with it. They've put in some new technology as of late yesterday, adding another layer to the jigsaw junction boxes in the condo basement and they'll try again Monday. I've been assure the proper kind of signal is now available in the lines. In the interim I guess I should be thankful we still have electricity.

Dragon Rule seems to be going over fairly well. The nice thing about fan email is only the people who enjoyed your work tend to write, except for a few who have clinical conditions ("You persecute me! My beagle told me I should write and ask you to stop."). The people who want to bitch just head to Amazon.

Our neighbors have an inflatable Santa in the shape of the one realized by Rankin-Bass in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. While I like Yukon Cornelius, I prefer Santa Clause is Coming To Town (Because Teacher Jessica Has a Massive Rack). The problem is he keeps falling over, so Santa looks like a passed-out wino on their roof. I took a picture:




The Sprog is obsessed with my sound system. He's learning how to work the knobs on the receiver. He just made Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite thunderingly loud and squealed in delight.

I'll keep you updated as technology allows.

Three reasons, really:

1. New release day! Dragon Rule comes out of the egg, officially.


2. The Sprog is making a new noise. It's a wet breathy susurrance, rather like the sloppy hiss the Gorn Captain made in Arena. Always thought the Gorn were an under-utilized race in the Star Trek universe, BTW. They had the potential to be really cool.


3. We're getting cable. Yes, you read that right. AT&T offers a package in this area of cable, phone, and high speed internet that turned out to be less than what we were paying for the old phone/DSL all by its lonesome, even once our first-year pricing expires. The DSL is already three times faster. The cable install is this afternoon. BBC America, here we come. The Sprog will be watching some Animal Planet in HD.