June 30th, 2009 by Neal

86,638 words.

Blue Collar Slut is finito.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been engaging in the prewriting for the sequel. I have a bunch of fragments and ideas, and it’s already coming together. I won’t start for about a month, but I think I have the title already:

Weak sister:

Origin: 1855-1860

–noun Informal.
1. a vacillating person; coward.
2. a part or element that undermines the whole of something; a weak link.

I can’t explain the title, alas, without giving a good chunk of the plot away. But it makes total sense.

Neal is pleased. And now Neal is off to format a manuscript.

PS: ZOMG 120 pages of editing today.

June 26th, 2009 by Neal

Draft four is in the can

June 26th, 2009 by Neal

My baby looks like the above, only with a black guard.

When you take a break in the writing to center your brain (which I do occasionally when I hit a passage I just can’t break, or when a really good song comes on the tunes), some people eat, some go for a walk.

I pick up Boner, my guitar, and hit a few songs.

Sometimes you find songs you think would be really elaborate that are quite simple and make your day better.

“Hiroshima” not only serves to make the book better for listening while writing, but to play it on guitar is a thing of beauty. Four chords, very simple, you can rock out without looking stupid. Very much the same thrill one gets from Rock Band.

Musicians turn their nose up at Rock Band, and I can see why. It’s like the NaNoWriMo pisses me off, because it’s a bunch of people who just say, out of the blue, “Yeah, I can do what you’ve trained a decade to do in my spare time, and as a hobby!”

But speaking as a guy who does both, I know why Rock Band is so successful thereby. It makes you feel like you can do what Eddie Van Halen can do without any work.

The parallel being, Hiroshima is one of those songs on the guitar that doesn’t make you feel learning impaired. You pick up, you play, you sing along, and it has that joy of Rock Band. Don’t get me wrong, there are many songs worth working for, but as a warmup and a joy, I just played it three times without feeling like I should stop.

June 24th, 2009 by Neal

(It’s hard to hear over the motor)

I have been spurred by wise advice (thank you Karen and Nunzio) to seek feedback on the new book. I’ve been so caught up in the fun of writing it that I didn’t realize I was reaching the point of nearly turning it in without having shown it around as much as I typically do, and that might lead to an insular fuckarow.

I know it’s pretty silly to ask for you to read the whole book in a week (because that’s when I’m likely to turn it in), but I’m more than willing to let folks, if you want to.

Instead, I propose another idea. If you want, read the first three chapters, and let me know how you think the flow is. Or read one chapter. Or some other idea.

Bottom line, I’m looking for a little feedback, the book feels close enough for me to do that, and if you’re interested, shoot me a line:

bailey.neal @ comcast.net

If I can get a response by Monday, I can pop in your advice, roll with the ideas, and if it seems like there’s some systemic problem I’ve missed, delay the send-in.

Here’s your chance to check out what I’ve been babbling about!

EDIT: I suppose I should throw in a bribe. It’s only sensible. Anyone who reads and responds to at least three chapters by Sunday night gets a copy of Michelle signed in the mail. Anyone who reads the whole thing by Sunday night gets Michelle and some signed Smallville Mags. That might make up for my short notice here.

Howzabout that, kids?

June 23rd, 2009 by Neal

Might as well stop using the graphic, because the book is now proceeding without much change. I’ll just drop a final word count when it’s done.

I did about 40 pages of editing today, and for some reason I don’t feel like that’s enough, so I’m just going to smack myself.

I’m more than halfway through the fourth draft, and with any luck I’ll hit a good clip and be done with this draft by Friday.

If the fifth draft reads as quickly as this one did, I should be done by the end of the month, which is my goal.

June 23rd, 2009 by Neal

I’m trying to figure out if this is sardonic or loving about God.

Tell me?

Either way, it’s beautiful.

One thing I note is that she has this penchant in her songs to do what I do in my poetry, which is to beautifully lead you through one line of thought and then slam you with an inherent contradiction. It’s one of my favorite tactics, because it shows you how easily the mind can be lulled, and how we must be consciously aware.

June 22nd, 2009 by Neal

Hal goes well. I’m not adding much, not deleting much, and that’s the desired state. I did two and a half chapters today, and the day was actually not balls-out, so I’m guessing that I’ll really start plowing through tomorrow now that I’ve had a few days to get back into the swing.

June 22nd, 2009 by Neal

I could just call a bar and ask, but I figger one of you might be a Salt Lake City person.

Can you buy cigarettes in bars in Salt Lake City? Anyone know? If you do, and respond first, I’ll name a character who laughs at Hal when he’s bloody after you, or a “hick-i-tized” version of your name, if it happens to be “Fahreed” or “Odwalla.”

Actually, Odwalla might work in his vicinity.

June 22nd, 2009 by Neal

Well, sometimes research sucks. I was looking up a bit of minutae, and as research does, it wandered here and there, from origins of pulp and noir, to Charlie Huston (someone I am quite fond of), and to Gregory MacDonald, the author of the Fletch books. No, not the Chevy Chase movie. That doesn’t BEGIN to do the novel justice.

At any rate, he’s dead. I just found out, because I haven’t looked up his wiki in a while. Apparently it happened in September.

Why is that important? Well, I guess you can say he’s the first guy who taught me that you don’t need a speaker tag to convey a point. He also taught me the importance of dialogue in place, and the lack of importance of surroundings if the prose is compelling and flowing enough. His later work didn’t live up to the early work, but dammit, I was hoping to meet him some day. He inspired a lot of what I do.

I’m kind of quietly studying the form without talking much about it. I’ve read a lot of noir and pulp and hard-boiled stuff lately. I have become even more extraordinarily pissed with my college teachers for denying me Chandler. And I say denying when I mean making The Big Sleep a chore. I’m re-reading it now, and I’ve learned a few things. One, it’s not a chore, it’s a fucking joy when it’s not something you HAVE to do. It’s also a joy I was too young to contemplate at eighteen. Two, why the fuck would a teacher put The Big Sleep in front of a guy before The Long Goodbye? If you’ve read Long, you know what I’m talking about. The book is a fucking epic piece. In my opinion, The Big Sleep pales next to it in terms of broader commentary. That’s not to knock Big Sleep, that’s just to say, when you’re introducing someone to a work (say, an impressionable, cocky-ass eighteen year-old student), do you give him a piece with a lot of speculation and detective work, or do you give him an almost anti-authority tome that waxes on the lack of importance of money in favor of morality? Beyond that, do you give him an artist’s early work, or his later work? (assuming the author has not gotten worse as he or she gets older, which happens an awful lot, but didn’t with Chandler, from what I’m seeing).

At any rate, point being, I was cheated out of Shakespeare, and that’s a tragedy (HAW), but what I’m learning is that maybe I was tailor-fuckin’ made for detective/wrong man/thriller/mystery, and just didn’t know it because I was never pointed at it. And by tailor-made, I mean to LOVE it. I can’t speak to my value as an author in that regard yet, but I have my hopes. I’m just saying, I think I was given the bad side of Hitchcock and Chandler and Bogie as a kid, and I want my money back.

Anyway, new pantheon authors: Chandler and Block. And I haven’t gone all the way back beyond one book for any of the other notables I’m reading, but my guess is that this year’s going to change a lot of thinking for me. It already has.

This is not to say I’m giving up on what I used to call “literature” fiction, whereby the genre was more than secondary to the ideas presented. What it does say, however, is that I have a new playground that I very much love.

June 22nd, 2009 by Neal

It’s rad to wake up to a kind review, and my thanks to Dan Ruble for nice words regarding my Hillary and Sarah comic.

There’s really no better feeling than when someone gets your work and enjoys what you were going for.

Now… BACK to said work! Just wanted to note the awesome and spread thanks.