The definition of overworking: I've been at the keyboard so long that I developed tennis elbow from typing. Good times. I have outfitted myself with one of those velcro braces that goes around my forearm and I'm okay. However, last night, it was a little tough to work. Bloody painful minor annoyance that tennis elbow is...
The Centurion: Babylon (note the change to the working title) is now about halfway completed. The bulk of the remainder of the work will be to join up the three story angles into one big 'splosion at the end. A few people who have been lucky enough to read through the pages have given me great feedback and they're very positive that TC:B will better than the original. That's all I can hope. I've been working like a dog to avoid the "sophomore slump."
The Seven is still underway and continues to develop. The problem with writing multiple novels at once is that I can only work on one at a time. Right now, The Seven has been shifted to the back burner in order to allow work to continue on TC:B. The as-yet-unnamed Sci-Fi story is on a low, low simmer on the furthest burner and the serious fiction piece I dreamed up is still in the dream stage--not a single word has been put to paper yet.
This weekend--The Twin Cities' Book Festival. I'll be anchoring my table for most of the day. And when I'm not there, my sister will be there to help me out. I'll be selling The Centurion: The Balance of the Soul War for a special rate of $15 per book. Can't beat that with a wet noodle! Hope to see you all there.
--Sean
Friday, October 12, 2007
Monday, October 1, 2007
South Dakota
I drove...I ate...I talked with people...and I rolled back home.
The South Dakota Festival of Books went down this weekend in Deadwood, SD. I had never been to Deadwood, so I was looking forward to the trip. I bailed out of bed at four in the morning on Friday, hit the road by five, and I was in South Dakota by nine. It's a long way across the state though, and the interstate was looming.
There are two types of people, I believe: Those who marvel at wide-open spaces, and those who shake their heads at them. My father is one of the former. I am one of the latter. Too much space is intimidating to me. The sky almost feels oppressive. I tried to picture the settlers who pushed west during the Manifest Destiny phase of this country and I was amazed that they bothered to make it across the plains. By car, it felt like it took forever. By wagon, I can't imagine.
There was a vicious cross-wind blowing that day and my poor little four-cylinder Chevy S-10 fought it valiantly, but that pick-up is not the ideal long-distance adventurer. It took me roughly seven hours to make the journey across the South Dakota, and I rolled into Rapid City around one. My hotel was in Spearfish, another 45 miles past Rapid City and a mere ten miles from the Wyoming border. Let me say this for Spearfish: It's a pretty laid back town. I checked in, showered, and drove into Deadwood for the Book Festival.
Deadwood was founded during the gold rush of 1876. I know this because every item of clothing in Deadwood seemed to be blazoned with that fact. Deadwood was a cool little town. The main street was paved with brick and the buildings were done up to look like they were straight out of HBO's wildest dreams. Every building houses a casino of some form or function.
I ventured to the Deadwood Pavillion (parking was not easy to locate), and met Craig Johnson. For those of you who don't know Johnson's work...shame on you. If you want to see how to put together an intelligent, funny, and well-told mystery novel, you need only check out any of his books. (My favorite is A Cold Dish, but they're all great.) I also got to meet Ivan Doig. Both of these authors are important to me because my father was the one who told me to check them out.
Craig invited me to breakfast the next morning and I joined him and his lovely wife, Judy, at the Iron Horse Saloon the next day. He was as good a person as you could hope to meet and we talked books and Bernese Mountain Dogs for about an hour. After that, I meet with two publishers whom I had contacted prior to the trip and they each took a copy of The Centurion and told me they'd be in touch. I hung out at the exhibitor's hall for a little while longer, making friends with a few authors there, and then, knowing I had about 11-12 hours to drive, I headed for home.
I chose to avoid the interstate on the way home, preferring to cross the middle of the state on Highway 14. I drove through the BLM grasslands through Union Center, Enning, and White Owl--little blips on the map that were little more than five or six houses on the side of the road. I drove through a corner of the Cheyanne River Indian Reservation and into Pierre. From Pierre, it was a long drive to De Smet--but worth it. Having been a fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder my whole life, going through De Smet was like having a book come to life. Many of the buildings she wrote about in Little Town on the Prairie are still standing. The cemetery outside of town has the original headstone of Charles Ingalls. It was really a neat little town.
The rest of the drive was done in the dark and I didn't roll back into Rochester until midnight. It was a long day...but well worth it.
I had a lot of time to think about the sequel to The Centurion and I figured out how I needed to construct a section of it that was giving me fits. It's all good now.
--Sean
The South Dakota Festival of Books went down this weekend in Deadwood, SD. I had never been to Deadwood, so I was looking forward to the trip. I bailed out of bed at four in the morning on Friday, hit the road by five, and I was in South Dakota by nine. It's a long way across the state though, and the interstate was looming.
There are two types of people, I believe: Those who marvel at wide-open spaces, and those who shake their heads at them. My father is one of the former. I am one of the latter. Too much space is intimidating to me. The sky almost feels oppressive. I tried to picture the settlers who pushed west during the Manifest Destiny phase of this country and I was amazed that they bothered to make it across the plains. By car, it felt like it took forever. By wagon, I can't imagine.
There was a vicious cross-wind blowing that day and my poor little four-cylinder Chevy S-10 fought it valiantly, but that pick-up is not the ideal long-distance adventurer. It took me roughly seven hours to make the journey across the South Dakota, and I rolled into Rapid City around one. My hotel was in Spearfish, another 45 miles past Rapid City and a mere ten miles from the Wyoming border. Let me say this for Spearfish: It's a pretty laid back town. I checked in, showered, and drove into Deadwood for the Book Festival.
Deadwood was founded during the gold rush of 1876. I know this because every item of clothing in Deadwood seemed to be blazoned with that fact. Deadwood was a cool little town. The main street was paved with brick and the buildings were done up to look like they were straight out of HBO's wildest dreams. Every building houses a casino of some form or function.
I ventured to the Deadwood Pavillion (parking was not easy to locate), and met Craig Johnson. For those of you who don't know Johnson's work...shame on you. If you want to see how to put together an intelligent, funny, and well-told mystery novel, you need only check out any of his books. (My favorite is A Cold Dish, but they're all great.) I also got to meet Ivan Doig. Both of these authors are important to me because my father was the one who told me to check them out.
Craig invited me to breakfast the next morning and I joined him and his lovely wife, Judy, at the Iron Horse Saloon the next day. He was as good a person as you could hope to meet and we talked books and Bernese Mountain Dogs for about an hour. After that, I meet with two publishers whom I had contacted prior to the trip and they each took a copy of The Centurion and told me they'd be in touch. I hung out at the exhibitor's hall for a little while longer, making friends with a few authors there, and then, knowing I had about 11-12 hours to drive, I headed for home.
I chose to avoid the interstate on the way home, preferring to cross the middle of the state on Highway 14. I drove through the BLM grasslands through Union Center, Enning, and White Owl--little blips on the map that were little more than five or six houses on the side of the road. I drove through a corner of the Cheyanne River Indian Reservation and into Pierre. From Pierre, it was a long drive to De Smet--but worth it. Having been a fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder my whole life, going through De Smet was like having a book come to life. Many of the buildings she wrote about in Little Town on the Prairie are still standing. The cemetery outside of town has the original headstone of Charles Ingalls. It was really a neat little town.
The rest of the drive was done in the dark and I didn't roll back into Rochester until midnight. It was a long day...but well worth it.
I had a lot of time to think about the sequel to The Centurion and I figured out how I needed to construct a section of it that was giving me fits. It's all good now.
--Sean
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