Coming up with character names is harder than you might think, at least, for me it is.  It’s hard because in reality people are more likely to have names like John Smith than Francis Dolarhyde (a fictional name I always loved)…you want it to be somewhat plausible, but not *too* crazy.  Some may say I already blew that one with Calliope Flax, but the goblin who lives in my pillow told me to use that name, and I’m not about to go against what the goblin says.

I used to try to just completely make them up, but somewhere along the line I have begun absorbing the names of those around me like some name-sucking vampire of legend.  I used one of my co-worker’s last name for a character I introduced in THE SILENT ARMY (a fact she does not yet know)…not because she’s anything *like* the character, but because I like the way the last name sounded.  Hell, I’d squish different ones together if they made any sense, but so far all I get are ones like ‘Jeffvid Stokestruno’.  Names are fair game.  I’ll take them where I can get them.

It helps that I work at a somewhat large company but you can only raid the corporate email directory so many times trolling for names before all that’s left are ‘Hardman’ and ‘Quackenbush’, which I’m saving for my buddy cop story HARDMAN AND QUACKENBUSH where Lyle Hardman is the tough-as-nails loose cannon fighting a crippling Sweet Tart addiction, and Penn Quackenbush is an ex-CIA numerology expert who subdues suspects using a hybrid of drunken boxing and hot yoga (Showtime is going to be all over that, you watch).

The bottom line is; when you email me, follow me on Twitter, or friend me on Facebook, don’t be completely surprised if somewhere down the line you see a street, building, organization or person with your name.   You probably didn’t know it, but by causing me to become aware of your name you actually entered into a binding contract allowing me full use of it in the future.

Sorry, but I don’t make the rules.  The goblin who lives in my pillow does and believe me; if his bite is half as bad as his bark then it would be best for all concerned to just do what he says.

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Dear lesbianhentai.hotpornnet.com/,

First let me say Happy Anniversary; I think it’s been one year now.

During our time together, you have been one of my most frequent commenters, and the number of times you’ve registered is completely off the chart.  I think it’s fair to say you are one of my longest standing and most ardent supporters and for that I thank you.  Your posts (which Akismet kindly points out to me on an almost hourly goddamned basis) are like a daily affirmation to me (or maybe an hourly one):

This valuable opinion
You are mistaken. Let’s discuss it. Write to me in PM, we will talk.
Happens… Such casual concurrence
I like it topic
The authoritative point of view

Seriously…it’s practically poetry.  You just don’t get that kind of quality from slimeviolationhentai.tentaclesinplaces.net/ or qwsusyct.a111287ws.ru/  Other bots just shout their wares out like carnival barkers, but not you; you value this opinion, and like it topics.  You speak to me, directly, in a way that is very clearly not randomly generated by some hacked-together computer program and then badly translated.  You understand me, lesbianhentai.hotpornnet.com/ and I fear you will never know how much that means.

Although spam filters will always stand between us, and I will certainly burn in the most vile circles of Hell before I ever even consider actually visiting your site, just know that I have had your kind words engraved in cedar and they now hang, framed, in a special spot above my writing desk.  They remain a constant inspiration to me.

There; I’ve said it.  Now, if you’ll excuse me I must purge Akismet once more – I’m expecting a comment from you any minute now.

Stay loose!

James

As of the 23rd of April, 2010, I am officially ‘middle-aged’.  At least, I hope I’m middle aged since despite the recklessness of my youth (and barring the intervention of an oncoming bus or falling chunk of frozen airline waste) I’d still like to see *at least* eighty.

When I was twenty, forty seemed pretty damned old but for any twenty year olds out there who might find themselves reading this you might take heart in the fact that it doesn’t feel that old when you get here.  I still enjoy a lot of the same things I did when I was twenty and forty doesn’t feel as decrepit as you might think.

So far every age has had its advantages, and this one is no different.  As a writer, for instance, being forty works out very well.  I’m not saying young people can’t write because I don’t believe that’s true, but the older you get and the more ’stuff’ you see, the more it brings to the writing table I think.  At twenty, my goal was to be published before I was thirty (a goal which I technically achieved by getting a non-fiction work published at twenty-nine, even though that wasn’t really what I meant).  By thirty-five, I’d almost given up on seeing my fiction in print and I think ‘giving up’ is one of the true hazards of getting older.  At twenty you have dreams but often not the means to reach them, and when you finally have the means other things have a way of piling on and burying them.  Even if I never have great fame, I’m glad I didn’t give up on this one particular dream though.

According to the conventions of our society I was supposed to start getting uneasy at thirty, and am now due for a full on freak out where I buy a flashy sports car and then dump my wife for our nineteen year old live-in nanny, but I finally got my regular car paid for and we don’t even have a nanny (plus my wife has been with me for over twelve years and hasn’t stabbed me in the throat with a desert fork yet, so I think that really speaks to her character).  I think I’ll skip the panic attack and maybe try again when I turn fifty.

In the interim I’ll continue to stay up too late and sleep too late, I’ll continue to play video games and enjoy science fiction, horror and cartoons.  I’ll continue to find flatulence amusing and laugh at dirty jokes.  There’s plenty of things out there to be serious about, but getting old doesn’t *have* to suck.  If it does, I haven’t reached that age yet and I hope I never do.

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A while back I set up a ‘Google Alert’ to let me know when ‘news’ about my book occurred over the interwebs.  Every once in a while, one ends up in my inbox, almost always because a library somewhere (we love libraries) has obtained a copy.  The last one I got was also library-centric but it was actually a directory of libraries which also had the unique distinction of being based in Singapore.

Singapore, for those who can’t picture exactly where it’s located, it very far away from me:

What was really neat about this was that, of the (many) libraries listed, STATE OF DECAY had been checked out of 16 of them.

That got me curious about Singapore and so I did some exhaustive research (and by ‘exhastive research’ I mean ‘I checked Wikipedia again’).  There I learned that Singapore is both the name of the city and the country, because the entire country constitutes a single municipality.

Okay, so Singapore is cool.  They must also have English-reading citizens since as far as I know my novel hasn’t been translated and if you have a library card you probably live there (Wikipedia, if it is to be believed, actually lists English as their first language but then again my edit on Parrots insists they can fly at 1200 mph).  The main thing for me, though, is how far away it is.

Singapore is far enough away that it’s a place I may never see…I mean hell, according to my Wikipedia entry even if you go by parrot that’s still, what?  Like a 172 hour flight?  It’s actually a little mind-blowing to me that at least sixteen people on the other side of the planet are actually reading my book.  Prior to this my reach has been fairly limited (fiction-wise…phsycially my arms are freakishly long) so I’m curious to know how it plays to an audience so far away.

So if you’re from Singapore (or anywhere, really) feel free to click the email link (I do get those) and tell me what you think…

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Ok, I have a few reviews under my belt now – most of them so far have been positive, and, of course, a couple of them have been (at least in part) negative.  I’m not really here to talk about the positive or negative here, though.  I’m here to talk about something else entirely, and hopefully help potential reviewers moving forward.

If there’s one pattern I can see emerging, it is that it is fun to play with the name of the thing you are reviewing in the review itself (Example: referring to ‘Days of Thunder’ as ‘Days of Blunder’).  If you can make this the actual title of your review, even better.

To assist reviewers in achieving that goal, I have assembled a handy chart of possibilities based on your opinion of the book.  If you are a reviewer, feel free to pick one from the list!

———————————————————————————————-
State of A-OK: For those who loved it
State of Blasse: For those who hated it
State of Okay: For those who didn’t love it but didn’t hate it
State of O-tay: For those who are Buckwheat, and who found it agreeable
State of Hooray: For those who loved it a little too much
State of Display: For those who want an internal HUD like the main character has
State of Ashtray: For those who wondered why no one in the story smoked
State of Today: For those who want to draw parallels between the story and our present
State of Cosplay: For those who are dressing as a revivor next Comic Con
State of Replay: For those who read it twice
State of Ash Grey: For those who thought the weather in the story was too dismal
State of Delay: For those who didn’t find out it was a series until the end
State of Dismay: For those who were expecting something different
State of Ass Play: For those who were expecting something *really* different
State of No Way: For those who didn’t see the ending coming
State of Cliche: For those who thought the characters/plot were too derivative
State of Copay: For those who were wondering if reanimation was covered by HMOs.
State of Cafe: For those who can’t stop wondering about the fallout from the restaurant scene
State of Jefe: For those who wondered what happened to incidental character ‘Jefe’
State of Christmas Day: For those wondering why it takes place in winter but there are no decorations
State of Risque : For those who wondered why there was no sex scene

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As is often the case when adopting from a shelter, our new arrival has brought with him a payload of infection, and parasites.  The respiratory thing and the dirty ears are easy enough to take care of, but the other day I learned a new word – Giardia.  Supposedly he was treated for (and was now free from) this affliction, but one vet visit and a baggie of poo later conclusively proved otherwise.

Giardia, for those who don’t know, is a parasitic infection.  Its full name is Giardia intestinalis, so you can probably guess where it likes to hang out.  For those now wondering if they should quickly click away from here before they learn more than they wanted to know, don’t go yet – the good news is that it is also transferable to humans.

So, much fun is had grabbing and medicating cats as they scramble madly for all corners of the house.  Human treatment involves, apparently, ‘riding it out’ but honestly human symptoms are so mild I can’t even be sure I have The Sickness.

It’s more the idea of it that is disturbing.  Here is a magnified image of Giardia Intestinalis:

Cute, right?  Kind of like a popcorn kernel with tentacles.  Some little innocuous amoeba, invisible to the naked eye.  It doesn’t seem worth worrying about, until you magnify it even further:

I’m sure you’ll agree that at this magnification it is a totally different story.  Frankly, I don’t know which bothers me more; the squirming mass of evil, wormlike tentacles that look ready to tap into my bloodstream, or the microscopic upside-down diver that is apparently also in there with them…

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.     .     .

Ok, I have almost, but not quite, come to terms with the unnatural love affair I have with computers in general, and my new laptop in particular.

The laptop in question looks basically like this:

Which I think you’ll agree bears a not-so-coincidental resemblance to this:

The picture doesn’t do justice to the hugeness of it, or the way it’s cold, adonized aluminum shell feels under the palm of your hand.  I am aware that since I do a lot of my writing in Notepad that the monolith provides more computing power than is strictly necessary, but it’s nice to know that it’s in there, ready to perform should I need it.  All of the hatred I feel for my burner is mirrored as love for this metal monstrosity.  I’m not saying that when it arrived I licked the packaging off of it the way a cow licks the afterbirth from a newborn calf, but I’m not saying I didn’t, either.

I’m also not saying I value my new laptop more than, say, a life.  If I were to return home and find my house in flames and my wife frantic in the driveway, I would immediately rush into the flames to save my cats if they were still inside.  They would not be inside, though, because knowing of my love for my laptop, they would have combined their forces like a tiny feline Voltron to collect it, and carry it to safety at the first whiff of smoke.  They would therefore be sitting on the lawn around the monolith, out of harm’s way, awaiting my return.

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.      .      .

Our house has cats, and all three delight in catnip, chin rubs, and murder.  Two are around the nine year mark, and one of them is two.  The two-year old had a playmate who was unfortunately lost, leaving him to torment the remaining two who are the human-equivalent of fifty.  This weekend my wife and I decided to rectify this situation and get the youngest a playmate (which he desperately needs).  Ergo:

He does not have a name yet, but he seems like he’ll be a good fit.  At eight months old, he is full of energy so my hope is the two younger ones will blow off steam together – however, this latest addition seems to have a respiratory situation going on, so he’s in quarantine until we get him checked out.  This means I am doing duty with him nights and am getting a very small sampling of what it must be like to have a baby, at least insofar as the thing seems to sleep for two hours, bounce off the walls for one, then sleep for two, and so on until morning.  I suspect his cuteness is an evolved survival mechanism, as despite the sleep deprivation I find it difficult to get too mad at him.

From his performance in tracking the laser pointer I can already tell he will be an efficient killer, like his playmate.  Spring is coming, and I’ve put a dollar down he will register his first kill while there is still snow on the ground…

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.      .      .

I freely admit that I know very little about the functioning of my home’s burner.  I know that, when it is functioning correctly, turning up the thermostat causes the heat inside to rise and doing the opposite makes it fall.  Aside from that, what I mostly know is that it very rarely seems to function correctly.

There was a time when I naively thought that this was because the little gnome who lives inside of it had gone on strike and refused to shovel any more coal.  Being slightly older and wiser now, I realize this isn’t true for two main reasons:

1.  The burner in question burns oil, not coal.  The men who show up at the house periodically do not deliver a leather pouch filled with semi-precious gems to the gnome through a chute from outside, but instead deliver oil, on which the burner runs.

2.  The gnome inside the burner is not a gnome at all – it is some bastard form of mechanized homonculous integrated into the hellspawned contraption which (allegedly) heats my home, feeding on oil, while belching heat and carbon monoxide.

This homonculous is extremely tempermental.  I can not understand the frantic ticking of the infernal difference engine it calls its brain, but the slightest offence is enough to cause it to stop venting heat.  I sometimes think that the only reason it doesn’t reroute its poison gas into my house is because it knows that should I die, the flow of precious oil will cease…but it hates me.

I’ve had several workmen come to service the beast, only to have them leave some hours later with a very convincing (and sometimes detailed) explaination of what the problem was but I know the truth – that the homonculous hypnotizes them, and then whispers the lie into their ear so they can parrot it back to me.  They seal the behemoth shut again before leaving, hiding the thing inside from view, but it is only a matter of time before the cycle repeats itself.

At least, this is all what I’ve been able to get from the owner’s manual.  I’m paraphrasing parts of it, but I think for the most part I have the gist.

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.      .      .