Begin, Begin

A couple of odds and ends, before I get down to the business of strapping the Stratocaster to the chimp tomorrow and have no headspace for anything else:

First, just as OVO steps down from a first public exhibition, Big Tony (our absent and missed fourth) tells me we also have our first public release, on the Looper's Delight 3 compilation, which I think I mentioned we'd been up entirely too late putting together back in June. (Also known as Kreepy Walking Trees, Take 1.) Too cool.

Second, for those of you who want to follow along as I unleash this year's assault on literature onto the unsuspecting world, the work-in-progress will be posted in installments here. No actual content there yet, of course, but just you wait.

Thirdly, of course, to all my companions in Craft: Happy New Year. And to all the departed, crowded close at the thinning of the veil, peace and restfulness and safe journey to you, wherever the Mystery may take you Onwards. Requiem aeternam dona eis, Munde, neve lux somnum pertubet eorum.

And so to bed, and gather my wits and strength for November. Aum Shri Ganeshaya Namah. See you on the other side.

The Minstrel in the Coffeehouse

For those of you I've failed to announce this to already, some good news: I have an upcoming gig, a week from tonight - Friday the 28th - at The Cup (where I've been an intermittent performer at Uncle John's open mic these past months). Huzzah!

And he called the band down to the stage: Along with my usual solo folkery, that night will premier some brand-new material from OVO (or, well, the three-quarters of us who have had the opportunity to all be in the same room together over the last few months), who will join me onstage at some point to assist in throwing paint at the canvas. We promise not to read aloud in Enochian so close to All Hallows, but all other bets are off. (Insert your fannish in-joke about "showy Gypsy stuff" here.)

And he looked at all the friends he'd made: On adjacent planes of cool, I'm honored and humbled that ilyAIMY will be playing the opening set that night. Heather and rob are real musician's musicians, and they actually do this stuff for a living, so headlining for them is probably better than I deserve; I'm starting to understand how Steven Wilson must feel lately having to follow Fripp every night. Those of you in attendance who I somehow haven't inflicted "Hands" on in the last couple of years are in for a treat.

Be there or be square as we give the big wheel of the year a nudge into Winter. And remember that tipping musicians is good for your karma.

UPDATE: Download a poster for Friday's show!

"This is a tribute..."

Department of horrible revelations, item #7214: I realized the other day that Fish-era Marillion (which I'd only just recently been trying to describe) sounds exactly like Tenacious D without the irony.

I think this may even trump the time when I had Porcupine Tree playing in the car, and sometime during the long instrumental in "Russia On Ice" Stacy turned to me and said, "You know this is porno music, right?"

>0

MACLEANE: Still swinging both ways, Rochester?
ROCHESTER: Jamie, I swing every way.

- Plunkett & Macleane

Happy belated National Coming Out Day, all - which was officially two days ago, I know. QST, natch.

Mother Hold the Laptop Steady While I Vacuum the Cat

All too soon it's going to be that month again.

Brief notes of an outlining nature, now I have the better part of October to obsess about it: I'm back to writing Jenny this year. Last year's effort was interesting enough, but I didn't carry quite the burning love for it of previous years, so I think that's a lesson learned. I'm considering a story from relatively late in the saga, when Jenny's been settled and married a while, and how she deals with the inevitable weirdness with that perspective; but that's just first thoughts, and I may yet change my mind.

Also, I'm doing this one as a present to myself. I have no agenda for this, no thought of selling it; I may even post it online as I go, and first publication rights be damned. I want to get back to how much fun my first effort at this was, and what a grand time I had cavorting around my universe with my characters. That's what I want to do - a novel I'm not stressing over what kind of commercial chances it has. Too much of my headspace the last couple of years has been given to worrying about that ephemeral hypothetical, and I've lost sight of the reason I do all this in the first place. So there.

Fear not, though, you happy few who have given me joy by being Jenny's fans these last years; I've also been chipping away at a Second First Draft of The Vasty Deep, which I do hope to turn into a more polished - and finished! - work in the next year. Consider that an early heads-up for beta readers.

There's also, sometime on the horizon, the story commissioned by Niels, which has direction now; I'm still deciding whether I want to make it an Eldritch-cosmos story or not, but otherwise the wheels are in motion for that too. Watch this space!

Blog of the Plague Year

Pardon my recent silence, as I've been holed up for a week now with (of all damn things) an early case of the flu. It's better now, if not gone, and I've got a heavy-duty decongestant rendering me more or less functional; otherwise, it's been a week of heavy fluids, daytime TV, and waiting for it to pass.

(Sadly, this points up the sucky aspect of contract work, i.e., the not having insurance or paid sick days part. The cold star of Austerity continues to shine over me into autumn; so it goes.)

I seem to have been sick a lot this year, more so than normal. Stress and depression undoubtedly contributing factors, in these days of instability. Nothing to be done about that, but I look forward to not waking up feeling drained and full of ick every couple of months.