johnlevitt

01:33 pm: Tomorrow I'll finally get a break from stuff. Been busy lately -- editorial revisions on my sequel,  deadline on book three still a ways off, but it creeps up on you. Then you realize there's less than two months left and you're not even halfway through. Plus boring yet time consuming health issues.

And tonight, a gig at the Hotel Utah with my band, The Procrastinistas.
 
Should be fun -- it always is, and there should be a good crowd.

09:58 am: Dreams
I’ve been getting a bunch of visits from the Dreamosphere.  That’s sort of like the Blogosphere.  An amorphous entity hanging around somewhere out in the ether.  I’m beginning to suspect that dreams come not from internal conflicts or unresolved desires, but from somewhere outside ourselves.  (Many religious traditions agree with me, btw.)

For the last few months, each night has been filled with the most bizarre dreams imaginable.

Some are relatively normal, like the one the other night where I was driving down the freeway and had a car window blow out.  I pulled into a rest stop where luckily there was a window store (a weak plot point, I admit) but then got into a gun battle with an employee.  (I won.)

A little odder was the one where I was in a creepy castle of some sort viewing a series of portraits my girlfriend had once painted, and then magically removing the face from one particular portrait to enable her to become that persona, which was of course necessary to escape the confines of the castle.

These are vastly simplified, of course, and don’t begin to touch the truly outre, experimental  film style ones.  Or the ones so utterly freakish as to defy description – they involve concepts that have no possibility of description through words.

I didn’t used to dream like this, and since not that much has changed in my life of late, I can only assume they are being sent to me from another plane.

Buy for what reason I can’t imagine.  If the were only more organized I could use them as plot arcs in my books, but literaraly they’re utterly useless.

But I think it’s affecting my writing.  After a night of dreams, I’m not eager to plunge into another world during the day.

01:05 pm: The Evolution of Paperback Books
Haven't posted anything lately -- quite busy with writing and various boring stuff that has nothing to do with writing or anything else of interest.

But I thought I'd post this link from the Borderlands Books Newsletter. Borderlands is our great indie SF/F bookstore here in San Francisco.  Alan Beatts, the proprietor, weighs in on the history of paperbacks, esp SF/F. Just scroll down to "From The Office."  Quire interesting.

12:00 pm: Two More Books
Ace has just signed me up for two more books after the Dog Days sequel, for a total of four. I even have an idea for the next one. By my God, it's going to be a lot of work. I'm sure everyone will feel sorry for me.

We had a few days of sun and 60 degrees here in SF, but the winter clouds and rain are back. Again, I'm sure everyone feels my pain. I don't know how I manage to keep going on.

08:22 am: Today I'm guest blogging over at The League Of Reluctant Adults.
Writing and music, even a song link. Check it out.

11:17 am: Weekend Fun
The gig Friday was great fun. The club is small, and although we only pulled in 60-70 people, it was therefore packed and that always makes playing twice as enjoyable -- there's nothing like playing live in front of a good crowd to put you on a high, esp when you spend much of your time alone in front of a computer screen, writing.

We pulled in some money as well. But there were some comps, and then there were two other bands, so split that by three. Then split the remainder six ways. Then I had to buy new strings for the gig, of course. So I figure I made about ten bucks. You think writers have a hard time making a living? Try being a musician.

But as I've said before, for me writing is satisfying, but I would never classify it as fun.  Playing clubs is a blast. (If I were playing every night it would get old pretty damn quick, though.)

Saturday, I went to an author signing event at Borderlands Books. The one, the only, Garth Nix.  He was in town briefly  and agreed to stop by and do a signing. I got to meet him and talk with him for quite a while, and can say that apart from being an extraordinary writer, he's also an interesting and grounded human being, and a lovely person. It's great to see someone enjoying such success who so thoroughly deserves it.

My self imposed deadline for starting my new book was February first. Oops. Hey,  I've  been busy having fun.

01:48 pm: Tonight's Gig
Taking some time off lately to play a little music. Tonight, my band, The Procrastinistas is playing at the Hotel Utah.  For the first time in a while,it's not going to be raining, so hopeful;y there'll be a decent crowd.

I often point out the similarities between music and writing. One more is that getting gigs is like getting published -- it has less to do with the quality of the music than it does the draw. The question with both is how many people will plunk down cash to read your book or see you play?

One big difference for me though -- playing music is always fun. If I couldn't get any gigs, I'd play anyway. I'm not so sure that's the case with writing. Writing is hard, in a way that music isn't. It's satisfying, but I wouldn't call it fun. Or maybe I should say they're both hard, but working on music is a lot more enjoyable for me than working on a ms.

08:46 am: Storytime
I finally got my sequel done and into the hands of my editor. Now I have to start working on the next one. Also have a gig coming up Friday with my band, The Procrastinistas, at the Hotel Utah.. Which of course is in San Francisco

The other day, I posted something on a writers’ board in response to a post about the Heimlich Maneuver. Then I realized it would be an entertaining story to put on my blog, saving me the trouble of thinking of something else. Then I realized I can also use it, in altered fashion, in my next book. Remember, you saw it here first.

This is a true (and unembellished) story:

I was working undercover (another story, I was once a cop in my wayward youth) and looked like hell. I was having coffee at a Dee's restaurant, where a waitress I really liked worked, trying to convince her to go out with me despite my less than reassuring appearance. Of course, I couldn't tell her what my real job was; she assumed I was a dope dealer or something of that sort.

She went into the kitchen, and I was idly scanning the patrons at a nearby table. An older woman at the table with her family suddenly grew quiet, got up, and stood there semi bent over. Huh, I thought. That lady is choking.

Having been trained in the Heimlich Maneuver but never having had to use it, my first thought naturally was to look around the restaurant hoping someone else would jump to the rescue. Nothing. We were the only ones in the place.

The man at the table, realizing something was amiss, jumped up and started pounding on her back. "Mother, are you all right?" Clearly she wasn't.

Oh shit, I  thought, and ran over to the table. The man, very straight, saw me coming and turned to fight me off. He thought I was attacking his family. (Remember, my appearance at the time inspired confidence in bikers and meth dealers, but few others.) I shoved him out of the way, got behind the woman (who knew exactly what I was doing) calmly located the xyphoid, moved three fingers down, made a fist, and gave a sharp, upward squeeze.

Absolutely nothing happened.

At the time I was unaware that it often takes more than one attempt, and it was surely one of the worst moments in my life. In near panic, I squeezed again, but perhaps still a bit too cautiously since she was elderly and frail. Still nothing.

Now in full panic mode, I stopped worrying about cracking her ribs and really bore down. Half a cheeseburger went flying out of her mouth and halfway across the table. She thanked me, her son mumbled something and turned away, wanting nothing further to do with me. She picked up the remaining part of her cheeseburger and resumed eating as if nothing had happened.

I went back to my table and sat down. As I did, the waitress I was trying to impress came out of the kitchen, strolled over to my table, and said, "So, anything interesting happened lately?"

I looked over at the family now quietly finishing their meal.

"Not really," I said. What else could I say?

11:16 am: Finally done with the final revisions to my sequel, Dark Days. Well, they're not really final, since my editor hasn't yet seen the ms. But I like to turn in the best draft I can -- if my editor comes back with five pages of revision notes, and asks for major changes, I feel I haven't done my job properly.

And I was informed that Don Sipely, who did that great cover for Dog Days, will also be doing the cover art for the sequel. Which is great news.

Over on Di Francis' blog is an interview with me. Di is a wonderful fantasy writer, so you should not only check out her blog, you should check out her latest book, The Cipher.

05:30 pm: Merry Christmas
Well, I haven't posted for a while -- I've been busy with revisions, band practice, holiday stuff, etc. Plus, I don't usually post unless I have something interesting to say, and I haven't had much.

I will post this year's Christmas card, even though I swore I'd never do anything so cutesy.

 Happy Holidays to all from Ruby, Lou, Blossom and Tula,

08:12 pm: Podcast
A couple of weeks ago I did a podcast with my friend Russell David, a singer/songwriter who has a weekly podcast show. He just put it up, and for those who want to hear, it's at simplemusik.net

It's not really an interview, more a discussion about writing and music. I play a few live acoustic tunes on the show as well. Listening to it was interesting -- I'm reasonably articulate, but also come off as kind of a pretentious ass. There's something about having a microphone in your face that makes you want to sound particularly intelligent and interesting, with predicable results.

Anyway, if you're interested in writing or music or both, you might find it entertaining.

05:54 pm: Book reading
Over the weekend I did a reading and signing at Borderlands Books in San Francisco.. You know how all your friends say they'll come, then don't show?  Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather -- almost everyone showed and they even brought other friends with them. So along with some random strangers who must have showed up by mistake, it made for a good turnout.  Lots of fun.

I finished the final draft of my sequel, only to realize it wasn't a final draft at all.  My wonderful agent read it and gave me a bunch of invaluable suggestions on how to improve it, then wangled an extra month out of my editor. Now the revisions are going well -- I finally have a handle on it. (I think.)

Dog Days has been out a couple of weeks, and apparently sales are pretty good. I've heard from strangers who have liked it -- and the best part is that they don't say anything about how well (or badly) it's written -- they simply enjoyed the book. To me, "a great read" is the highest praise I could get. Of course, those who didn't like it wouldn't bother to contact me and advise me of that fact.  Which is as should be.

01:13 pm: Halloween in the Castro
This year, San Francisco has banned the traditional street party in the Castro. Which in a lot of ways is a shame -- it was one of the most entertaining things you'll ever see, with hundreds of thousands of people crowded into a relatively small neighborhood --wall to wall people, many in imaginative costumes.  I even tentatively used it as the background for the opening pages of my next book.

But it got too scary -- and I don't mean the vampire and werewolf type of scary. I have friends who live in the Castro who don't leave their apartments for the entire evening.  Last year, nine random people were hit by gunfire during a gang confrontation. For some reason, it's  become a destination party for a lot of gang members, many of whom travel there from outside the city.  How bizarre.

We'll see whether people show up anyway, despite the ban.

07:36 am: Dog Days is finally out, just in time for Halloween! Am I excited? Well, sort of, but it's weird. I'm more focused on the sequel these days -- to me, Dog Days is over and done with, even though it has only just been released. I imagine I'll be more excited when everyone begins to let me know how much they love the book.  For those of you who don't (how unthinkable) please do not feel obligated to inform me of that fact. 

12:10 pm: Sequel to Dog Days
Well, I finally finished the sequel to Dog Days.  Actually, not quite. It's more than a first draft by far, but it still needs some work. Right now it's in shape to send off to my agent for some feedback before I ship it off to my editor. I don't use beta readers or crit groups, so no one has seen a word of it yet. So the first feedback I'll get will either be, "Hey, it's great," or "What were you thinking?" I would guess it'll be somewhere in the middle.

Dog Days will be released in a few days, Oct 30. I got an advance copy, and I really like the way it looks. Ace did a fine job with it. I also found a pre-release review on the Green Man Review site, (not that I would obsessively check the internet) and it was quite positive. Not any kind of major review, of course, but it's still encouraging to hear that someone likes it.

04:31 pm: Cross post from FF&F discussion.
A lot of genre writers get upset when you indicate that genre writing is different than writing serious fiction. They see it as a put down, but it's really not., any more than saying there's a difference between The Rolling Stones and Chopin. Here's my reply to someone who took exception.

You have some good points, but I think the most telling expression you used was "transcending the genre." There are indeed books that do that, but the very fact that it's such a common phrase indicates that genre, in general, is different from "serious" fiction.

Serious fiction addresses issues of universal importance -- love, death, loss, duty -- the essence of the human condition. Genre basically wants to tell an interesting story, and deep concerns are secondary, if addressed at all. Serious fiction sometimes employs fantasy elements, but it does so as a vehicle to illuminate serious themes. In genre, the fantasy elements themselves are the major point of the story.

There are always exceptions. I can name numerous fantasy books that I think are serious works. One can use the genre form to do anything. But most genre -- good, bad, and indifferent, is exactly that -- genre. Jim Butcher, for example, the classic uf guy, is not a writer of serious fiction. I enjoy his books, he's good, but they're genre, nonetheless.

So is my book. I put a lot of work into it and I think it does address certain serious issues, but only in passing. It's basically entertainment, by design.

Genre is like a great pop song as opposed to a serious work of music. A good pop song is not easy to write, nor is good genre. But no matter how good it is, it's still trying to do something different than a classical piece. It's all music, but it's not all the same.

11:04 am: Back Home
Well, I’m back in San Francisco and it’s great to be here.  Except, I’m spending almost all my time sitting at my keyboard as the deadline for my sequel draws inexorably closer.

My hand is healing more slowly from the surgery than I thought and I still haven’t been able to really play (although I’ve found alternate chord voicings to replace the ones my hand won’t make.)  Probably just as well, since I hardly need another excuse to interrupt  the writing.

Right now, unlike my previous books, the current one is a hodgepodge of scenes and conversation between characters, widely scattered.  It’s like making a quilt – I’ve created a bunch of neat squares, but sooner or later I’ll have to assemble them into one coherent piece.  That’s when I'll find out if it works.  I’m reasonably confident, but if it doesn’t I’ll be in deep trouble.  I actually woke up this morning at 5 A.M. suddenly realizing a plot point was totally illogical.  The only way I can get something done is to become obsessed at some point, but I don’t like being that way.

And once again, I go from believing I’m a talentless hack to thinking I’m a genius and then back to hack again three of four times in the space of a couple of hours.  No one has seen any of it so far, except for a friend of mine whose opinion I wanted on whether a particular scene was believable from a woman’s point of view.

And I’ve had to spend some time checking out locations in SF to make sure what I’ve written is physically possible in terms of where I’ve set a scene.  That’s one of the problems about trying to write about a place when you’re somewhere else.  Memory is not always reliable.

Oh, and yesterday, an emergency root canal.  There’s always something.

12:01 pm: Website --finally.

So I finally managed to get my website up and running -- still a few glitches to work out, but I like the look and feel.

Check it out:  http://www.jlevitt.com/

Also, tomorrow I'm loading up my car and taking off for San Francisco, where I'll be spending a few months at least --maybe even until next spring.  I can't wait to get there, although I'll be spending most of my time in front of a computer screen for the next two months, trying to get the sequel to Dog Days finished. Still, it'll be great.

11:01 pm: Hand Surgery
 Last year, I started having trouble with the index finger on my left hand. It was stiff, I couldn't fully make a fist, and occasionally it would catch and refuse to straighten out. Annoying, to say the least. But for me, serious, because I'm a guitar player. Besides slowing my lead playing, there were certain chords I couldn't even form any more.

So I went to the doc, who informed me it was a common ailment known as trigger finger, where the tendon no longer moves smoothly in the tendon sheath and occasionally catches. I got a cortisone shot, and within a week it was good as new. But as the months passed, it slowly reverted back to its original state. So, I think, it's time for another.

Not so fast, says the doc. Continued shots of a steroid will thin out the tendon and it's likely to rupture. 
But I need the shot, I cried. I'm a musician. 
No problem, he says.  I'll just whip in there and clean it out. 
You mean, operate? Cut into my hand? 
It's simple, he says. Piece of cake.

Yeah, easy for him to say. Turns out he was telling the truth. Local anesthetic, (and don't think that shot didn't hurt)procedure room at the office, 45 minutes total from the time I walked into the office.

So it's better, but I still can't make a complete fist. Supposedly with a little physical therapy, I'll get full range of motion back. But I worry. I can't afford to have finger problems; I'm not that good a player to begin with. Of course, it's only been a week and the stitches are still in.

At least I can still type.

09:29 pm: Crossposted from Fangs, Fur & Fey
The question of series vs. standalones in fantasy comes up often. Some thoughts --

I think in adult UF, and paranormal romance, series definitely are king, at least as far as sales go. Jim Butcher. Rachael Caine. Kim Harrison. Laurel Hamilton. And so on.

My upcoming UF is an absolute standalone, but it was pitched as a series. (Actually, I only got a two book contract, but if they sell they’ll want more.) Book two refers obliquely to some of the incidents in book one, but it also stands alone.

In my admittedly limited experience, it’s a selling point. If a series catches on it’s a cash cow. By book four or five, they don’t even have to be very good – loyal fans will buy them anyway.

I love the standalone/series concept. Each book totally different, no overarcing plotline- just the same world and main cast of characters. My role models here are the mystery writers – specifically John D. MacDonald with his Travis McGee character. He wrote twenty of them or so –and you can read number 14, then number 5, without much sense of dislocation. But the more you read about Travis and his friend Meyer, the further into his world you get. Of course, he was a fine writer.

So that’s my goal. (Not the twenty books – that’s well beyond me). To create a world and characters that readers will want to visit, not so much for the plots, although they have to be engaging, but more just to find out what these guys are up to now. In some ways it’s limiting, but it’s also a lot of fun.

And plan ahead? I’m lucky if I can plan ahead to the next chapter.