The Malice Engine

I had a fantasy football draft this evening, so while I was out screwing up my team I decided to light up a Diesel, a cigar brand I’d never tried before. Its torpedo shape and rich, dark brown wrapper looked interesting enough, and it had a nice, full-bodied scent, so I clipped it, grabbed a matchbox, and carried it outside with the laptop.

The humidor’s running a hair hot and humid due to the weather and our reluctance to fire up the A/C this year. Heck, I haven’t added water to the puck since Spring and it’s still averaging high seventies on both temp and humidity, with an occasional spike into the 80-82 range. I blame these conditions for the initial lighting issues I had with the Diesel.

Once I kept it going, though, it produced dense smoke and had a smooth, easy draw. I’d call it full-bodied in flavor, if somewhat unremarkable to others in its category. It burned clean for an hour and a half, and the ash demonstrated its good construction. It did canoe a bit, but given I was largely distracted by the laptop and the draft chat, I’ll take the blame. Near the end I started to compose a brief review in my head, thinking I’d tag it as a good, if not great, smoke for hanging out.

Then I stood up.

Wow. The buzz came rolling in like a heavy wave. I don’t usually pursue cigars just for this effect, but this it pushed the Diesel near the top of my smoke list for celebrations or after a tough day at work. One of these and a good craft beer would make a potent combination, something I’ll have to keep in mind in the future.

I should add this is one of several cigars I received in a “bombing run” from my cousin Mark and his friends in Ward B at the Cigar World community forum. They heard my humidor ran empty through the summer and decided to fix the problem for me. Thanks to their willingness to help a brother when he’s down, I’ll be equipped well into the fall, if not longer. I thanked each of them directly, but I’ll have to make the time to jump into the forum and thank them again soon.

It went something like this:

How was yours?

I don’t take much stock in sites like I Write Like where they analyze your writing and match it up with some other famous writer, but it’s fun to see what they come up with. I finished a zombie short story a couple of weeks ago and ran the first page through, and this is what it told me:

I write like
Cory Doctorow

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Just for kicks, I took a passage in the middle and ran it through, then the last couple of pages and ran them through, and both times it told me:

I write like
Neil Gaiman

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Hmm. Can’t really complain with either of those. The only real takeaway is the writer of the program appears to think I write like a modern fantasist. Of course, when I first found this a while ago, I ran a short passage from The Pack: Winter Kill through it, and it said I write like Rudyard Kipling.

Figure that one out.

I’m glad this summer is finally coming to an end.

With teachers and students returning to my workplace soon, maybe I’ll be able to return to some semblance of routine. While I haven’t overextended myself intentionally, a number of things conspired to take care of that for me, not least of which being the Great Heart Scare these last few weeks.

The good news on that front is the stress test, EKG, and nuclear camera pics of my pump show all is well. The bad news is now people are telling me it could be inflammation, an aortal aneurism, a defective gall bladder, torn cartilage and/or a pulled muscle, a pinched nerve, or a hiatal hernia. So yeah, comforting.

Fortunately I don’t yet write for a living because it’s put a strain on both my creativity and my time to create. I’ve been throwing myself at the day job instead.

This weekend i decided I’m done sweating it. I have too much to do. And thanks to that new mindset, a new direction for The Pack reared it’s head, a way to accelerate to the meat of the characters’ stories in Book 2 that the editor and I both dig and I think you all will enjoy.

It’s time to get excited about writing again, not sweat what my body may or may not be doing and the stacks of green paper the hospital is going to be looking for. Hell, it’s even been way too easy to forget about my camera the last few weeks, after things had been going so well for Photo Fridays.

In this same regrouping, I’ve decided I’m going to suck it up and dump the oldest blog posts. I’ve got stuff going back almost a decade, but all it seems to do is attract spam comments. I thought it would be neat to keep that archive visible, but let’s be honest: there’s nothing particularly interesting back there. I’ll stash it away for possible future use, but for now it’s going to come off the web.

I’ll spending a part of the day on a motorcycle, and I’m going to use that quiet time to cogitate on creative activity, not stress. I want to be in the right mindset for Friday, when my Evileye Books editor and I will be making a road trip to visit Cullen Bunn and talk more creativity and business planning. That’s sure to be a good time, too.

More later.

This old man comes off as a little nuts, but he does have some amazing nunchaku skills:

japan – probe
Uploaded by Japanherpderp. – More video blogs and vloggers.

Found via Mario McKenna’s blog.

Colum McKnight from Paperback Horror recently took the time to review The Pack: Winter Kill, and he had some great things to say about the book.

You have to be dead not to dig this book. That’s right. Dead.

What you see before you is one of the most incredible mixes of crime, action, and the supernatural that you can ever lay claim to reading. To say that this is the best example of how cross genre writing should be done would be an understatement. Between Greg Lamberson and Mike Oliveri – the bar has been set.

Reading that just made my month. You can read the full review here.

I have to admit, I was nervous about this book as we neared the street date. It’s been a few years since my last release, and a few more years since my first novel release. I felt like I’d been out of the game too long, and I worried that it would show in the final product. Fortunately those concerns have been largely unfounded, as the book has been very well received.

Here’s hoping book 2 gets the same kind of attention. You can be sure I’m giving it my all.

Late again? Crap. Anyway. Finally dipping into the Hawai’i pics.

We went down into the Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park one day, and I caught this fun piece.

Ya think?

Back in the ’70s (if memory serves), a lava flow came down the mountain and flowed over the road. This sign has been there since.

Now that I’ve spent two nights promoting other guys’ projects, I should probably catch everyone up on my own work.

The Pack is still my main focus this summer, and of course The Pack: Winter Kill is still available in trade paperback and in a Kindle edition. The short comic Big Bad Wolves will be going live I believe next month, and I’ve just finish scripting the second short.

Just as Big Bad Wolves is a prequel of sorts to The Pack: Winter Kill, the second short will be a prequel to the second prose book, giving readers a little more insight into one of the main characters and his behavior. And no, neither the second short nor book 2 have a title yet, just some working titles my editor and I are still kicking around. I usually don’t have a solid title until I’m done.

I’m already starting to talk to a potential artist for the second short as well. It’s a lot easier to find an artist for the short pieces than it is a longer project, especially for the kind of rates a new startup is able to pay, so the first comic book in the series, The Pack: Chimaera, will be delayed a bit longer. We’re taking advantage of the delay to do a bit more tweaking to the script for Chimaera, and I think those efforts will pay off in the long run.

Meanwhile, I’m pushing the deadline for the 2nd book, but I’m still confident I’ll make it. It’s going to take some extra knuckling down over the next several weeks, but I’m up for it.

There are a few more The Pack developments in store, but none that I can share just yet. Stay tuned.

I sold a short story last year that I hope will see print in an anthology soon. It’s not been announced yet, so I’ll keep quiet for now. I’ve got two more shorts sitting in a slush pile, and two more to write, one overdue and the other with a deadline imminent. It’s tough to make those a priority with my contractual obligations to Evileye for The Pack, but I’ve not written them off yet.

I’ll have some news on a webcomic soon. The artist is inking the strips, and we’re going to wait until we have several in the can before we launch. I don’t want to say too much right now because we’ve both fallen behind on it, but it’s kind of a new direction for both of us and the short strip format will be a new way to flex my creative muscles.

All of this has unfortunately back-burnered my novel Powerless. With The Pack taking center stage and so many other things going on, it’s been hard to revisit my older work. What’s written is edited on paper, but I haven’t been able to get the rewrite in gear. I had hoped to get back to it by the end of this year, but I think the next The Pack commitment may supersede it yet again.

I’m actually a little more interested in writing Sick Day, which also got preempted by The Pack, specifically the second draft of Chimaera. Crime thrillers have interested me a little more both in my reading and my writing, and Sick Day is a straight thriller with no horror or supernatural elements. Heck, I’ve even been tempted to go back and revisit An Ounce of Brass, an abortive first attempt at a thriller novel that has some good material at its heart but it needs to shed a ton of unnecessary weight.

I won’t even get started on the notebook. It’s got some good things waiting to come to light, like The Shattered Man, but I need to finish all this other stuff first and make some room. Until the writing can start paying the bills, I have to let the day job consume the bulk of my writing time. I’m a night owl and get most of my writing done then, but having to get up early makes it tough to do that consistently. Some see a romantic flair in the writer who forgoes sleep for the sake of his craft, but the fact is it actually harms the output in the long run.

Not to mention the toll it takes on one’s health. I’ve said many times I’d love to stay up late writing and then sleep well into the morning, but right now I just don’t have that luxury. It’s one of several reasons I look forward to Spring and Winter Breaks at work.

In the end it may look like it’s been a while since my last release, but never fear, the wheels are in motion.

Thanks to everyone for reading, and I hope you’ll keep coming back.

Following is the red band trailer for Robert Rodriguez’s Machete starring Danny Trejo. Um, not work safe.

Rappelling out a window with a dude’s intestines? I’m there!

Yeah, it’s cheesy, but with Rodriguez you can be sure it’s going to be fun.

AMC is producing a TV series based on The Walking Dead, and a teaser was screened in San Diego this weekend. Someone in attendance recorded it and posted it to YouTube:

Man, I’m really looking forward to this series. I get the impression there was only so much footage available for the teaser, which is why we have so much of Rick just walking around in uniform, but if it’s as faithful to the original comics as they claim, this series is going to kick all form of ass.

It will also be nice to see a horror show played straight. Most of them end up over-the-top horrific or they play up the Gothic angle. If this show can blend the dramatic tone of Breaking Bad with some good, old-fashioned zombie horror, it’s going to be huge.

Also, be sure to check out the Walking Dead motion comic, which takes Tony Moore’s original art and turns it into an animated teaser. Cool stuff.