Seems like there's a lot of things going on all of a sudden -- I guess the change in Day Jobs has opened up the floodgates on all the various possibilities that have been bottled up in the past year. It's nice -- like a blast of fresh air (though at 102 degrees right now, it's more like a blast of fresh oven air). Here are some snippets.

We're heading to the beach on Saturday! One whole week with the Jasper/Meyer/Ahlberg clan. Yes, about 20 people all under one roof. Good thing I'm not bringing my laptop along to try and do some work stuff while I'm there (that was my plan before I gave my notice). I doubt much work will get done, just lots of eating, drinking, and catching up with the fam. Drew is gonna have a blast seeing all his cousins and aunts and uncles again, and going swimming and having all kinds of adventures.

Speaking of laptops, my current/almost former company is offering me my work laptop to take with me for $250. Nice! I can't pass that up, since my other laptop is a pooch (and it currently has Linux loaded, so I needed a Windows machine). Glad I took care of the ol' laptop the past year and a half...

I finished updating all my web pages, after about two years of intending to do so. I'm really happy with how the Stories page turned out, with the images line up more or less with the text. The pages should all match the format you see on this sample page. If you come across an oddball page in the old, less streamlined format, please let me know (unless it's one of my old, pre-JournalScape journals, and I ain't fixing those!). Now I know why I'm not a web developer -- I'd go nuts.

I should've mentioned this sooner, but my buddy Jeff Rutherford interviewed me over the phone for his new, upcoming podcast (though it may get published after he and his way have their new, upcoming baby in two weeks!). That was a lot of fun -- I haven't chatted about writing like that in a looong time (except in this journal, and that's kinda one-way, you know?). Jeff asked some great questions, and made me think about which authors' books I'd take with me to a desert island, and my first story acceptance. I also got to chat about my novels, and I really enjoyed talking about the baseball novel. Always a good sign...

I'm back into the Sixteen Miles novel now, having woken up way too early this morning (4 a.m., thanks to our dog needing to go outside). I didn't mind -- my brain woke up right away, thinking about writing and dragging the rest of me kicking and screaming downstairs. I'm 1/3 of the way through my "chapter breakdowns," which is sort of a rough, unshiny version of my eventual novel synopsis. I do one line of explanation per scene in each chapter, just so I don't forget the plot stuff. I'm getting pumped up about this book again.

I've also been chipping away at a new story, thanks to an exercise I read about over in Steph B's journal. Her husband and fellow writer Patrick came up with the idea of assigning a sentence as the opening to someone else, and letting the writer take it from there. I asked him if he'd send me a sentence, sort of half-hopeful, half-joking, and he gave me this: "She was broken by dawn." Nice! I've been working on the story in ten-sentence increments -- no more, no less. Speaking of, I need to add ten more sentences today... It's been fun, writing without an outline, working without a net.

And finally, I finished up Elizabeth Hand's novel Generation Loss this morning. Great, creepy, dark book. She created a pretty non-heroic heroine for her protagonist, but the 1st-person narration by the protag kept me reading, even if some of the things she did weren't all that appealing as a human being. The book is all about damaged people, many of them artists, and how art often bridges the gap between reality and some other place, and how taking the leap to that other place may just drive you mad. I felt like I was up there on those islands in Maine, freezing my toes off with Cass. I heard some folks didn't like the ending, but I thought it worked just fine. I really liked how she tied everything together -- something mentioned almost in passing in chapter three came back to haunt you in the end. Highly recommended.

Whew. And that's my update. Guess I'd better go finish up my docs now that lunch is over... Thanks for listening to me ramble. Later!