Want to meet some fantastic people? Visit any of the Pioneer Library System libraries. They hosted the fourth bi-annual Red Dirt Book Festival yesterday and today, and I’m here to tell ya, they are some of the most helpful, enthusiastic, book-lovin’ people you’ll ever meet. This was my third time to attend the festival — second as a guest — and I mean it, they go all out for the authors and the readers. They put us up in the Hilton Hotel in Shawnee, provided tickets to the meals, had a shuttle that ran from the hotel to the conference sites, had a hospitality room, provided the books themselves, and even paid us a stipend to talk about our books and writing. Hell, most of us would do that for free.

It was a good conference, too. I learned a few things, though a lot of the panels provided information I’d heard before. One of my favorites was where three of those librarians did mini-reviews and some reading from various books from the attending authors. It was just refreshing to see somebody other than the authors pushing their work. I don’t know if they mentioned mine or not, as I missed over half the two-hour panel, but it was good, anyway. I met several new people, including the editor for Silhoutte, but spent the most time talking to Michelle Bardsley, who was on the Vampires, Werewolves and Demons: The Sexy Side of the Paranormal with me and Chrystal Inman. Michelle gets a link because she’ll be giving away a couple of my books at some point.

Probably the best thing about the conference, though, was the quiet time in the hotel. I wrote 14 or 15 pages, which is nothing compared to what I used to do in the same amount of time, but it was enough to really put me back into Nadia’s Children. I can’t wait to get back to it. There’s a really, really big scene coming up. A couple of minor characters we haven’t seen for a while are going to be killed.

Here’s one of those word count things to show my progress. I guess I completed another 3 percent of the book over the weekend.

16211 / 100000 words. 16% done!

I also got my hands on about 83 pages of Gayleen’s YA (or is it middel grade?) novel that she’s working on. She’d left me hanging in a house that’d had all the air sucked out of it by a dust storm a long time ago. This is good stuff and I’m glad to finally get to see what happens next.

Last thing. Remember the post about my acting debut back in September? Well, the music video is online now. You can watch it here. It’s good cheesy fun.

I got news today that Graveside Tales’ newest anthology Harvest Hill is now available for purchase. The book includes my new story “Hungry is the Night” written specifically for this book. Like my story “The God of Discord”, this one involves a monster I first wrote about in about 1990 or ‘91 for a novel called The Living Dark, something I’ve messed with rewriting off and on ever since. But I digress. Like all stories in this anthology, mine takes place in the little town of Harvest Hill, Tennessee, on Halloween night. Mine is a modern story featuring the newspaper editor of the little town. I have to admit I’m rather proud of the story, particularly considering how quickly I knocked it off.

Right now you can only get the book from Graveside Tales’ site. (I’m sure it’ll be at Amazon and all the usual places very soon.) Here’s the link to a pretty cool (but rather uninformative) book trailer.

Happy reading!

First off, HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Oh, to be 10 years old again …

Well, it was an interesting week. I heard from an agent who wants to look at The Girls Nobody Wanted to Date. Not bad for the first query I ever sent out on it. I didn’t get any real writing done, but I did make a few pages of notes for things that are coming up in Nadia’s Children.

The biggest event, I guess, was having a student break down in the hallway, bury her face in my chest and cry for a while. It’s just incredible what some of these kids have to go through. When I was that age I never would have imagined a teenager actually having that kind of life. This poor girl lost her father recently. She feels the grief, of course, but she’s also feeling guilt because she left home because of another woman living in the house. She told me a lot more about herself that I won’t divulge here. She’s a strong young lady who has already overcome more than most people could, but losing her daddy really tore her up.

One thing she told me was that last time I went to the school counselors about her, they called her in, talked to her about what was going on at that time, and then called the parents of the guy she was living with and told them what she’d told them. The boyfriend beat the hell out of her for that. Most of our counselors should stick to making schedules. Sheesh. The school did just hire a full-time social worker, so hopefully we’ll get somebody who is trained, compassionate and understanding of what the kids are dealing with so they can get some real help.

Another one of my students was arrested for what started as a just a minor school-related infraction in the hallway, but because he was stoned he went nuts when he was called on it. Yesterday, another of my students was so wasted in class that he didn’t know what he was doing most of the time. I know I should have sent him to the office, but … Well, there are reasons I didn’t.

Looking ahead, I’ll be at the Red Dirt Book Festival next weekend. My panel is “Vampires, Werewolves, and Demons – The Sexy Side of the Paranormal” with Michele Bardsley and Crystal Inman. The panel is from 4:15 to 5 p.m. on Friday. I’ll also be at the book signings from 2-3 p.m. both Friday and Saturday. Red Dirt is a very good conference. It’s the most literary of the conferences and conventions I attend, bringing in a lot of librarians, teachers, etc. This year’s featured guest is Billie Letts.

I am not taking any school papers with me to Red Dirt. When not at the conference, I will be in the hotel room provided by the conference, writing about werewolves.

Look for an announcement very soon about a new contest. The prize this time will be one of my PC copies of Little Graveyard on the Prairie. It’ll cost you to enter the contest, but they money will go to a very worthy charity. (No, not me!) I’m still hammering out a few details and getting things set up.

We have new projectors at school that allow us to show movies on a pull-down screen. Yeah, like what we had when I was in elementary school, but I’m not talking about film strips made in the 1950s shown through a big and heavy blue projector. These let us show DVDs. The downside is that our school didn’t have the foresight to hook up the DVD player to the projector, so we have to use the computer. You can’t do anything else with the computer while the movie’s playing. And you have to move the mouse every once in a while to keep the screen saver from coming on. But I digress. My three English IV classes finally finished Beowulf and took the test, so I’m showing them the movie and we’re griping about things that were changed and talking about why. But, with the room dark, the kids engaged, and the computer occupied, I have nothing to do. So I took my laptop on Thursday and Friday. The battery was dead on Thursday. On Friday, though, I finally had a breakthrough.

Yes, I finally began writing again. I didn’t get much done, but it was enough. It was kind of like hitting the Hoover Dam until finally a crack appears in the cement and a trickle of the Colorado River leaks through. I figured out a format for what I needed to do on the chapter of Nadia’s Children that’s been holding me up. It isn’t brilliant, and it may not be the final format, but it was enough to pull me back into the story.

So today, to get some quiet time without discussion of past-due bills or breaking up squabbles between children, me and the trusty laptop went to the library. It was damn near orgasmic. The words flowed and flowed. I got there at about 3:30 and wrote pretty much non-stop until the library closed at 5 p.m. There was a brief break for some added research on an 18th century war between Sweden and Russia, but I knocked off seven pages. Now, that’s not a lot compared to what I’m typically capable of, but considering how long it’s been since I did anything, it was pretty damn good. Is it quality work? I dunno, but right now that doesn’t really matter.

Here’s one of those word meter things to show where I stand:

12658 / 100000 words. 13% done!

There were a few things that went into breaking the dam. One is reading John Steinbeck’s Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters, and following his lead. Yes, I’m keeping a “werewolf journal.” I did it with Ulrik, too, but then it was mostly just chapter outlines to plan ahead. This time there are outlines (or will be), but also notes about things that are giving me problems, possible ways to fix or get around them, things I want to include, reminders of things that have gone before, etc. Writing in it before starting my actual writing kind of gets me ready to write and focused on what’s ahead.

The problem I was having was figuring out who Fenris really is, and why he’s against the Pack uniting. This ate at me for weeks! And, of course, the answer was there all along. It was assigning and reading the first draft of my AP essays on the barbarism vs civilization debate that made me understand what Fenris is all about. Okay, but why does he believe what he does?

That’s where the history comes in. What did we know about Fenris’s history from what was in Ulrik? Not very much. He almost killed Ulrik in the forest surrounding Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair retreat and he looks like Jim Steinman (okay, that’s not explicitly in the book, but that’s who I based his physical appearance on). Now his history is coming into focus. And, I think, readers may be able to have some sympathy for him. When I teach creative writing, I always emphasize the fact that nobody sets out to be the bad guy; everyone is the hero of his own story. I wasn’t doing that with Fenris in the last book. He was just a cardboard villain to oppose Ulrik. Now he’s somebody unique. He’s kind of reminding me of Captain Wolf Larsen from Jack London’s The Sea Wolf.

When the library closed, I considered going to the park to keep writing until my battery died, but came home instead to help fix dinner. (There’s a cop in the library who makes sure you’re preparing to leave once they start announcing that closing is pending and he was giving me the stink eye the last 10 minutes or so.)

*If you care, the AP essay assignment is to read Jack London’s The Call of the Wild (yes, I am a big fan of London), Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs, Stephen Crane’s story “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky”, and one other source of the student’s choosing, then write an essay agreeing or disagreeing with Robert E. Howard’s statement from “Beyond the Black River” that “Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.” First draft essays were mostly bad to mediocre, almost like they’d never seen a persuasive essay before.

First, thanks to Gayleen and Paul for meeting me for lunch today. I needed that. Thanks for all your kind words and encouragement. I’m working on a query letter for The Girls Nobody Wanted to Date Gayleen. I swear it.

I finally got out and bought the new KISS album, Sonic Boom, today. I like it a lot … and I didn’t expect to. Even “Modern Day Delilah” has kind of grown on me. I”d have to say “Never Enough” is my favorite song on it so far. It isn’t the Destroyer meets Love Gun that Paul Stanley said it was, but it has some real klassic moments. I have to say it does have several riffs and licks that sound like they were … uhhh … borrowed from older songs. Still, I’ll be playing the heck out of this one for a good long time. Right now I’m listening to the bonus CD. These recordings are a little different than the originals, I think. Or maybe it’s just that I haven’t listened to them through headphones in a long time. Every track on the bonus CD is a killer, except that horrible piece of shit “Forever.” Yeah, skipping right over that one for “Christine Sixteen.” By the way, “Lick It Up” has to be one of the best KISS songs ever, and really sums up what I think the band is all about.

It’s fall break. The wifey had a list of appointments for me, plus my youngest daughter came down with an ear infection and strep throat, so I haven’t gotten any real writing done, but I have been doing some research on something that’s stumped me for a while. Fenris, the lead villian of The Werewolf Saga, needs a deeper identity. Who is he, really? And, why is he so against the Pack uniting? These are things I’m working out. Right now he seems to much like an Arnold Schwarzenegger bad buy from one of his 1980s action flicks. And that’s not a good thing.

I have a stack of essays to grade. First drafts of persuasive essays exploring whether man is more prone to a state of barbarism or civilization. Should be “interesting” reading. Plus some shorter benchmark essays analyzing a quote from John Steinbeck’s Cup of Gold. There are also some makeup quizzes and such to grade.

Speaking of Steinbeck, I’ve been on a real binge with him. A while back I ordered an omnibus of his short novels, his journal from the writing of The Grapes of Wrath and an annotated version of that novel. I’ve been reading the essays in that one while listening to East of Eden in my car. East of Eden is a book I read a long time ago, while working in some machine shop. I remember loving it … and am surprised at how little of it I remember. It’s weird. It’s also pretty damn depressing, but the writing is beautiful and inspiring. He was a master at finding the perfect little detail to define a character or place. I just ordered the East of Eden letters, plus a Steinbeck biography and an examination of the banning of Grapes from Alibris. How much of it will I read before I burn out? I dunno. It seems I prefer reading nonfiction to fiction these days.

You say you want to go for a spin, the party’s just begun, but let you in. You drive us wild, we’ll drive you crazy …

I spent Friday and Saturday in Tulsa for the first Sci-Fi Horror Weekend. This was a convention in the vein of Horrorfind Weekend or the Texas Frightmare Weekend. It’s geared more toward the movies and features the stars of some genre gems. The main guests were the stars of the first (that I know of) and best zombie comedy, Return of the Living Dead. There were also several people there from some of the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels.

I imagine the weekend was not as well attended as the organizers hoped, but it wasn’t nearly as dead as the Horrorfind Weekend I went to in Phoenix. There was a pretty steady, if modest, stream of people meandering down the aisles. Some people stopped to look at books, but not much money ended up in the hands of the authors in attendance.

Not that it was a bad con. I met a lot of new and intersting people. Among those were Damon Blaylock, who I’d spoken to on the phone and via e-mail a few times. Damon has directed a movie called Howling Moon that is based on the same source material I used for writing Murdered by Human Wolves. I got to see his trailer, which looked really good, and met his werewolf star, Carl Buffington, who seemed very cool. I’m very excited to see the movie. Oh, and Damon wants to do an interview with me for the DVD release.

I met another dude whose name escapes me, but we spent a good bit of time talking about writing screenplays.

Then there were the old friends, like Duvy and Z, Joyce, Dennis MacDonald, another Enid boy writing horror, and Jackson Compton and his very, very pregnant wife (due any day now). John Ferguson, aka Count Gregore, was there and it’s always good to see him out and about.

It seemed kind of strange not having the event at a hotel, so there was no after-show hanging out, and it cost $16 to park for the two days. The biggest drawback of the event was my natural tendency to do everything wrong when it comes to driving. It took an hour and 45 minutes to drive from Moore to Tulsa, but then it took an hour and a half to make the 10-minute trip from the Convention Center to my motel. I got so freaking lost, then when I tried to get back there was road construction everywhere. That’s nothing new, though. If there’s a wrong turn to make, you can bet I’ll make it.

No updates in two weeks. That’s quite a while, even for me. Last week was brutal. I worked four out of five evenings, then spent the fifth getting ready for FenCon. So, what’s been going on with me? Hmm.

I’ve been drowning in paperwork from school. I’ve switched to a mostly participation-based grading system. I don’t like it, but I simply don’t have time to grade that many papers. And I’m lucky. My biggest class is 24; some of the English teachers have 36 kids to a class. Add to my three high school preps my ESL class at the college, and it’s a big load. Then I had ESL testing last week, too.

My childcare issue has been resolved. A former student will watch my kids. This will be an added, and unexpected, expense.

The administration at our school is already talking about taking away our second plan period. This was expected, but I can tell you there will be a huge revolt if that happens. The classes are too big and we’re expected to do too much other stuff, like mess with that horrible new lesson planning software. I know several teachers who are already saying they won’t be back next year because of the schedule change this year.

I’ve been so busy I hadn’t done any writing since school started. That was until last night, when I finally knocked out a few pages of Nadia’s Children. It would have been better if I wasn’t so damn tired. I’m still very, very tired. I don’t know why, really. I just feel wrung out.

FenCon was fun. It would have been better if I hadn’t been so tired the whole time. Saw lots of friends, sat on some good panels, and sold some books. It was good. On the way home I started listening to John Steinbeck’s East of Eden on CD.

I got home to find a returned package from a publisher. This was very depressing. I sent Shara to this mass market publisher in January 2007, along with the synopsis of Ulrik, blurbs, etc. After two years and eight months, the editor sent it back unread, saying because his inventory is so backlogged that it was only fair to me to return the material. WTF? I just don’t understand what it takes to break into the mass market. This editor said in late 2006 that werewolves would be the new zombies. He was right. I pitched Shara, he asked for it, had it for over two and a half years … but didn’t even read it? I don’t get it.

That’s right. I wasn’t able to shuffle up to Buffalo for Greg Lamberson’s “Slime City Massacre” movie shoot, but today I got to play a zombie in Christophe’s new music video. It was hot, it was humid, but it sure was fun. We got kicked out of a cemetery, so we finished the shoot at Little River Park in Moore, a place I think would be nice for a werewolf flick. The video will debut at TrickConTreat. Sadly, I won’t be there because I’ll be in Tulsa for this. I’m sure it’ll be online eventually and I’ll post a llink. I took a few pictures and I’ll post those pretty soon.

Right now I’m watching the mighty Oklahoma Sooners beat up on BYU. The OK State Cowboys already took care of business against the Georgia Bulldogs earlier today. Last night the hgh school Jets won their first game since the 2007 season. It was the first game for my oldest daughter, who was quickly recruited to the yearbook staff. She had to take pictures of the crowd and cheerleaders. The best part of the game was seeing so many kids from the class of 2009 return.

No solution on the daycare issue yet. My kids are walking over with a boy from class and going to another teacher’s empty room. However, the principal told us that has to stop. One of those class of ‘09 students said she’ll watch mine … but her boss has to stop scheduling her after 2 p.m. first, and that hasn’t happened yet.

My ESL class started this week. Thanks to a switch with another teacher I’m teaching on the OCCC campus instead of way up in Edmond. The class is okay. I was pretty worried about it, really, but after a couple of sessions I feel all right about it.

What I do not feel all right about is my regular high school classes. I’m drowning in papers that need grading. Seriously, the bag I carry back and forth is stuffed with papers, and most of them are just from this week. Like most of the teachers, I’m giving a lot of participation grades because I simply don’t have time to actually read it all. Add to that the horrible new lesson plan software we’re supposed to use and every minute of every day is at a premium. That lesson planner is the worst piece of software I’ve ever seen. It takes forever to put anything in and last time I used it it lost half of what I did … twice.

Needless to say, I haven’t done any writing since school started. It’s starting to eat at me a little. I need to write. I need therapy!

It’s been all dark, depressing and stressful for me lately. Yesterday was a better day, though. It was the best day of school so far. There were a few reasons for that. The first is just the students. Kids I haven’t even had in class — sometimes kids I don’t even know names for — come by to talk to me, tell me they wish they were in my class, etc. One sophomore’s even going so far as to claim to be my daughter (not sure I’m thrilled about that, but she means well), and yesterday she gave me a hug for no real reason. We have some really good kids at our school, and they’re reminding me why I stayed.

After school I got to have a little talk with the new principal, and I learned some things on the childcare front. There is something in the works for the district. In the meantime, my kids are hanging out after school with a boy in my daughter’s class; his mom is a math teacher who is out of her room seventh period, so the kids go in there. They’re across the hall from the 9th grade principal, who is okay with the arrangment. In a couple of weeks one of last year’s graduates will probably start watching them.

My oldest daughter is doing well at my school, and that makes me very happy. She got recruited onto the yearbook staff already, and that’s pretty rare for a freshman. Now she’s interested in joining student council (she wasn’t so interested when I suggested it, but when I mentioned it to the 9th grade principal he said he’d suggest it to her, and that did it). She’s becoming friends with the movers and shakers of the student body, the kids who’ll get the big scholarships to major universities. I’m very proud of her, of course, and I get to spend more time with her, something that wasn’t happening much the past couple of years. And yeah, I’ve already had to tell a few senior boys that looking too hard would cost them their testicles.

Then I come home and find an e-mail from a publisher saying my novel Amara’s Prayer is a “must-do” for his company. I haven’t asked if I can announce it yet, so I won’t say who it is now, but it’s somebody I’ve worked with before. Somebody who pays what he promises and is on time, or within a reasonable shot of his projected publication date. I am really, really happy that this novel has finally found a home. It was my graduate thesis at the University of Oklahoma, so it was picked apart more than once by professors of English, journalism, and … my third committee person had multiple degrees in various fields. She helped with the anthropology and comparative religion aspects, turning me on to some really great books as she did. What I’m getting to is that I think this is the best book I’ve written. There’s limited violence, some graphic sex, and an actual, like, literary theme to it.

So, yeah, yesterday was a good day.

Yes, there is a rant, but it isn’t here. I posted it at The Werewolf Saga Online site. Here’s the thesis: I offer for your consideration the theory that today’s readers are the most self-absorbed and ignorant since the invention of movable type. I give my reasons and offer a poll to see if you agree. I’d really like to know what you think.

In other news, this is my last day off work before officially reporting back to school tomorrow. However, I’ve been at the school so much this summer it hardly seems like there was a break. It’s going to be an interesting year. We’re going from the block schedule in which I had four classes with three preps to a seven-period day in which I’ll have five classes and three preps, but instead of having the same kids for 80 minutes a day for a semester I’ll have them for 50 minutes a day all year. We’re getting new computers, plus something called “the intelligent classroom” which includes a projector and, they say, a pad-thing on which we can write and it’ll show up on the projector screen. Haven’t seen it in action yet. After the first nine weeks one of our vice principals will become principal, and he tells me there’ll be some changes coming when he takes over. Interesting year, I’m sure.

Last night I edited the short story I worked on for way too long. It’s called “The Hungry Night” and was written on request for an anthology I won’t name yet … because they may reject it like they did the first one I wrote for them. I’ve got another short story pending with another anthology; it’s made it past the first and primary reader there.

Two years ago I was gearing up for Horrorfind Weekend. I’d been every year since 2003. Didn’t make it last year and won’t make it this year. Damn money. Seeing the actors is no big deal anymore, but I really, really miss hanging out with the other writers I’d only get to see in Baltimore. I was gonna go into a list of names, but no way I’d get them all and I’d feel bad later about missing important ones.

Speaking of conventions, last night I was invited to join the Sci-fi Horror Weekend in Tulsa. The primary cast of Return of the Living Dead will be there and I’d get to sit in a booth next to them. However, this event is the same weekend as TrickConTreat and I’ve already agreed to be there. What to do, what to do?