FULL BLEED: SHOOT SPEED KILL LIGHT

Today's election day 2024. Don't worry. That's my first and last discussion of the issue. Just marking the time for the record. Assuming there is a record, or that I revisit these to check out what was boiling in the 'ol brain pan on any given time. I've been known to do that. Like with photographs I've taken on the phone where I see something that just sticks out and I feel like it should be recorded. Sometimes I can even remember what I was thinking about or feeling when I took the picture. Sometimes.

I don't often do this. Though there was a period last year where I spend a lot of time reading books I'd loved (everything from Blood Meridian to The Invisibles to The Sandman and the Swamp Thing refiguring by Alan Moore and company, but also Gibson and Chandler.) I also went through a bunch of my old college papers, trying to connect to that wide-eyed dude who'd just been shown the wonders of critical theory circa the middle-late eighties and sociological theory and practice, zen, all sorts of stuff. Stuff that I ate up then and has become somewhat rote and expected now. Though once in a while, I get a fresh kick in the head from work like Mark Fisher's. It still happens. But yeah, revisiting that work so I could see where the spark came from. 'Cause that spark is tough to come by now. Happens when you have 35 years intervening. Thats's a lot of occlusion in the systems building up (in my case literal, thanks thrombosis that happened about four years back.)

Which is funny, because after recovering from that thrombosis, I was pretty much fired up to get back to work. I even got a lot done. Which got thrown in the woodchipper after my publisher melted down. End digression.

So, did I find that spark while going through those papers and assigned readings and the like? Nah. You can't go home again. Though it was nice to see that I was capapble of being motivated (for awhile I didn't really give a fuck about school, even in college -- then I finally started taking classes that I was excited by after getting all those pre-reqs done.) I was capable of going way above and beyond (a hundred page work, much of it reference images, of death in the comics, co-written by one of my best friends, then and now, for instance.) Why is it hard now? Aside from thirty-five years and I'm still my primary audience? Yeah, tough one. Real puzzler.

There was a time I felt like it was all possible. That's harder to come by while staring down, well, time. Things feel finite. Limited. Particularly in a world like ours where individual creators are so commonplace that being among them is like submerging yourself in the seethe of a crowd. And everyone, everyone is hungry, least of all me, or yourself if you are one of those creators who've found your way into reading this.

Sure, it's great that all these people are taking spins at the wheel. Sure, it makes things hard in the aggregate. And of course, you, as a reader of stuff that's on the outside, want to help all these authors out and that's exhausting. Sure, I'm supposed to have a limitless supply of love and support in that well. Isn't that what we're taught?

Man, that level of energy gets harder to sustain every day. I'm sorry. I know I'm supposed to be positive. That's what you're supposed to be out here. Positive as fuck. Love those book birthdays and unboxings and cover reveals and and and.

I still see that stuff as just playing around, really. It's not the work.

Not that I've been good about the work. Not that I'm one to talk. Not that I even ever was. I can point to that small body of work and feel some pride, but lemme tell ya, my numbers aren't going to convince anyone that I know the first god damned thing about what I'm doing. But what I'm doing is writing. Not selling. Not being a social media personality (though I spend too much time there.) Not racking up reviews. Not all those things that we've been told we need to do. Not making contacts and shaking hands and electing myself as the one-man representative of a genre or worse a group of writers out there. I've never seen that end well. Hell, we're watching another case (that was far worse than I ever suspected) turn out badly not only for the dude at the center of that, but everyone he fucked over to get another rung up that ladder. If that's what it takes to succeed, then I'll take failure.

I know. There's multiple dudes I could be subtweeting here, some far more famous than others. I'll leave it mysterious.

Anyways, treating writing like that kind of social climbing game is a recipe for heartbreak. Or just using others as stepping stones, as tools. And who wants to go through life like that? Nevermind, I know there's literally thousands who would, given the chance. Count me out.

I suppose this means I wasn't ever meant for the social media age of writing. You're goddamn right about that. I started in this more than thirty years ago, with time off for good behavior. It's about the only thing I'm good at. Okay, I'm pretty good at making covers, but nobody else wants my work for their books. It's weird, right? I know I'm good at this, but that's kinda the last opinion that matters. Unless you're using that as your rock to cling to, the ferry to ride downwriver as the cable has snapped and you're helpless and at the mercy of the roaring water and the rocks thudding against the hull. You got nothing else to hold onto.

You got nothing else to hold onto.

Maybe that's all the spark you get.

Anyways, back to the matters of life and work. The next book is called The Missing Pieces, and it's a haunted house story. It'll get backed up with a shorter work called The Pearl, which is about trying to carve out a place you can stay in long enough for it to be haunted. The first one is mostly about a girl named Grace who we met briefly in my last novel. Yes, Cait will be there, too.

Until next time.