You know you're looking at me

There are people whose blogs I follow where I think "Man, you haven't posted in a week! What the hell's wrong with you!" And then I remember that you're lucky to get a post a month out of me. Again. Twitter. It takes all of me.

I've spent a lot of this year learning to be humble and thankful. I've had a lot of friends go through some pretty horrible stuff. I've had my own issues, but when you set them side by side it's a little silly to get bent up by these things. I'm a lucky guy, in a lucky situation. So I'm not writing full time. How many writers out there even manage publication. So Chicago isn't my ideal habitude. I'm here. So friendships don't always work out. I've got some pretty wonderful people in my life. So the writing isn't as good on the page as it is in my head. It's better than it was when I started.

Anyway. There's always a lot of bad static on these pages. I just wanted to be clear that I'm learning to live beyond the static. I'm learning to be up. It's a curious feeling.

The Desolate Nature of the Business

Initial indications are that distribution for The Horns of Ruin will be quite good, and there are already some reviews showing up. I'm hopeful. And of course, all this talk of book releases brings up talk of signings in the Akers' household. I'm resistant to it. Wife and I were talking about this, and I was struggling to express how badly signings sit in my head. They're one of those things that I recognize as important to the business, but I really, really hate doing them.

Put it this way: we all know how socially crippled I am. I just don't deal with people, or groups of people, terribly well. I do okay in formalized settings. Panels seem to go okay, because then I'm performing and I have a set topic and if it goes badly I can just pick a fight. Purely intellectual.

But signings? Realistically it's just sitting at a table with a pen and a stack of books. But really? It's sitting at a table for three hours with a pen and no one who walks by will make eye contact with you like you're some kind of eye-borne disease, and there's this stack of books, but not just books but *your* book that you bled into and sweated over and crafted like your life depended on it because let's be serious, your life does depend on it. And eventually they let you go and you can crawl back into your hole and hope no one ever, ever, ever asks you to make eye contact with a stranger ever again. Never.

So that's why I don't like signings. But I recognize that they're important.

An Early Christmas

Pretty chaotic couple weeks, there. And the next couple aren't looking too good. But we've closed on the house, moved in some furniture, and started our punchlist. In about a week we'll actually be living there. That's going to be weird.

I'll update as best I can, but seriously, my time is spoken for. Things will calm down in October, but by then I'm going to be on the contract trail, and that book is going to be coming in hot. We should probably just wish each other a Happy New Year right now, cuz that's the next time I'm going to be at my leisure.

Hello September

To celebrate the end of August, I'm going to buy myself a shirt. http://tinyurl.com/24hxcwj or http://tinyurl.com/244h8a9 ?