Matt Maxwell's Blog: Highway 62 on Goodreads

After going back and forth on things over the last couple of weeks, I went ahead and decided to run the Kickstarter campaign for my newest book. I’d thought that I wouldn’t have the energy/focus to run it and promote it and all, particularly since I was spending a lot of time helping my wife recover from surgery. Yeah, last week was long and rocky. The surgery isn’t the only issue in our lives and I’m gonna leave it there. I have a lot to do that has nothing to with writing or promoting (and...

A lonely Imperial Pilot guiding folks into the waiting area before the show. Flew down to attend Wonder-Con last week. Well, and to spend a few days seeing friends and LA and eating a lot of Mexican food because my family doesn’t like it as much as I do. I’ll spend most of this one talking about Wonder-Con as a show. Not sure I’m going to write up the other stuff so much except to wrap up everything in passing. Part of what I’ll talk about there is the root of the problems that I’ll talk...

Hey folks. Yeah, it’s been a minute. Last time I posted here, I’d just finished up the first draft of My Gifts Are Hungry. Well, the second draft really. That first draft is the maybe fifty pages of raw plotting, that whole skeleton. In this case, there were another couple rounds of putting stuff in different places and changing the fundamental nature of the “antagonist” in the book, which forced some other stuff to be written a little more fully. Made for a slower process. Last week, I...

Maybe you heard the news. Finished another novel a couple days ago. Trying to remember whether this is number ten or eleven. There’s four I can’t really count even though I wrote ‘em. Maybe those names will get counted one day. Not today for sure. So yeah, that’s My Gifts Are Hungry printed and waiting markup. I say “finished” knowing full well that there’s an edit pass. This serves a couple purposes. One, it makes me experience the book in reader time, ie over a course of hours (over a few...

It's tough to look around and think that things are going well. Living through America's Years of Lead and seeing all the obvious, flagrant and almost comical violations of the law on the part of those in power and you'd be insane to think that things are going well. I'm just talking on a relatively limited personal basis. Hell, there's stuff still going on within reach that's bad enough that I won't freely discuss it here (and don't hold your breath.) So I'm clearly selfish to think...

Thirty-five years ago, I started a job out of college. I'd moved to a new city to be with my girlfriend of four years, to one day to be my fiancée then wife who I'm still married to. I'm anything but a quitter I guess. Just don't talk to my bandmate in the Roswell Incident. The turn of the new year makes me think of this, mostly because I started that job on January second, which is basically monster-like behavior. It wasn't a great job, but it wasn't terrible. I was (shockingly)...

In 2020, I drove out to San Francisco. I want to say it was in February. Reviewing, it was actually in January. I covered that trip here, in the post called " That Good Godspeed You Black Emperor Light. " There was a thing called Covid in the news, but it wasn't real. Not like it would be. It would be the last trip I took to the city until probably 2023? Just checked, actually December 0f 2022. I seem to be a month off in my recollections. Of course, Everything Horrible that's been going...

I know, this should have a more Christmas-like or Solstice-like title. It is that time of year, right? Of course it is. That’s why I’m wiped. All that obligation dragged around, begins to weigh on ya. Yes, it’s joyous and a time of being together with your family (only this year it’s not, by and large – long story which I’m not relating here). No, nothing’s wrong with the immediate family, not any more than usual. Just weirdness with relatives. And oh, making it over to my family involves...

I'm spending more time these days responding to writing from other people than I am writing my own work. That's probably not a good sign. Though it's good in that there have been works worth responding to. That's something, right? Totally worth not getting back to my own work for. Sure, I guess. I'll lay the blame at the feet of the holiday season, which is a time of year where I have to do more and more with every year that passes. There's reasons for that. Maybe I'll be brave enough to talk...

I’m not particularly good at this. As it’s neither a formal essay nor an informal response to a piece of writing, I don’t exactly know where to start. So I’ll just keep writing until something catches, perhaps a piece of friction between two words sparks something. Bear with me. This is essential in apprehending the subjects we’re going to take a look at in this piece. A word of background on me, or at least some attempt at explanation. One of the areas of study I found myself enmeshed in...