2009, I started writing again. 2010, I started publishing again. I am now sitting on a train wondering how it went. So here is my end of year performance review.

Jan-March. I put the finishing touches on the book that I had started in Paris and continued back here in the North County San Diego that it cruelly lampooned. Surrounded daily by characters from the book, I didn't know if I could finish it. In the end, only by realizing that it was really all about me and different aspects of my perceptions did I finish it.

April. Publishing time: "This Unhappy Planet" ships. For my second novel, I didn't think even once about approaching a conventional publisher despite the fact that it is, in most respects, a fairly conventional piece of writing. Frankly, TradPub just seems a messed up place to be. Begging for agency, rewriting purely so the editor can keep her job, selling ebooks for ten frickin' dollars!

In a word: No.

I released via Feedbooks and Amazon Print On Demand as my main channels. I have achieved my twin goals of beer money and hitting 5k downloads this year.

Artistically I am proud of the book. The only thing I would maybe change is to be less restrained. It's very economical in the words it spends on its world, and every time I saw a seed of non-realism, I pruned it. I wanted to avoid science fiction. But the buds of other worlds are all over the book.

Having completed two novels I liked was a big deal for me. I started to think maybe I was a writer. So…

May. I joined up with the Year Zero Writers collective. Although on the whole, I think my writing is less extreme than what they do, a few of the best writers I have discovered in years are on this crew so when Dan Holloway invited me, I could literally not say no.

So, being on the team has made me feel like I should …y'know… write some stuff. So I have written a lot of short stuff this year. Some of it worked, some didn't.

Literary Valentine: I did this as a comment. I guess this was like my audition for Year Zero…writing short fiction in real time in a little comment box was a cool feeling. It felt really digital, instead of like writing in a little book then copying it onto a fancy electric typewriter like the novels do.

Higgs-Boson: I was physically [ha ha ha] excited by reading "Daisy Ann Gree's" piece about Higgs-Boson experiments. I was infected by the mood of the piece and so I did another comment fiction. It's like a reply, or an homage or something I suppose. I felt a bit vampiric, but I like the final result. Drink only the best blood.

Then I joined the group and thought okay I should write something.

I sat down on a bench overlooking the ocean with a little book and wrote what I would say is frankly a bit of a flop [Kirk.] Let's write it off as clearing my throat for novel number 3, which I started soon after.

My characters were ahead of my plot for novel 3. I decided to take the characters out to play.

I sent the American film-maker character back to the pubs of my teen years back in the Boro. This was a stress test of the character. I think the story ended up good, and the character passed the test of being someone I could write a lot of words with.

Oli Johns of Year Zero commented on my piece suggesting it was like no England he had ever known. Anyway, he suggested that I write something about Predators for his zine, Gupter Puncher. It was too far a drive to watch Predators so I did Inception instead. This turned out to be the most directly autobiographical thing I have ever written. It was well received, and in an obscure French bulletin board I got my favorite review of the year.

(I feel a bit under-reviewed in general frankly. I suppose that is the value of what Dan H is doing over at EightCuts…working for those reviews. I crave reviews, good or bad, I have to admit.)

Also at about this time, I wrote a screenplay with a pal of mine from my Colorado years. He had a lead with a studio, and the first third of a screenplay ready to go  about an American fighting the UK prison system. I dived in and finished it. I really enjoyed attempting Mamet-style scenes and writing only in sound and the minimal possible light and motion. We haven't sold it yet. Same studio were also not super-interested in our Tokyo Zero treatment. Turning my awkwardly paced first novel into a muscular thriller was a great joy though.

These are good screenplays I think: I don't mind trying to sell them in the same way I do for the books. I'll keep pimping them.

Oli pushed me the idea of writing about the Venice film festival for Gupter Puncher. Ok, so I sat down and did that with another character I was thinking about for Novel 3. I wrote for about an hour with no edits. That turned out great, I thought. I was starting to get an idea for the kind of extreme voice I could carry off for novel 3.

I was in L.A. a few weeks later, starting a period of being there a LOT, and thought I should write something about it. L.A. is interesting right? I crapped out a piece about everything I saw that morning. I don't really know why it didn't work. It's on Gupter, but I pulled it of Year Zero about an hour after I posted it there. I guess there is nothing behind the voice is why it fails.

Then I dove into novel 3. That's rolling well now. I am indulging my tastes: eating what I want out of the chocolate box. Maintain flow, and all will be well with novel 3.

I also wrote some twitter fiction: It would be crazy to write a lot about it, except that it was well received by some good writers and probably is actually my first poetry.

So, on balance a good year. Tokyo Zero is really getting read a lot with the ebook boomlet. This Unhappy Planet is starting to find its legs. And novel number 3, code-name R.A.D. is on track to drop in the first half of 2011.

I would like to make some money for R.A.D.: I think everyone who read Tokyo Zero [all 65,000 of you] would enjoy it. So I need to think about that. Except, I can't think about that. So I'll just write the thing and then see what happens…

Here is an exclusive excerpt! Happy New Year. Thanks for reading.

As I jump from the Pont Louis-Philippe, I realize that for a moment I am one of the most beautiful and remarkable things in the world. Anyone who sees me plunging past the white stone down to the black water will never forget it. Paris blurs until even the river below seems the more solid. And time does its thing. Gravity tries its best but time does its thing. I remember just taking a nice stroll in that 11pm heat, the heat the day shrugged off, the heat the day left on the plate. I was trying to just wander and take in the city, but I had been here just a bit too long.

[…]

 

And I'm in. Everything in me screams 'get out' but nothing in me can do anything about it. My speed pulls me down way farther than I ever thought it would. It pulls me down into archaeology. It pulls me down into statistics. My senses take a cigarette break, except my vestibular system that tells me I am doing something wrong wrong wrong. I am going down down down when I had hoped to be bobbing. A current flips me over and the black water plays with me listlessly. Across the ocean, a couple of dozen journalists are getting out of bed and they don't even know yet what fun they are going to have writing about me later today, when they fish me out. "Award winning film-maker goes out like a sucker. In France!"