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 (just the) "Vanity Smurf" Entries Weekend Checklist, Contest Bump July 6, 2008 Break down and recycle our growing cat litter box collection, CHECK. Finish 1st draft of comic script (I think my first western genre story ever, in any medium), CHECK. Post a "Guess my 400th Rejection" Contest on the friday of a holiday weekend to maximize the likelihood that readers won't be online to see it, CHECK. Get supplies for my first figure drawing class (first drawing class ever!), CHECK. 
 WisCon 2008: Best Mistake Evar! May 31, 2008 So WisCon was probably a mistake, healthwise. I was beat even before my reading Friday night, and compromised my immune system so quickly and thoroughly that I caught a bug probably from the first hands I  The Clarion 2006 partial reunion. Photo courtesy of Vince, who has a larger version (and his own blog about WisCon) here  Alex does his, um, reading? as JoSelle looks on in horror.  Is Will testing the camera? Or is the camera testing Will?  This made me sad. And I don't think I made a fool of myself too often throughout the rest of the con, though I don't think I've ever felt so self-conscious as I debated with each interaction: do I bring up the brain injury and risk looking like a sympathy whore or do I let this person walk away assuming I'm just a flaky dumbass? Tried both. Wasn't happy with either. Gonna sign me up for next year and see what WisCon's like coherent. And it'd be nice to actually go to more panels, readings, and parties than I reluctantly miss out on. *Watched Recount. Brilliant performances, except for the cringeworthy Gore and Bush impersonators. Overall, allowed me to relive that unique visceral disheartenment of 2000. So... thanks, HBO!
Incremental Soldiering March 9, 2008 Obligatory head injury tag. My friend Steve turned me on to Jimmy Amadie, a jazz pianist with tendinitis and nerve damage so severe that he's "unable to play for more than five or six minutes at a time, on a piano whose keys are specially weighted to cushion his touch" (from a review of Amadie's Savoring Every Note). It'll take two years of working in these increments before he'll compose, record, and finish his album. With considerably less talent and with large concentrations of caffeine, I can manufacture (almost consistently) a similarly short period of relative lucidity/productivity each day, so I can steal back my productivity from the twin gods of STFU and Convalesce. This is how I've technically written something every day this year with unbelievably little to show for it. This is because the same rules apply as before the head injury: some writing days are (relative) winners, most aren't. It's just that now the writing windows are smaller and foggier. I'm never near my peak performance. And for the most part, words and thoughts still just won't do what I want them to do. Stupid words and thoughts. Would I be the first to write with colors? Not entirely convinced these last ten (!) weeks wouldn't have been just as well served had I purchased a video game console in December, but I have trouble seeing the difference between that and giving up. I owe too much of my sanity and identity to reading and writing. And if I understand correctly (and ha! that's unlikely these days), the athlete who fully rests after an injury comes back nowhere nearly as strong as the one who works at rehabilitation, pushes herself, and exercises those stubborn muscles. Which brings up the big assumption: that I'll come back from this. Except for those caffeine-grabbed moments (which hell can't be good for me in the long run), my ability to think clearly is worse even than it was last month. Now, that could be a perceptual issue; of course normal seems worse compared to the caffeine high. But even if I'm not getting worse, it's become pretty hard to believe I'm still getting better. Even assuming I could be good at something else... it's only because I've put nine years into it that I'm on cusp of being good at writing. My father died at 53 (and his father at 52), so that doesn't give me a lot of time to practice a second calling. On the other hand? If I'm ten years away from making headway on my next big pursuit? I should probably get started on that ASAP, huh?
ABNA: Publishers Weekly Reviews Pinocchio is Punching You January 24, 2008  "In this funny sendup of the classic fairy tale, Pinocchio, having been made a boy, wants one more thing: to be made a ninja. Pinocchio hangs out at the mall, where a bully convinces him that ninja mastery can be had-at a price. The story sharply outlines the oddity of pre-pubescent boys' fixations (ninjas, zombies, petty theft and bra straps), and its playful blend of realism and fantasy is just right. The author has a sharp ear for dialogue and for the unusual highways and byways that adolescent conversations take. It's a clever idea executed ably; lots of laugh-out-loud moments and off-beat humor pepper this fun, inventive romp." --Publishers Weekly Pinocchio is Punching You! Cool, I might be able to sell this. (The above review is based on the entire novelette, not just the posted excerpt.)
Three Things I Woulda Done Differently... January 23, 2008 ...had I known I'd still be recovering from this head injury a month later.
(There are times when I feel like I'm myself again, and I feel like my mind should be able to do everything it used to do... but I'm quickly proven wrong, and I think that's the most frustrating thing. Recovery is gradual, but it's happening. Most importantly: focus is starting to improve. I'm able to read up to a page at a time before--usually--needing to start over. And if I can write an entire story in under 300 words, I can often keep all the threads in my head at one time. So... outlining and writing up pitches, mostly. A journal entry like this one will now take me less than half an hour, and I'll catch more typos now. So watch out, world! Alex'll be back in the game before you ooooh look a shiny penny!)
And We Got a Little Red Prius January 21, 2008  As soon as I'm driving again, this is what I'll drive. (And as soon as I get my camera back, I'll take a real picture.)
Not Brain Damage Yet January 1, 2008 (From the literature:) Following this type of head injury, headaches, nausea, inability to concentrate/focus, etc. may linger for a few days, weeks, or longer... Most of it's dealable, but it's been a week+ and the last one is killing me. A big part of writing, especially storytelling, is keeping multiple trains of thought going at once, both on a sentence level and and on a greater story-construction level. It's at the point where by the end of a paragraph I've lost everything I set out to do with the first word. Last journal entry took me over an hour. Had to give up on multiple stories that were so close to being done for a few Dec 31 deadlines, self-imposed and otherwise. Sending an older story to Writers of the Future, even a strong one, always feels like a defeat to me. Unproductive is the hardest feeling to deal with. ...but the brain damage is rarely permanent. The FUCK did you just say? I currently have brain damage but it's probably only temporary? And this is how you break it to a guy who constantly feels he's missing something: as an aside, like it's already been established, like we've been talking about brain damage all along, so he has to re-read all this passive-aggressive literature just to know he's not also suffering from memory loss? If only I'da known I had temporary brain damage a week ago. I've seen Law & Order. I could've gotten away with so much stuff over the holidays. I hear bank robbing does wonders for headaches and nausea.
Almost Made It December 27, 2007 So black ice is real. I lived most of my life on northern Ohio roads. When it comes to ice and similar hazards, I'm an annoyingly cautious driver. Sure, I've pulled myself out of fishtails, and I've pushed myself out of snowy ditches. But black ice? Where the first sign of anything slippery is a complete loss of traction? I've only hit black ice exactly once now: it was Sunday night, coming up 77 from Carrboro, North Carolina to Akron, Ohio, in the last half hour of a nine-hour solo drive.  But once is enough, eh? The driver who stopped and called an ambulance for me said I rolled twice, but I blacked out too soon to corroborate that. Walked away with nothing more than bruises and a mild head injury, if any head injury can be mild. Head's still swollen. Still can't focus for long periods, or stay awake for the better part of the day. But that'll get better. The Honda CR-V's finished after taking the worst of it (2000-2007 with just under 160K miles on it; airbag never deflated, but it saved my life regardless). Got sick of picking broken glass out of my beard, so that's gone, too. My glasses were torn off me in the crash, but better torn outward than inward, I guess. So the year ends the same way it begins, with an ambulance ride to the emergency room. Wheeee! I'm thinking 2008 must have something pretty wild in store, if 2007 is that adamant about keeping us from seeing it. But we're alive. We're happy. We're blessed. Drive safely, all!
"Shooting Dogs for Fun and Profit" free at ChiZine October 9, 2007 My story "Shooting Dogs for Fun and Profit" is up at ChiZine/Chiaroscuro. As a comedy piece, it should be a bit more amusing than the story behind it, below: I don't give a lot of thought to genre when I'm writing. Or if I do, it's more comedy vs drama rather than science fiction vs mystery vs non-genre or anything. There've been times I've written an entire story specifically for a market only to discover that, in the process of turning an idea into what I think is a workable story, I'd taken out the very element that would have made it appropriate for that particular market (no speculative element for an SF publication, no pirates for a pirate anthology). Even after years of writing and reading genre fiction, I spent the first half of Clarion failing to figure out the expectations of genre, and the second half failing to figure out my expectations of genre. I've never made it any further than the addage: good stories are good stories. So I've come to haphazardly put works into categories only after the fact, which probably contributes to my difficulty in placing my favorite work, and is probably why regular readers of non-genre fiction enjoyed "Outgoing" so much more than regular readers of science fiction or fantasy did (and why it's no great gamble to recommend "Shotting Dogs" to people who don't typically like horror; it's the horror fans who'll be wondering what the hell they're reading...). "Shooting Dogs for Fun and Profit" was a ten-minute play I submitted in 2005 to the Actor's Theatre of Louisville's National Ten Minute Play competition, which I try to enter every year. It didn't place, but this summer I dug it up because a filmmaker friend was looking for pieces we could shoot in a weekend. I realized there were still things I liked about it. So I'd meant to send it to another short play competition, but misread a deadline as "postmarked by" instead of "received by" because I'm silly like that. At the same time, I was trying to come up with a story for James Van Pelt's Hardboiled Horror, a crime-horror crossgenre anthology. It occurred to me (two years after I wrote it, of course) that "Shooting Dogs" had elements of both crime and horror, but I'd never thought of it as anything other than a comedy. So I kept most of the dialogue, and filled in some gaps, completely Hemingwaying it at times with... "DIALOGUE, DIALOGUE." He stood. His eyeballs itched. "DIALOGUE, DIALOGUE." ...an example which thankfully didn't make it into the submitted draft. So I felt like a hack. But prose can take many forms, and some stories are all about the dialogue. Why try to make "Shooting Dogs" something that it's not? I finished the prose version of the story at the end of June, plenty of time before the anthology deadline, which meant plenty of time to sit on it, work on other things, and come back to it with fresh eyes (which might mean a completely different thing in horror than it does in writing in general; I'll have to be careful). But the ChiZine/Chiaroscuro short fiction contest closed in a few days, so I figured why not let it sit in their slush pile instead of on my hard drive? And I forgot about it, except to wince when the Michael Vick/dogfighting allegations were dominating the news in the months between the ChiZine deadline closing and the announcement of the winners. I thought: okay, there goes the chance in hell I had of placing in the contest, and I'll need to change the title (which is figurative--no dogs even appear in the story) before I send it out to Hardboiled. But I never got the chance. It won third place in the contest and became my second SFWA-qualifying sale. And, for what it's worth, I offered it up to Mr. Van Pelt as a reprint, but it wasn't a good fit for the anthology in the first place, alas. Ah well. I've got nothing to complain about, and clearly I've demonstrated that I'm not the best judge for where mys tuff belongs. Now of course, I'm wondering whether we can really film it on a weekend...
The Year Our Brains Turn Around September 29, 2007 Two milestones this week, both relating to January first: We've hit a milestone of good health news relating to that cryptic family medical emergency (detailed as much as I'm gonna here and here) that's been weighing on us since New Year's morning. Yeah, I know the last time I said something positive about it, things took a rotten turn, but there's evidence instead of just hope that I'm right this time. And less importantly, my 100th submission of the year went out last Saturday, making this my most productive year as far as sending my stuff out into the world--less than nine months in. Yes, the latter is an effect, heavily influenced by the former. I've trained myself (wisely/stupidly/both) to respond to shitstorms by working harder, punching through. So 100+ subs in 9 months--including a relatively high number of new works--has been as much a feat of desperation as of dedication. In truth, it feels like I've been treading water all year, working almost exclusively on shorter work (when I aimed to spend the bulk of the year on book length stuff), barely keeping up with the business side of Telltale (and consequently far behind on the creative side of things), and all but letting Guidevines and my own site fester. And I've been sloppy, both in decision-making and in sending out works to top tier markets before they were ready. I'm not convinced more solid revising standards would've made sales out of the rejections (even the near misses), but it's unfortunate that just as editors are starting to recognize my name from one submission to the next that the work they're identifing with me has been so sloppy. In person I've behaved little better. My extroverted energy has been so spent that I often don't know what's coming out of my mouth until I'm saying it--sometimes not even then--and I find I can't figure out how to end a sentence or an idea (including on a Trinoc-coN panel, I was embarrassed to admit the other day). So to everyone, I apologize. Personally, I owe a lot of people emails and calls and I'll get to them, though this week I might not be answering the phone at regular hours as I retrain myself how to sleep (and I'll talk this later, probably). Professionally, Telltale gets a kick in the ass, then Guidevines, then the novel. This has been a messed up year, and I'm determined to use the last three months of it to keep from having to write it off completely.
Trinoc*coN 2007 Con Report September 27, 2007 I must say: being a guest is a lot easier than being an attendee. Sure, I've enjoyed previous conventions. I've learned a lot, gotten full value for my entertainment dollar. But I've usually felt little more than a witness, a consumer at these things--or worse, the guy at the party who doesn't know anybody else, and who can't help wondering... if he doesn't belong here, among people who share his interests and passions, then does he belong anywhere at all? And of course (I say this as if I'd always known it) the interaction is the best thing about a convention, even (especially?) for an introvert like me. And I'm not just talking about schmoozing with peers and peerless. Especially at this stage in my career, I have more in common with the casual attendee than with any professional. But here too, the guest badge acts as my icebreaker, my introduction to anybody and everybody (fan, pro, furry). It doesn't mean I know the guy who's throwing the party or anything, but it means somebody in one of the bedrooms might have vouched for me. And for introverts at parties, we need all the validation we can get. So... great meeting the other writers and attendees (see my panel schedule for most of the namedropping I'm expected to do), along with some of my fellow Codex members (Alethea Kontis, Edmund Schubert, and Gray Reinhardt) who I'd only known online, Gravy Boy writer Marty Blevins (who I'd met on an online comics forum), Luna and Andreas Black who I knew through mutual friends Jason Erik Lundberg and Janet Chui, and of course the active fans putting the con together in the first place.  Gray, Stephanie, Edmund, James, Ada, and Alex. (Alethea's holding the camera, obviously.) On my first panel, the conversation never let up. I talked a bit toward the top, and later watched for the pauses to interject my thoughts. When they didn't come, I shrugged and listened as the conversation went into different directions. It was very liberating. On the second panel, I got enough small laughs from the room that I figured out what I had to offer on a panel of my betters. By the fourth (and last), I realized that the most challenging--and satisfying--part of being on a panel is setting up one of the other panelists with a punchline or otherwise brilliant spike. Thankfully, I only had one or two times when I opened my mouth on a panel and had no idea where my sentence was supposed to end, though I'm sure I made an ass of myself more often than I remember. So yeah. I'd do that again. But I think this means I won't actively pursue attending too many other conventions until I've got the credentials to attend them as panelist. The icebreaker is more valuable to me than how I get there.  Alex Wilson, George R R Martin, Scott Nicholson, and Alexandra Sokoloff. The easy-to-understand reason is Clarion. Though it's semi-tradition that a student might do little to no writing in the year following the workshop, for me the thing I've dreaded is writing/talking _about_ writing. Which also makes the blog difficult, by the way. So being a guest at a con for the first time exactly a year after my Clarion graduation, talking about writing for three days straight... that was kind of all I had in me. Doing a meta-essay on the meta-discussion was unthinkable. But I think the bigger reason is how I haven't been able to wrap my head around how Jamie Bishop's absence from the con was so difficult for me. FWIW, it still doesn't make total sense, so if the remainder of this entry is confusing, it's not you; I mean: I get that I'm sad over the loss of a friend. I get that he was a regular Trinoc-coN attendee and a number of the guests and other attendees knew him primarily or exclusively through the con, enough so that our mutual friend Jason wrote a nice remembrance in the program. And I get that when someone dies it's a different kind of missing than when someone lives on the other side of the world now (Jason and Janet were about the only two people I knew/met the only other time I've been to Trinoc-coN, and they now live in Singapore, an absence felt in a different--but no less real--way). But... there's no sense of place to connect Jamie there. To my knowledge, the convention hasn't been held at this particular hotel before, so the echo of his presence seems artificially removed, like I'm visiting a replica of his apartment (which, by the way, I kind of have. We have friends who've lived at and invited us many times to Jamie's old apartment complex, and the apartment layouts are identical). And more significantly, I was never at Trinoc-coN or with any of these people who also knew him at the same time he was, so his association in my mind with the convention comes almost exclusively from our numerous conversations about it, all the way back in Carrboro. It was Jamie who encouraged me to first contact the con/ask to be a guest, successfully convincing me that (even before any significant writing sales) I might have something to offer on a panel or two. Which--on top of the other confusion--feels like a very selfish way to remember a friend. So I'm still processing that part of it. Eh. This turned out to be quite vague and introspective for a con-report. Ah well. That's what I get for putting it off for two months. I'll try to do better next year, if they'll have me. Thanks again to Alethea for being smart enough to actually pull out her camera (and for letting me post her pix). My camera was quite unhelpful in my pocket all weekend.
Trinoc*coN 2007 Schedule, What I Look Like Now August 1, 2007
I am soooo outclassed. (If this gets changed between now and Friday, I'll add an "Updated" to the header. Otherwise, look for last-minute tweaks near the registration desk. Visit the Trinoc-coN website for more info.) If you're in Raleigh, NC this weekend and would like to say hello, here's what I look like this morning, according to the self-timer on my camera:  But I might be wearing a hat this weekend. My hair is at that length where it'll stick straight up if I don't do anything, it'll look like a combover if I push it forward, and it requires a lot of "product" to keep back like this. (Though, looking at this pic, I should forget about figuring out what to do with hair now that I have it; I need to work on my smile.) Edit: Okay, yeah. It turns out I'm wearing the same sleeveless shirt that I wore in my intentionally bald photo from the first time I shaved my head in '04. It's comfy.
Umoja at Eno 2007 July 11, 2007  It's the Eno picture tour 2007! Fourth of July was on a hot Wednesday. Jen, Mary, and I headed out to the 28th annual Festival for the Eno in Durham. It was my third time there, Jen's fourth. Not sure about Mary's Eno stats, but she went with Jen last year while I was at Clarion.  This is not a request.  Boo Hanks at Grove Stage. Kickass blues player. 80 years old. The man recorded his first album last year and is currently considering whether he wants to pursue music as a career, after a lifetime of playing for friends and family. God bless him. I hope he does.  The recycle-monsters.  My first deep-fried Twinkie. Been wanting to try one for years. It was okay. Like a warm donut on a stick. The cream turned really watery and gave it a sickening sweetness. Next time I think I'll just go for a warm donut.  Just to show it wasn't all junk food.  The chimney/remains of (IIRC) an old hunting lodge.  The reading of the Declaration of Independence by Durham councilpeoples and organizers.  Giant puppeteers of giant puppets (Paper Hand) lead the parade. Amazing as always. We've seen them a few times over our five years in the NC triangle, but this might be the first time in daylight.  African American Dance Ensemble, who make me seem all cultured because they told the crowd that "umoja" was the Swahili word for "coming together" or "unity."  Baron Von Rumblebuss and Redd Zeppelin on the River Stage. Fun sound, groovy look, and they're local. I'll definitely be keeping my eye out for them.  Jen and Mary. What's a river festival without a river? (Actually I don't think that's the Eno. I think it's a stream that runs into the Eno. But we can pretend.)  Remember: only you can prevent forest fire hydrants.
The SFWA Walk of Shame July 2, 2007 I debated joining the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America so early. With only one SFWA-eligible novelette sale, I could only join as a non-voting, non-nominating Associate member at this point. But I've been incorrectly confident for over a year now that my next two eligible sales were imminent, and those would allow me to become a full-fledge Active Member. So I figured I'd join in January and by the end of 2007 I'd renew as an Active after a hard-fought battle with the slushpile. But it wasn't to be! Yes, I joined. But my pro-rated membership was for only six months. All SFWA memberships are renewed mid-year. But that did not deter me; no, it did not. I signed up anyway! Because surely I could make two little SFWA-eligible sales in six whole months! I may not dedicate _all_ my writing time to genre stories, nor do I submit exclusively to SFWA-eligible markets, but what does that matter? I'm on the cusp of a career! But here we are, time to renew, and in order to do so I still have to check that Associate box. I feel like such a poseur. And I'm still wearing last night's clothes. But that's just how I roll.
Server Move Almost Complete June 14, 2007 I try not to post about difficulties and frustrations until I think I'm through them. The past two weeks of moving servers remind me why: had I posted day-to-day it would have read like someone self-destructing. And who wants to read that? Aw, who am I kidding? Everybody does! The highlights:
Some of it can even wait until morning.
I Bribe You to Subscribe to Free Newsletter May 15, 2007 This Friday, I'll be sending subscribers the next free Alex Wilson Studio News via email. In it I will offer two freebies:
To subscribe without using/creating a Yahoo! account Send an email to alexwilson-subscribe@yahoogroups.com and REPLY to the confirmation email (rather than clicking on the link, which will prompt you to login). To subscribe with a Yahoo! account, go here.
I Have Hair Again April 26, 2007  I'm actually quite happy with it. Thanks, Chia Pet! (This is from a film project that I would share more readily if it hadn't turned out so dreadful. Unlike my beautiful, bountiful hair.) EDIT: Wow. There actually is a Chia Alex. I've got nothing on reality.
The Year Our Brains Turned Against Us April 20, 2007 Thanks for the well-wishes, everybody. Someone asked me how I was doing last night and I didn't cry. That's progress. I was also able to do some writing. Two mutual friends of Jamie, (and the first guys I emailed on Monday, after trying to get in touch with Jamie and Steffi and then learning that a German class was one of the locations hit) have posted remembrances: Michael Jasper and Jason Lundberg. It was Jason who got through to Blacksburg (from Singapore!) and let us know for sure that Jamie died, and equally important: that Steffi was alive. As announced everywhere: a Virginia Tech scholarship has been set up in Jamie's honor. Donation Info. Go rent Run Lola Run. I don't know that it was Jamie's favorite, but it was it was definitely his go-to movie. If we found any narrative film we both enjoyed, inevitably he'd turn the conversation toward a comparison to RLR. And go get some Daredevil comics as long as you're out, specifically Frank Miller's run (available in trade paperback under the Daredevil: Visionaries series. Volume 2, where Miller takes over scripting chores on top of illustration, is where it really takes off) which I know was a favorite of his. One of a few similar emails starting early Tuesday morning because Jamie's blog links to mine: "Please accept my condolences, regarding your friend Jamie Bishop. The television news program, INSIDE EDITION would like to obtain pictures of Jamie, and interviews so that the world will understand who was taken from us yesterday. Please call me at ... as soon as possible. We are under a very early deadline. Our show feeds to satelite at 3pm est. Thank you for your prompt response to this request." Gee, I would have called, but upon receiving this I was too busy throwing up in my mouth. I guess I should be thankful at least that this wasn't how I first heard the news. Now something else to get over with as long as I'm posting (nothing but happiness and light after this, though): By the end of March we started getting cocky about how that "family medical emergency" was all but behind us. Which of course is probably why it's came back with a vengeance. So we're still dealing with that and something else. A few days before that crap came back, my own body got hit with something, too. My left arm and the left half of my face keep going numb on me. The sensation is like when my foot falls asleep. There's a strong tingling and numbness from lip to ear, from elbow to fingertips. It's happened three times where it lasted 12-15 hours, each about a week apart. And there've been "smaller" episodes in between and as recently as this week where I just feel like there's cobwebs on my left eyebrow or my lips are being tickled. The record number of neurologists currently assigned to our collective ailments don't think (in fact, they CONCUR in not thinking that) these things could be related, though personally we haven't stopped looking for possible environmental causes. I've had an EKG (for which they shaved two itchy little patches on my chest), an MRI (and if you want me to sit still as claustrophobia overcomes me, don't shave two itchy little patches in my chest the day before), and an ultrasound in my neck (turns out my neck's a boy neck, though I would have loved my neck no matter what sex it was; I just want it to be healthy). Next week they ultrsound my heart, which sucks because I spent all my ultrasound jokes on my neck just now. No wait, how about: Ultrasound My Heart? Isn't that a Ray Charles song? Eh. So that might be why some of my correspondence sounded depressing before Monday. Was on the fence about sharing, but now I've decided that it's best to combine pity parties rather than spread them out. Because sound-decision-making is the one thing I've got a handle on this week. Really. Please, no armchair diagnoses; I get that enough with my insomnia and inability to whistle. We'll figure it out or we'll live with it. Yeah it's weird and scary but it's the easiest thing I've had to deal with all year. And so far my situation is entirely perceptual (though they didn't outright say I was making it up) and, because all the acronyms came back clean (in fact the exact result in one case was: "we found nothing remarkable," referring to either to my heart or brain...), they don't think I'm in any danger. So yeah. Good thing bad things only come in threes, right?
Catch Up February 5, 2007 So we had a family medical emergency on the first of the year. We think everybody's okay. We've been ruling the bad stuff out, and we're almost done looking. But it's resulted in some additional challenges and lifestyle adjustments for the first half of 2007, including what time I can spare for non-"essential" online tasks like reading and writing blogs. And obviously I haven't been able to revamp my site, or write much new content for visitors coming from Asimov's, etc. I've taught myself to respond to crap by pushing myself harder. In some ways I've been succeeding at this, but between meeting personal deadlines and needing to scramble to replace the suddenly-defunct Bitpass payment service for Telltale in January, I realize I need to pull back, adjust some goals, if I'm to keep from burning out over the long haul. So expect sporadic updates and an inconsistent ability to keep in touch over the next few months. Also: We won't be attending WisCon 31. This has less to do with the medical stuff and more to do with a dear friend getting married. It's unfortunate, but we haven't booked our flight yet, the hotel room can be canceled, and we can apply our membership fees to next year's con. And WisCon was a deadline for a few of my bigger projects, so that gives me some flexibility as I rework some goals. Again, we think everything's fine, and only getting better. When you wake up at 6AM on New Year's morning and the first thing you do is call 9-1-1, you can expect the rest of the year to roll relatively smoothly by comparison.
Commenting Moved to LiveJournal January 21, 2007 More than half of y'all prefer commenting at LiveJournal, and I get 50+ spams for every legit comment here. So I'm pointing everyone to LJ. Keeps the discussion all in one place anyway. Test'er out...
Find My Work and ComicSpace December 13, 2006 So this is the page you should hit if you want to find out where to find my stuff, online or off. Includes ordering info for "Persistent City" (contributor copies arrived today) and a bunch links. Probably the best-organized page of this site, which tells you where my time needs to go. And I've signed up at ComicSpace (as Alex), kind of a MySpace for Comic Creators. It's in its early days, but I have confidence that it'll turn into something useful. Back when I did Undersweet, ComicSpace's older sister OnlineComics.net was one of the best resources out there for webcomics.
Oscar Winner Speaks Out November 23, 2006 See the front page of The Carrboro Film Festival website (first few paragaphs) for what Oscar winner--and Carrboro Film Fest winner--Barbara Trent thought of my All's Fair in Love and Police Actions. My own take: "All's Fair" works much better on a smaller screen than a big one.
Newsletter Reboots November 17, 2006 Due to an overwhelming number of email bounces (regularly over 100 on a 1200-member list, even after manually deleting the previous issue's bounces), and worries about jerkface people subscribing others without their consent, I'm moving my newsletters back to Yahoo Groups. As noted in last night's newsletters, you will need to resubscribe if you wish to continue receiving either the Alex Wilson Studios newsletter or the Telltale Weekly/Spoken Alexandria one. Sorry for the inconvenience, but I take your privacy seriously. Thanks.
Another Milestone Called Thirty October 31, 2006 After turning thirty and sending out Writing Submission #300 within the past few months, here's one more thirty for the books. Just gave my 30th pint of blood to the Red Cross. A few of the staffers dressed up in Halloween costume, but, alas, I did not have my blood drawn by a vampire today.
LiveJournal Crossposting! September 22, 2006 LiveJournal readers can now use alexotica to read/comment/friend my blog. (Finally got the LJCrosspost MT plugin to work in a moment of true, geeky satisfaction). That is all. EDIT: Okay, that is not all. Further explanation is needed, sorry. If you have "friended" me (or wish to friend me) via LiveJournal, use alexotica instead of alexotica_blog from now on. The latter is just a subscription to the RSS feed, shows you less of each entry, does not notify me of new comments, and does little more than point back here. I cannot edit or delete the alexotica_blog account and there is no added value to friending both accounts (you'll just see two copies of each entry if you friend both). Thanks.
Kelly Link's "The Girl Detective" August 30, 2006 
Just released a free narration of Kelly Link's story "The Girl Detective" over at Spoken Alexandria. It's the first recording I've done post-Clarion, and my second favorite story in Link's first story collection. Last week my narration of my favorite Link story ("Most of My Friends Are Two Thirds Water") got a mention in The New York Times as "worth downloading" and I guess I felt emboldened.
New York Times Hearts Telltale Again August 25, 2006 EDIT: Article and Sidebar reprinted in full at the N&O (no login required). Thanks to Craig Silverman of The New York Times for including me and my audiobook project Telltale Weekly (and sister site "Spoken Alexandria") as part of his Public Domain Books, Ready for Your iPod article (onine with free NYT registration, or page B29 in the today's print version. Sidebar here). The article also offers positive mentions of other great audiobook projects for spoken word connoisseurs: Librivox and LiteralSystems. And fie on my spam filter for earlier this week not understanding that sometimes "Interview Request" in a subject line actually means interview request.
Holly Black-Inspired Meme. August 18, 2006 Holly Black said "I want everyone who reads this to also fill it out and post it on their blogs, so the procrastination can flow between us all." Not everyone can get me to do a meme, but here we go. 1. FIRST NAME? Alex. 2. ARE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? Alexander the Pretty-Good, I think. 3. WHEN DID YOU LAST CRY? Yesterday, throughout the day. Found out Pat Bresnahan died. He was once like a father figure to me. Really threw me. 4. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? If I could read it, I think I'd be fine with it. But I can't and neither can anyone else.
Continue reading "Holly Black-Inspired Meme." Filed Under: Journal, Vanity Smurf Thirty August 17, 2006 So I'm thirty years old. And the cats are one. They're too old for kitten food and Cosmo says I'm too old to wear mini-skirts. I think that's bullshit.
Studios/Kartania/Wonderland 10 Year Celebration! February 6, 2006 Bear with me here. This is as vanity smurf as I get: February 6, 1996 I'm a college freshman at Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio. For a few hours each weeknight from about 11PM-2AM (or whenever it closed) I head over to the computer lab and email my longtime girlfriend who goes to a different school. She also emails at night, so if she hasn't yet replied to yesterday's message, I surf the web, teach myself cheap Unix tricks, and otherwise waste time, finally culminating in the biggest time-waster ever, taking up over a third of my lifespan now: my own website called "Alex in Wonderland."  (Long post with more illustrations after the jump)
Continue reading "Studios/Kartania/Wonderland 10 Year Celebration!" Filed Under: Journal, News, Vanity Smurf First Catmas January 29, 2006 They were four months old over Christmas. Since the boarding places were all filled up even before we decided to adopt them, that means we got to spend Christmas as a family. Two nine hour car rides and adjusting to a new place.  
Go, Speed Reader, Go! January 23, 2006 So I've always known I was a slow reader, but I didn't figure out until last week that I'm well below average in words per minute. (Yeah, I'm also a slow writer, but that's more of a habit than a problem, I think.) I often wondered how an unabridged reading of a book that took me a good thirty hours to read silently could become an eight hour recording (even if I'm the one who narrated it), or how other people finished short stories in one sitting or more than one or two novels in a month, when I'm sure I actually sit down to read for more hours than most people I know. I keep books on my Palm pilot. I almost never buy hardcover books because they're not as portable or pocketable as paperbacks. Not including computer time, I easily read more than two hours per day, minimum. How come reading more doesn't equal reading more? Well, now I know. Now, this wouldn't be such a bad thing if I had above average comprehension of what I read. Hey, I was an English major, I'm a writer, and I run a literature-based project; perhaps I'm just reading more deeply? Nope, but that's a nice try. I don't even retain everything I probably should. I can remember the main ideas, yeah, but there's a lot I seem to miss, too. And I can count on what does make it in to leak out the back of my skull pretty quickly afterwards. (And people think I'm a clutterbug...)
Continue reading "Go, Speed Reader, Go!" Filed Under: Journal, Prose and Poetry, Vanity Smurf 2005Q4 Quarter in Review January 2, 2006 So what happened this past quarter...
Continue reading "2005Q4 Quarter in Review" Filed Under: Acting, Comic Stripping, Journal, Prose and Poetry, Vanity Smurf Marathon Training Week 2 of 26 December 25, 2005 We switched to the Jeff Galloway plan this week, which is a lighter workout during the week, and then a longer run on the weekend. Both plans use interval running and they're pretty compatible, though it might have been harder to switch the other way. Today's the first run we're going to miss since we started, because we're traveling, because it's harder to find non-icy places to run where we are, because it's Christmas (against which there is a war), and--most of all--because I banged up my knee quite a few times over the last three days chasing after Loki. We're traveling with Thor and Loki for as much as one more week, so this third week of training might prove to be the most difficult one to fulfill. Happy Everything!
Forum Begone December 19, 2005 End of the year, out with the old. I had a lot of people request bringing the forum back for both this site and Telltale, and I tried to make it work. But after eight months, not-a-one of those who requested it proved interested in participating, and I spent as much time trying (failing) to start conversations as I did staying on top of the spam. Sorry to those who did make an effort, and to those who are about to email me that they were about to jump in, but not every page/project wants a forum.
Marathon Training Week 1 of 26 December 18, 2005 Four days of being cold and out of breath. During one run it rained, but we pulled through. Four days of interval running, where we repeat a run-2-3-minutes, walk-4-minutes routine five times each day. Doesn't seem like much, but it wasn't until our fourth run that I wasn't completely out of breath by the end of it, even as we increased the number of 3-minute-runs during the last two sessions. A friend recommended using Jeff Galloway's marathon training program instead. It's very similiar with interval running, and actually seems lighter in the first few weeks than the e-Hows we're using. I just ordered Galloway's book, and I'll consider supplementing/changing the plan as I read more. My friend also invited me to join him for the Chicago Marathon in October, which is flattering, but I gotta get through this first one before I make any long-term plans. Jen and I will be traveling at the end of the month, so we'll see how badly that effects the schedule.
Training for a Marathon December 11, 2005 So I turn 30 by the end of next year, which makes me contemplative and a bit restless. About ten years ago I set some pretty unachievable goals for myself, about what I wanted to accomplish by 25. Almost five years late, I still haven't touched most of them, but there is one that's been sticking in my mind over the last month or so. From Thanksgiving and other socials with marathon-running friends to recently reading a Jim Van Pelt story in which The New York City Marathon played a supporting role, every time I put the idea out of my head, it just comes on back with sounds of sneakered feet. The problem is I also want to attend The Clarion writing workshop seven months from now (another one of those things I hoped to do before 25), so that makes it all kind of tricky. I don't want to be asleep my first week of classes and I don't want to be training when I'd benefit more from writing. I'll need to train conservatively, because if this is more harmful to my health than beneficial, then there's really no point. So starting yesterday I'm giving myself six months to run my first marathon. Marathon-running friends have encouraged me to go for a half-marathon somewhere in the middle there for a nice motivator, and to get out of the way the "what-the-hell-do-I-do-nows" that I'm sure to experience on my first race day. That puts me at the weekend of June 10th, 2006. I'm leaning toward Lake Placid on the 11th because it's further north (and hopefully cooler) than alternatives for that weekend, and I have fond memories of camping in the beautiful forests of New York.
Continue reading "Training for a Marathon" Filed Under: Journal, Marathon, Vanity Smurf Thor and Loki: Two New Additions to the Family November 24, 2005 We knew they'd be indoor cats so we wanted to adopt two. If they couldn't play outdoors we figured at least they should have each other to play with and bond with.
They don't meow as much, and instead do a lot of purring, which I guess is a good sign. I recorded Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat" for Telltale last month. It would be rather funny if that was one of the last recordings I could ever do without the sounds of cats meowing faintly in the background. Thanks to The Orange County Animal Shelter for bringing them into our lives. And special thanks to Zondra, a staff member (or volunteer?) who had taken Thor and Loki (as Lottie and Leslie) to live with her when they were sick before we met them, and who came in on her day off to answer our questions, recommend some books, and to see the babies off to their new home on Monday night when we picked them up. Anyway, today we celebrated our first Thanksgiving as parents. We're learning as we go. See the complete batch of photos if this entry didn't sicken you enough with its cuteness.
Saying No to NaNoWriMo November 1, 2005 
I first heard about National Novel Writing Month a few years back, and it seemed to me to be the mother of all writing dares. I've been at this writing-and-submitting-and-journaling-online-about-it thing since November of 1998, the month and year of the first NaNoWriMo. So both this journal and NaNoWriMo are seven years old. To date, my longest piece of fiction is just over 12,000 words (and 12=3x4; 3+4=7). The last time I attempted to write anything longer that that, I was in seventh grade. So you'd think the planets are aligned (all seven of them; Pluto's out and I'm thinking they're gonna relabel Jupiter as a sun soon anyway), trying to tell me that this is the year. But, alas, though I consider taking part every year, I have decied once again that this isn't the right time for me. But not for lack of writing. I have three short stories, some sonnets, and a comics project I need to write this month, and, considering I'm generally such a slow writer that I'm lucky to finish a decent short story in a quarter, it's probably not a good idea to try and tackle a lesser-priority novel on top of all that. Maybe next year. But to those about to NoWri, I salute you.
My First Migraine with Aura October 20, 2005 I have a neurological disease! No, I'm not kidding. I will likely kid in places over the next few paragraphs, but about this at least I vow: I do not kid. In the reading I've done over the past few days, I've learned there are two types of migraines: "common" and "classical." Common is the more popular (err, common) of the two; it's what you think of when someone says "I have such a migraine." Maybe they're exaggerating; maybe what they have is just a really bad headache and not actually a common migraine. Either way the effect is the same, albeit with different degrees of pain and frequency): the common migraine is simply the worst headache you can imagine. If common migraines are so named because they're more common, then I'll guess classical migraines are named because they happen to more refined individuals. As it happens, I suffer from classical migraines. Or one at least. Hopefully the next one is a long way off. But when I started hallucinating and seeing LSD fairies and sunspots in my blinds-down living room on Tuesday morning, I wasn't thinking "migraine." When I lost all depth perspective and peripheral vision, I wasn't wondering where we keep the Motrin. No, after forty minutes when the vision problems--along with dizziness, nausea, and a fifteen-minute numbness down my right forearm--hadn't yet gone away, there I was trying to keep working on my laptop, even though my limited eyesight could only actually focus on one letter on the LCD at a time. It just seemed more important at the time that I successfully type the word "BRAIN ANEURYSM" into Wikipedia's search engine. Sure I gad a headache. Sure it was a bad one. But I was a little more worried about those LSD fairies in the corner of my eyes that I couldn't quite see because, again, I had no peripheral vision.
Continue reading "My First Migraine with Aura" Filed Under: Journal, Vanity Smurf Music: The Moxy of Fruheadedness October 16, 2005 Mister Sugar (Anton Zuiker) just emailed out a call for Tar Heel Tavern entries about tee shirts, which is as good an excuse as any to talk about my favorite band.  Hard to believe, but a few years ago Ebay, Amazon, and Craig's List didn't yet make it quite as easy to find everything you wanted online. To get the more obscure albums of a Canadian band like Moxy Fruvous, you had to find a Canadian retailer with an online presence and phone number listed and then make something called a "phone call" to place your order. This is how I first got my hands on the albums B and Wood, as well as the tee shirt you see at the top of this article. The CDs--as you can see by the links--now ship within 24 hours at Amazon.com. But it didn't end there. Because the Canadian retailer would then send you a baseball cap and album for a rival Canadian band you'd never heard about. So you'd call them and ask what's up and they'd say they would look into it, and then a few days later they'd get back to you and say how they accidentally sent your order to some woman in Maine and how you must have gotten her order. So they gave you her address and asked you would you please ship it to this person, and she would mail you your tee shirt and albums. And you had a sneaking suspicion they were using you somehow in an international drug smuggling operation but you didn't know how exactly.
Continue reading "Music: The Moxy of Fruheadedness" Filed Under: Journal, Peers & Peerless, Vanity Smurf Something old, nothing new September 11, 2005 Well, I think I put the last of the pre-Movable Type journal entries online, and even re-added comments where I could find them. To get republished, an entry had to be at least one of three things: (a) important, (b) representative of a bunch of similar entries, or (c) entertaining. It's all subjective. I've been doing this thing since 1998, first with manually-typed HTML, then almost-as-manually with makeshift PHP, then briefly with the very limiting Blogger, then in PHP with Javascript comments, then with Wordpress last year, then back to PHP, and, finally, Movable Type in December 2004. Then there was a changeover last month while I made the whole site Movable Type and the journal just a small part of it. But I think I'm done with overhauling the thing. Time to look to the future. If an entry's missing that you think should've been preserved, then congratulations. You've got a great memory.
Looking Glass Falls, NC (Photography) September 8, 2005  Been a while since I posted any photography. This past weekend Funsized (AKA my wife Jen) and I were in the Brevard and Cedar Mountain area of western North Carolina for the wedding of our friends Susan and Austin. Our friend Allison joined us for a meal or two in Asheville and a Sunday daytrip looking at some of the waterfalls in the area. Photos taken with the Fuji A201 (a low-end digital point-and-shoot). More after the jump. 
Continue reading "Looking Glass Falls, NC (Photography)" Filed Under: Carrboro Area, Journal, Pretty Pictures, Vanity Smurf Jamie Bishop & My First Presskit June 4, 2005 
I met fellow creative (read: "doomed") Jamie Bishop a few months ago after an impulsive stop at Jason Erik Lundberg's journal. Jason wrote about heading out to my neck of the woods to get interviewed by Jamie. I read "Carrboro" and "audio" and decided to follow a hypertext link to Jamie's site (yes, I'm exactly that internet savvy), and drop him a note. Mike Jasper had dropped my name to Jamie (Mike, Jason, and I used to be in a writer's critique group together), so it seems like we were soulmates, except that we're both married, heterosexual men who aren't attracted to each other, with all the emotional baggage that goes with that ordeal.
Jamie's a multimedia artist, if that's not too vague. He's done book covers for Mike Jasper, Michael Bishop, and Jason's Two Cranes Press. What really impresses me is his photography, and the digital art he's made out of it. It's generally dark enough to make an impression, deep enough to make that impression worth having, and simple enough to let you enjoy looking at it in the first place. Check out his portfolio for samples and insights into his creative process, particularly under Illustration and Collage. Then you should email him and order three dozen poster sized prints of his wife's photo, just to freak him out.
Continue reading "Jamie Bishop & My First Presskit" Filed Under: Journal, Peers & Peerless, Pretty Pictures, Vanity Smurf Writing Dare, Forum, Future, Etc May 11, 2005 Between April 15 and May 15, I've been taking part in a create-your-own writing dare started by Jenn Reese, and I figured I'd take a page out of Jay Lake's book and write a story every week for four weeks. As an incredibly slow writer (one of my more recently submitted stories took 3 years from concept to first submission) prolificacy isn't one of my strengths. I'm on week four, still working on my third story. And I've been writing every day, at about the same time, out of steam through most of it. The writing's crap. Crappier than the worst of my "regular" work. And I don't know how much of it is forcing myself to write a way in which my mind doesn't want to work, and how much of it is growing pains. I'm trying to imagine it's like when you go from being a relatively fast hunt-and-peck keyboardist to someone who knows proper hand position. At first it's an incredible slowdown, but if you can push through, you'll be faster and more efficient in the long run.
Continue reading "Writing Dare, Forum, Future, Etc" Filed Under: Journal, Prose and Poetry, Vanity Smurf, Writing Dares Community Art Project: Dream April 23, 2005 
From April 7 through May 27, you can see my illustrated poem," "Tree Sprites Never Learn" hanging in the Chapel Hill Town Hall as part of the 2005 Chapel Hill/Carrboro Community Art Project: Dream. The poem was originally published in the first issue of Spellbound, a wonderful fantas |
