Submitting writing for publication is an emotional trip. Looking for the agent was hard enough. Whenever I got a reply to my query letter I felt a mix of excitement and fear before opening it.

After enough rejection I got use to it and the excitement of opening another email reply was gone.

Then came the signing with the agent. For weeks after that I was a wreck. I wanted a weekly update from him about what was happening with the book.

Two years later, I’m back to submitting query letters, but this time to small press publishers. I’ll update with any further news as I have it.

I’ve been away from the blog for two weeks now.  Posting only limited stuff.  We celebrated Chinese New Years and had house guests.  I’m all fireworked out and I don’t think I need to eat for a month.  I’d seen crazy firework displays in Taiwan where spectators dress in motorcycle helmets and rain coats to watch fireworks because they shoot out into the crowd.  That was intense.

But Sanya gave an amazing display.  It isn’t done in any organized fashion.  But individual goes out on the beach and shoot of huge fireworks.  No pyrotechnic license needed.  It was a free for all–except the fireworks were expensive.  

I live on a beach that is 10 kilometers long.  On half of it, that’s 5 kilometers, there were solid fireworks going for 6 hours straight.  I went and sat at a beach restaurant and watched for a while.  It was 180 degrees of a constant spray of fireworks.  Plus they set off long chains of firecrackers.  Not the little ones we had a kids that numbed your hand if you didn’t throw it away fast enough.  These things would easily blow your hand apart.  The noise was terrorizing.  My wife got sick from the constant barrage of explosions.  

And that was just New Years eve.  It went on like that for the entire week.  My wife left town with the kid to visit family and friends in a quieter area of the island.  And I hung at home to write.  In two days I wrote 7000 words (The Dream of the Apple Head post came from that).  That was cool.  But every evening at dusk, I had to stop because the noise was too great.  I couldn’t hear myself think.  I couldn’t even think straight.  And there was no possible chance to sleep again until the sun came up and the Chinese went home.

I tried to take pictures but they didn’t turn out.  But a television crew came and interviewed me about what the Chinese New Year meant to me.  I’m sure I said some very nice things, but they came early in the morning and I hadn’t slept.  And Hunter wasn’t into it.  He’s holding up a stuffed tiger as his way to show how he celebrated the new year.  He, like me, prefers to be behind the camera. 

Good news today from Shanghai.  The Director at Zuloo who invited me to write a one-act play “really enjoyed” it and found it “very performable.”  And I thought he was going to file it under WTF.

Here’s a bit of the email.

I really enjoyed Insatiable.  I think it’s very performable.  It hits the cross-cultural theme rather well.  And that’s a lot of food, let’s be honest.

It will fit nicely into a one-act evening.  I hope that we can produce something at the end of March.

Since most of you, my reading public, won’t be able to get to Shanghai for a one-act evening.  I’ll publish the script in full opening night.  And now that I’m thinking about it.  I’ll talk to Zuloo about videotaping the performance.  Though I don’t know how I’m going to upload since Youtube is blocked here.

Speaking of blockage. The theater’s performance of M. Butterfly got shutdown by the censorship police.  Check out the article.

The guy pulling up his pants in the pic, that’s Daniel the director.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/expat/josephinemcdermott/10136117/high-drama-as-m-butterfly-is-closed-down-by-police/

After reading that, I have to say.  The censorship is not likely because of the play’s content, it’s because the theater didn’t build the proper relationship with the government.  Meaning, they forgot to pay somebody off.  The hint comes from the reasoning the police used.  They didn’t have a “License.”  Translation – you didn’t pay up.

I’m pretty sure my play about a competitive eater will get passed the censorship police–especially if they get paid this time.  Anyway, my play is too small for them to care about in the first place.  And even if they do see it, they’ll likely file it under WTF?

I read somewhere that writers should use their blogs as labs for learning how to write and what to write.  I like to think after a master’s degree, two pre-published novels, a sensationally successful web series I know something about how to write… still there’s always room to grow.

Last week, I posted a funny little story about some FB confusion.  It was my blog’s equivalent to a web sensation.  Now there are probably tons of reasons why it got so many hits, including it was the New Year, and there was some FB activity from my best friend and web master, and other people from the online community were involved in the story.  

I have to put a shout out to Niq Cid, the woman behind the FB caper.  She’s the most left-brained, monkey girl I know.  She’s got a great writing voice and a killer eye for photographing food.  Thanks Niq for making me feel Hawt for a couple of days anyway.

She made me think about “what to write.”  It seemed amusing stories about how dumb I can be are popular blog fodder.  So it was time to go back to the lab again, yo.  I asked myself a series of questions.  Can I write stories that continue to build a web presence for this blog?  Can I, a life long dumbass, draw a readership, a fan base?  Can I build an empire upon stories of all the dumbass things I’ve done?

In the coming weeks, I will begin the experiment with the tale of how I attempted the dumbest thing any man with two girlfriends could ever attempt and inevitably must attempt being dumb enough to have two girlfriends in the first place.  Over the coarse of a week, I will present you with “E’s Birthday.”  A five part series about a dambass and the girls dumb enough to date him–meaning me.

And if you’ve been here before, you’ve no doubt noticed the new banner. Thanks go out to Stone for his excellent creative work. Pretty cool, eh? He had to do some resizing so my head is fatter now and my eyes are set wider apart, which kind of makes me look like a dumbass. Usually, I’m HAWT!

I’m just about finished with the story, so I’ll post soon.  But I also want to create some back log.  Come back soon and, as always, please feel free to comment.

So the other day I get this email from FB saying some girl named Bianca commented on a photo of me.  And her comment was “this dude is hawt! ”

I can’t log into FB because I’m behind the Great Firewall of China. And I don’t know Bianca, so I dismiss it as spam. 

Then the next day I get another email from FB. Only this time it says a girl I know commented on a photo of me, saying, “Yes he is! ”  I’m thinking, Can’t be.  There’s a mistake.  FB has obviously mixed up my picture with some stud.  I don’t know.  But it’s not me.  But then again, maybe.  Maybe I’ve come into something here.  Now I’m in my prime.  I’m walking a little taller now.

So I ask a friend to log in and get the goods on what’s going on with FB.  I gotta find out just how Hawt I am.  Could be I was wearing a really good shirt, or maybe the camera got me from the right angle.  I imagine myself buying several identical shirts and positioning myself in certain places in crowds and low lit rooms.

Then this morning, I’m riding the bus.  And a girl starts talking to me.  Usual, stuff. “Where are you from, and is Hainan as nice as Hawaii?”  That stuff.  Then she offers her phone number to me.  I try to refuse graciously.  I can’t make her understand because my Chinese is abysmal.  She was pretty and all that, but no.  So I show her the screen on my phone is broken, and I can’t save numbers.  She grabs my phone and calls herself to capture my number and says, “I’ll call you.”

Now I’m thinking, I AM hawt.  This is my year, my decade maybe even.  Things are turning around for me.  Lady editors will buy my books and get them made into movies because I am HAWT.  I’ll even write an autobiography and have some hawt young newbe play me in the movie.  Yeah.  And he’d be lucky to have the part.

That’s when my friend reports back about the comments on the picture of “me.”  Some 22 year old model named Todd is in a photo that’s tagged with my name.  Turns out that the girl who knows me, included me as a character in her book.  And published a picture of what my “character” in the book looks like.  See.  I already have a hawt young stud playing me.  She was using a whole lot of creative license.  Guess she can’t have some soft old guy in her book for teen girls. I wish I was 6’5″ and built like a rugby player.

Now I’m LMAO at myself.  But I’m a bit relieved.  For a minute there I thought I had the Kavorka.  Now I can go back to writing my crime novel about a good old triple cross with a trunk full of money.

Happy New Year from Sunny Sanya, China.  This year I got here before you all…. at least most of you.  I’m 13 hours ahead of the East Coast.

2009 ended poorly for me.  Local food poisoned me and I spent the last day of the decade in the hospital… actually it sounds like the appropriate ending to the decade.  But a new year is here and it’s time to think positive, to work with resolve toward greater goals.

So, in that spirit, I resolve to make more money from fiction in 2010 than any other year in my life.  This may or may not be too hard, since I haven’t made that much money from fiction during my career, but then it is seriously difficult in this market to make money writing fiction.

None the less, there it is.

Happy New Year!!!!

Well, I keep finding new ways to demonstrate to myself I have no idea how WordPress works.  I’ll figure it all out.

I’m planning a revamp of the blog to start in April.  It’ll feature daily updates and loads of free fiction.  Between now and then, I’ll post about my progress for the new venture.

Speaking of ventures.  Here’s my current status.  The end of the year is always rife with assessment.  Most years this can be dismal.  This year, I feel like I’ve accomplished a few things applicable toward my larger goal.

As of the end of 2009:  I am a pre-published author with an agent.  My first book Torque has been making the rounds without any takers as of yet.  The economy of the book industry isn’t conducive for new writers.  Still gotta get it out there, though.

The second book, My Alien Sex Fiend, is out for a critique before going through another round of revision.  After all that, I’ll begin seeking publishing opportunities for it as well.

Books three and four, The French Monkey, and Operation Flaming Bush (working title) are in various stages of the initial draft.

My comic book proposals are in the hands of the decision makers, and I haven’t heard anything from them since I turned in the proposal.

A draft of my one-act play, “Insatiable,” based on a pre-published story by Todd Carter, is in the hands of the Director at Zuloo Theater Productions in Shanghai.  The play is set to be produced in the Spring.  I’m sure there will be revision work to be done once the director reads it… or maybe he’ll just file the thing under WTF?

I didn’t write any noteworthy short stories during 2009.  I’m not making any big plans to write any in 2010.  For the foreseeable future I’ll be writing book length manuscripts, feature length screenplays, and maybe even a full-length stage play–somewhat dependent upon escaping the “WTF” file.

The idea with this blog in 2010 is to use it as a lab for learning the craft of writing and using you, my readers, as Guinea Pigs.  Up to now I’ve been writing about writing instead of publishing my writing.  Well, while I’ve been blogging about writing, I’ve also been writing offline.  As I finish my works, I’ll begin to post them, chapter-by-chapter in the blog to be read and commented on.  Not everything I write will be blog fodder.  I’m still writing for the traditional market as well while experimenting on you, my pretties.

That’s the state of things with me here at the end of 2009.  And some of the current plans for 2010.

Happy New Year!

I love great holiday books and movies. Revisiting holiday favs is a great way to celebrate. Come on, tell me you don’t love the Grinch. Not the Jim Carry mistake either–the original.

Well, I’ve added a new tradition to my Christmas–it’s reading The Ice Harvest by Scott Phillips. If that ain’t enough for Christmas jollies, I watch the movie on Christmas Eve. There’s nothing like a Noir Christmas.

You don’t know what book and movie I’m talking about. Here’s some links to check out.

Scott Phillips Site

Check out the movie.

Happy Holidays!