First of all, I’d like to wish Stephen King a happy and a healthy 57th birthday. To celebrate I picked up his final book in the Dark Tower series, simply titled The Dark Tower, the last book he will publish for some time, I suspect.

I take this 800+ page book with me as I travel to Canmore, Alberta, tomorrow morning on a week-long (and much needed, O Discordia!) vacation. I will take many pictures of the leaves, as I have been told they have already begun to change out there, and of the mountains, of which I hear there are one or two. Which means I’ll have a helluva big update upon my return.

Until then, I travel west along the Path of the Beam.

Ian

On Labor Day weekend I had the chance to escape to the wilderness and have some sort of summer vacation. The girl and I went up to one of her family’s cabins (they have three) on Eels Lake. At the time I didn’t know where the cabin was, so when I saw the road sign saying Eels Lake was coming up, I happened to say, "Eels Lake? Who the hell would go swimming in a place called Eels Lake?" The girl and her sister looked at each other and laughed. "You would," they both said. They assured me that the name came from a person and not the presence of actual eels in the lake. I didn’t see any, though we went a tour of the lake in her cousin’s boat. No sign of lake monsters, either, dammit.

Anyway, I took a bunch of pictures, enough to create a new album in the Photography section. Some good pics in there, check ‘em out. Here’s a rare shot of Summer Ian.

Ian

Booksquare posted a great bit on the good and the bad of self-publishing — and those who see self-publishing as a shortcut to fame and glory (it’s not). They also included a great bit on my own personal beef — writing listservs where everyone gushes about how talented they all are. Here’s an excerpt:

That last line is something every writer should have taped on the wall over their typewriter or computer monitor. There are far too many people out there (most of them standing members of numerous writing circles and book clubs, no doubt) who treat writing as a social exercise and see their success as a matter of getting enough emails from their online buddies that say "This is great! You’re so talented!"

Not to be bitter, but writing clubs aren’t for writers; they’re for people who like to be part of clubs.

Ian

I picked up another horror anthology recently. It’s called Horrible Beginnings, an embarassingly apt title as it features the first published stories of some of the most successful horror authors today. I’ve only read three stories ("Lilies" by Robert Bloch, "The Case of Four and Twenty Blackbirds" by Neil Gaiman, and "Optional Music for Voice and Piano" by Poppy Z. Brite), but each one shows the writer learning their chops, and as such makes me feel better about just starting out. Not that the stories are particularly bad, but they certainly don’t represent the best these authors have to offer.

Got a new rejection today. Another Flesh & Blood form letter. Always a blast.

Ian

Damn, I really hate the post office. No matter when you go there always seems to be at least one person in front of you who’s got a dozen items to mail, and they’re always going to some country with half a dozen forms to fill out, customs stamps … GAHH!!!

… So I sent "Charlotte’s Frequency" to Weird Tales. Good times, good times. Short stories are like your grown-up kids: After you send them off into the world, you don’t really mind if they come back for a short visit, but mostly you want to get them back out the door.

I also dropped off about seven rolls of film today, which means I’ll have a big photography update next week sometime.

And I’ve updated the Links section with a number of new sites. I’m trying to think of some way to accentuate the new ones, but it hasn’t quite come to me yet. I’ll work on that one.

Ian

So I picked up From the Borderlands, which, for whatever reason, is what they’re calling Borderlands 5 in paperback. Meh. It’s a good collection so far as I can tell. Naturally, the first story I read was the new Stephen King novella, "Stationary Bike." It’s about an overweight freelance artist who paints a mural of a country road to look at while he rides his new stationary bike. Strange things start to happen as the pounds begin to drop. I’ve also read "One of Those Weeks," by Bev Vincent. Bev is a Stephen King scholar with a column in Cemetery Dance magazine. As a short story writer he’s not too bad (fortunately he isn’t trying to imitate King). It’s weird story, but I was never bored and didn’t feel compelled to skip onto the next one (a good sign!). Another good story is "Slipknot" by a Canadian writer named Brett Alexander Savory. Savory is one of the editors of a popular Canadian horror ‘zine called ChiZine, which I plan to send to story in the near future.

In current news, I received two new rejections recently – but they were encouraging. The editors of both magazines asked me to send another story, which is a thousand times better than hearing Hey, kid, it’s not too late to go to law school.

In typical fashion, I’ve responded by sending the stories off to different magazines and writing a new one. It’s called "Colony," and I think it’s pretty damn scary.

Ian

Peterborough doesn’t suck – on the contrary it’s a quaint little city – but I thought I’d recommend an amusing website called peterboroughsucks.com. The people who run it don’t think Peterborough sucks, either, but they definitely have a love-hate relationship with their hometown and the people who live there. There’s a particular good photo gallery featuring pictures of the town post-flood. They remind me of the dome-cities in Logan’s Run.

Ian

I can’t tell you how nice it is to be working at home. My peak writing time is around eleven in the morning (which on any ordinary weekday would conflict with my day job), so this is working out great for me. I get up around 7:30 a.m., shower, get dressed, then boot across the road for an extra large French Vanilla at Tim Hortons, and return to my office, deliciously wired and ready to write.

Using my vacation time to work on my writing is like catching a glimpse at what my life would be like if I was writing full time. And I have to say, it’s pretty freakin sweet. I’m also sure that spending my time off in such a fashion (i.e. working) makes me a bit of a nerd, but so be it!

Speaking of nerds, I was on a movie-news website the other day and read a piece on Tarantino’s proposed sequel to Kill Bill. He wants to use the girls who played the daughters of the characters played by Uma Thurman and Viveca A. Fox in the first film. If you recall in Kill Bill – Vol. 1, The Bride told the daughter of Fox’s character (I can’t remember which one she was … Cottonmouth?) that if she wanted revenge on her, The Bride, she could come looking for her one day. So, Tarantino wants to pick up the story with Fox’s daughter and The Bride’s daughter kung-fu-ing on each other ten or fifteen years down the road.

It’s not a bad idea, and personally I think Kill Beatrix would make a great title.

Ian