My So-Called Life Archives

2008

• May 2008
• April 2008
• March 2008
• February 2008
• January 2008

2007

• December 2007
• November 2007
• October 2007
• September 2007
• August 2007
• July 2007
• June 2007
• May 2007
• April 2007
• March 2007
• February 2007
• January 2007

---

MAY 2008

5/27 - COMMERCIAL BREAK ABOUT JACK: SECRET HISTORIES - A NEW REPAIRMAN JACK NOVEL

…except he’s not Repairman Jack yet.

It's 1983. The Atari 5200 is the hot videogame console and Star Wars Death Star Battle is the hot game; the Apple ][+ with a whole 48K of RAM is state of the art in home computing; everyone's twisting a Rubik's cube.

And a fourteen-year-old boy is beginning to explore the talents that will lead him to become a man known as Repairman Jack.

Never saw myself writing for kids, especially since I already have a fair number of teen readers, mostly sixteen and up. But a motley array of forces converged to goose me into writing a novel geared toward the sixteen-and-under crowd – a so-called Young-Adult novel.

I say "so-called" because the writing process wasn't much different from my adult work and the style is virtually identical. I've striven over the years for a clean, lean style, tailored to the pace of the thrillers I write. Now, to my delight, I find it fits a younger audience equally well. At least that's what a focus group showed: Kids who often took up to a month to finish a book were polishing off Jack: Secret Histories over a weekend and looking for more.

But what surprised me most was how much fun I had. I delighted in peeking into Jack's past and populating it with people who would play parts in his later life, or arranging cameos of characters from other novels. The books practically wrote themselves. I'd agreed to write three and I had drafts of the second and third done before the first’s pub date. Like taking dictation.

Best of all was looking at the world again through fourteen-year-old eyes. I remember my own last summer before high school as a turning point in my life. So that was where I decided to pick up Jack’s story. Since I’d already established his birth year as 1969, I pretty much had to set the story in 1983. Not a bad year – lots of new technology, disco was dead, and MTV was on the rise.

Lucky for me, I’d already placed Jack’s hometown in Burlington County, which juts into the mysterious and fabled Jersey Pine Barrens. Perfect. It all came together in a glorious crash. I could work all sorts of magic in a million acres of wilderness with places no human eyes have ever seen, where strange lights jump from tree to tree and the Jersey Devil supposedly roams. I peopled his town with weird characters and places – like an old woman (with a dog) who's supposedly a witch, and the town drunk who's rumored to be able to heal with a touch but always wears gloves, and USED, the store that sells old…stuff.

From his start many years ago in The Tomb , I made of point of giving the adult Jack an Everyman background. He's not an ex Navy SEAL or former CIA black-ops agent, just a guy from New Jersey who dropped off the radar and taught himself a few tricks. But he has an innate knack for manipulating people and situations to his advantage. (Of course if that doesn’t work, he has his trusty Glock.) Here was a chance to show him discovering his talents.

As I said: Like taking dictation.

Jack: Secret Histories is the first of a trilogy. If comments on this site are any indication, adult Jack fans are lined up, waiting to dive in. If you know a 9-16 year old, male of female, try a copy. It's a good gift and, considering the deep discount Amazon is offering, a small investment that could pay high dividends if you turn a kid on to reading.

Check it out here: JACK: SECRET HISTORIES

 

5/24 - someone on the Forum who's reading the Gauntlet edition points out that section "11" is missing from the "Saturday" chapter of By the Sword.  Not missing - misnumbered.  It's misnumbered in the ARC for the trade edition too, but there's time to change that before it goes to press.

5/22 - remember my saying I’d like to see the website pass the 2 million-hit mark by the end of May? Well, we don’t have to wait. It just did. Today. Yeah, sure, some are due to bots and spiders; that’s expected and inevitable. But bots and spiders are always with us. They can’t account for this level of increase in activity. I guess The Voice was right: If you build it, they will come.

5/20 - I finish the introduction for the next collection of Batton Lash’s Wolff & Byrd comics. They’re well written with lots of wordplay, sly cultural references, and a subtle libertarian edge. Check ’em out. Wolff & Byrd

5/20 - a contract from Brilliance for an audio version of By the Sword arrives (coincidentally with a royalty statement that shows their audio version of Bloodline has already earned out).

5/19 - contracts arrive for online sale of some of my older short stories through the Sony ebook site. The rights are for English only and are non-exclusive, so I don’t see a downside. The upside is that a number of stories from my first collection, the hard-to-find Soft & Others, will be available again.

5/19 - email from Romantic Times magazine asking me to interview Heather Graham for their October issue. Mostly it’s promotion for her holiday trilogy in the fall - a novel a month for October, November, and December. (Unlike some other prolific, well-known authors, she writes every word herself. I don’t know how she does it.)

5/17 - in honor of my birthday (or so it seems), two states of By the Sword arrive: my author copies of the Gauntlet edition and a few copies of the Forge ARC. I’m completely out of shelf space. I’m going to have to start selling off or giving away some of my other books to make room.

5/16 - ah, royalty check day. Some are better than others. Today’s is pretty good. This is something most people don’t understand about the writing life. Publishers don’t pay royalties weekly or monthly; they pay every 6 months. This check was for royalties earned in the latter half of 2007. Advances are a different matter. An advance is money paid against anticipated royalties in =advance= of publication. You’re paid part when you sign the contract, part upon delivery and acceptance of the completed manuscript (the “D&A payment”), and part on date of publication. Once the book’s royalties exceed the amount of the advance, you begin receiving the aforementioned semi-annual checks. Most books never earn out their advance.

5/15 - Gauntlet starts shipping out the limited edition of By the Sword.

5/15 - my first author copies of Jack: Secret Histories arrive. A pretty nifty hardcover, though slimmer than my usual adult novels. (The cover's on the welcome page)

5/14 - email from Molly Bolden of Bent Pages bookstore, asking me back to the Houma Writers Conference next April. Ha. Try keeping me away.

5/14 - news from Susan Chang that they’re making a video trailer for Jack: Secret Histories. They expect the script next week. I’ll let you know when it goes up.

5/13 - Barry Eisler and I think we’ve come up with a cool panel idea for next year’s Romantic Times convention. Two romance pros, Kathy Love and Erin McCarthy, are going to help us out. Of course the con committee must agree, but I’ll be very surprised if they don’t go for it. (After all, we plan to serve drinks.)

5/13 - email from David Hartwell with a .jpg of the new cover of the 2009 paperback reissue of BLACK WIND attached. It’s very, um, nuclear. (Or nucular, as some say.) Here’s a peek:

5/13 - email from the Jefferson Railway in Jefferson, Texas asking if they can to use the title "THE PEABODY-OZYMANDIAS TRAVELING CIRCUS & ODDITY EMPORIUM" for their Halloween corn maze. I say sure, but there’s a price: They have to send me samples of any promotional materials bearing the name. I'll stick them in my collection.

5/12 - I’ll be drumming in the house band again at Heather Graham’s Writers for New Orleans Workshop over Labor Day Weekend (see Where I'll Be). She’s planning a pirate theme for her dinner show so we’re looking for sea songs. So far we’ve settled on “Come sail Away” and “Sloop John B.”

5/11 - got to listen to a final mix of the audio dramatization of “Slasher” (meaning they use actors, stereo sound effects, and a script as opposed to simply reading the story) and it sounds super.

5/6 - email from Pierce Watters informing me that, as per my suggestion, he has acquired the Henry Kuttner collection Robots Have No Tails for reprint. These are wonderful, whimsical SF stories written in the 1940s about a scientist named Gallegher who’s bright when he’s sober but absolutely brilliant when drunk. He’ll invent something while blasted and then his sober self must figure out what it does. Pierce asks if I still want to write the introduction. I inform him that he and all he loves will die horribly if he allows someone else near it.

5/5 - looks like there will be a stripped-down version of the Killer Thriller Band at this year’s Thrillerfest. For a while it was doubtful we’d have any band at all because of the exorbitant cost last year. Don’t know yet if we’ll have 2 drummers (as we did in Phoenix) or just yours truly.

5/1 - attended the Edgar Awards banquet tonight. Finally met Bill Pronzini (who received the Grandmaster Award). I’ve been reading his Nameless Detective series forever. As usual, saw a lot of my old friends from the mystery field. Talked to Lee Child for a bit, telling him that my 92-year-old mother is a Jack Reacher fan. (I suspect she might like his Jack more than her son’s.)

5/1 - we hit an all-time record of activity at www.repairmanjack.com during April: 1,991,004 hits. This beats the previous high back in October when I was on tour (and October has an extra day). With an extra day in May, we should be able to top 2m. Why do I want to top 2m? I have no idea. I do not allow advertising on the site, so it’s no help there. Maybe because it’s such a nice round number.

April 2008

4/30 - started the new RJ novel today - number 13.  The first chapters are always tough for me, but seem especially so this go-round.  I think I’m going to have to approach these last 3 books as one big novel divided into three parts.  I kn

MARCH 2008

3/29 - Simon Clark and I present the best-novel Stoker award at the banquet. I peeked into the envelope beforehand and knew Sarah Langan was the winner, so I felt free to harass her beforehand. (Someone later reminded me that BLACK WIND was nominated for best novel in 1988 – I guess it was, but who can remember that long?) You can see it here. And here you can watch Sarah do her impression of the Chef of the Future.

3/29 - back from the desert I have lunch with Stephen Lewis who has the world's most unique take on disease and healing. See for yourself: http://www.energeticmatrix.com/

3/29 - took a long morning ride out past Great Salt Lake into the desert. Strange, stark beauty out there. I can see why the prophets of old would lose themselves in the desert - and come back either wiser or completely mad. (I didn't stay long enough for either.)

3/28 - I hang a good deal with Heather Graham at WHC and, as mentioned elsewhere, I'm performing in her Vampire Ball on Friday night at the Romantic Times Convention. She tells me she has a suitably awful (and even embarrassing) death planned for me. I can hardly wait.

3/28 - the special JACK: SECRET HISTORIES bookmarks arrive today, too late to get into the convention goodie bags. I'll give them away at the signing.

3/28 - Harry Morris emails me 4 different possible covers for the limited edition of LEGACIES. I invite a number of writers at WHC to comment and the choice is unanimous.

3/27 - off to Salt Lake City for the World Horror Convention - all sorts of signings and panels and sundry activities planned. (Skiing is not one of them - I don't get skiing.)

3/23 - the Richard Matheson tribute anthology, HE IS LEGEND is on sale. I wrote a sequel to his "The Distributor" and couldn't resist involving Repairman Jack (though he's never mentioned by name). The prices are astronomical but will go up after it's sold out. It's going to be one hell of a collector's item. http://www.gauntletpress.com/

3/22 - first draft of SECRET CIRCLES completed. I’ll let it sit until the plane ride to and from World Horror next week.

3/21 - into NYC to meet with a young game designer who wants to develop MASQUE into a videogame. (Yes, we've been down this road before.) We have lunch at the Ear Inn in SoHo. (You'll learn all about the place in BY THE SWORD.)

3/20 - spoke to Alexis about the giveaway title for Romantic Times. Although THE TMB would be idea, HOSTS seems right too and it has plenty of copies in the warehouse, so we're going to go with that. This means lots of cases of books - a dozen or more - being shipped to the hotel. I hope they don't all wind up in my room.

3/19 - another great advance review of JACK: SECRET HISTORIES, this time from the target audience: an 11-year old.

3/18 - word from Alexis that the JACK: SECRET HISTORIES postcards are running a little late and will have to be shipped directly to the Radisson in Salt Lake City for the convention. This is not bad news. It saves me from schlepping them onto the plane.

3/17 - email from Thrillerfest wanting me to moderate a panel on paranormal thrillers. (Instead of "moderator" they prefer "Panel Master" - has a fascist ring, which is cool as long as I'm the Master.) Well, since the panel was my idea, I suppose I must.

3/15 - a nice advance review of JACK: SECRET HISTORIES from a respected librarian.

3/14 - I pass the 50K-word mark on SECRET CIRCLES. Beginning the grand finale of the novel and the whole trilogy. Gonna be a slam-bang finish, folks.

3/13 - Jo Carol Jones from Romantic Times writes to ask if I want to join Barry Eisler and Heather Graham for an author chat on Wednesday at Romantic Times. I'm in. Heather's one of my favorite people, and Barry's a good guy and an excellent thriller writer - check out his John Rain series. (But only after you've finished all the Repairman Jacks - let's keep our priorities straight here.)

3/13 - an email from Otto Penzler of the famous Mysterious Bookshop wanting to reprint the =Midnight Mass= novella in an upcoming anthology. Like I'm gonna say no? 3/12 - trading emails with J.A. Konrath and learn that he's had to cancel out on Romantic Times. Something about a wedding. Bummer. Joe's always good for a laugh and a beer. (He even buys.)

3/12 - a new paperback edition of my 1993 medical thriller THE SELECT arrives from Germany (where it's called DIE PRUFUNG). This is its umpteenth printing over there, and tenth incarnation with a different cover each time. It's long out of print everywhere else but hit number one on the German bestseller lists and keeps selling and selling. Go figure. You can rarely explain and never predict this kind of thing.

3/11 - hey, the April issue of =Romantic Times Bookreviews= magazine devotes a page to the men attending the convention. J.A. Konrath, Barry Eisler, and yrs trly are profiled among others under "Let's Hear it for the Boys." Only 7 of us on the page. Just 7 male authors? Yow. Our testosterone-fu must be strong lest we come home in drag.

3/10 - I hear from Alexis that Tor is printing up a bunch of SECRET HISTORIES postcards to give away at WHC. Let's hope they arrive in time for the con.

3/7 - Alexis gets back to me on the CD idea: Marketing would prefer to ship out 500 or so copies of one of the novels to give away - don't give 'em a taste of Jack, give 'em the whole damn book. Well, all right. Can't argue with that.

3/6 - I'm thinking of changing the title of the 3rd YA novel from SECRET LIVES to SECRET CIRCLES. A lot of circular themes running through it and connecting up from the first two books.

3/5 - email from Alexis telling me that NY ComiCon wants me on a panel on Saturday April 19. Then she remembers that I'll be at the Romantic Times con in Pittsburgh at that time. Can I do both? she asks. Only if I breach the space-time continuum which, as you are well aware, will end all life as we know it. (I confess to having a Stimpy big-red-button moment.)

3/3 - Dara from Gauntlet informs me that she's having problems typesetting some of the Kanji in the ms. We work it out.

3/3 - I email Alexis, my publicist, about this idea for a promotional giveaway at the Romantic Times con: a CD with a Repairman Jack story (I suggest "A Day in the Life") and an excerpt from THE TOMB to give the ladies a taste of Jack. "A Taste of Repairman Jack! Exclusive for Romantic Times Booklovers!" She says she'll run it by marketing.

3/1 - I fax the corrected galley pages of BY THE SWORD to Gauntlet. Shouldn't be long now.

FEBRUARY 2008

JANUARY 2008

1/31 - heard from IDW today that there's going to be a Spanish-language edition of THE KEEP graphic novel. Cool. (The French edition is due from Wetta in May.)

1/30 - a while back Pierce Watters of Paizo Publishing asked me to write an introduction to THE HOUNDS OF SKAITH by Leigh Brackett, one of the classic sf-fantasies in the Planet Stories line he's editing. We've corresponded for many years and finally met on the Seattle stop of my last book tour. Although I've done introductions here and there, nonfiction is not my thing. Still, because of the long relationship, I said I'd give it a go. I worked on it off and on and finally sent it in today. Brackett wrote some excellent space opera in her day, and a few of you may remember her name from the screenplay credits for =The Empire Strikes Back=. http://paizo.com/store/fiction/planetStories

1/25-27 - another rewarding stint at the Borderlands Boot Camp for Writers. There's always a bell curve of talent, but it seems to me that more of the grunts this round started off at the higher end than previous years. That puts extra pressure on us instructors to make the camp worth their while. The leap in quality from the pre-camp samples to the new pieces written Saturday night and presented Sunday morning is consistently amazing and gratifying.

1/24 - finish a first pass on the outline for the last YA novel in the trilogy (not sure of the title yet but it will be SECRET something) and zap it to Susan Chang.

1/23 - Ridley Pearson (longtime thriller novelist and recent big hit in the YA market) gives SECRET HISTORIES a generous blurb.

1/20 - I spend the NFC and AFC playoffs signing the stack of signature sheets for the limited edition of BY THE SWORD - a perfect, guilt-free way to perform this mind-numbing task. If I happen to be looking down during a big play, no worry - they'll replay it from 3 different angles. Also I get to compliment myself on my ability to multi-task. Shouldn't take too long now for the book to be bound and ready to ship.

1/18 - the votes are tallied and the Lifetime Achievement Award panel has decided to honor 2 people this year. I'll have to wait till HWA makes the announcement before I tell you here.

1/17 - very enthusiastic email from Susan Chang today about SECRET VENGEANCE. She'll have some notes for me, but she really loves the way it's structured so differently from SECRET HISTORIES. (In series fiction, writing a novel that's significantly different from the one preceding it is not always a good thing. Many readers have a let's-have-another-one-just-like-the-other-one mindset. I can't do that - just one of a number of reasons why I'm not a household name.)

1/16 - I'm chairing HWA's Lifetime Achievement Award panel this year. Time to start polling the panelists for a recipient (who must either be at least sixty years of age by May 1, 2008, or have first produced professional work in the field of horror at least thirty-five years prior to May 1. Oh, yeah, and he or she must be still among the living. Not sure how I'd feel about a Lifetime Achievement Award. I mean, it's certainly an honor, but it sort of implies (at least to me) that your best work is behind you. In many cases that's true, but I'm not there yet. (At least I hope not.)

1/12 - heard from Hank Wagner who's just finished co-authoring a Neil Gaiman companion and is now ready to start THE REPAIRMAN JACK COMPANION. Yay. I'll finally have a single source for looking up all the stuff I've forgotten about my own work.

1/11 - my Ron Paul piece on the Political Machine blog (see 1/5) garners nearly 160 comments, some thanking me for an insightful post, others calling me an idiot and a dickweed. Ha!

1/9 - okay, I didn't die. And the Ethink folks find an old backup from months ago that's missing only 800 or so of the most recent sign-ups. ("Only" - yeah, the list is that big.) As for the missing, all I've got to do is send out a special newsletter saying, If you don't receive this, resubscribe. No, wait...that won't work. Okay, if you know someone who subscribes to the "F File," ask if they received this. If not, tell them they need to resubscribe.

1/8 - some complaints have rolled in about difficulty signing up for the newsletter. I check with the hosting folks and they say the database got corrupted and they can't fix it. THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF E-ADDRESSES GONE! I suffer an acute coronary occlusion and die.

1/7 - I hear from the publisher that the HARBINGERS paperback is going back to press. Always good news, but especially this long after its September pub date. It means stores are still reordering.

1/7 - the Romantic Times Convention wants me on one of its thriller panels. Glad to oblige.

1/6 - I have an all-star flight crew on the way back from NH: The pilot looks like a young Anthony Bourdain, the co-pilot looks like Shakira (thankfully, said co-pilot is female), and the attendant is Winona Ryder. When we land I don't want to get off. (Let me rephrase: I don't want to deboard.)

1/5 - I hang out at the Liberty Forum and talk with Glen Jacobs (he's a pro wrestler whose ring name is "Kane" and he's the size of Hagrid's brother Grawp). He's here to speak on education issues. He has an education degree and used to be a teacher (bet no one acted up in =his= class). Really difficult to reconcile this intelligent, soft-spoken, articulate man with his troglodytic ring persona. 1/5 - my next stop is a signing at the Toadstool Bookstore in Milford where the turnout is light - McCain, Clinton, and Obama all have rallies in the area, so I'm definitely a minor attraction.

1/5 – I get to have breakfast with Ron Paul.

1/3 - hop a plane for Manchester, NH to do my thing at the Free State Project's second annual Liberty Forum. The shuttle to take me to the hotel in Nashua is late and I damn near freeze solid waiting for it.

1/2 – I finish revising the 1st draft of SECRET VENGEANCE (the sequel to SECRET HISTORIES) and send it off to my YA editor, Susan Chang. Now to start thinking about the final book of the trilogy.

1/1 - I can't believe I never mentioned last month that I collaborated with Joe Konrath (who writes the Jack Daniels thrillers as J. A. Konrath) on an insane short story for the comedic horror anthology BLOOD LITE. It's called "The Sound of Blunder" and is full of idiotic adolescent humor that somehow manages to make adults laugh.

DECEMBER 2007

12/31 - 2007 was a pretty good year for writing: 3 novels completed. (Okay, two of them were relatively short young-adult books, but that's still 3 novels.) We made some progress on the film. Life goes on. Can't wait to see what 2008 holds. Or can I?

12/28 - printed out a hardcopy of SECRET VENGEANCE and began revising. Writing is rewriting, folks.

12/23 - started reading / editing the writing samples for the Borderlands Boot Camp next month. The first couple aren't bad at all.

12/22 - ARCs of the Gauntlet edition of SECRET HISTORIES arrive and the wraparound cover by Harry Morris is stunning. (To get an idea of how badly some folks want an advance look at the book, check this out:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150198783158

12/21 - finished reviewing the edits in BY THE SWORD. It never ceases to amaze how many typos slip through the cracks. Four people read the second draft, each flagging muchos typos. I entered all those corrections before sending the ms. off to the publisher. Now it comes back with at least another 100 flagged. And I'm sure plenty are left. I don't think there's any such thing as a typo-free book. 12/20 - looks like I finished that draft just in time. The copyedited ms. for the Gauntlet edition of BY THE SWORD arrove today. Need to peruse that ASAP.

12/20 - finished a first draft of SECRET VENGEANCE: 56k words in 6 weeks. Wow. I haven't written anything this fast since SIBS. I'll let it marinate for a week before I start revising.

12/19 - watched =Meet the Robinsons= last night (a sweet, delightful, feel-good film, btw) and noticed Bill Borden's name on the credits as producer. (He and Barry Rosenbush are producing the Repairman Jack film.) I wrote to tell him how much I enjoyed the film; he responded by saying he didn't know if it would make me feel any better, but it took him 12 years to get it made.

12/15 - the ARCs of SECRET HISTORIES arrive from Tor. Stock art or not, I think the cover looks pretty good.

12/14 - email from After Dark Films wanting to know which of my books are not already optioned for film. So I told them.

12/13 - stopped in at the Flat Iron Building to spread a little holiday cheer - bubbly and chocolates - among the publicists. They took good care of me this year. Hung out a while in Tom Doherty's office talking anything but business.

12/10 - Doug Preston invited me to a party next month for his new novel BLASPHEMY. I'd love to go, but it's in Santa Monica. A bit of a haul from the Jersey Shore.

12/10 - email from my YA editor Susan Chang today, telling me she's sending me some ARCs of SECRET HISTORIES. She says she's not happy with the image on the front of the jacket - a piece of stock art - so they're commissioning an illustration to replace it. She says the illustration will be more specific to the book. The jacket illo I saw in the mechanical she sent last month looked pretty much in tune with the story. Curious as to what this one will look like.

12/4 - learned today that the CONSPIRACIES paperback sold out its stock of the old design. The good news is it now goes back for redesign along the lines of the other titles; the bad news is it won't be available for 6 months. 

NOVEMBER 2007

11/30 - the second YA Jack novel is flying out of me: it's only day 22 since starting and I'm almost to the halfway point.

11/29 - in connection with mentoring ITW's debut authors, here's a brief article about how I got started.
http://www.thrillerwriters.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=575&Itemid=200

11/28 - a box of 9 zillion signature sheets for SECRET HISTORIES arrove today. I'll put on the next "Heroes" disc and get started.

11/27 - I made some suggestions to Harry Morris for the Gauntlet edition cover of BY THE SWORD and he came through with another beauty.

11/27 - heard from David Hartwell. I handed in the new RJ novel with the working title, BY THE SWORD. David says the sales force loved the title at the pre Turkey-Day sales meeting, so that's what it will be. That means Paul Ramplin gets a credit line in the acknowledgments. As often happens, I'll write a novel with no idea of what to call it. Once again I asked the members of the repairmanjack.com Forum to help me out. Lisa Krause named HARBINGERS a few years ago. This time Paul came up with BY THE SWORD, and it stuck.

11/26 - a while back I volunteered to be a mentor for the International Thriller Writers 2008 debut authors. They chose me as their December mentor, and today I received a list of questions they'd like me to answer—mostly about how to manage a series character and how to sustain a career. Serious stuff. Doesn't anyone want to know my favorite color?

11/23 - Chris Ryall from IDW emails me that they've received an offer from Wetta Worldwide for French language rights to THE KEEP graphic novel. He wants to know if I accept the terms. Wait, let me check my door. Nope, no other French publishers waiting on the stoop. Guess I'll go with Wetta. (This is the last time I'll do this, I promise.)

11/20 - received word that an interview I'd done earlier in the month had been posted. Here 'tis (it's an audio download):
http://www.earth-2.net/podcasts/dreadmedia/episodes/dreadmedia_012.mp3

11/19 - attended my first SFWA editors reception in many, many years. I used to run these when I was Eastern Regional Director back in Jurassic Age. It was held at the Society of Illustrators on East 63rd St. Went out afterward for a bite with a friend and her agent and ran into thriller writer John Lescroart at the restaurant. Think about it: John and I are both in the Killer Thriller Band; he flies in from California to visit family for the holiday; I drive in from the Jersey Shore to visit my SF friends; we wind up in the same restaurant at the same late hour. Dude, like =how= does this happen? (I see the noodly appendage of the Flying Spaghetti Monster at work here.)

11/16 - received another invite to a special 25th anniversary screening of "The Keep" in London. I might have gone (just to hang with people who worked on the film) but I'm committed to the Borderlands Boot Camp on that date. http://www.fangoria.com/news_article.php?id=5457

11/13 - page galleys for SECRET HISTORIES arrove simultaneously from Gauntlet and Tor. That makes the proofing a little easier. Have to remember to change every Grainger to Connell.

11/12 - I decide to change "Grainger" to "Connell."

11/11 - while writing away on SECRET VENGEANCE I realize that the surname of the female lead in the series is "Grainger." Why does that sound familiar? Oh, crap Hermoine Granger from the Potter books. Must change, much change! (This is really odd, because I use a random name generator to name characters. Grainger popped up and I chose it. Could my subconscious have been thinking of Hermoine?)

11/9 - received an offer from Bulgarian publisher Riva for LEGACIES. Not a big offer. Wait, let me check my door. Nope, no other Bulgarian publishers waiting on the stoop. Guess I'll go with Riva.

11/8 - started writing the second Repairman Jack young adult novel. Working title: SECRET VENGEANCE.

11/8 - heard from Susan Chang that the Tor marketing department will be sending 450 ARCs of SECRET HISTORIES to indie booksellers via Book Sense. Cool. (I'll let you know when you can start watching Ebay. Heh.)

11/8 - I pitched David Hartwell on including "Dat-Tay-Vao," the prequel to THE TOUCH, in the reprint edition of the novel. 1) Obviously it will make for a unique edition 2) The character Walter Erskine, who transfers the touch to Alan in the novel, appears in "Dat-Tay-Vao" as well. 3) Walter Erskine is "Weird Walt," a major player in the YA Jack novels. 4) THE TOUCH / "Dat-Tay-Vao" combo will be appropriate reading for any kids who want to know more about where Walt came from and how he ends up. I didn't see how he could refuse. He didn't.

11/7 - received a jpeg of the full wraparound cover for JACK: SECRET HISTORIES today. It's gawjus. See for yourself.
http://www.repairmanjack.com/newsblog.htm#thelatest

11/6 - well, today I did it: I signed up for the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention. Do I write romances? Yes, in the classic sense (as opposed to mimetic fiction). But the audiences on my last tour drove home an important fact to me: I have a hell of a lot of women readers. When I started the series I figured the market would be 90% male, but at every stop at least half the crowd was female: teenagers, retirees, and every age between. Come WFC I'm hanging at one of the small press parties when Alexandra Sokoloff (her novel THE HARROWING is excellent, btw) says, "You have =got= to go to RT. They'll love you there." That starts me thinking how RT is a major convention for women readers. Yes, romances are their fave, but they read everything. I called Heather Graham (the author, not the actress) and she agreed with Alex: Go. So I'm going. I may wind up a fish out of water, or I may hook a whole new audience on Jack. We'll see.

11/5 - My other lost novel, THE FIFTH HARMONIC, is reviewed on a new-age video program. I don't know who sent them the book but I'm glad they did. If you want just the good stuff, start at the 21-minute mark. http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=dt8fpIVcYkg

11/1-4 - World Fantasy Con weekend. Saratoga Springs has its beauties, and lots of good restaurants within walking distance of the con. Loads of writers and publishing folk there.

11/1 - HOW I GOT PUBLISHED is a new collection of essays from Writers Digest Books. I have a piece in it, as do a who's-who of writers. For those of you interested in writing and selling what you write, it might be worth your while to check it out. (I get no royalties, so consider this a Public Service Announcement.)

October 2007

>10/31 - I make it back on Halloween and survive the riskiest leg of the trip: The NJ Turnpike.  It’s good to be home, but tomorrow I head out for the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs, NY.

>10/30 - Elizabeth T. picks me up in Portland and drops me at the hotel. The travel must be getting to me: I conk out for 2 hours.  Then it’s off to Beaverton for a signing at Powell’s books.  Nice crowd.  The store gives me a clip-on mic so I can wander as I read "Part of the Game" again.  Great staff, great crowd, lots of books to sign. 

I’m done.

>10/29 - a day off, sort of.  I get to spend 2 consecutive nights in the same hotel.  (Yay) Nothing to do until we start stock signings in the afternoon before heading to Mountain View, so I hang out, do some writing, and when the maid knocks on the door, a little wandering. 

After a few stops at the chain stores to sign stock, Cynthia drove me to Mountain View, CA, home of Google.  Looks like a nice little town, even in the dark. Wouldn't have minded wandering it during the day.

Books Inc. had the biggest space yet - big enough to need a microphone. Only a couple of empty seats. Read "Part of the Game" again. I'm not sick of reading it yet, mainly because it's so well received. (It's just the right length for a reading, is set on the West Coast, and, because it's a horror story, goes over particularly well this close to Halloween.)

Ran out another refill signing the collections people brought. Have yet to see a woman appear with a shopping bag full of old books. I get the feeling book collecting is mostly a guy thing.

>10/29  Greg Lamberson posted an interview on Fear Zone: http://www.fearzone.com/blog/f-paul-wilson

>10/28 - on to San Francisco where my escort, Cynthia F, dropped me off at the Palomar hotel to get settled in, then took me down to Borderlands Books in the funky Mission District.  Another SRO crowd.  Read "Part of the Game" again (had to: it takes place in San Francisco).  The Bloody Marys went over well here.  San Franciscans are my kinda people. Back to the hotel to watch the Sox take the series.

>10/27 - a 7am flight to Burbank where I was met by Elizabeth R.  She filled my morning with stock signings at chain stores, then lunch. Kevin Anderson once told me I had to stop at an In-and-Out Burger next time I was in LA, so we did.  Had a double burger/double cheese.  Elizabeth recommended "animal style" so I went for it.  Not quite up to the burger at The Ear in NYC or the Shack Burger in Playa del Rey, but it’s the best fast-food-chain burger ever.  On to Dark Delicacies where a very long line awaited.  Set up some Bloody Marys and Virgin Marys, but there weren’t a lot of takers. Two hours later, down the block to Mucho Mas for a margharita or two with some of the visiting writer folk (David Schow, Hal Bodner, and Eddie McMullen - check out his www.feoamante.com) who showed up.  Then out to dinner at a churrascaria place with Del and Sue, owners of Dark Delicacies. 

>10/26 - arrove in Seattle where I was picked up (I should rephrase that but I won’t) by my media escort Diane D.  No renown Seattle clouds or rain; instead, a pristine sky and a panoramic view of Mt. Ranier so breathtaking it had to be CGI.  She took me to the Mystery Bookshop for a stock signing and then we grabbed some dim sum and other goodies in Seattle’s Chinatown.  After taping an interview for the Evergreen Radio Reading Service (for the blind) we were off to the Redmond Library in Microsoft Country.  Not much of a crowd at University Books later on.  (But on such a beautiful clear Friday night, with a full moon hanging over the city, I wouldn’t stick myself in a bookstore either.)  An editor and publisher I’m working with took me out to a seafood restaurant called Elliot’s for dinner.

>10/24 - with my readers’ comments in hand, I did a final pass on the 12th RJ novel (title still uncertain) and sent it off to David Hartwell.  Now I can go on tour with a clear conscience.

>10/19 - an email from a reader asked when THE TOUCH would be reprinted.  I keep forgetting to discuss the rest of the Adversary Cycle with my publisher.  So I emailed David Hartwell about THE TOUCH, REBORN, REPRISAL, and NIGHTWORLD (explaining that the pub dates of the last two have to be synched with the Jack books).  (See "The Secret History of the World" - http://www.repairmanjack.com/works.htm#SECRETHISTORY)  He wrote right back, asking me if I had the rights and should he contact my agent about them.  (Well, that was easy.)

>10/18 - a brief article on BLOODLINE went up today on Sci Fi Wire:
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=5&id=44775

>10/18 - read "Interlude at Duane’s" to a packed SRO house.  Yes, it was near Halloween and I was sort of expected to read a horror story, but since this was my only New York City stop, I figured I’d never find a better audience for a tale about Repairman Jack trapped in a Duane Reade drugstore with a quartet of homicidal robbers.  (At least people laughed in the right places.  A few twits thought it contained "racial stereotypes."  They oughta get out on the street and remove their earbuds so they can hear how NYC people really talk.)

>10/16 - highly quotable mini-review in the current =Entertainment Weekly=.   Here’s the whole thing: "Private eye Jack - just Jack - is hired by a distraught mother to to investigate the skeevy older guy dating her daughter.  See, the first PI she hired has disappeared.  But when Jack finds his predecessor tortured and drowned in a bathtub, he embarks on a harrowing journey involving murder, an anarchist movement, genetic engineering and a suspicious mental institution.  In his 11th Repairman Jack thriller, Wilson offers a canny mix of sci-fi paranoia and criminal mayhem.  Despite a contrived end that baldly strains for a sequel, Bloodline starts fast, keeps the accelerator down, and defies you to stop reading.  B+ - Bob Cannon"

About that "contrived end that baldly strains for a sequel”…he’s not the first to mention it.  And he has a point.  Maybe you felt that way too.  Here’s my problem: I’m into the end game of the series.  I’m putting the pieces and the players into place.  I’ve got long arcs (4 books or so) that have to flow through in order to pay off at the end.  The only "straining" I’m doing is trying to tie up each book into a stand-alone.  But try as I might, it’s not happening.  The arcs are too big and too important to abridge.  So you’re going to have to bear with me here.  I don’t like it, but the story demands it.  In the end, I think you’ll agree it was worth the frustration.  But trust me, I’m not teasing for teasing sake.  It’s do it this way, or make you sit and wait four years for a 2000 page novel.

>10/25 - received word that a reading of "Lipidleggin' " is available here: http://www.davehitt.com/podcasts/QH_Lipidleggin.mp3 It's well read.  Take a listen.

>10/25 - arrove in Atlanta and driven around by my media escort (they should call them guides), Robert F.  Did a few stock signings at some chain stores, and then an SRO signing event at Eagle Eye Books in Decatur.  After being introduced by Dave Hinchberger, I read "Part of the Game" and reveled in the pained and disgusted grimaces on a few listeners.

>10/24 - with my readers’ comments in hand, I did a final pass on the 12th RJ novel (title still uncertain) and sent it off to David Hartwell.  Now I can go on tour with a clear conscience.

>10/15 - finished the last of the Harry Potter series on the train back from NAIBA.  A very satisfying read.  J.K. Rowling tells a mean story.  I still find her adverbs off-putting, but her storytelling is so compelling I stop noticing after a while.  An excellent end to the series - ingenious, I might say. Voldemort is brought down not by brute force, but by his inherent character flaws. (True to the Greek drama model, hubris tops the list.)  Excellent catharsis, lots of surprises, and many an "a-Ha!"  I recommend it, folks. I’m a picky, impatient reader, but I kept moving to the next book.  The second volume is the weakest.  Forgive her that and keep rolling.  Did I skim?  Yes - in many places.  But that’s me.  When I read I have the attention span of a Chihuahua after a double espresso. 

Yes, she's wordy, but then again she's creating an entire society living parallel to ours. It's quite a feat and it takes some wordage. Not as wordy as Rice, not as digressive as Straub. The 7 books run well over a million words, but she guides you through a richly detailed world you'd never see without her. She delivers on the promise of fiction: to take you places no one will ever see, let you experience things no one will ever experience.

>10/14 - trained down to Baltimore for the NAIBA (New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association) convention.  Mostly I ate - a banquet luncheon and a banquet dinner.  Later, I was a featured author at what they call the "Noir Bar" (for mystery-thriller writers) where I signed BLOODLINE for the booksellers.

>10/5 - Alexis sent me my finial tour schedule and mentioned she’d arranged escorts in every city.  I’m thinking, Wow, escorts! Here’s a publicist who really knows how to take care of an author.  Then I notice that my first escort is named Robert.  Whoa.  (Dress up in drag just once and people get the wrong idea.)  Alexis tells me they’re =media= escorts who’ll be transporting me to events and to other bookstores to sign stock.  Ah, well. 

>10/4 - added the final edits to the Repairman Jack #12 file.  DONE!  Printed out copies for my two first-look readers, Steve and Elizabeth.  When I get their feedback, I’ll make final changes, then it’s off to the publisher who needs it before the end of October. 

>10/3 - email from Alexis with the subject line: "EW!"  I thought it was going to be about a bad smell or the like, but it turns out =Entertainment Weekly= is going to review BLOODLINE soon.  Kewl.

>10/1 - sent back the copy-edited manuscript of SECRET HISTORIES.

September 2007

>9/30 - finished my edit of the first draft of CUTTING EDGE.  I’ll enter the changes during the week, send copies to my readers, and get the final ms. into the publisher before the end of the month.

>9/29 - back from NEIBA.  Typical bookseller trade show: met some booksellers, hung with the sales folks and other industry types, signed a bunch of books, yadda-yadda.  

>9/28 - before heading for the train I finished reviewing the copy-edited SECRET HISTORIES.  Not many changes.  My manuscripts go in pretty damn clean.    

>9/27 - printed out the first draft of CUTTING EDGE to take on the train to Rhode Island tomorrow.  (I’m appearing at the NEIBA - New England Independent Booksellers Association - trade show in Providence.)  Four undisturbed hours up and another 4 back on Saturday should allow for a good edit.  

>9/27 - did a radio interview with Gard Goldsmith again.  We ranged over a bunch of topics.  You can listen here: http://odeo.com/audio/16869033/view  

>9/26 - Alexis sent me my flight schedule for the tour.  This is going to be =very= hectic.  

>9/26 - NOW the first draft of CUTTING EDGE is done.  (I added a couple of brief scenes.)  

>9/24 - the copy edited ms. of the YA novel arrived for my review.  We’ve settled on the title.  It’s JACK: SECRET HISTORIES.  

>9/22 - readers have been bugging Gauntlet Press for years to do a limited edition of LEGACIES (the only RJ novel with no limited edition), so Barry asked me if he could publish a 10th anniversary edition.  Today I finished combing the ms for anachronisms.  I made a few minor changes (VCRs have become DVD players, etc.) but otherwise it holds up pretty well.  

>9/21 - email from Alexis about my tour details being posted on the Tor site.  They did a beautiful job - maps and everything.  Check it out and, if you have any plans of showing up, save the URL: http://www.tor-forge.com/Tour.aspx?Tour=579

>9/20  I recorded my Guest Host hour for Halloween night.  I was kind of lame because I had nothing prepared.  I’d assumed it would be an interview interspersed with music.  I wound up sitting alone at a console ad libbing.  I brought along a few Halloweeny songs: themes from =Godzilla= and =Psycho=, plus "Tubular Bells," "Voodoo in my Basement" by the Lovin Spoonful, "Sympathy for the Devil," and "Rasalom" by Brazilian metal group, Steel Warrior (I lasted only 3 out of that one’s 6 minutes).  They had stuff by Bauhaus and The Church and Bowie ready to go to fill out the rest of the hour. If you’ve got nothing better to do at 11PM ET on Halloween, go to http://90.5thenight.org/ and click the "LISTEN" button in the upper left corner.  (But I won’t mind at all if you don’t.)  

>9/19 - heard from Alexis that the podcast interview we recorded last winter is up in a zillion places across the net.  Here’s the YouTube URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi6J_0z8-YY  

>9/16 - okay, the last scene of the first draft of RJ-12 (I’m calling it CUTTING EDGE for now) is done.  108K words—shorter than most of the recent entries, but you know how I feel about padding.  Now to let it marinate a little before the ruthless first edit.  

>9/15 - a guy named Dave Hitt contacts me about allowing him to read "Lipidleggin' " on his podcast.  I say, sure, why the hell not?  (As long as I get a copy.)  I tell him to mention Dave Moore’s superb film adaptation on the =Others= DVD.  

>9/13 - Leo Zaccari from a NJ FM station (WBJB 90.5 The NIGHT) wants me to guest host an hour on Halloween night.  Since I’ll be on tour on Halloween, we’ll record it in advance.  Sounds like fun.  

>9/10 - the Borders store in Paramus, NJ has been added to the tour. (see "Where I’ll Be")  

>9/9 - finished the last chapter of the new RJ novel, but the first draft is still a ways from completion.  While writing through I created unanticipated situations and incidents that need setting up, and that requires going back and establishing new characters and circumstances to make the later events work.  I never stop in the middle of a book and go back - too disruptive of the narrative momentum.  I wait till I've written the story all the way through, then return and backfill.  That's what works for me: momentum-momentum-momentum.  

>9/6 - Deborah LeBlanc, who was at the New Orleans workshop, writes to ask me to chair the HWA Lifetime Achievement Award jury.  She doesn't offer money, but I say yes anyway.    

>9/6 - Molly Bolden of Bent Pages Books in Houma, who was at the New Orleans workshop, writes to ask if I'll be keynote speaker at a writer's gathering in Louisiana next spring. She offers money.  I say yes.  

>9/5 - Steve from the thehorrorblog.com wants to know what work of fiction has frightened me the most.  =The Exorcist=, of course.

August 2007

>8/30-9/2 - guesting at Heather Graham's New Orleans workshop. I agreed to this for a number of reasons. First off, I like Heather a lot - she's truly good people. Second, I'd get to drum in a pick-up band with a bunch of folks from the Killer-Thriller Band, and third, the attendees would be mostly from the romance wing, very few of whom would have read me or even heard of me. I liked the challenge of seeing if I could win them over. At this point I don't know if I did, but I had a great time, met a lot of nice readers and tyro writers (mostly women - lots of estrogen in those rooms). I meet Molly Bolden, who has to be the world's wackiest, most outspoken bookseller. Gotta love her.

>8/29 - well, I found out the reason for the BLOODLINE pub date change: some special promotion deal with Barnes & Noble that wouldn't have been possible with the October date. For some reason the B&N buyers and I have not been on the best of terms over the years - very little of my backlist on their shelves. This might change all that.

>8/29 - a forty-minute phone interview with Brice McVicar for =Rue Morgue=.

>8/28 - I learn today that the BLOODLINE street date has been moved up to September 18. Don't know why yet.

>8/28 - today's the official publication date of the HARBINGERS paperback.

>8/28 - received an invitation to the Midwest Booksellers trade show the first weekend in October, but I have to turn it down. I'm already committed to the Paperback Expo in NYC.

>8/27 - finish the Matheson tribute and am fairly satisfied with it. (It's got a nice twist.)

>8/24 - receive my author copies of BLACK WIND and they are stunning.

>8/23 - Monica Kuebler of =Rue Morgue= magazine emails asking for an interview for their Halloween issue. But of course. It's a cool mag.

>8/22 - Gard Goldsmith interviewed me on 107.7 FM in Concord, NH. Here's a RECORDING of the broadcast:   

>8/20 - send some ARCs of BLOODLINE to Nanci Kalanta of Horrorworld for a promotion she'll run in September.

>8/17 - Seattle is added to the BLOODLINE tour.

>8/15 - I'm invited to sign at the Northeast Independent Booksellers convention in Providence, RI on September 29. I accept.

>8/12 - I'm invited to a 25th Anniversary screening of "The Keep" in London on December 8. I remind the inviter that it will also be the 25th anniversary of my incessant whining and bitching about the film.

>8/9 - too far behind for Horrorfind . . . glad I'm staying home. Some folks there I'd like to see, but after Thrillerfest, NECon, and San Diego Comicon back to back, I'm conventioned out.

>8/8 - start my Richard Matheson tribute story - a sequel to "The Distributor."

>8/8 - email from Susan Chang. I wanted to call the YA Repairman Jack series "You Don't Know Jack" but the publisher thinks the pre-existing game of the same name will cause confusion. We may call it simply: JACK.

>8/7 - a call from Suzann Ellis, head of production at Beacon (see "Repairman Jack - the movie" below)

>8/7 - receive a link to a special area of the Dark Delicacies website which I will pass along. As many of you already know, Shocklines is going out of the bookselling business. (Don't worry, all pending orders will be filled.) Dark Delicacies will be taking over as the source of signed / inscribed copies of the Repairman Jack trade editions. They're taking preorders on BLOODLINE now: Signed Bloodline 

I'll sign them when I pass through on tour and Del and Sue will send them out immediately after.

>8/3 - email from Eileen Hutton of Brilliance Audio: the narrator for the audio version of BLOODLINE wants to know how to pronounce Rasalom. I write back: RAH-sah-lahm.

July 2007

>7/29 – glad to get back home.  No more trips until Labor Day Weekend.

>7/25 - 29 – off to San Diego for the Comic-con.  Panels, signings, meetings, and crowds-crowds-crowds.  (110+K attendees, I’m told.) Love San Diego.

>7/20 - 22 – off to NECon and, as usual, it’s a good ’un.  Like to tell you more but I’m restrained by the code of WHANSAN. (What happens at NECon stays at NECon.)

>7/15 – a 9am panel on “Horror as the Original Thriller” (or something like that), moderated by David Morrell.  People actually show up at that hour.  A signing later, then I’m outta there.

>7/14 – out to lunch with Eileen Hutton of Brilliance Audio.  I guide her and her husband Bob to the Ear Inn in SoHo where we feast on its superb burgers and Hoegaarden witbier.  (I love this place – look for it in the 2008 Jack novel.)

Later – I can’t make it to the auction (I’m with the band at a sound check and final run-through in the banquet hall), but a fellow named Tom O’Day is the winning bidder for the right to a horrible death in Repairman Jack #12.

Later still: Showtime: Except for a few miscues (one of them mine), we pretty much nail the songs at the banquet.

>7/13 – Friday the 13th – pretty much a repeat of Thursday.  The band is sounding better and better.

>7/12 – do some writing in the a.m., then another rehearsal mid-afternoon.  Everyone’s there and we sound . . . awful. The age span of the crowd will run from 30s to 70s, so we play it safe with classic rock: “Travelin’ Band,” “Proud Mary,” “Satisfaction,” “Brown-Eyed Girl,” and Stevie Ray Vaughn’s “House is a-Rockin’,” plus an original song by John Lescroart. (He gives me a CD so I can hear how it’s done.)

Later: Thrillerfest officially begins with a reception and signing of the THRILLER anthology paperback.

Later still: another rehearsal at 10pm and we sound . . . better.  Not good, but better.

>7/11 – reception at Mysterious Bookshop (=way= downtown) is holding a reception for writers early for Thrillerfest.  It starts to pour.  Can’t get a taxi so I subway downtown to Chambers Street inside a wheeled sauna called the 2 train.  I hang with the owner, Otto Penzler, for a while, then a bunch of us head up to Chinatown for some food. 

Later: first rehearsal for the Killer Thriller Band.  Only half of us there.  We run through Dave Simm’s original theme for Thrillerfest. I’m trying to channel Link Wray’s “Rumble” to come up with a drum part that sounds as dark and ominous as the tune.

>7/10 – Jackie Estrada wrote to ask me if I wanted to present one of the Eisner Awards at San Diego Comic-con.  Much as I’d like to, I’ve already got a dinner scheduled with my publisher that night.

>7/7 – I add 1400 words back into the text of the abridged edition. The first is a scene where Jack stomps a couple of obnoxious thugs bothering a pregnant woman on a subway. I crow-bar it into a different part of the book, but it's self-contained so it still works. The second is a scene in a bar when he deflects a drunk looking for a fight. Again, I move it from its original spot, but it works in the new one. I think it's important to keep these. I wrote them to illustrate two aspects of Jack's character. The first: his capacity for quick, decisive violence when it's called for. The second, conversely, to demonstrate his street cunning in avoiding a potentially violent situation. That's Jack: perfectly happy to use violence when necessary but, when not, preferring to use his wits to avoid it.

That night: Eileen writes back (on a Saturday, no less) that the word count is strict on the abridged version.  If I add 1400 words, I’ll have to cut 1400 words.  I go through and cut about 1800 – just to be sure.

>7/5 – Brilliance Audio has contracted to do BLOODLINE in both uncut and abridged editions.  I receive the script for the abridged.

June 2007

>6/20 – Later that same day I came back into Manhattan to the Flat Iron Building (where my publisher dwells) for a LongPen signing.  You can check out the technology via the link below, but I let me tell you: an amazing experience. I sat at the crossroads of Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street in Manhattan and signed books – actually signed the books – of readers at a tech convention in Anaheim, CA.  The title page would be transmitted to me on the screen of a tablet computer.  I would sign the screen with a special pen, then hit SEND.  Immediately this robot arm would pop into view and inscribe exactly what I written on the book’s title page.  We had an AV hookup where the readers and I could see and talk to each other.  Very, very cool.  The next best thing to being there. LongPen

>6/20 – did another location check.  Jack’s got to find somebody at Belmont Race Park, so I drove all the way through Queens, NY to check it out.  All for maybe 1,000 words.  Gotta say I was disappointed.  A thin, drab, sad looking crowd, mostly middle age or older, going through the motions.  No zim, no vim or vigor.  Where were the Runyonesque flashy dressers with style and attitude?  These folks have more in common with Willie Loman than Sky Masterson and Nathan Detroit.

>6/14 – lunch at The Ear Inn with my son-in-law – I needed an out-of-the-way place for Jack to meet with a customer in the current book and he suggested The Ear.  Cool place.  Arguably the oldest bar in NYC (est. 1851).  They serve a fabulous 8-oz burger and Hoegaarden on tap.  (We have a winnah!)

>6/13 – made the final tweaks on SECRET HISTORIES and sent it off to Susan Chang.

>6/6 – spoke at the 5th annual Wildwood Writers Conference.  I’m getting an hour’s worth of patter down pretty solid.  Maybe someday I’ll take it on the road.  (Like it isn’t hard enough now to find sufficient time to write.)

>6/3 – checked Ebay (as I always do after BEA) and found a listing for one of the ARCs I’d signed – put up for auction 6 HOURS after I’d signed it.  Went for $54 and change.

>6/1-2 – at Book Expo America.  Had 2 signings – one at the Mira booth for the paperback edition of THRILLER and another in what are known as the “chutes” for advance reading copies of BLOODLINE.  The ARC is paperbound but the same size and printed with the same cover as the October hardcover.  Met a lot of folks I knew, met some new ones, did some bidness, went to parties, had a flat tire on the way home.

May 2007

>5/31 – Tom Monteleone arrives tonight for a few days.  Book Expo America starts tomorrow and I’ve got two signings, and we’ve got a number of meetings set up on our graphic novel proposal and other collaborations.

>5/30 – cooking on the new RJ.  Those new complications and parallel plots I dreamed up give it a lot of juice.  I’m having fun now.

>5/24 – got a request from the ’08 World Horror Convention to contribute a reprint to their program book.  Dusted off “Muscles,” cleaned it up, and sent it off.  Originally in =F&SF=, that story hasn’t seen the light of day since I collected it in SOFT & OTHERS back in 1989.

>5/21 – received this link from the publisher’s publicity department today.  Recorded it back in January.  It’s a growing trend in promoting books. All in all, I think it works. Find the link here:
http://www.repairmanjack.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7153

>5/18 – lying awake at 4am (an unfortunate habit) I came up with some twists and complications for the new Jack novel.  Don’t know if they’ll work yet.  I’m going to have to sit down and map them out to see how they mesh.

>5/17 – my birthday.  Wow.  40 years old.  Bummer.

>5/12 – David Hartwell offered me a seat at the Tor table for the Nebula Awards banquet.  I started to refuse, then said yes.  (This means that the guy who never does banquets—I consider Brunch & Bullets a banquet—has been to 4 in 6 weeks.)  I agreed because I felt like seeing my old sci-fi friends.  MWA had been such a disappointment, I figured this had to be better.  I’m a lifetime member of SFWA and I write a science fiction novel once a decade (SIMS was this decade’s), so no one could say I didn’t belong (although Ellen Datlow implied it.)

Gotta tell you, it was great seeing that old crowd.  Took me back a quarter century or so when we young turks would hang out together at these affairs and gripe about the field.  These were people like Susan Allison and Betsy Mitchell (both now vice president and editor-in-chief of Ace and Del Rey respectively) and a bunch of others who are pretty much =running= the field.  (btw, my novel DYDEETOWN WORLD would not exist without Betsy’s nudging to take the story further.) 

So many of us started out of the same gate, but time thinned our ranks—some ran out of gas, some shot their wad in their first 2 books and had nothing left to offer, some simply didn't want it badly enough.  And of course, some died.  But a number of us hung in there through the hot times and the cold times because we loved what we were doing. There's a bond there. We may not see each other for years, but when we're in the same room, we're connected. 

Got invited to an après-dinner party at Showman’s Café, an old-school jazz and blues club in Harlem.  Would’ve loved to go but begged off.  The hour was late and I had to drive home…miles to go before I slept.

>5/5 – I was a guest author at the first annual Brunch & Bullets fundraiser for RiF.  A veritable who’s who of East Coast thriller writers showed up: Preston & Child, Michael Palmer, Joe Finder, Heather Graham, Carla Neggers, Steve Coonts, Jon Land, and others.  The food was good and the company excellent.

>5/3 – a long, laid-back web interview at (I’m not kidding) withoutyourhead.com.  These are good guys and we had a fun time.  You can play it or download it at: http://www.withoutyourhead.com/viewnews.php?autoid=133

>5/2 – a catch-up day: finished reviewing the page proofs for the HARBINGERS paperback and found a major formatting problem.  Wrote a brief intro to the BLOODLINE outline chapbook from Gauntlet.  Approved (or not) the final edits in the copyedited ms. of  “The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling Circus & Oddity Emporium.” (Now officially up for pre-order – see “In the Pipeline.”)  And finally got around to doing a little work on the new Jack novel (the grown-up Jack).

April 2007

>4/30 – heard from Susan Chang after she read the revision of SECRET HISTORIES: "I LOVE this book!" I’ll take that as a positive response.

>4/27 – and now the page proofs for the mass market paperback of HARBINGERS arrive. Try to imagine how tired I am of this book, even though it’s one of my favorites in the series. But I see that they’ve made a significant change in the formatting.

>4/26 – attended the Edgar Awards Banquet, thrown every year by the Mystery Writers of America. I used to belong years and years ago. My publisher had an empty seat at his table and offered it to me. Why not? (The man who hates banquets attends his second in less that a month. Go figger.) Shared a few words with Stephen King who’s receiving this year’s Grand Master Award…man, he’s so thin—painfully so. Someone should buy him a Big Mac. 750 people there and I knew 30 if I was lucky. Used to know damn near everybody. A couple of people urged me to rejoin MWA but that’s not going to happen. This is no longer my tribe.

>4/23 – sent the revised SECRET HISTORIES to Susan Chang. Now to get to work on the 12th RJ novel.

>4/22 – Matt Schwartz stopped by with boxes of VIRGIN and THE TERY to inscribe.

>4/20 – Bookgasm loves BLOODLINE: http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/horror/bloodline/

>4/14 – finished an interview with John Joseph Adams for SCI-FI Wire. You can find it at:
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=5&id=41352

>4/13 – finished a quick pass on the BLOODLINES page proofs and faxed the fixed pages into the publisher. I hope someone in-house does a closer read. I’ve simply no time and no inclination to immerse myself in it again.

>4/13 – I sent Susan Chang a précis of my fixes for SECRET HISTORIES (the young adult Repairman Jack novel) and she’s cool with them. I begin whipping the ms. into a final draft.

>4/7 – the page proofs for the trade edition of BLOODLINE arrove. Once again I have to comb through the text for errors. (At this point in the gestation of any book – after reading it and rereading it numerous times, proofing copy-edited mss and checking page proofs from two publishers – I am sick to death of the damn thing and simply want it to go away.)

>4/6 – an email from Craig Shaw Gardner telling me I’ve been chosen as the NECon Legend for next year’s gathering. I accepted, of course.

>4/5 – Russ Madden has an early review of BLOODLINE up on his website. Check it out:
http://www.russellmadden.com/Blood_in_Water.html

>4/4 – the repairmanjack.com webmail is up and running again. I have 407 emails awaiting me, most of them with "Tour" in the subject line. This is gonna take a while, folks.

>4/2 – Susan Chang got back to me with a few editorial notes on the first draft young adult Repairman Jack novel (which I’m titling it SECRET HISTORIES, though I’m not sure yet about the über-title of the series.) I think they’re valid (most were aspects I’d had concerns over myself) and I know ways to fix them.

March 2007

>3/29-4/1 – attended a very well-run World Horror convention. It had interesting panels, interesting people, and was held in an interesting city (Toronto). I had a wonderful time.

>3/23 – received a copy of OCP’s THE TERY and am very impressed. 'Tis a thing of beauty. The gold-stamped covers, the DJ, the endpapers, the layout - a class act all the way.

>3/22 – word came that HARBINGERS is a finalist for this year’s Prometheus Award. I don't see the book as particularly libertarian (in its protagonist, yes, but not much else), and I already have 4 Promethei, so I'll be happy to see a more deserving title win.

>3/18 – the ethink folks did a server switch (or something like that) that had the site down for a few days. Some of the Forum regulars went into acute withdrawal, but they seem okay now. (Not that they were ever really okay.)

>3/16-17 – I spent St. Paddy’s day in Fort Myers at the Southwest Florida Reading Festival. Signed a lot of books and met a number of long-time readers who drove in from all over the state. I appreciate the effort, folks.

>3/11 – began reading / revising BLACK WIND for the Borderlands edition. Loads of passive voice to deal with, but somehow – maybe because the novel is such a period piece – it doesn’t bother me as much here as in my other early fiction.

>3/9 – finished the first draft of the YA Jack novel. Came in at 65k words and I’m delighted with it.

>3/2-4 – the first spring Horrorfind weekend was nowhere near as jammed with B-movie fans as the August version. (Writers at these affairs tend to be looked on as vestigial appendages, but Nikki Reinhardt took good care of us.) I enjoyed it and made new friends. I moderated a Friday night panel about the effect of awards on writers’ organizations (I think it’s toxic) that turned out to be a lot of fun. (The gallon of Wild Turkey Elizabeth Blue brought along for panelists and audience alike might have had something to do with that.)

February 2007

>2/28 – passed the 50k-word mark on the YA novel. Will definitely wind up the first draft next month.

>2/26 – sent off Form 8802 to the IRS so that it can send me copies of Form 6166 which will eventually find their way to my foreign publishers to save me from double taxation. (Ain’t the writing life romantic?)

>2/24 – hit the NY ComiCon. Wandered around with my fellow geeks, did some bidness, and closed the day as a member of the "Masters of Horror" panel with Mick Garris, Stuart Gordon, Jeffrey Combs, Jon Landis, and Dennis Paoli. They asked me out to dinner with them afterward but I begged off – other plans.

>2/21 – put up Tom Monteleone for the night after his reading at KGB Bar. The NYC genre family was there to listen – like a mini-NECon. Steven King (in town for the NY ComiCon) had said he’d drop by but – surprise! – didn’t.

>2/20 – the BLOODLINE page proofs for the first edition arrove from Gauntlet. I’ll spend the next two days synching them up. (Copyediting is odd – Editor A will miss errors found by Editor B, who’ll miss errors found by Editor A. I’m convinced we’ll never see a perfectly edited book until we develop an AI that can read.)

>2/13 – the "Pelts" DVD is released.

>2/12 – the copy-edited ms. of BLOODLINE arrove from Forge. They want it back in 10 days, so I start giving it a close editorial read, making sure all the errors and corrections from the Gauntlet edit are flagged in this one.

>2/8-9 – my publisher flew me out to Chicago (actually a suburb called Romeoville) to sign paperbacks for Levy Home Entertainment, a major book distributor. I spent 2 days in their warehouse signing 1536 copies each of HOSTS, GATEWAYS, CRISSCROSS and INFERNAL. A total of 6,144 in 9:15 hours. A photo of yours truly with all the cartons of books here:
http://www.repairmanjack.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6736

January 2007

>1/31 – I’ve reached pg. 153 on the YA novel.

>1/26-28 – do the instructor thing at the 5th Borderlands Boot Camp. The level of writing skill is the highest yet. Some folks are so good I can’t give them a whole lotta help. Still, a very satisfying weekend.

>1/20 – got invited back as a guest author to the ICON convention out on Long Island in March but had to turn them down. In Feb and March I’m schedded for 4 conventions, a reading festival, and a 2-day stock signing at a major distributor in Chicago. I need =some= time home.

>1/19 – my trade publisher arranged for Expanded Books to tape an interview with me to promote BLOODLINE. So I meet up with them in a suite at the Park Lane hotel. We tape about half an hour’s worth of Q&A. This will be edited into a podcast, and that, in turn, will be cut to 3 or 4 minutes for venues like YouTube and iTunes, etc. I’ll let you know when it’s available.

>1/17 – a corrected version of BLOODLINE emailed to Gauntlet Press.

>1/16 – I pass the 100-page mark on the YA Jack novel. At this stage it’s practically writing itself.

>1/10 – I’m invited to speak at the fifth annual Beach Writers Conference at the Wildwoods Convention Center in North Wildwood, NJ on June 5 & 6. I was at the inaugural event 5 years ago and I guess I was so wonderful they want me back. (Or maybe they can’t find anyone else.) I tell them I can make the 6th only.

>1/8 – Jon Land of ITW emails me to see if I want to speak at a thriller-themed charity luncheon called "Bullets & Brunch" in Connecticut on May 5 to raise funds for RIF. I say, Sure.

>1/5 – Franks Festa, one of my German publishers (Festa Verlag), wants to do a collection of Repairman Jack short fiction. We discussed this during my trip to Leipzig. I finally get around to emailing him the stories.

>1/4 – Elizabeth Monteleone writes, asking how BLACK WIND is coming. I tell her it’s not. I won’t be able to start editing it until after Bootcamp. She says no problem.

>1/3 – I begin reading the novel chapters and outlines for the Borderlands Bootcamp at the end of the month. Usually I do short fiction; this will be my first time with the novelists.

VIRGIN goes to press.

>1/2 – my author copies of DOOMED #4 (containing "Faces") arrive. IDW editor Chris Ryall tells me this is the last issue in this large format. Apparently the title never caught on with the comic book crowd.

>1/1 – I start the first Repairman Jack young adult novel. I have a contract for three. We still haven’t settled on a title for the series, but I’m naming the first book SECRET HISTORIES. It’s supposed to be 60k words long, which is half the length of the adult books, so I should be able to make the May deadline. I’m psyched about this trilogy – lots of fun things planned, lots of cameos by characters from other books.