Monday, February 14, 2011

When it Rains it Pours

Lots of forward movement in my writing world in the past few days. I'm happy to say.

Sold a story called "Lily White and Red" to Trembles. I also got word from Borgo's editor that "Midnight in Rosary," my collection of vampire and werewolf tales, has been sent to the folks who will print it. I don't have any idea as to the cover yet. I'm also going over the galleys for Wings Over Talera, which will soon be published in ebook. I did not make any forward progress on my science book over the weekend. In fact, I was pretty lazy and played quite a lot of video games, as well as doing some reading. I think I needed it, though, since last week was extremely busy, what with normal schol stuff and three extra research proposals to consider by the IRB committee that I chair. This week is gearing up to be a nightmare. Today, for example, I was up at 5:50 and won't get home till probably 10:30 tonight. Or later.

And, unfortunately, I've just acquired another university committee. So, forward progress on anything is likely to slow to a crawl for at least the next few weeks.

Lana and I did also watch Inception this weekend and I thought it was quite good. Lots of cool ideas and great special effects. I was actually pretty amazed that what was a complicated story was told so clearly that I didn't have trouble following it at all.

Last weekend, Lana and I watched two other movies, The Social Network, which I thought was pretty lame, and The Expendables, which I liked better but which wasn't anything to write home about.
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37 comments:

Sidney said...

Very cool about the collection. Great title!

David Cranmer said...

I liked INCEPTION quite a bit as well. That Leonardo has been making some darn good films of late.

Congrats on Trembles! I'm looking forward to reading it.

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Congratulations! Let it pour.
And glad you finally saw Inception. Damn good film.

Unknown said...

Congrats on the writing successes.

If you watched the Super Bowl then you know all the good movies are coming out soon. Certainly Aliens and Cowboys should be interesting.

Charles Gramlich said...

Sidney, thankee. The horror collection with your intro is next to get ready.

David, Lana and I both agreed that DiCaprio is a pretty good actor.

Alex, thankee. It definitely was.

Carole, I do want to see that one, and Battle L.A.

Harry Markov said...

Hurray on the progress and accepted story. Woohoo!

Lana Gramlich said...

Congrats on the progress, baby. Glad to see you admitting that you likely needed the break you too, as opposed to your usual self-berating for such.
Sorry about the new committee, though. I know how such things tend to gobble your time. :( *hug*
We agree on Inception, at least. Nice to see a really GOOD movie again, for a change!
Happy Valentines Day my sweetiepie honeylambkins. Love you now & always. *huggles*

Deka Black said...

Werewolves deserves more praise. What werevolves lack is a icon. They don't have a Carmilla, a Dracula or a Imhotep (in the mummie's case)

BernardL said...

Very good writing news and thanks for the 'Inception' review. We've been debating seeing it or not.

sage said...

Wow, you days are sounding like mine. Congratulations on your writing successes.

Erik Donald France said...

Excellent & coolness on the publications! And a big good luck with the other stuff~~ some parts of academia are a definite drag, inspiring the Secret Life of Walter Mitty daydreaming, no doubt . . . maybe some Inception work to boot . . .

Golden Eagle said...

Congratulations on your writing successes!

Charles Gramlich said...

Harry Markov, thanks, man. I appreciate it.

Lana Gramlich, you've got to be the sweetest woman on earth. At least to me. though others should beware. :)

Deka Black, there aren't a whole lot of werewolf stories in this collection but a few. I agree, they need their own iconic story.

BernardL, definitely worth while. I could nitpick but they really were nits. For the most part it was quite a ride.

sage, I could go with some sleep at the moment. My restful weekend is long gone already.

Erik Donald France, If only I could plant the thought in all my bosses minds that "Charles Gramlich needs to be given no work so he can do important things." :)

j said...

I hope it keeps pouring buckets! Congratulations on all of the great things that have happened lately.

I have to tell you though, the word "committee" gives me hives. People always want to put my time to their use. You sound like a better sport than I am.

Lisa said...

Congratulations Charles.

I watched Inception but if not for my children explaining it to me, I would have been L O S T.

laughingwolf said...

grats on the books, crap on the school stuff... it takes you away from writing, and more! ;)

Ron Scheer said...

Well done, my friend. Keep on keepin' on.

Funny how SOCIAL NETWORK hits people. I've asked several students, and they say, "It was good," in that vague way that means they weren't bored, I guess. The film made me angry, as happens when I'm in the middle of a movie and realize I don't care about any of the characters.

Watch those university committees; they can turn into black holes and suck you drier than a vampire.

Travis Cody said...

Congrats on the writing successes.

Rick said...

Congrats on the new collection, Charles!

nephite blood spartan heart said...

Glad to hear it-and with werewolf stories connected-does that mena we'll get more than the glimpse of that werewolf dream you posted about once?

Angie said...

Congrats on the story sale and the antho. :D

And it sounds like you've got a lot on your plate these days. Hang in there, and don't burn yourself out. [hugz]

Angie

the walking man said...

Nothing un-cool about selling and galleys and that sort of stuff. Drag for the rest of it but even Gramlich has to professor once in awhile.

Unknown said...

Wow, congrats Charles, you appear to be a prolific writer so acknowledgement is well founded. I saw Inception also and loved it; you can keep the lame Expendable though.

jodi said...

Charles, Congrats again! Those are three movies I want to catch as soon as they come out on cable.

Charles Gramlich said...

jennifer, Oh I hate committees with a passion, but they are an inescapable part of the academic life. Kind of like splinters are the bane of carpenters. You just have to learn to live with them.

Ocean Girl, strangely, it made sense to me. But I’ve written a lot and thought a lot about dreams anyway.

laughingwolf, absolutely. Time wasted that will never be returned.

Ron Scheer, I certainly did feel some anger in Social Network. The only character I had any sense of being a real person was the dude’s roommate, who got the shaft. If the rest of them are truly real then the world is more lame than I thought.

Travis Cody, thankee.


Rick, thanks, man.

David J. West, there are several werewolf stories in the collection, though nothing I would consider Iconic. I still want to write that one of these days.

Angie, yeah, more piling on my plate than I can eat. But I’m getting used to it.

Mark, I know, you’d think they’d just let me do anything I wanted and still pay me. Bosses, man!


Gaston Studio, I wouldn’t watch Expendables again. It wasn’t anything special. I kind of liked “the Losers” better, which was in a similar vein.

jodi, believe me, I’ll let you know. :)

pattinase (abbott) said...

Fell asleep during THE SOCIAL NETWORK. And you rock, CG. So much activity.

Jodi MacArthur said...

I'm looking forward to your Lily White And Red story, Charles. And your "Midnight in Rosary" collection sounds excellent.

Steve Malley said...

Great news! I'm just coming off the tail-end of one of those hell-weeks myself. Extra sleep, wherever I can grab it, has been the order of the day... :-)

Again, congrats on the sale!!

Charles Gramlich said...

patti, I found myself pretty bored during the Social Network, and also hoping most of the characters would die.

Jodi MacArthur, Lily white and red might be down your alley!

Steve Malley, thanks. I'm just up from a brief nap now and man did I need it. Now it's hit the work load hard and try to bring it down.

ivan said...

Charles,

My firewall seems a little agitated when I hit your site...Maybe you got too many doo-dads on it. Anyway, making my old compute nervous...Or more likely it's that I have to go through Google to enter your comment space.

Anyway,


Wow. A real recent success for you. But the teaching load!

Well, I can certainly empathize and sympathize with the work load...Been there. Ended up burned out.

...Or was it burn-through?

Anyway, one day I surrendered the vows, gave up teaching and took up my Don Quixote lance as professional novelist.

...Nice work if you can get it!
Everything seems to take time, even decades.

So finally now, tongue handing out and feeling like Wile E. Coyote after that Roadrunner of publishing, I finally get this letter from some ethnic committee, asking for all four of my published novels.
Well durn. Remainders. I have remainders. Boxes of them.
Hey, they seem to want every last copy of my poor novels.

This is encouraging.

Publishers. The woods are polluted with them.
Andalay, andalay!

Actually, I wonder how Murphy's law is going to scotch me on this thing.

Heh. If anything goes wrong, it will. And when it goes wrong, it'ls go wrong where it'll do the most damage!

Well, Don Quixote is hoping this is the real deal.

Hasta Lugego.

Ello - Ellen Oh said...

I loved Inception! One of my favorite movies!

And what great news about your writing! Congrats!!!

JR's Thumbprints said...

I've managed to dodge several committees during my prison-teaching stint; for some reason, traveling the city of our state capital, where all those political hacks backstabbed one another, doesn't seem very appealing. And yeah, the Social Network was beyond lame.

Charles Gramlich said...

ivan, good news about your novels. I'm glad to hear that. Certainly sounds promising.

Ello, thanks, I appreciate that. I'm pretty happy.


JR, I manage to avoid a lot of committees but some invitations you can't escape. :)

X. Dell said...

Hmm. I'm beginning to suspect that you prefer writing fiction over non-fiction. You think?

Oh, and congratulations on the continued sales.

Charles Gramlich said...

X-dell, despite the fact that nonfiction seems to pay me infinitely more, I still prefer fiction. Talk about an idiot.

ivan said...

Charles,

I keep forgetting that you are a widely published author--certainly texbooks.
closest I got to any of that was writing travelogues.

Some years ago, a friend came in to chide, "Gee with that kind of shit, you should be in Canadian Geographic."

Hix
Nix
Stix
Pix !

Charles Gramlich said...

Ivan, well only one textbook so far. Eventualy maybe another one though it will be a while.