Finally got around to taking some glamor shots of Sim Kern's THE FREE PEOPLE'S VILLAGE. which I was very honored to design the cover(s) and endpapers for.
Sim Kern's THE FREE PEOPLE'S VILLAGE release at Brazos Bookstore the other day went superbly well. It was a full house, and their conversation with Ehigbor Okosun was engaging, funny, and informative. The best part for me was for sure getting to see Sim in person (and also editor Irene Vasquez!) who despite living in the same city and getting to design their book cover, I actually don't really see much of at all.
So, the above photo bringing Sim, Irene, and myself all together in the same physical space is in actually a very rare occurrence indeed.
THE BIG BOOK OF CYBERPUNK drops in just 13 days, and its impressive table of contents has been announced on File 770.
Like other Best-Of tomes, this thing is a doorstopper coming in at 1136 pages. It is very humbling to see one's name listed alongside giants you've read for years; like Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, and Bruce Sterling, but it's also great so see the book bringing together many awesome contemporaries like Omar Robert Hamilton, Ales Kot, and Corey J. White. Not to mention boundary pushing thinkers like Samuel R. Delaney, Charles Stross, Lauren Beukes, and many more.
Looking forward to seeing it in person and spending the next 10 years attempting to read it all.
Time-blocking didn't quite work out for me yesterday. The epoxy resin I was planning on using on an art piece had yellowed due to less-than-ideal storage, so I put in an order for some but until it arrives, I have to keep the setup I have in place for it undisturbed because it took a while to prep (artwork perched on plastic on table, everything leveled—not easy to do because the entire house is in fact somewhat tilted). So when I switched to taking care of fulfillment instead, the occupied tablespace made it a little less efficient and it took way more time. As a result several other things I wanted to do never got done.
So, in the future, days where I do fulfillment shall be dedicated entirely to fulfillment and nothing else. If it is really terribly necessary to squeeze more in there, it'll only come after fulfillment is taken care of, just to ensure no potential mishaps lead to an unusable table.
And the same goes for artmaking, better to reserve specific days for that and only that.
And today I am with migraine. There go all my time-blocking plans now.
Awoken at 3:30 AM today for no comprehensible reason, after getting all of 3h-47m of sleep. This despite yesterday being a wonderfully productive day. Got some scriptwriting in, along with thumbnails, and also some painting. Did a grocery run, exercised for an hour, cooked a slamming dinner with enough leftovers for today while managing to keep the kitchen tidy. Took care of business email (inbox: zero), got some reading in, and even got to socialize later in the evening. And look at me, back to blogging again. I'm liking this time-block method.
Spending this week developing my timetable as each day progresses because the nature of what I do doesn't quite allow for identically plotted out days. Today for example, there will be much fulfillment of online orders from my shop, newsletter-writing, possibly some very belated website-updating, in addition to looking after my kid in the late afternoon into the evening. And my personal email inbox has been taunting me with the number 71.
Let's see what this timetable looks like by week's end and whether or not it could be reapplied to next week.
There are a bunch of things I haven't been doing enough of, and a few things that have been moving a little slower than desired, so rather than my usual to-do-list method of going about my day (where often times many items on the list don't end up getting checked off and are relegated to the following day's list), I'm attempting to implement a stricter time-blocking method. Essentially, a timetable. Like the kind they used to give us in school (which I imagine they must still be using in schools today).
It is for this reason and this reason alone that I managed to work in a blog entry this morning; I had it time-blocked.
Let's see how the rest of the week goes.
Peter Biskind's DOWN AND DIRTY PICTURES is worlds apart from his EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS. Whereas the latter is inspiring, the former is just icky. Not a fault of Biskind, but the Hollywood scene of the 90's he's writing about is very different from that of the 60's/70's. You feel like you've been thrown into a pit of sheer nasty backstabbing scum. Everyone is terrible. Every time I read a bit, I just feel like taking a shower and sitting on a park bench somewhere pleasant, where you might strike a delightful conversation with someone without want or ulterior motive.
Spent yesterday doing kitchen things: filling the jars in my spice cabinet and extracting all my groceries from the packaging they came in, emptying them all in reusable containers. What the latter activity does (which I'm realizing is a highly unusual practice by most peoples' standards) is completely de-brand my kitchen. No longer is my fridge or pantry an eyesore, and no longer do their contents constantly scream a cacophony of brand advertisements whenever I make use of the kitchen. A de-branded home is one of the ways to ensure your place of residence is a true refuge from the constant corporate messaging of the outside world.
Of course, they still tend to reach you through screens, but there are ways around that as well. Ad blockers for your browsers, and streaming services instead of standard television for instance.
Some friends have asked me “But why?”
Because every one of those things is a tug for attention, even if very minor, they all add up. Upon elimination, you'll be surprised by the serenity caused by the mental alleviation—and thus mental clarity—of this sort of cleansing.
Just had my first “fuck, what was I thinking?” moment.
In preparation for drafting the last two chapters in THE SOLAR GRID, I've been re-reading all THE SOLAR GRIDs I've put out to date in an effort to find all the authorly breadcrumbs we tend to leave ourselves. Breadcrumbs that often come in handy when bringing the whole yarn to a close. But as early as chapter 2, I found that I may have done the unspeakable. It's really fucking bad. There is a point to it, but that point doesn't quite transpire till several chapters later, which is way too much to ask of a reader. It's the sort of thing that upon sight makes you want to toss the book at the nearest wall. As early as chapter 2 for crying out loud!
Only now, 8 years later, am I able to envision a far more graceful way of pulling it off, which I may just have to adjust for the collected edition. Shit.
I'm rather surprised no one has called me out on it yet. It's really fucking bad. Fml.
And then there are typos littered throughout the series. So many terrible typos. So many printed copies including said typos as well as my horrible Ch. 2 mishap. This will drive me mad, at least until the amended collected edition.