BREAK NUMBER SIX: She Keeps Writing. The Music Swells. End Of Series.

~Last week I finished the rough drafts of The Fourth Wall Season 2. While there is quite a bit of work left to do—as a matter of fact, most of the work left to do—I’ve told myself the story, and that makes a lot of things much clearer. Now if only I can settle on a title for Episodes 3 and 6…

~If you’re reading this, you’re digging deeper into the site than most, I’d imagine. So, here’s a little update. As I write this, the movie review blog is already up to 84 entries. Even though it’s existed for almost half as long, it is already giving the flash blog a run for it’s money in word count. Who will reach 50,000 words first? Flash fiction is currently at 45,612. Movie reviews are at 42,830. Stay tuned, but the direction for the 3.0 version of this site is starting to shape up.

~An old friend passed away recently… I’m sorry, that should have read “a movie theater of which I had a lot of fond memories—but had fallen into disrepair—recently shut down all of a sudden. The Promenade Palace 12, once owned by Hollywood Theaters and then absorbed by Regal, hadn’t much as a single upgrade since 1998 when it opened, and it was starting to show. Frequently empty as a tomb, I guess it made sense that the theater would eventually collapse in on itself, much like the mall around it. I just get bummed out when these things happen, especially since I had just been there not more than a couple of weeks before to catch a last-minute matinee of Aquaman (2018). Had I known it was going to be the last time I would ever be in the theater, I might have made more of an event of the occurrence.

And then the news came that mall management insists that the theater will open again under new management. They said two weeks, but that was nearly two months ago. We’ll see. But maybe, just maybe, one thing in this world can turn back the clock.

~As I go about reorganizing the music I carry with me on my new phone, I am struck by a dilemma. I’ve cut out all Woody Allen movies from my watching diet, for reasons. Is it okay to re-adopt the music from those films for my listening diet? I mean, the soundtrack from Manhattan (1979) is one thing, but should I really punish the Marx Brothers for the crimes of another man, long after they were all dead? It’s a subject worth some consideration.

~As I write this particular sentence, it is 02/08/19. I am eating a pretzel, listening to AC/DC, and reading a biography of Eliza Hamilton. It occurs to me while I am doing this that I am likely the only person in the entire universe doing this exact same series of things at the same time.

~Although this will just miss Black History Month by a minute, a tweet (or, rather, a series of them) came across my radar that detailed what a an African American Batman would be like.

Now, of course some are going to be bent out of shape about such an idea, and really, seriously fuck them. This in inspired. You’re telling me that Batman can credibly be The World’s Greatest Detective, a manic depressive Tim Burton stand-in, an aging Dirty Harry type, a straight up murderer*, and—in the guise of Adam West—the greatest hipster doofus the world has ever known, but can’t be an educated, woke as hell black man?

Anybody that isn’t into this idea isn’t a fan of Batman at all. Fight me, America. 

Now, that all being said, looking at a bat flying into a window and deciding that it is a symbol that will inspire fear in the cowardly and superstitious lot of criminals is kind of the biggest White Guy Leap Of Logic (™) in American culture, but I digress…

*Seriously, read some of those early Detective Comics stories from the 30s. That Batman loves two things, guns and pushing people to their deaths.

BREAK NUMBER FIVE: Why Did I Agree To Do This Again?

Whew. 2018, am I right? Can any of us remember the last year that was just normal sauce? Like 2012, maybe? But 2019 is going to be our year, right?

Ahem.

Despite a full six weeks dealing with Laryngitis From Planet X, I did manage to get ahead of the curve. In fact, at the time of this writing, this is the last non-appointment obligation* I have for 2018.

I’ve written and edited all of the flash fiction stories for this year. It was an interesting experiment, and at this point I’m pot committed, so I’ll definitely do it for another year. There’s a book there. Indeed, even without publishing a book this year, I managed to write (by my best estimates) 85,701 words, and even published most of them in one form or another. Not a bad haul for a year that quite frankly often asked why I was doing this all to begin with.

I’ve also completed the final mix on The Fourth Wall’s holiday special. I’d offer some more insight into its creation, but at this point I’m a little Christmas-ed out, and this year I actually think I’ve earned it. By the time you’re reading this, you can listen to the show your self, in case you missed it:

I have also finished my reading goal. 62 books, and we’ll aim for 64 next year. I’m relatively proud of the mix of trash and “real” books. Only a few books based on TV shows with the word “Star” in the title. All in all, part of this complete breakfast. Here’s the list. “(a)” denotes an audiobook (unabridged, naturally, I’m not some kind of animal). 

1. George Lucas: A Life (a)

2. Along the way (a)

3. Easy Rider

4. All New Letters From A Nut

5. Fire and Fury

6. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (a)

7. Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel (a)

8. Gremlins 2: The New Batch

9. The Hunt for Red October (a)

10. Thanks For The Money (a)

11. Copper and Gold

12. Star Trek: Prey: Book One (a)

13. On Writing (a)

14. Nightmare of Ecstasy

15. The Day of the Doctor

16. Discovery: Drastic Measures (a)

17. The Soul of a new machine (a)

18. The Paradise Snare

19. The Seven Percent Solution (a)

20. Wonder Boys (a)

21. Dies Infaustus

22. Into the Void

23. Rogue Saucer

24. The West End Horror (a)

25. North by Northwest

26. The Canary Trainer (a)

27. Discovery: Fear Itself (a)

28. How to American (a)

29. The Great Gatsby (a)

30. The Two-Front War

31. The Hound of the Baskervilles (a)

32. A Brief History of Time (a)

33. Go Set a Watchman(a)

34. Console Wars

35. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (a)

36. The Accidental President (a)

37. I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie

38. Invisible Man (a)

39. From A Certain Point of View (a)

40. The Man With the Golden Typewriter

41. The Shining (a)

42. Alligator

43. End Game

44. Minority Report and other stories (a)

45. Mindhunter (a)

46. The Buried Age

47. Space Odyssey (a)

48. A Study in Scarlett (a)

49. Agent to the Stars (a)

50. English History Made Brief, irreverent, and pleasurable (a)

51. The Everything Store (a)

52. Once Burned

53. The Sign of Four (a)

54. Halloween

55. The Firm (a)

56. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (a)

57. What If (a)

58. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (a)

59. Spider-man: Hostile Takeover 

60. A Confederacy of Dunces (a)

61. Halloween '18

62. Life Itself

So, let’s make 2019 ours. I think there are some opportunities there. We may just have to learn to let go of the past a little bit. Yes, past, I’m looking in your direction. You know who you are. You know what you did.

* My therapist, my wife and I (at different points in time, mind you) are quick to point out that a full 90% of my “obligations” are self-inflicted. I’d say I’m working on it, but then I’d have to come up with a due date out of the ether, so let’s just skip that part.

This is Reggie. He is a bird. He is very sensitive about it.

The premiere episode of The Fourth Wall, “Clipped Wings,” will run on Wednesday, September 27th. Therefore, over the next several weeks here on the blog we’ll run brief introductions to the characters for the show. Two weeks ago, we discussed the series’ lead, Abigail Westing. Read all about her here. Last week, we caught up with the aging sidekick to Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, MD. Read all about him, here.

This week, I must offer an apology to the memory of Edgar Allan Poe. While his poem, “The Raven,” is a classic, he got it all wrong. The bird that haunts poor Lenore’s widower never meant to scare anybody. He was just seeing if he could borrow a cup of Nevermore Brand Absinthe.

His name is Reggie, if you please, and that “poem”* is one of the great miscarriages of literary justice. He’s tried to move on from that fateful midnight dreary, but only more indignity awaited him when he started his new life at The Fourth Wall. When he arrived at The Wall, he thought he’d find a life of adventure and wonder.

Instead, he has to work in the mail room. Where else would a bird find gainful employment in the world? Having spent the last 170 years making sure inter-office memos reach their intended recipient, he’s developed a caustic sense of humor and a deep skepticism about the stoicism displayed by Director John Watson, MD and his Fourth Wall agents. 

And yet, his bravery can not be denied. Having singled-wingedly—and at great personal cost—repelled a recent attempted invasion from the vampire Dracula, Director Watson has little choice but to give Reggie an opportunity to prove his mettle among the agents of The Fourth Wall. He agrees readily, although he may yet live to regret the decision. Now, the hours are terrible, the work is hard, and he’s in mortal danger nearly every week. Some may think he’s not up to the job, but few can deny that he is the very heart and soul of The Fourth Wall.

Reggie is voiced by Mac Bayle. I’m sorry, that should read Boyle… as he is, um… Me. Why would I have decided to play one of the main characters, in addition to co-creating, writing, directing, editing, and overseeing all of the tie-in material for The Fourth Wall? Because I’m a deeply broken person, that’s why. Really, folks: Seeing all those posts written out like that makes even me question my sanity.

But seriously really, of the few acting roles I’ve taken a stab at, Reggie is the closest to my own personality. Not only that, but of all the characters I’ve written, he is the closest to me, feathers and beak notwithstanding. Sorry, Orson.

I’d write more about Reggie in this space, but guys… I’ve got to finish the actual radio show that all of this is leading to. Currently we have two episodes in the can. That’s some runway for when the show starts running on 9/27. But I gotta get more. I just gotta. Can’t stop. Can’t ever stop.

Ahem.

Next week, we’ll wrap up our pieces on the characters of The Fourth Wall with a warning. Dracula is already all around you. He’ll strike when you least expect it. In the mean time, find where to subscribe to The Fourth Wall podcast here.

*Reggie made me put that in quotes. He’s very particular on that matter, even if I think “The Raven”—at the very least—does not need quotation marks around it. That is, unless we’re talking about the title. Punctuation is super hard folks. That’s why I’m working in audio now. Also, it should bear mentioning that Reggie The Raven™ is not—to my knowledge—real. I think. Ahem.

(Re)Introducing John H. Watson, MD

The premiere episode of The Fourth Wall, “Clipped Wings,” will run on Wednesday, September 27th. Therefore, over the next several weeks here on the blog we’ll run brief introductions to the characters for the show. Last week we discussed the series’ lead, Abigail Westing. Read all about her here.

This week, let’s catch up with John H. Watson, MD. At the tender age of 165 years, he suspects that he might have lived a bit too long. At this point, he wonders if he even can die. Many years have passed since he last cracked a case with Sherlock Holmes, but he is busier than ever. 

He currently serves as the Director of the Fourth Wall. He maintains the fragile peace between the fictional and real worlds, and protects both your lives, and those of your heroes. His days are also filled with a litany of bureaucratic tasks for which he hadn’t bargained, like breaking up fights between frightened villagers and kindly monsters, or enduring the complaints of the anthropomorphic birds working in The Fourth Wall’s mail room. It certainly isn’t the life he envisioned for himself when he first met his old friend Sherlock during the “A Study in Scarlet.”

Guilt from a lifetime of mistakes dominates Watson’s thoughts. His only comfort is knowing that Merlin made far more errors in his day. He is possessed of one purpose: either destroy, or bring to justice the creature who once lived as Vlad the Impaler, and now travels as the vampire, Count Dracula.

One element is crucial to the completion of what might be his final case, and that is to ensure that Abigail Westing—a person from the Real World—joins the ranks of The Fourth Wall. A real person has never been allowed access to The Wall, but Watson is insistent on keeping his reasons for the exception to himself.

Watson is cranky and irascible, yet grandfatherly and protective. The people of The Fourth Wall trust him with their lives, and he does not take that trust lightly. And yet, he still dreams of the days where he chased murderers into the night with a volatile genius, and the love he had to leave behind in his story.

Watson is voiced by Bill Fisher. As I’m writing this, I am editing a key scene in Episode 2. Move over Nigel Bruce, Jude Law, and Martin Freeman. Bill Fisher is John Watson. I keep feeding him pages of exposition, but he keeps knocking it out of the park. By any reasonable measure, he has been with Party Now Apocalypse Later Industries longer than anyone else. Way back in the day, he played Really Good Man in our first film. For some reason, he keeps coming back when I’ve got a new project in the hopper. He’s my oldest friend, and I find it nearly unfathomable to not have him involved in a project. In addition to playing the role, Fisher did the artwork on the covers for The Devil Lives in Beverly Hills and Orson Welles of Mars. He also designed the logo for The Fourth Wall, and did the art for one of the forthcoming trading cards (more on that next week).

Speaking of next week: Watch this space, as we’ll take a little trip that famed midnight dreary. While there— 

Squawk!

Sorry, what’s that? 

That “poem” is a one-note caricature of the many-layered splendor that is me, okay? 

Uh, sure. Can we talk about that next week?

I suppose.

And the week after that, we’ll stay the night in a lonely, ruined castle high atop the Transylvanian hills. Will we survive to tell the tale—

Squawk! HE’s not here, is he?

Reggie?

Squawk!

Be quiet.

Caw-CAW.

Can’t remember the last time I was interrupted in the middle of a blog... Anyway: until then, friends. In the mean time, find where to subscribe to The Fourth Wall podcast here.

Meet Abigail Westing

With enough completed product to give us here at Party Now, Apocalypse Later Industries, I can say with 100% certainty that the premiere episode of The Fourth Wall, “Clipped Wings,” will run on Wednesday, September 27th. Therefore, over the next several weeks here on the blog we’ll run brief introductions to the characters for the show.

This week, let’s meet Abigail Westing. She’s both a former professor of literature and a soldier. Currently, she is the latest recruit to the ranks of The Fourth Wall. Hailing from our world—that is, the non-fiction one—she is unique in the history of The Wall. Since the days of antiquity when Merlin built The Fourth Wall to cover for his own grievous error, no one from the Real World has been allowed to work—or, for that matter, know about—The Wall.

Why has Director Watson broken this long-standing rule? Only he knows, and he is not about to let others know his reasoning. Despite receiving no answers as to why she is here, Westing has left behind the friends and life she knew before to join the eclectic crew of The Wall. It can be a bit of a challenge growing accustomed to living among fictional characters. Her mentor is Sherlock Holmes’ best friend, her best friend is the bird from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” and Count Dracula wants her dead. She can meet the Connecticut Yankee from King Arthur’s Court, travel via H.G. Wells’ Time Machine, and call upon any fictional hero to help her out in a pinch. It’s a good life, despite the dangers and frustrations. She’s found the one job that uses all of her training in equal measure, and the stories she has immersed herself in all her life are now a reality.

In all honesty, she’s had far worse jobs.

Now, some of you might be wondering why on earth I would want my main protagonist to be a woman…

If you’re really wondering that much, maybe don’t listen to the show? You’ll be missed, sort of…

Anyway, for those of you still around, in the radio show, Westing is voiced by Jill Sutton. Jill majored in Performance Theater in college and brings a polish and professionalism to the proceedings that is vital to Abigail’s essence. Here’s what she had to say about taking on the role:

Now this is a story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside-down. And I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there and I'll tell you how I got involved with a group called The Fourth Wall…

She added, after we got her some guacamole:

Abigail brings a sense of innocence to The Fourth Wall that I feel the veteran members lack. In reading for Abigail, I really tried to capture the sense of awe and wonderment that a "real person" may experience when entering a world where your favorite character could come walking around a corner at any minute. She is able to provide real-world solutions to (fake-world? fictional-world? help me out here!) problems. She is fiercely loyal to her old friends and her new family, and has a no-nonsense attitude when any of them are threatened.

Next week, we’ll learn a little bit about what John Watson, MD has been up to since the days of his adventures at 221B Baker Street. Before the premiere of “Clipped Wings,” we’ll make quick stops into the work of Bram Stoker and Edgar Allan Poe. In the mean time, find where to subscribe to the show here.

Introducing The Fourth Wall OR Reality is a Dreadful Place. I Try to Spend as Little Time There as Possible.

Growing up, I had a reputation in our house for having… let’s call it “trouble”… with the difference between fantasy and reality. 

I don’t think I was ever more upset than when—in the summer of ’89—I flashed my Batman™ flashlight into the sky, and realized that the bat symbol would not illuminate the night sky. 

Totally reputable scientists can tell me that time travel is impossible as many times as they like, but I’m never going to quite believe it, mainly because I don’t want to. 

I had little aptitude for math or foreign languages, but I had enough of a working knowledge of warp drive that I could probably finagle an acceptance to Starfleet Academy. 

In truth, I think I had an overdeveloped sense of fiction vs reality, and I mourned that immutable boundary*. I fully understood that I couldn’t vote Jed Bartlet for President, or join the Ghostbusters, but I never quite liked it.

When Michael Burris** talked about a radio show that was Sherlock Holmes meets Warehouse 13, it absolutely lit that same part of my imagination on fire. What if that border became mutable? What if—in a world where the difference between the fictional and the real meant little—we are subjected to a new slate of dangers? Who would protect us?

For the past year I’ve been working on that show, and while I’ve been alluding to it for months and am still working on the final touches, I'm excited to start sharing it with you now.

The Fourth Wall is a six-episode***, full-cast**** audio drama. The episodes will run each week starting in late September. The show will be available from the iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher podcast platforms. Subscribe now! The Fourth Wall isn’t going to stop at just the radio show, though. There’s going to be a “Pick-The-Plot*****” tie-in book, trading cards, and a line of sugary breakfast cereals******.

I’d go into it all more, but I want you to hear about The Fourth Wall directly from the people that live there. You can subscribe now and listen to the first season trailer on any of the above-listed platforms, but you can also hear it here:

While I might pitch the show as Men in Black meets The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen*******, the place is far more than that in my head. It’s a bit Babylon 5, and a little bit Deep Space Nine. At times, it can feel like Casablanca at the height of the war; at others it will be as madcap as Greendale Community College. Frankly, if it turns out The Fourth Wall is real, I want to go to there.

Give me a few more weeks, and I’ll show you around the place, too. In the meantime, I’ll be posting a lot about the show in the next few weeks. Artwork, bonus material, the recipe for that breakfast cereal. At The Fourth Wall, we’re just getting started.

*Although, I will admit when Chandler briefly moved to Tulsa in the ninth season of Friends, I had to work through some stuff.

**Without question, there would be no The Fourth Wall without him.

***Don’t worry; it won’t end there. I already have ideas for a second season and… ahem… a Christmas special.

****In fact, I had the privilege to work with seventeen separate voice artists over the course of the season, and I only had to play eight or nine roles.

*****Similar to, but legally distinct from Choose Your Own Adventure. Ahem.

******I’m only lying about one of those. Which one might surprise you.

*******The comic book, not the movie. We’re not animals here.

Crisis, er, *Lunch* With Multiple Macs

Someone recently asked me what I thought my life would be like if I had made different choices, or if events had worked out differently. It’s a natural question to ponder, and I’d be lying if the thought hasn’t crossed my mind on occasion. For many of us, the answers to the all-powerful “what if” are vague and ephemeral. We’re just guessing at what our lives might be had fate turned out differently.

But what if we didn’t have to guess anymore? What if we could see our alternate selves? What if it were possible to talk to—and maybe even understand—them?

Here at Party Now, Apocalypse Later Industries, our R and D department has been hard at work developing technologies* designed to pierce the veil between realities so that we can glimpse the endless possibilities that lie within. In an effort to test this new technology, I have invited my various other selves to sit around for a confab. We sat around for ruebens and soft pretzels at Margaret’s Deli here in Tulsa (Earth 247-a, or “home” to you and me).

There is the Mac from Earth 409-Epsilon, who couldn’t quite achieve escape velocity from Law School. Still thoroughly unemployable, he’s managed to fall ass-backwards into a State House seat. Still, in hushed tones he refers to the State Capitol as a “gulag.” He wears an oversized belt buckle like a droid wears a restraining bolt. He orders six beers, and then asks what the rest of us want.

Seated next to him is the Mac from Earth 13254-Beta Blocker. He comes from a world where humans evolved from jellyfish instead of humans. He sits there like a blob. Occasionally, a bubble floats to the surface of his unusual form when he wants more iced tea. He also took the full-on leap into middle management at (JOB REDACTED). Oh, the things I might have done if I was born without a spine.

Continuing around the table is the Mac from Earth 14. He seems pretty successful, and successful in the way that I might like to see myself one day. He made it out to California, and started working in film. He’s even directed a little bit, but I’d rather not discuss the titles. They’re not good out-loud words, but sufficed to say, they get regular play late at night on Cinemax**. Truth be told, he looks kind of tired.

The final responder to my trans-dimensional invite is the Mac from Fireworld-7B. He wears camo, a bright red hat—the writing upon which I won’t go into in this blog—and he looks at our surroundings contemptuously.  I get the feeling that there isn’t a whole lot ethnic food on his world. How did this guy get to the party, you might ask? Well, if we look at the infinite nature of the multiverse, then I suppose there’s a version of me that matches this description as well.

…and I would tell you what was discussed, except that would violate the laws of inter-dimensional travel. That, and I just suddenly realized that the conceit of this piece would involve me writing dialogue for several characters that have the same name. I tried a couple of times to do it, but I only managed to confuse myself. So, I think I’ll keep our conversation—or gurgling, as in the case of jellyfish Mac—private. The point I would make is that, the longer I think about these other versions of me, the better off I think I am. I hope the rest of you are living the best version of your lives. If not, there’s always time to make a change. If you need a change of scenery, can I suggest a trip to Fireworld-7B? There’s a guy there that kind of looks like me who has plenty of room at his place, just so long as you don’t mind Ted Nugent records playing non-stop.

*Or, you know a six part full-cast audio drama. Potato, potato. Which, I’m once again realizing is an expression that has almost no meaning in text.

**Cinemax is still a thing, right? Well, on Earth-14, it sure is.

NaNo? More like "No, no!" Am I right?

It’s mid-October as I am writing this, but it will be late October by the time you read it. I’m assuming we’re now living in a wild future of Cubs championships, and someone finally getting Donald Trump to say his name backwards so that he disappears back to his dimension of shriveled pumpkins and shouting*. Now that the major crises of our time are-p winding down, I want to direct our attention now to an entirely different plight.

Do you have friends who fancy themselves novelists**? Well, they may be ramping up to that greatest of challenges: NaNoWriMo***. National Novel Writing Month. One book. Thirty days. 50,000 words****. 

It’s not for the faint of heart. For that matter, I can’t understate the importance of exercises meant to strengthen and loosen up your wrists. I participated for the first time last year, and “won,” to use their term. I came in at 57,309 words and completed the first draft of what will hopefully one day become The Once and Future Orson Welles…*****

And I kind of wish I hadn’t done it at all. I may not have been in the best state of mind going into November 2015, and I think that gave the writing I produced that whole month a decidedly rushed feeling. A character pops up in Chapter One, I abandon him by Chapter Three, and then I realize that the plot falls apart without the mystery person****** before I type the words “Epilogue.” I have yet to master the muted nature of the story, and am only now finding an internal life that might save it. And the title? Oh boy, did that title elude my conscious mind until just a few short months ago.

And this is all fine. This is the work of rough drafts. Vomit some words and then spend the next year trying to mold them into something worth someone else’s time. But for me, NaNo became an endurance test, fueled by increasingly daredevil amounts of caffeine and a steady diet of Rocky soundtracks. But, writing shouldn’t be an endurance test, or at least it doesn’t have to be. Creating a writing career for yourself? That is where the endurance comes in. The better rough drafts I have written, I was relaxed and able to let my mind wander ahead of me from time to time. NaNo doesn’t really allow for that. Just as you finish your word count for the day, another day comes careening right behind it. Unfortunately, you can’t claim it’s a religious holiday and get off of work. Also, you can order T-shirts. I can see it being a wonderfully valuable thing for someone to jump start the work ethic that is needed to bring a novel into reality, but I don’t think diligence about regular writing is my problem. I need to like doing this for it to still be worth doing. If I don’t, then it might as well be my day job.

So, I’m not going to do NaNo this month. I did, however, think I should do something to test my endurance, or somehow re-enforce my writing. For a brief moment, I considered doing the exact opposite of NaNo and not write a single word for the entire month. I could try living a little and re-connect with the things that made me want to write in the first place. But then, I realized that if I spend even one day not writing, I’m a walking, talking headache medicine commercial*******. If I were to try for thirty days, I would quickly become a poster child for the Toht school of exfoliation.

So, I quickly ruled out not writing at all. I will try to clear the decks of any other projects I have been working on, and really bear down and try to fix the book I wrote one year ago. While I have spent the last several months working out many of the details of “The Fourth Wall********”, I think I have cleared my brain of all the muck I’ve gathered in the writing of The Once and Future Orson Welles that I can attack its problems once again, and this time a little more productively. I know I can. I just have to take my time.

And yet, there is still the matter of testing my endurance. I could try watching Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Again. The Ultimate Edition, no less. Not quite the restorative experience I might have otherwise hoped for. It might behoove me to try and get back on track with my reading goals for the year. I’m well below my quota, and am in very reasonable danger of not making the goal for the first time in several years. Sadly, even if I were to somehow read a book a day for the whole month, I would still be running behind. 

I really should work on getting back into shape. After a smattering of health issues last year and losing a fine walking buddy in CJ, I’ve let my physical activity slide, and its starting to show. If I keep letting these things slide, there may come a day very soon when I can’t try to get any healthier. So, instead of writing at least 1,667 words every day, I’m going to go walking. I’ll take a book with me and I will walk as far as I can before I feel I have to turn back. It won’t get me fit as a fiddle again, I’m sure, but it just might get me back on the right track. I think I can do it. I mean, I wrote a novel in a month… I can do anything, right?

*Note from the future/present: Boy, did I call that one wrong. I forgot to factor in the possibility of Anthony Weiner. And one should never negate the possibility of Anthony Weiner giving a Yeoman’s effort in ruining things.

**Of course you do. If you’re reading this, chances are you know me personally. With that being said, if you enjoy what you see here, please tell your friends about the blog…  That is, your other friends. Don’t tell me about Bloggy B. Bloggington, DDS. It’s already on my RSS feed.

***Don’t ask me how to pronounce it. Just like with religion, each person has to look in their heart and decide what the truth is. If you want to say the word like it is a homonym of “kumquat,” then by all means…

****Or 1,667 words per day, for those of you that just got a nosebleed looking at that many zeros.

*****Did I just reveal the title of Orson Book 3? I guess I just did. Gah, now I have to go actually finish the damned thing.

******Okay. You twisted my arm. I admit it. I tried to cut Orson Welles out of The Once and Future Orson Welles. Probably should have picked up on that one earlier than I did.

*******Does that make me an addict? Maybe. So what? There are far worse things to be addicted to in this world.

********Coming soon, from Party Now, Apocalypse Later Industries!