You had to wonder how long into "sheltering in place" it
would take before I finally wrote a blog post. It's been... 17 days. That's not
too bad, considering I haven't written one in nearly 11 months. At least not
one that I've published.
That's definitely a thing. I
have written plenty of blog posts over the years that I haven't published. Some
of them were pretty good too, like the Scott Weiland tribute I started on the
day of his death and then never finished. Maybe I should finish
and publish that one even though it's been like 4-5 years since he died.
Nothing that I wrote then doesn't still hold true.
Now is as good of a time as
any, I suppose, for a new blog post. I mean, I am on a mini vacation from work
for five whole days! It was supposed to be for a wedding, but, well, you
know... Anyways, it's now a well-needed break for some rest and relaxation.
I am listening to the new Pearl Jam album, Gigaton. It's not super catchy, but it is kinda
catchy. Not that that's bad. In fact, I am really enjoying it. The right amount
of catchiness, I suppose. It's not one of those albums with knock them out of
the park singles, necessarily. It more of a whole piece, and content-wise it is
definitely appropriate for the moment. What amazes me, as someone who's been in
bands, that the members of Pearl Jam, who have played together consistently for
such a long time now, still get along well enough to make pretty solidly good
music together. This is probably their best album in a long time, too.
For me, creatively, things are
also looking up. Not only am I playing music again, but I am also finishing my next book, the semi-autobiographical short fiction collection, Asshole
Years. It actually started as a re-edit of my first book, the now out-of-print Tales from the Fringes, but from it I only kept four
stories and totally re-wrote and re-edited them, so it didn't really seem
fair to call it a new edition.
For the record, the stories
in Asshole Years that came from Tales from the Fringes are
"Tin Cup" (formerly "The Other Side of Cool"),
"Greasy," "Maturity" (formerly "A Hipster
Confession"), and "The Opossums" (formerly "The Backwoods
Event").
Another two of the stories
in Asshole Years have also already been published, but
elsewhere: "Freshmen" as an e-book single, "The Day the Music Died," on
Smashwords, and "Truck Shop," which was originally published in Literally
Literary on Medium.com.
Finally, there is one new
story, "Dropout," which is about 25% of the entire collection and one
that I am pretty proud of.
Originally there was supposed
to be three more new ones but I decided to pull those and put them into their
own separate set of longer short stories (probably 10-15K words each), tentatively titled Fucking.
That probably won't last as the title, so I guess technically it's more of a
working title.
All of the seven stories
in Asshole Years have origins in stories that I wrote for
classes as a student at Kent State when I finally came back and finished my
bachelor's degree in 2010-2011 after a long hiatus. You could say that I was in
a kind of nostalgic head space at the time--plus, in most of the workshops I
took, we were encouraged to write in realism, and I really adapted well to it
(I think). The plan is to release the collection over the summer. I am still
working on a specific date, as I am still editing it, but I am upping my game
quite a bit this time and publishing through IngramSpark with my indie
imprint, Gott Press.
This increases my expenses, but I don't mind putting more money into it to come
up with a better product and also break away from using CreateSpace, which is
owned by Amazon.
Music-wise, I have a couple of
projects going on: one that I started with my brother, and one that I am
pursuing on my own.
The first one, which we are
still in a large way sorting out the details of, will hopefully eventually turn
into a full-band situation. We're not exactly sure of the genre, but there's
definitely some areas where we overlap musically and so we plan to just lean in
those directions.
The latter has been sort of my
ongoing, off-and-on-again solo
act/one-man-band-acoustic-punk-folk-psychedelic-noise thing that I have been
doing since roughly 2003, when I first learned that one of my favorite things
on the planet to do is to write and record albums completely on my own. If
you're not familiar with this project, I have on Soundcloud my two most recent recordings, Survival Pilot (2013)
and Daydream Death Rattle (2009). I highly encourage you to check out the self-titled one, at least, as those songs still hold up pretty well.
I am even contemplating doing
some gigging again, eventually, as I have grown at least a little as a singer
and a musician since the last time I performed for an audience. Actually, between
2007 and 2009, I used to perform somewhat regularly, but I stopped to focus
more on writing, and I haven't performed as a musician since.
We'll see. I might take
advantage of the opportunity and start out by putting stuff online or doing a
"live from the basement" sort of thing, I don't know. I think my
position at work, having to manage people, has helped me overcome a little my
stage fright.
In summary (as I read on more than one student paper during my tenure
as an adjunct college professor), I guess that means I am surviving being
forced to stay home. I don't really mind it, to be honest. I am definitely a
home body, so to speak. After all, it's hard to work on projects when you're
not home, or, you know, dead.
Until next time, I suppose
(there I go again), ta ta!
