Who's a Good Boy?

That's my new dog, Maxx.  I was thinking about changing it to something like Percival or Gimpmeister Sir-runs-into-a-lot-of-trees, but I didn't want to confuse him. 

He's maybe the sweetest dog I've ever met.  Of course, I'm biased, just like most parents are of their own ugly, drooly children.  Maxx doesn't drool though.  Seriously, he's awesome.  He snorts when he gets excited (just like dad!) and he's not real keen on carpet yet, but we're getting there.  He woke up this morning and scared himself so bad that he snorted amazingly loud and woke up my neighbor...which is totally payback for all the mornings I had to wake up to Queen's Greatest Hits.  Anyway, say hi to my new crazy writing companion!

The writing goes.  I'm at a point.  I'm not sure what that point is.  I'm either 1/3 or half way through with the book.  I like where it's going, what it says (what it says about me) but something's off with it.  It's like, I like the first part and I like the last part, but I feel like there's a middle part that I'm missing.  It's difficult.  THE DEATHDAY LETTER spanned one day, so charting a path was pretty easy.  This book follows about six months.  I have to choose the moments which best reflect the story.  I guess I'm just questioning whether the moments are cohesive enough to create a whole.  I won't really know that until I finish, which I hope I'll do before I get my edits for DDL, but I highly doubt.  

I got around to reading THE FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH by Carrie Ryan this weekend.  It was a really fun read.  I like my zombies hungry.  It read like the best kind of slasher, horror flick from my youth.  The kind where the killers never, ever stop tell you why they're going to kill you, and the protagonist (by protag I mean:  Large breasted virgin who runs fast enough in the dark to always stay ahead, but manages to trip and take ten minutes to get back up) keeps going long past the point where she even knows why anymore.  The book was heavy on fantastic description, and the lurve story was touching.  The prose was a little uptight but I think that Ryan will loosen up a little as she goes, and there was a history, a mythology, if you will, that was hinted at but never went anywhere.  Neither of those things detract in any way (and I think that Ryan has stated she's writing a second book, so maybe the mythology of the Sisterhood will be addressed more in that), so I say, go read it, but don't plan on eating at the Rib joint for dinner.

Snail and Puppy Dog Tails (and porn)

The things boys are made of.  

I'm totally psyched about rescuing a dog this weekend.  I hope it works out.  I've been skirting the idea of a dog for a while; crazy, fat writer guys need dogs.  Anyway, I was on some rescue sites when I found Maxx.  He's a cute as crap little Shih Tzu.  What really broke my heart is that he's been blind since birth.  I'm going to meet him tomorrow and see what his personality's like.  Sure, I'm a little nervous about adopting a special needs dog, but I have the perfect life for taking care of a little dog like that that no one else seems to want.  Plus, he's got the same name as a major character in my WIP.  

It's been a quiet week with both my agent and editor on vacations.  I've had lots of time to go crazy over my WIP.  The good thing about it is that I have a clear picture of where I want the story to go.  The bad is that the closer I get to the end, the more I realize the beginning isn't working.  That's okay, that's what second drafts are for, and I have plenty of time.

One thing I've discovered is that I have a theme.  I mean, each of my books has had a theme of its own.  Deathday Letter has a Carpe Diem theme, my current WIP has a friendship theme, my next story has themes of xenophobism and competition and other stuff I don't even know about, but they all have one theme in common:  becoming the you you want to be.  

That's something I struggled with, that I still struggle with.  In HS, I didn't know who I was or who I wanted to be.  In college I became who I thought I had to be to survive coming out.  In life, we all have to struggle with what we want versus what others want versus what we know is right.  That's what my characters all face.  They're all struggling to become the men they want to be.  Sometimes they fail, sometimes they succeed.  Being that we're all human, I think being the man you want to be is more about moments than anything else.  In each moment, are you who you want to be?  It doesn't matter what you did twenty years ago or twenty minutes ago.  Are you who you want to be right this very second.  I think maybe if we live our lives like that, then the gains will outweigh the failures and the moments will equal a greater whole.

I promised I was going to be funnier didn't I?  Right.  Here, if this doesn't make you laugh, you're dead inside.