Ah, The Siren Song of A Cat at 0430

Until this morning, and aside from a standard couple of days of jet lag, I have been sleeping very well here in Athens. I don’t generally, so it has been a welcome change, and part of that change was doubtless due to the fact that Nibbler was not waking me up sometime in the three o’clock hour, as is her wont. Maybe she was dealing with jet lag, as well, though we all know from Miyazaki that this is unlikely.

Regardless, Nibbler’s trills and occasional yowls woke me at 0430 and eventually roused me out of bed entirely by 0545. We have lived together long enough that I know better than to think I could just feed her and then go back to bed, and this is even more the case these days when her food is such a fraught issue. Nibbler is well into the kidney disease stage of her life, and this has upended her relationship with food. She clearly wants it, but she has little interest in most food we put in front of her. She has an intake appointment with her Athens vet tomorrow morning, so we hope to make the transition to prescription food over the next week. It may be a challenge, though. Well, this is another reason why Athenians’ love/need of coffee is so convenient.

I taught the first session of my course, Mythology in the Films of Yorgos Lanthimos, at The Athens Centre on Monday afternoon. We won’t get to the Classics content of the course until the third week, so for now we were starting out with Lanthimos’s feature directorial debut, Kinetta (2005). It’s not an easy film, but not for the usual reasons when it comes to Lanthimos. Instead of potentially uncomfortable depictions of sex and violence, or the hulking specter of psychosexual taboos, Kinetta offers vaguely mysterious characters shuffling through a virtual anti-narrative with very little dialogue. As one of my students observed (without precisely complaining), it’s boring. I don’t entirely share that assessment, but I come to it with my own interests in independent film, so I’m not exactly impartial. Still, the students were great. They paid attention, and we had a rousing discussion of the film, what it does, and how it does it. It was a solid start to the course, and I assured them that, whether or not they enjoyed any of the future films in the course, none of them will be boring.

I’m also using this opportunity in Athens to really dig into modern Greek. I have been using Duolingo for Greek for over a year now, and that has given me an excellent context to begin more formal learning. I have a moderate vocabulary and some very basic grammar, but I haven’t forced Christina to speak Greek with me, and so my natural reluctance to sound stupid in public has kept me from trying to speak much Greek when I am out and about. To help me with that, I have enrolled in a Greek I class while I am here, and my first class (I’m joining late, sorry!) was last night. It’s been decades since I was in a language classroom, but it felt familiar and in this context a lot of fun. I’m excited to keep going and sound stupid even more often than I already do.

I can’t let this update pass without acknowledging the death of Tom Robbins this week at the age of 92. I didn’t find my way to his novels until I was in college (Thank you, Stacy!), and even then I read most of them after college while I was in the Army, since my English major kept my TBR pile Seussian if not Cyclopean. Robbins has always stood apart like authors I most admire. It’s not that he did something very well that other writers were doing; it’s that he seemed to be doing something entirely his own. Sui generis. On top of that, he was knocking it out of the park. I admire him a great deal as a writer, and from what little I know of him as a person, he seems equally admirable. He found joy and love and reasons to laugh and dance at every turn, and yet he didn’t back down when taking a stand was necessary. This is a model I’d like to emulate more. It’s easier to imagine being one thing or the other: a warrior for a cause, or a jester who keeps people’s spirits afloat in dark times. Robbins seems like an example of someone who could do both as needed. Maybe it’s something about dancing…

You’ll Myth Me When I’m Gone

Some of you know already, but for those who aren’t aware, Christina and I are in our first week of leading our first study abroad program: Bucknell/Penn State in Athens! Christina is the official faculty-in-residence leader of the trip, but as her partner and the instructor of one course this term, I am obviously helping her with the formal and informal duties and obligations related to shepherding ten undergraduates on an 89-day adventure into Greeces both modern and ancient.

Christina is teaching two of her own political science courses related to Greek political development and democracy in theory and practice, while I will be teaching a course on the films of Yorgos Lanthimos and their often fraught relationship with Greek myth. Christina is also responsible for overseeing a Culture and Environment course that brings students (and us) into more direct contact with experts in the modern Greek context, including experts on wildfires, sea turtle conservation, various agricultural concerns, and more. In addition, all of the students take an archaeology course on ancient Greece, and they are given the option of enrolling in a modern Greek course, too.

The students are fantastic, animated, and engaged. We’re all getting over our jet lag, settling in to our surroundings, and finding our bearings around the Pangrati neighborhood of Athens near the Kalimarmaro Olympic stadium and the Temple of Olympian Zeus. Christina and I have already twice returned for solid runs in the National Gardens next to the Parliament building, where we ran when came to Athens in December of 2023.

The program is facilitated partly through the Athens Centre, a local philanthropic organization that provides logistical support to academic programs of varying length and focus. There is a large classroom there where I found this wonderful framed poster from a film screening from decades past. It made me feel at home to be part of an organization that cares about sharing modern culture as much as it cares about introducing students to ancient civilization, as well.

One of the other extraordinary parts of this experience is that we chose to bring our elderly cat, Nibbler (she’s almost 18!), along with us on this adventure.

This was the first time Nibbler ever flew in an airplane, and she pretty much handled it like a pro. She was a bit cranky on the second leg of the journey from Frankfurt to Athens, but we all arrived in one piece. Now she is getting to know her new stomping grounds.

Meanwhile, our other adorable feline, Madeleine Albright (the tortie), is back at home in Lewisburg with our house sitters, one of whom comes with a cat of her own, the relatively kittenish Annata (gray and white). We get photographic evidence with some regularity that Madeleine Albright is warming nicely to her new housemate.

On Approach

I spent several months in the weeds of a revision of my latest novel, Above and Beyond. It felt like I was circling Detroit Metro Airport, low on fuel, after a particularly harrowing trans-Atlantic flight punctuated by vertiginous microbursts over Lake Erie (if that sounds like an oddly specific simile, ask me about it sometime when we’re within arm’s reach of a bar–I’ve felt safer jumping out of a plane than I felt on that flight). This morning, during another session of a wonderful Zoom writing group I joined earlier in the year when the revisions had stalled, I printed out the full second draft. This is what I consider a readable draft, and whenever she’s done with her teaching responsibilities for the semester, my fantastic beta-reader Christina will read it through and share her thoughts. Is it a story? Does it work? How do you feel afterward?

It’s not as though I can’t answer these questions for myself. In fact, I’m getting better and better at being my own editor with each project, as one would hope. But pretty much every writer will tell you some version of how crucial it is to get out of your own head at some point. I’m not yet ready to let this story go and declare it finished, but I do want to know what someone else thinks of it. In some very real sense, I want every manuscript I give her to be better than the one before it, even though I know it’s not perfect or polished, and I am all ears when it comes to suggestions from a smart and earnest reader.

And just in case you’re wondering, the problem is not usually that I really like what I have written and maybe need to be brought down a peg or two hundred. Rather, I usually need to be convinced that it does not suck, because that is what it so often looks like from the weeds. Christina already knows the general shape of the story, so she’ll be able to look past the big picture and react to the execution, too.

Assuming that my my view of the weeds is not representative of the overall effect of the novel, query letters will go out within the month, giving me plenty of time to tinker with the issues Christina and I identify.

The author, hitting Print on his novel manuscript.

Here’s some money. Go see a Star War.

There was a lot about the fall of 2020 that was distressing and depressing and generally speaking not good. However, I found out yesterday that there was at least one small silver lining of which I hadn’t been aware. By the close of the year, my debut novel Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows had earned out its advance.

This is not monumental or earthshaking news, and maybe it’s really only of interest to me and my publisher, Ross E. Lockhart of Word Horde. This means that the earned royalties from book sales (print and ebook) have exceeded the amount I was paid as an advance on those royalties. I’ll actually be receiving another check!

As of the New Year, there are over 1,000 copies of my book out there in the world, on people’s shelves, and in their tablets. For someone just starting out in publishing, that feels pretty good. It’s a modest milestone that Christina and I will take an opportunity to celebrate this week.

Of course, if you haven’t read Memento Mori, and you’re the kind of person who likes weird fiction, The King in Yellow, underground horror films, Riot Grrrl zines, and general strangeness, then by all means purchase a copy and give it a go. I think you’ll enjoy it.

I also need to give a quick shout out to my publisher, Ross (buy all of his books!), who obviously took a chance on me and the book to begin with, and who is also an excellent person with whom to do business. Small press publishing sounds like a minefield sometimes, but Ross has a well-earned reputation as a stand-up dude who tirelessly promotes his authors and their work.

Finally, this post also comes courtesy of Molly Tanzer (buy all of her books, too!), who graciously invited Memento Mori to be part of the Word Horde StoryBundle in the fall. Without a doubt, it was those sales that pushed the novel over the top.

And if you already bought and/or read, THANK YOU, TOO! (Please consider leaving a rating and/or review on Amazon, GoodReads, etc. They really do help a lot.)

The Sweet Sting of Sweat in Your Eye

Is it any surprise that an author’s blog goes dormant, becomes moribund? Not really. I’ll do my best not to treat myself too harshly, though. I have been working, even if the fruits of those labors are not yet ripe.

For about a year, from the fall of 2019 through the fall of 2020, I was doing very well on the writing front. I drafted one novel at the beginning of that stretch and set that project aside to cool (necessarily in that case) while I embarked upon a new feature screenplay and then later in the spring another novel manuscript. It is that second novel that I am still working on now, well into the revision process. For me, this is the slog, even though it’s one that I usually welcome. It’s difficult, but I don’t mind that it is.

When I was writing my dissertation, and I know I’m not alone here, my favorite form of productive procrastination was to format the document repeatedly. Dissertation formatting requirements are notoriously, absurdly strict. At Ohio State in the 2000s, there was an employee in the graduate school who seemed to relish the opportunity to pull out a trusty ruler when a student arrived with her (then required) hardcopy manuscript. She would wield that ruler like a scalpel, looking for the slightest deviation from accepted tolerances. Virtually every late-stage grad student I knew at that time held their breath in those seemingly interminable moments. I did, too, but I was pretty confident that I had done it well enough to pass inspection. That’s how I would waste time in the latter half of the writing process. It slowed things down, but it did have a pay off.

That’s where I am now. I think quarantine fatigue and end-of-democracy fatigue and absurdity fatigue have brought me to the point at which I find it well nigh impossible to concentrate on the elaborate structure of a novel, even though Above and Beyond is not a lengthy novel. I know the kinds of substantive alterations that I need to make at this stage, and yet day after day I find it all but impossible to do them.

So I don’t.

But I don’t do nothing. What I have been doing is the detail work, cleaning up the manuscript I have, remaining familiar with its contours, its shiny bits, and its rougher surfaces. This cleaning up shouldn’t happen now, in the best of circumstances. I should be making the changes that require heavy equipment that beeps when you back it up. I should be knocking down whole wings and hauling away rubble to make room for needed renovations. When all of that is over, it would be the right time for the fine detail work and then the clean up.

And yet, there is something to be said for momentum. I need to keep going, and I especially need to keep the story and the words and the world in my head. Picking it all up again weeks or months after dropping it entirely feels like an insurmountable feat. So, I’m doing whatever I can not to put myself in that position. A new semester is underway, and I am teaching only one class. I have the time to work pretty much every day, and I have the energy. I believe that I can get this manuscript where it needs to be by May. That’s my goal. I’m writing it here so that you and Idris Elba and I can keep me honest.

No Touching!

Last year, Christina and I had the pleasure of being in Portland, OR for the annual H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival and Cthulhucon (The Only Festival That Understands), where my short script Flypaper won the screenwriting award.

This year, Brian and Gwen Callahan, the current directors of the fest, spun up a virtual version of the festival so that Lurkers everywhere could enjoy the event from the comforts of their homes. I am so impressed and grateful with all of their hard work. This year has taken so much from all of us, and the HPLFF could have been one more of those things. There is a strong and active weird fiction community online, and I know that many of us enjoy those occasional opportunities to meet one another in meatspace, share meals and drinks and stories, and generally get the chance to interact with each other F2F instead of through (but really in addition to) social media.

Before I looked at the fest schedule, I had visions of finally being able to see the entire film lineup. I have lofty goals every time I go to the HPLFF, but there are so many people, places, and things competing for just a handful of days. Brian and Gwen pack the weekend with programming on screen and off, so there is simply no way to do it all in person. However, I thought things might be different with a virtual fest. I’m actually relieved to say that I was completely wrong. I think even if I strapped myself to a chair in front of my computer for the whole weekend, it still wouldn’t have been possible to see every hour of streaming they put online. I haven’t done the math (“You do the math!”), but my sense was that it was simply a losing battle. So, I needed to make some decisions.

My eventual strategy was to watch as many blocks of short films as I could and then add in feature films as I had time. I’m proud to report that I saw every shorts block offered, except for Cthulhu Girl’s Shorts, along with two feature films. My overall impression is that the level of quality was well above the general level that I have seen before at the festival. LOTS more wheat and not much chaff to speak of. Here are some very quick thoughts on a ton of films.

THE RETURN (2020, Dir. Verot, Canada) – An interesting feature that pays as much attention to character development and arcs as it does to the supernatural and VFX. Worth your time.

THE HILL AND THE HOLE (2020, Dir. Darmon and Ernst, USA) – This feature is based on a short story by Fritz Leiber, and it delivers on its premise of rural strangeness with believable characters, lively dialogue, and occasionally jarring visuals. This one did a fine job of building up real dread.

From The Hill and the Hole (2020)

Short Films I Enjoyed Immensely (the best of the best of the films I enjoyed):
Oak – iPhone-shot quarantine film; disturbing and deeply weird
Secluse – stop-motion wonder from Monsieur Soeur
Exit – fantastic Russian film with serious House of Leaves mojo
Magic Hour – fabulous Tokyo-set film
Smiles – Spanish film that is profoundly funny and disturbing at the same time
Clearwater – excellent VFX carry this well-done set piece
Bad Seed – hardscrabble, agrarian weirdness
We Said Forever – you should dread marriage counseling
Circle of Stone – slickly produced genre-bending tale
PHX – a deft twist on a classic supernatural scenario
The Instrument – a soul-quaking dreadfest ripped right out of a Delta Green op
Exist! – peerless Belgian surrealism
The Appointment – peerless British surrealism
The Black Tome of Alsophocus – awesome Argentinian short that goes from interesting visuals into fantastic graphic novel animation

Every year at the HPLFF, there is a 72-Hour Lovecraft Under the Gun filmmaking competition. Teams enter and are given a prop and a line of dialogue that must both be in the film and then 72 hours to write, shoot, edit, score, and deliver their short film. These are always great fun to see, and believe it or not, it is quite often the animated films that blow me away the most. There is a team that does stop-motion animation (in 3 days!!!) pretty much every year. But this year it was a fantastic musical short using cardboard cut-out puppets that knocked me out and made me smile for hours. If you ever get the chance, check out The Infernal Teahouse.

Those who follow me on Facebook especially will know that I spent the last few weeks pushing the Word Horde StoryBundle horror bundle curated by Molly Tanzer in support of Planned Parenthood. I was very excited to be asked to be involved, and it seems to have been a smashing success. “We” sold hundreds of bundles, the vast majority of which were the $15 bonus bundles that include Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows and fourteen other awesome books from Word Horde. That’s not only a nice royalty check for me, but it’s also a nice donation to a tried and true provider of reproductive health services. Even if you missed out on the StoryBundle, I encourage you to head on over to Word Horde and see what’s on offer.

Thank you, all!

September 2020 Horror StoryBundle!

This is an amazing opportunity for all of you out there who are fans of reading horror and the weird, in particular if you like to check out the cutting edge of indie-authored fiction. This month’s horror StoryBundle features most of the Word Horde line up, and as you see above that includes Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows, along with over a dozen other astounding titles.

Here’s how StoryBundle works. You decide how much you want to pay. For at least $5, you get the Basic Bundle in any ebook format:

Corpsepaint by David Peak
A Sick Gray Laugh by Nicole Cushing
A Hawk in the Woods by Carrie Laben
The Fisherman by John Langan
She Said Destroy by Nadia Bulkin

If you pay at least $15, then in addition to the Basic Bundle you get the other ten Bonus Books (15 books for $15+), which includes yours truly:

Beneath by Kristi DeMeester
An Augmented Fourth by Tony McMillen
Memento Mori – The Fathomless Shadows by Brian Hauser
Stonefish by Scott R. Jones
Furnace by Livia Llewellyn
Guignol & Other Sardonic Tales by Orrin Grey
The Human Alchemy by Michael Griffin
The Raven’s Table by Christine Morgan
The Unnamed Country by Jeffrey Thomas
Vermilion by Molly Tanzer

I’ve personally read 60% of these titles, and I will vouch for every one of them being worth your time and your eyeballs. I cannot wait to read the rest of them myself. This is a marvelous opportunity for you to sweep up a treasure trove of indie horror fiction for a song.

Don’t miss out, because the StoryBundle will only be available for a limited time!

It’s A Gaming Ship

Tabletop role-playing games made me who I am.

I can say that as surely as I can say it about my family, our socio-economic bracket, and my DNA. Later on, my identity would be shaped strongly by what I read and what I watched. But from age 5 on, role-playing games were at the core of my cultural experience. They formed the bulk of my reading outside of schoolwork, and they dominated how I spent my free time.

Like a lot of folks, Dungeons and Dragons was the game where I got my start. My brother (four years older) got the D&D Basic Set at the tale end of the 1970s. I was occasionally allowed to play, and in a couple of years I was also allowed to look at the slim Advanced Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks that he collected. But the D&D books were never mine. I bought one or two supplements later on, but the core books and the vast majority of our adventure modules belonged to Kurt.

But it didn’t take me long to discover other games, always in different genres. I started to frequent the role-playing game section of toy stores just as much as the other sections and eventually more. And then sometime in the mid-1980s, I discovered Mind Games, at the time the only game store in Toledo, OH. During the early- to mid-80s I purchased all sorts of different games: Chill, Call of Cthulhu, Indiana Jones, James Bond, Tunnels and Trolls, Crime Fighter, Bureau 13: Stalking the Night Fantastic, Pendragon, GURPS, Top Secret, Car Wars, and near the end of high school, Star Wars and Space: 1889. About half of these games remained on my shelves (who am I kidding, strewn haphazardly around my bedroom), read but unplayed. I wanted to play them, but I was not good at convincing my friends to play them. But we did play hours and hours, years and years of Chill, Tunnels and Trolls, and Stalking. And, of course, D&D.

Just the other day, I was diving down an internet rabbit hole when I discovered a site dedicated to collecting scans of out-of-print tabletop RPGs. I’m ambivalent about these sorts of sites. Part of me respects the archival nature of the collections, and I obviously got a powerful jolt of nostalgia when I perused it. And part of me is shocked at all of the “free” content that is still protected by copyright. I won’t link to it here, but it’s out there.

One of the things that it made me confront and ponder is the way that I have been a completist about certain things and what that means for me. For instance, I have the complete line of material produced for the first edition of Chill put out by Pacesetter Limited in the early 1980s. I am fairly certain I have everything made for the James Bond RPG, as well. I remember this vividly. When I found Chill, I found something that brought together disparate interests. By that time, I already had a strong affinity for macabre tales, and I was an avid gamer. Here was a horror RPG that seemed completely different from TSR’s D&D. I owned Call of Cthulhu, but Chill flipped more switches for me than the Lovecraft-based game did. Who knows why? Maybe it was the graphic design. Maybe it was just the world the designers created. I usually made at least a weekly visit to the toy store and later to Mind Games. Whenever there was a new Chill supplement, I bought it, or it was the next thing I bought when I had enough money. I wanted everything they produced. Anyway, looking back now, it’s almost unbelievable that Pacesetter introduced Chill in 1984, and they ceased company operations by 1986. The ripples they created spread for years after that.

When I found this trove of online scans, of course I fantasized about finally getting to play some of them. Even before the current pandemic, I had found my way back to the early relationships, gaming online with some of my childhood friends, my partner, and some new friends. Roll20 has allowed us all to connect in a way that feels vital and necessary. It has also allowed me to tick off some boxes. I played through a full D&D5e campaign, I ran a full Delta Green campaign, and I’m trying out a brand new game. But even so, I felt this greed to try out old games in a new format. Maybe I could find people to play Space: 1889. Maybe someone would want to play through those old Chill scenarios, too. Maybe I could, and maybe they would. But that really is just pure nostalgia. The connection with others that comes while playing these games is sufficient (not really necessary), but it’s not at all necessary for me to go back and finally get to play these games. Would it be fun? Probably. But it also feels indulgent.

I’m ecstatic to have reconnected with old gaming buddies and added new people to that circle. We have already created new and exciting adventures together. I’m heartened to see so many of my friends online doing the same around the world. Maybe I will play some of those old games again some day, but I’m not worried about it anymore. It doesn’t feel like a missed opportunity. It feels more like the reason I have some of the opportunities I have today. I think it’s safe to say that I pursued fiction writing because of all the different games I found it difficult to play for one reason or another. My first feature-length screenplay was a straight adaptation of Space: 1889. If I couldn’t tell these stories with my friends, then maybe I could tell them to my friends. And now to people I don’t even know.

Take to the Sea!

Well, take to the inflatable pool, anyway. This is central Pennsylvania, after all, and much as we might want to, we’re not going anywhere.

Cat People (1942), Dir. Jacques Tourneur, Prod. Val Lewton

Christina and I planned a late-summer staycation so that we could try to get some kind of non-work downtime prior to the start of whatever the fall semester turns out to be. I won’t be in a classroom this fall, but she will be (assuming there isn’t another complete lockdown), and of course the stress around that fact has educators across the country feeling anxious. At the same time, the looming threat of economic precariousness has prompted me to once again look for a more secure day job. I’m focusing my efforts on becoming a faceless bureaucrat, particularly if the position is telework eligible.

The complete first draft of Above and Beyond

While Christina had a whole pallet of projects that she wanted to complete before this weekend, I had only one: the first draft of a new novel called Above and Beyond. This is a novel I’ve been wanting to do for a few years. Its origin is a feature-length script I wrote for the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival screenwriting competition in 2013. That script had lots of cool things, but also some pretty serious flaws. After that competition, I hit upon a way to transform the story into something that would work much, much better than the story I had already told. Just like with The Hermit, I set myself a goal of three chapters a week, stuck to it, and completed the initial draft in about six and a half weeks.

I don’t want to give away too much about it, but I will say that it’s a weird noir set during World War II. I think of it as Val Lewton doing cosmic horror for the Office of War Information.

The Ghost Ship (1943), Dir. Mark Robson, Prod. Val Lewton

I’m very excited to read through the manuscript and plan out the revision, but I am also eager for the rest and relaxation. The book will be waiting for me when our staycation is over. Waiting, and watching.

Our plan for staycation involves a great deal of pleasure reading and the completion of a 1000-piece puzzle (I bought it especially for Christina; I can’t wait for her to see it!).

Cassilda’s Song

We’ll maintain our weekly socializing, including a Science and Sorcery reading group (we’re reading through Cassilda’s Song two stories at a time) and a new Roll20 campaign of Scum and Villainy. But other than that, there will be no work.* We’ll continue to run and to make cool food, and—checks notes—we’ll be instituting vacation rules with regard to beverages.

There are some cool things coming up in the next couple of months. The Outer Dark Symposium on the Greater Weird will be virtual this year, and I will be moderating two different events. And then in September I’m probably going to be a guest on a fabulous podcast in September at the same time that cool new things will be happening for Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows. Stay tuned!

I hope you’re all doing as well as you can be during all of this. Stay strong, take care of yourselves, and look after your crew.

* There may be a little work, but it’s the kind we have written actual signed contracts to ourselves about so that it doesn’t cascade into betrayals of the staycation credo.

The Inner Sanctum

When we moved to central Pennsylvania last summer, there was a spare bedroom that we identified as my office. The whole house needed a fairly serious cosmetic make over, and I can’t tell you how excited I was to basically imagine my work space from the ground up.

Square one.

I know not everyone likes this green, or how much of it there is, but I love it. I feel comfortable surrounded by it. I worked like this for months, surrounded by stacked boxes, and having to shoo away one of our cats who wanted nothing more than to mark this room as hers.

Taking up carpet, padding, and tack strips.

The new green paint was there on the walls to encourage me to think about how the office would and could look, as soon as I got off my ass and did something about it. But, man, moving is exhausting in all sorts of different ways. But when I finally got around to transforming this room, I was so excited to see it come together.

New floor!

After months of various home improvement tasks, it was time to lay down new floors in my office and a couple other rooms. I had only done this sort of thing once before in a small hallway, but I think they turned out pretty nice. Way WAY better than the previous low-pile, deep padded, heavily trafficked carpet.

Piece by piece.

Here is all the furniture except for the bookshelves. The green is comforting to me, but the books…oh, the books.

Done! (basically)

This is the lived-in version with books, and rug, and various tid bits that have yet to find permanent homes.

Mission control.

The long Ikea desk is the centerpiece in terms of furniture. Being able to have a permanent typing desk right next to my iMac workstation is just heaven. I know it’s a portable typewriter, but working at the dining room table was a bit of a hassle for everyone involved. And for those of you wondering, that typewriter is not for show. I have written three book-length manuscripts on it. The printer also has a document feed scanner, so I can type for a day, scan the pages, and have both a PDF and a text file in minutes.

The most amazing Angel Heart (1987) print! There is so much detail in this image; I can stare at it for hours…

This print hangs right above my reading chair. I can’t begin to tell you how much joy this print brings me. It’s a brilliant piece of art that pays tribute to another brilliant piece of art.

It’s been almost a year, and the office is finally complete. In my experience, that is faster than I have ever been able to effectively organize and decorate a work space. I have already done plenty of work of which I am very proud in this room: a new novel draft, a short screenplay, a feature, a couple more treatments. I’m eager for the projects yet to come, too.

I already need more shelves, though…