Links 12/30/10

Jess Nevins gives a close reading of Mary Poppins and he can reach only one conclusion: It's a horror film! “Mary Poppins’ mirror image moves and acts on its own. It smiles now—but what is it doing when the children are asleep? Is it still there, looking at them? Does it—can it—affect the children’s reality? Heroes nods at this, with Mirror Jessica haunting Niki, but the show doesn’t make full use of this. Neither does Mary Poppins, but in context Mirror Mary Poppins is actually more disturbing than Mirror Jessica.”

The best, most disheartening analysis of the Wikileaks affair so far comes from SF writer Bruce Sterling. Everyone involved, including Julian Assange and Wikileaks, gets taken to task: “Diplomats have become weak in the way that musicians are weak. Musicians naturally want people to pay real money for music, but if you press them on it, they’ll sadly admit that they don’t buy any music themselves. Because, well, they’re in the business, so why should they? And the same goes for diplomats and discreet secrets.”

Like me, you may still have folks asking you how Twitter works or why you do it. Designer Jessica Hische has put together a simple and conclusive explanation called Mom, This is How Twitter Works. I will be directing people to this page a lot, I think.

Expecting

Melissa and I found out she was pregnant quite a while ago and we've been sitting on the news. We've been told it's a good idea to wait until at least the eighth week of pregnancy to spread the news. Given Melissa's age, we wanted to wait even longer and get the results of some non-invasive genetics testing before we let the cat out of the bag. Well, the results were positive enough that we're letting the world know. Sometime in Late June or early July we'll be welcoming baby #2, whom we are calling Blossom (we called Oscar The Sprout). This is an interesting date just because on July fifth I am expecting to board a plane bound for Ireland for a little more than a week as part of my MFA program. We'll see how all of that goes.

This pregnancy has been a little rough. Melissa has been nauseated, sometimes to the point of incapacity, nearly the entire time. On top of everything else I've got going on, I've picked up the slack around the house and helped to ease her suffering -- and that's exactly what it looked like to me. It seems to be letting up, and I'm glad of that for a few reasons.

So, come the Summer, things will once again be pretty interesting. Melissa and I are trying to prepare ourselves to have a newborn in the house again, but I feel like we can't really. One of the reason I think people have more children is that they can't remember exactly what the experience was like. We're also trying to prepare Oscar. We'll see how that goes. Some days he seems excited, or at least interested, by the prospect. Some days he flat out says he doesn't want a little brother or sister.

For the next little while you can expect the usual silliness on this blog to be peppered with news about The Blossom -- how it's developing, it's entrance into the world, etc. Hope no one minds.

Wish us luck.

The Beauty of Pixar

UPDATE: The video has since been deleted from Copperfield's Vimeo stream. Sorry, folks.

This video is making the rounds, but if you haven't seen it, you should definitely watch it. It's a mashup of all of Pixar's films set to music, edited by Leandro Copperfield. This makes me want to watch each and every one of these movies again. Enjoy.

The Beauty of Pixar from Leandro Copperfield on Vimeo.

Links 12/28/10

Via BoingBoing comes this collection of Civil-War-era photos of battlefield injuries. Not easy to look at, but fascinating and informative.

Tineye.com. Reverse image search. Have a cool image but you don't know the artist? Tineye seems like it could help. Useful is good.

Once again, Patton Oswalt speaks truth. This time about geek culture: “The coming decades—the 21st-century’s ’20s, ’30s, and ’40s—have the potential to be one long, unbroken, recut spoof in which everything in Avatar farts while Keyboard Cat plays eerily in the background.”

Back From Kathmandu

To wash the taste of that previous, terribly dry post out of our collective mouth (ugh), here's a lovely video. I posted this a while ago on FaceBook, but I think that site is imperfect vessel for something so lovely. Also, I want it somewhere I can find it quickly.

Ok Go make very lovely videos. I thought this was a lost art. I especially like the "Hey, kid's, let's put on a show!" aspect that must of their videos embody. Very DIY, very spontaneous and, because of that, very full of energy and very inventive. That's too many instances of the word "very", but I think you get what I'm going for.

I also like the lyrics to this song:

In the dream you were someone different
You and everyone else all at once
You were beautiful, you were beautiful
In the dream you were just like you are

You loved everyone like a sovereign
Half magnanimous, half unimpressed
And I was talkin' too much I was tryin' too hard
In the dream it was just like it is

Everything was so simple
Things are how they always will be
You are the answer to the question that is me
In the dream it was just like it is

We were captive in, in a prison
Where everyone was guilty by mistake
And it was infinite, it was infinite
In the dream it was just like it is

And I, I asked, "Is that good for you?"
You said, "No, probably not
But everybody's gotta get through the night
And love is all we got", yeah

In the dream it was just like it is
Yeah, in the dream it was just like it is

In the dream you were someone different
You and everyone else all at once
You were beautiful, you were beautiful
In the dream it was just like it is

Links 12/26/10

I have heard rumors that Delicious.com is going away. This distress me. I like that site a lot. (For those that don't know, Delicious is a bookmarking site. Rather than create bookmarks on your computer's web browser, you save them to the site. This means you can access them from any computer with internet access.) I'm hunting around for a replacement site. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. I've started using Mister-Wong.com, but I'm not falling in love with it so far.

In the mean time, I'm going to start saving links right here. I figure that this site won't ever go away, right? I also figure that people might be interested to see what's catching my eye. Some of this is for specific projects, some of it's just because it's weird and informative and of general interest.

James Burke: Connections. One of the finest documentary series ever produced on television. EVER. Now available to stream on your Internet viewing device (otherwise known as your computer).

Jaguar Warrior - Wikipedia.

Aztec Warfare - Wikipedia.

Stone of Tizoc - Wikipedia.

In which the novel is discussed and the title is revealed

I have a habit of not talking about what I'm writing. There are two parts to this. 1) I often feel like talking too much about something I'm writing robs it of a lot of energy. Sometimes I can talk so much about something that I feel no desire to actually get it on paper. And 2) I don't want to jinx any of the projects I'm working on by mentioning them. If there's something I'm excited about and mention it to a lot of people, I don't want to have to go back to this people later and explain that it's not going to happen should some disaster befall the whole process. I've been burned by both of those in the past. Or, perhaps I should say, I have burned myself with both of those in the past.

Such was the case with my novel. Which, for the past few months, I have been calling simply, "The novel." I didn't want to mention too many specifics here as I wrote it. And now that a draft is done and some people have asked about it, I want to talk about it in more detail, but it feels really awkward. Like when you want to bring up something in casual conversation, maybe something you are really proud of -- some accomplishment -- but there's no graceful way to steer the conversation that way and so you just end up bringing it up and you feel like an ass, but you just can't help yourself. Or maybe that's just me.

Anyway, I know that no one mentioned novels, but hey, let me tell you about the novel I just wrote! For starters, it has a title: Zomburbia. It's a YA novel. Here's the elevator pitch:

Zomburbia is about a smart-ass sixteen-year-old girl trying to navigate burgeoning first love in a world infested by zombies.

That log line is a work-in-progress, but it's nearly there. Also, I am very proud of myself for having spelled "burgeoning" correctly on the first attempt.

So. A zombie novel. I resisted it for a long time. I know that zombies are everywhere right now and that makes me think that they are about to disappear. I did think about something else as a first novel, but everything I thought of interested me less than Zomburbia. Nothing inspired me in the same way. So I decided to go with my gut and hope I was doing the right thing.

The world of Zomburbia is different than other zombie stories in that the world never ground to a halt because of the zombie infestation. Of course, they were never able to get rid of the undead either, so now they're a threat, but one that everyone is familiar with.

Here's a little bit about where the idea came from. This may be of interest to exactly no one, but what the hell. I live in Salem, Oregon. Salem is about an hour south of Portland. There was a time when my wife and I drove back and forth to Portland a lot. We'd see friends, catch a rock show, go to eat, see plays. Portland is a nice place to go and experience some culture that isn't available in Salem. On one of these trips, I sat in the passenger seat and just watched the scenery roll by. The area between Salem and Portland is open fields for the most part. Agricultural land, and not all of it along the highways is developed. Sometimes it's easy to watch that empty land roll by and imagine that there's not a single person alive out there. I was thinking that very thing on that trip and, as is my wont, I started imaging why the land would be empty. Naturally, for me anyway, zombies were the first thing to come to mind. One of the things that's always bothered me about zombie movies is the way civilization just grinds to a halt. I think that humans have overcome way worse things in its history than the dead returning. (Before everyone rushes to tell me about it, I am aware of a film out there called Fido, which posits the same kind of world. Friends told me about it after I had the general outline to Zomburbia done and I was willing to talk about it. But I have purposefully avoided watching the movie because I didn't want to be contaminated by it.) I started to imagine a world where zombies had come back, but that still functioned. What would that world look like? How would you live in it? And then I imagined a bored teenager living in this world. She would think of zombies as just another nuisance in her day to day life right along with boys, her friends, her teachers and parents. Zombies might be more deadly than any of those things, but they're still just one more hassle to try and avoid as she goes about her business.

And after I knew what kind of girl this still unnamed character was, the story just sort of came to me all in a flash. Her, her friends and her dad, I knew what kinds of characters they were. I knew the broad outlines of the story. I knew what she would have to overcome by the novels end. I knew practically all of it. That sort of inspiration has never come to me before, and I remember getting home that night and writing away in one of my notebooks trying to capture all of it. It's at this point that I have to admit that I did rework that original outline. If I was given the story from A to Z, I actually used everything from, say, A to W. I changed the ending, made the girl more sympathetic and less of an outright psychotic. She was pretty dark in the original and I brightened her up a bit.

And I think I'll stop there. I don't want to discuss too much more. I'm going to start rewriting the book next month and so things might change, but the basic world and concept will stay the same.

So, if you've been wondering what I was working on for the last five months, there you go.

*The picture that goes with this post is a still from the seminal zombie movie, Night of the Living Dead, written directed by George Romero.

Cooperation!

Something I've never done before is to collaborate on a piece of writing. That may be changing. If I'm lucky.

I have a friend who also writes comics on occasion. He contacted me out of the blue last month to tell me that he had an artist who was interested in working with him to put together a comics pitch. They both know an editor at a large comics publisher and wanted to work up something to pitch to him specifically. My writer friend worried that he didn't have enough time to work on anything by himself, so he wrote to me and asked if I'd like to write something with him. For a number of reason -- the chance to work with my friend, the chance to be published by this particular company -- I said yes.

I thought that we would just be working on an idea that he had come up with, but he and the artist had not actually settled on an idea yet, so I was asked to contribute some ideas as well. My friend then put the four best ideas, two from him and two from me, into one list and sent it off to the artist. I just heard back from my friend today and it turns out the artist picked one of my ideas. I won! General congratulations and back slapping for me...

And now I feel the pressure to deliver since it was my idea that was chosen. *sigh*

And the idea? In a nutshell, t's about Mexican wrestlers, Aztec death gods and general mayhem and untra-violence. You know, the usual...

More updates as the situation warrants, of course. Oh, and this is the comics project that I wrote about on occasion last month. It'll be interesting to fit in even more writing with everything that's going on now, and everything that I know is coming down the pike in the near future.

Wish me luck.

Stonecoast and lots of numbers

For those of you who are unaware, I started a writing MFA program, Stonecoast, this Summer. I know I've mentioned it in this space a few times and I wanted to write about it at more length now that I've just completed the first semester of work. First I'll talk about my intentions in following the grad school route, and then I'll assess what I think I've accomplished this semester. Finally, tacked on to the end in an ungainly manner, I'll run the numbers on what I wrote over the last few months. Sounds fun, right?

First, what I wasn't expecting by attending an MFA program. I don't think writing that leads to publishing can be taught. I certainly had no belief that I would be handed a magical set of rules that, once followed, led to me becoming the next Stephen King. I think that lots of writing and re-writing is the only thing that can lead to publication.

And that's one of the big reasons I wanted to go back to school. Time. I'll admit that last year when I was considering applying to grad school , I was feeling more than a little lost. I had been a stay-at-home dad for two years and while that was great, and continues to be great, it was not how I defined myself. I'd always thought of myself as a writer. Only I wasn't doing much writing. Since 2003, when my first professionally published comic came out, comics was the medium through which I channeled my creativity. There was no comics work. Several proposals had been rejected and no one was exactly knocking down my door to submit more. I knew that the entire industry was in an economic downturn, but that didn't really help boost my ego.

It occurred to me then that I should get back to writing prose. Writing comics had seemed like a sideline back when I was first published, but then it became my sole focus. So, prose. I tried a couple of times to write longer prose pieces -- I've never cared much for writing short stories, though I seem to be developing a taste for them now. But it was hard to find a focus. I struggled for more than a year with one piece, got about 150 pages and then stalled out when my computer suffered a hard drive crash that was unrepairable. After I calmed down about so much wasted work, it was almost a relief. I've since recovered that word document and can't bring myself to go back and reread it to see if it can be salvaged. I may need to just consign it to the dustbin of history, as it were.

I thought that a writing program of some sort might be just what I needed. It would get me back into the habit of writing prose and it would impose a deadline to do so. Perfect. And while I don't believe you can teach someone to write, I did think that a grad program would have other benefits. Among these, I'd be exposed to a group of writing professional and I would get their critiques of my work, I'd meet and (I hoped) become friends with peers who were in the same situation as me, and I would learn from those who had already gone through the process of getting published the ins and outs of the business. Of those three the second, meeting peers, was most important to me. Living where I do, I feel sometimes like I'm living in a creative vacuum. It's been nice to have people I can reach out to via email or facebook and know that they are sharing a similar experience.

Once I decided that a writing program is what I wanted, I had to decide which one. I interviewed a couple of writers who had been through MFAs. They told me the same thing -- an observation borne out on various websites and in interviews I've read. As soon as I told them that I wanted to write genre fiction, their reply was that I would have a difficult time finding a program that would work with me. Most MFA programs are welcoming of non-genre, or literary, fiction and don't know what to do with genre. And even if a program said they'd work with you, I was told, I would find that that statement was designed just to get me in the door. Once there, I'd find an environment hostile to genre fiction. This was discouraging to say the least, and it led to me putting the idea on the back burner for a while.

I was toying with the idea of applying to the Clarion Writers' Workshop, an intensive six-week long "boot camp" for writers, when I heard a radio interview with Kelly Link. Ms Link is a phenomenal writer of surreal short stories and a recent favorite of mine. In the interview she was asked what work she did besides writing and she said that she taught at the Stonecoast MFA. That sent me running to the Internet to look up the program. Like every MFA in the country, Stonecoast has disciplines in Fiction, Non-fiction, and Poetry. What makes them unique is that they also offer a concentration in Popular Fiction (read: Genre Fiction). It didn't take me long to decide that I wanted to go there. And it was the only program to which I applied. If I had not been accepted, I would have taken it as a sign that I wasn't meant to go to grad school and I needed to find another way to advance my writing. I am so happy that I got accepted.

I was even happier when, a few months ago, Poets and Writers magazine named Stonecoast one of the top ten low-residency MFA programs in the country. What, I hear you asking, does low-residency mean? A full-residency program is one which holds classes every day. You stop your life to attend, move to the city where the college is located, etc. A low-res program just means it's part-time. Twice a year I go to Maine for two weeks to attend classes, lectures, and workshops. The rest of the time, I'm at home doing the required homework. I mail off five packets over the six months of the semester and communicate with my advisor (in the program they are called "mentors") over the phone or via email. It's all self-directed and self-motivating so it's really a case of sink or swim for the students.

Which leads to the section where I talk about what I've accomplished. One of the unexpected results of being accepted -- a real sense of urgency to my writing. Seriousness. Fucking gravitas. Let me give you an example using the novel I just finished. In the four months before I started the MFA program, I wrote just 12,500 words -- that's 56 pages. After starting the program in mid-July through the beginning of December -- about four and a half months -- I wrote an additional 91,000 words. That's just shy of 400 pages. And I didn't use the novel toward the page count for my homework. It far exceeded what the school's handbook says to send to the advisors on a monthly basis. I wrote and sent in short stories. If there was a day when I didn't write, I felt bad about myself.

And I wasn't the only person affected by this. Paying for an MFA program makes your family and friends take your writing very seriously. Suddenly my writing became a priority.

I also feel like I've gained confidence in my writing. The comments I received in workshop last July, and the critiques from my advisor, have really boosted my ego -- in a good way. And, not to worry, I'm still getting some fairly humbling responses as well.

Now that I've completed a draft of my novel, I feel like my experience at Stonecoast will be different. Next semester I see myself devoting myself to rewriting the novel and not devoting so much time to writing new material. I'll probably write enough just to satisfy the packet requirements and then use the rest of my time on the rewrites. I want to get this thing polished up and to an agent as soon as possible. I want to see if it's publishable.

And now the numbers:

Last numbers dump of the semester. Here is what I've been doing for the last five months.

As I mentioned, I wrote 91,000 words on my novel. In addition, I also wrote three-and-a-half short stories and a short film script. There was also a new comics proposal thrown in their as well.

Short story A: 8,026

Short story B: 8,682

Short story C: 5,319

Short story D: 5,089 (so far)

Short film: 2,008 (an 11-page script)

Comics project: 1,516

That gives us a grand total of 121, 640 words for the semester. That's 486 pages. Not bad. I guess I don't feel too bad about slowing down through this month (which is all about preparing for the next residency) and the next semester. Come next July, though, I bet I'll be ready to get back on that horse.

I already have an idea for a second novel...

The Holiday Pimp

File this under "shameless self-promotion." Christmas is just around the corner, Hanukkah is nearly over, Kwanzaa is nearly upon as are other celebrations about which I am unaware because I am an American with a public school education. In that spirit, I thought I would take this opportunity to point out to you, the gift-buying public, that I am the author of several fine comic books. Which comics? Well, let me show you. Consider the list below the only one you need to complete your holiday shopping:

Star Wars: Infinities -- Return of the Jedi

Art by Ryan Benjamin

My very first published work. Also the most awkwardly titled. It's an alternate-universe take on the third of the Star Wars films (or the sixth if you are a heretic and consider the new trilogy worthy of the canon). This book is perfect for the sci-fi-loving geek in your household.

100 Girls

Art by Todd Demong

My first creator-owned titled. Originally published by Arcana

Comics, it was later collected by big-time publisher, Simon & Schuster. This one is near and dear to heart. It's the story of

thirteen-year-old Sylvia Mark. She's the product of a government-funded experiment and she can totally kick your butt. Honestly,

my favorite thing about this book is Todd Demong's art, which evolved over the course of our doing the book together (as a bonus, if you follow the link to Todd's blog, he posted a new sketch of Regina from 100 Girls just today!). It starts out great and moves on to face-meltingly great. This is recommended for teens as there is a fair bit of violence.

Tales of Hot-Rod Horror

Art by Justin Nitz

An anthology of indie horror comics featuring some very cool cats (Rick Geary is at the top of that heap!) and published by my good friend Devon Devereaux. Buy this book and see my riff on classic EC horror tales of old. There's a lot of fun stuff here for those who like their horror mixed with black comedy. This is definitely suggested for adults.

Gear School

Art by Nuria Peris, Sergio Sandoval and Studio Fenix

Another creator-owned title, this one published by Dark Horse Comics. It features a young girl in a world where giant mecha

are the principle war machines. Children are taught to drive these machines at an early age. I've always thought of this series as Digrassi High meets Mobile Suit Gundum. It's high melodrama in a futuristic high school and the occasional alien menace. Yes. And it features gorgeous art by a team of Spanish

artists. Suitable for younger teens or anyone who was once a young teen.

MySpace Dark Horse Presents volumes 1 & 5

I have one short story in each of these volumes. Volume one features a Gear School short story with art by Nuria and Sergio. Volume five features a new character, Dalton, with art by Todd Demong. Both are fun little romps surrounded by an eclectic collection of very cool comics. DHP has always had a reputation for publishing some of the finest comics in the business, and the on-line incarnation was no exception (my own contributions notwithstanding). Get these for anyone who is looking to be exposed to a lot of new titles. Probably rated PG-13.

Gear School volume 2

Art by Nuria Peris, Sergio Sandoval and Studio Fenix

A follow-up to the original Gear School, this book features more of everything you (well, maybe not you) loved in the first volume -- romance, rivalry, giant robots beating the snot out of each other. Buy this for anyone who loved book one or buy both for a great little set. Again, suitable for young teens and up.

Arcana Team-Up

Art by Todd Demong and mumble-mumble...

This is an odd little number, but of potential interest to some folks out there. This book collects some team-up stories featuring characters that Arcana has published over the years. One of these is a 100 girls story published for the first time ever. It was written and drawn years ago and fell into a pit of legal darkness when the character with which Sylvia teamed up had her company go bankrupt. Some deft maneuvering on the part of Arcana makes this story's publication possible. It's a 48-page story told in two parts. Part one features art by Todd Demong, part two by a fine young man whose name I've forgotten and can't find record of. C'mon, it was like four or five years ago. Buy the book and you can look it up yourself. Recommended for older teens.

There you go. A little something for everyone on your holiday gift list. Unless I'm that person, of course. But you can always just send me cash. Happy holidays, folks.

Draft 0.9

Late Friday night/early Saturday morning I typed THE END at the bottom of my novel. And then I just stared at it for a while. And then, this being the age that it is and the time that it was, I updated my FaceBook status and went to bed.

If only typing those words meant that I was done with this particular work. Unfortunately, it's not even at a place where I can call it a complete draft--that will require another couple of months of writing. Writing I won't be able to get to until January. I have a story to rewrite for my last homework packet and much, much reading to do to prepare for January's residency in Maine. Oh, and I still need to read a short story for a friend and give her notes. Honestly, it already feels a little anticlimactic.

But I am happy to be done. This is the first time I've been able to finish the draft of a novel. Now I need to figure out what to do with it. In January, I suppose I'll start patching some of the holes I know exist in the draft. One of the things that allowed me to finish is that I didn't go back and fix things as they occurred to me. I think that's where I'd lost momentum on earlier attempts at a novel. I rewrote as I went and I lost steam. This time I forged ahead and kept notes about all of the things I needed correct. Another thing that helped me was a trick I picked up from Corey Doctorow. He suggest that anytime he came across something that he needed to look up while writing would instead get a "TK" in it's place in the manuscript. TK being two letters that almost never occur together in English. Then, once he's done with a draft, he goes back and replaces all those TKs. Using that method meant that I ran up against something I didn't know at the time I was writing, I didn't have to stop and go look something up on the amazing time-suck device known as the Internet. I just typed two little letters and continued on. We'll see how I feel once I start replacing all of those instances of TK.

So things will be a little quiet here as I try and get caught up on homework. No more writing about writing. At least not the close-to-real-time blogging I've been doing lately. There are a few things I want to write about in the next little while. I want to write about the novel I just (sort of) finished. I want to write about the MFA program I am attending and why I decided to attend one at all. And, based on an email I got from a friend on FaceBook, I want to write a little about my process of writing in general. If anyone reading this has any questions along those lines, add them as a comment and I'll do my best to answer them.

For now, here's the last numbers update for some time. Remember that these are Friday/Saturday's numbers

Daily word count: 2,339

Monthly word count: 5,319

Novel word count: 103,450

Dave Brubeck

An early update. I had to do my writing this afternoon because I won't have a chance tonight. I gave up a nap to get it done. Do you see the kinds of sacrifices I make for my art?!

It'll be another short, music-related post. I thought I'd class it up a little bit. This is a video of The Dave Brubeck Quartet doing "Blue Rondo a la Turk." Good, good stuff. I remember being at a party once in college and a girl I was talking to asked me what kind of jazz I liked. I started my (admittedly short list) with Dave Brubeck. Because of this, she said something to the effect of, "You don't know shit about jazz." I had never stated I did, but this really threw me. It's like she was telling me that I wasn't qualified to like what I liked. And I know this kind of pretentious behavior is part and parcel of being that age, but man it got under my skin. I was so mad I didn't even try to hit on her later in the evening when she was obviously drunk. Because, you know, I have principles. I think it was around this time that I started formulating my "no guilty pleasures" theory, where I refuse to feel bad about anything I like. I may have to expound on that at some point here.

Anyway, take it away, Dave:

And here are today's numbers:

Daily word count: 1,010

Monthly word count: 2,980

Novel word count: 101,111

The Johnny Cash Project + numbers

As I near the end of the draft of the novel, I feel like I'm developing tunnel vision. All I can think about is the book. What happens next, and after that? Until I get to the end. Which will be soon. All I really have time for are these bits of Internet flotsam that seem to constitute how I take in the world these days. The easiest of these to post, and those that seem most meaningful to me right now, are the music videos I've been posting. I feel like I couldn't write without music and when I discover that videos exist for these songs that are meaningful in their own right, well, I just have to share them.

A case in point: The Johnny Cash Project. Director Chris Milk (who directed the beautiful video experience for Arcade Fire's "We Used to Wait") has created a site where fans of the late Johnny Cash may contribute to a video of his song "Ain't No Grave." The result is beautiful and moving. I don't want to say too much about it, I'll leave it to you to explore the site, or not. If you click on the link, you won't be disappointed. I promise.

And here are today's numbers.

I was filled with a desire to reach 100,000 words on the novel today. That number, which is nice and round and darts around my brain in a pleasing way, has been floating just out of reach for the last few days and I was determined to put it behind me. Long story short, I did it. Yea, me. Oh, and since this is the beginning of a new month, I'm resetting the numbers. I have a feeling that the novel is the only thing I'll be working on until I reach the end. But I could very well be wrong about that.

Daily word count: 1,970 (which is also the year I was born--more resonance.)

Monthly word count: 1,970

Novel word count: 100,101