Unplanned, unprepared, unexpected

So I needed a new car. The need wasn't urgent, mind you, certainly not on the level of 2005 when the car I was then driving threatened to curl up and die any time I put the key in the ignition. I bought my blue PT Cruiser then, the first vehicle I'd ever purchased because it was what I wanted to drive. I loved the retro styling (no surprise, since a 1937 Studebaker President is my dream car) and finally got to drive a standard again (driving automatic feels more like playing a video game to me). I actively loathed the red Dodge Neon I had been driving, a hand-me-down from The Wife. The week before, a cloud of acrid smoke literally puffed out of the dash, an ominous warning. The radio had stopped working, but would randomly turn on to harsh static and increase to ear-splitting volume, resisting all attempts to turn it off until the car itself was turned off (which raised the spectre of the car not actually starting again). Lest you think I exaggerate, Monkey Girl can back up everything I've said about that Neon. It was truly a wretched car.

The Cruiser, pretty much the opposite. It was fun to drive. The big windows gave great visibility. It was amazingly roomy inside, and with the seats out, I could haul crazy amounts of stuff (lots of stray hay in the back attests to that). Yes, it had flaws. It was too heavy for its size, and consequently got gas mileage that, while not awful, was far short of what you'd expect. One of the seat belts in the back was broken, so once Bug outgrew car seats, the entire family could no longer ride together in it. The internal computer died on me once, which cost quite a bit to replace. But you know what? The engine ran well, the clutch was good and I drove the hell out of that little car--to the tune of 175,000 miles. I didn't absolutely love it, but I really, really liked it.

But, sad to say, it's time had come. I have no doubt I could drive it to 275,000 miles and beyond, but it had reached the point where repair costs exceeded or approached its value. Case in point--the air conditioner went out. The condenser needed replacing, as well as some other parts. The cost to have cool air flowing once again? Roughly $700. Ouch. Fixing that back seat belt would run north of $300, and other little nagging issues were sure to come up in the future. In short, it had reached the point where it cost more to keep than replace. So I started looking around, and pretty much settled on getting a Chevrolet HHR. Now the HHR is a straight-up copy of the PT Cruiser, overseen by the same executive after he left Chrysler to join GM. I don't like the blocky styling nearly as much, but do like the better gas mileage. Both the PT Cruiser and HHR are discontinued, but they made HHRs through 2011 so more late model, low-mileage vehicles should theoretically be available.

The Master Plan (devised by The Wife and myself) called for me to suffer through summer without AC until September/October, when a number of wedding payments came due. Couple that income with money saved, and we should have enough to make a large down payment--if not pay for a new (used) HHR outright. Which was all fine and dandy, until yesterday afternoon. About once a week or so I do a car search online to see what's available and maintain a feel for the market and availability. And during this search I stumbled across a 2009 HHR with about 30,000 miles on it for a really, really good price. Yes, the car's older than I wanted, and yes, the mileage was a bit higher, but still, it was a high-end trim model going for less than 50 percent what it cost new. I showed the link to The Wife, complaining that knowing my luck, such a deal won't be around when we're ready to buy. And she replied--get this--"Why don't we go ahead and buy it then?"

Seriously, this is not the way we operate. We devise a plan and stick to it--one of the reasons why her photography business has done so well. So as we drove to San Antonio in my PT Cruiser with the windows rolled down and the wind blowing our hair, we felt very, very naughty. But you know what? It was probably the right call. Our down payment was much more modest than we'd planned for, but the dealer gave us 3 percent financing, which is fantastic any way you slice it. After September, we'll have paid most of it off and will probably be free and clear by next spring. And this here is the new car:

It's a nifty car, with all sorts of whistles and bells I haven't yet deciphered. Having cruise control again is very nice, and keyless entry is amusing (although if you unlock the car door using only the key and not the clicker, alarms will go off. Trust me). It came with no owner's manual, one of the perils of buying used, but I'll manage. All the seat belts work, so the whole family can ride in it. And the AC works, so no more overheated commutes. I only have two complaints, one is that the columns are thick and windows small, so visibility really sucks in comparison to the Cruiser, and the interior is black. The paint job is a nice, reflective silver/goldish blend (let's call it "electrum" for all you old D&D players out there) but the insides are black. Hey, Detroit, not everyone lives in a northern, sun-deprived climate. How about coming up with an interior color scheme not guaranteed to scald someone's butt cheeks off on a Texas August afternoon, huh? Oh, and the car's automatic, not standard, but The Wife insisted on that point.

It's a nice car, and I fully intend to clock another 100,000 miles or more on it before all is said and done, but I'll admit I was surprisingly nostalgic when we left the lot, leaving the old Cruiser behind. I put lots of miles and memories into that car, and the HHR has a lot of catching up to do.

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Nacogdoches or bust!

Well, it's official and can now be shared (although a year ago I'd have laughed at the very idea): I am a presenter at the East Texas Historical Association's fall conference, September 27-29, in Nacogdoches.

Don't feel too bad if you didn't see that coming. Academic/historical conferences aren't really in my wheelhouse, and I'm riding a bit of a steep learning curve here. These conferences differ in significant ways from the literary science fiction conventions I'm familiar with.

I'm scheduled to present during Session V, 9 a.m. Friday, September 28. The session title is “The Yellowest of Texas’ Roses: Prostitution in the Lone Star State.” My paper is titled "The Last Madam: The Unexpected Life of the Chicken Ranch's Edna Milton (1928-2012)." Presentations are limited to 20 minutes, with a short Q&A follow-up, so obviously I'm going to have to be judicious in what I include and what I discard. An expanded journal article might be worthwhile in the future, but at the moment I've got to focus on getting through the second draft revisions of the Chicken Ranch book.

There are two others presenting during my session, Beverly Rowe of Texarkana with "Texarkana's Prostitution District, Swampoodle," and Jennifer Bridges of the University of North Texas with "The Katy's Ladies: Prostitution in Early Denison, 1872-1880." Needless to say, I'm looking forward to both of these presentations as well as making more people aware of my upcoming book. I just wish I had a publisher lined up!

I also confess to a wee bit of trepidation going into this conference. These folks in attendance are hard-core historians and academics. I, at best, am an interloper with a one-off history book. My background is in journalism and science fiction, neither of which are likely to bolster my street cred with this group. If I get out of the session without having anyone throw rotting vegetables at the podium, I believe I'll count it as a success.

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Friday Night VIdeos

There's a surprising lack of Talking Heads featured on Friday Night Videos, considering how much I listen to them normally and the fact their song, "Nothing But Flowers," was the first video I featured here way back in 2006. Well, the only way to correct the dearth of Heads is to meet the challenge head-on. Here's "And She Was."

Previously on Friday Night Videos... ZZ Top.

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Of gorillas and gasbags

So, Armadillocon has came and went, and everybody else in the whole of creation has posted their thoughts and comments about the convention except me. Par for the course, I'd say. I've got a larger wrap-up coming, but I'd like to focus for the moment on Friday night's "Gorilla of the Gasbags" story challenge panel. As I mentioned last week, Joe Lansdale threw out a challenge a year ago to write a story centered around the cover of an exceptionally rare issue of Zeppelin Stories. We had one year to write them, and present the finished product at the panel in question.

Quite a few folks turned out with stories, myself included. "Prince Koindrindra Lives" is a direct sequel to my story "Prince Koindrindra Escapes," which appeared in Lone Star Universe Cross Plains Universe back in 2006. Except, since I'm not a particularly fast writer, and I'd only completed the first draft of my Chicken Ranch book the week before, I didn't get mine completed. Specifically, I wrote about 11 pages of what will probably be a 30-page tale once all is said and done. Everybody else finished theirs. Or at least claimed to. I'm not going to accuse anyone of bending the truth a bit, but those folks who hung me out to dry know who they are.

Bill Crider lapped the field by writing two stories on the topic. Edgar Rice Burroughs was a popular touchstone, and Mark Finn got in a jab at L. Sprague de Camp. Chris Brown wowed everyone with the revelation that his grandfather actually worked in a German Zeppelin factory, and had a trove of artifacts and souvenirs from those days. Chris also went against the grain by writing a borderline-pornographic innuendo-laden story based on the secondary "Balloon Juice" title from the pulp cover. It was, I must admit, magnificent.

I ended up reading several pages of Neal Barrett, Jr.'s story, as he couldn't make the panel (it's a corker!) as well as a little more than half a page of mine. I got lots of compliments afterward about my reading, but I found it a tad troubling that some folks hadn't realized I'd done two separate readings (Neal's and my stories both had strong 1930s German elements to them). To clear up any further confusion, here is what I read (it might help to know that Koindrindra is a 30-foot-tall ape who has just skydived along with 100 or so paratroopers into Castle Neuschwanstein):

Koindrindra had barely taken two steps toward the keep when the giant doors exploded open, propellering through the courtyard to embed themselves in the Palas wall. The very force knocked Koindrindra back. He stared at the keep, not believing his eyes.

Through the smoke-filled doorway, backlit by a hundred work lights, rumbled a massive... something. Mounted on a twenty-foot armored tank chassis, a sectioned cylindrical torso rose with a black Iron Cross emblazoned across the chest. One either side of the armored cylinder extended two jointed, hydraulic arms. One ended in a vice-like clamp, the other in a still-smoking gun barrel. Mounted atop the torso, more than thirty feet high, sat what could only be described as a head, ape-like in design.

The mad Fritz could not win against Koindrindra on the field of battle, so they'd build a mechanical abomination to do it for them.

Panzer Affe!

Amazingly, every single story fragment read came off as solid, quality literature. Don Webb actually recited his from memory, as he'd forgotten his manuscript. Amazing. This really needs to be anthology, as the stories ranged widely in tone and theme. I'd certainly buy it.

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Catch a Wave

How do you make a writer happy? Get them a good keyboard. I don't consider myself particularly picky when it comes to keyboards--as a journalist, I've written on all manner of keyboards of varying quality and style in my life, and short of some of the glorious steampunk keyboards out there that are scratch-built by folks more technically inclined than I, there isn't much keyboard lust lurking within me.

But even I have standards. At the university where I work, there's a two-year computer refresh cycle, and I've noticed new keyboards are getting smaller and flimsier with each new generation. I can only assume this is a cost-saving measure by the manufacturer. The Wife bought a high-end, graphic-centric computer for Lisa on Location a couple of years ago, and already the letters on the keys are wearing off. Seriously? I realized the other day that the keyboard I've been using dates back to the 90s, from a pre-hard drive PC that I had to boot from a floppy. Seriously. I used it instead of the newer keyboards that came with various replacement computers because it was solid. It felt almost like typing on an electric typewriter, as opposed to pecking at calculator keypads. But it was old, and I didn't particularly like it--it was just the lesser of various keyboard evils available at the time. I mentioned this to The Wife while in Office Max the other day, gazing at the various different keyboards available that made my old clunkers look like, well, clunkers. And she said, "Go ahead and pick one out." My hardwired frugality made me hem and haw and list all the reasons why it wasn't necessary, but she just repeated that I should pick one out. So I did, a Logitech Wave wireless keyboard:

I didn't particularly want a wireless keyboard, but I did want the ergonomic design the Wave offered (Microsoft has two different ergonomic-style keyboards, wired and unwired, but for various reasons I didn't much like either of those. Plus, you know, Microsoft). Folks, let me tell you that up until I got this keyboard home, I numbered among the skeptics of the whole ergonomic keyboard concept. After all, as a journalist and writer, I'd used traditional keyboards for more than 20 years with no ill effects, right? I've got to say, trading out my old keyboard for the Wave was akin to replacing burlap sacks on my bed with Egyptian cotton. Huge, immediate difference. Typing became so much more comfortable and silky smooth, and that's starting from a point that I never considered uncomfortable to begin with. The keys are solid, with good motion and just the right amount of resistance for touch typing. I've never been a particularly good touch typist, but I find myself doing so much more--and much more accurately--in the few days I've used the Wave. The keyboard is laid out in a shallow arc to compensate for the different angles you hands approach it from, and the keys themselves are patterned in a wave to allow for the different lengths of your fingers. And there's a nice padded bumper for your wrists. I didn't really think those touches would make much difference, but they seriously do. There are also various function keys you can dedicate to specific tasks--the first thing I did was set one key to automatically open WordPerfect for me, which doesn't sound like much, but has had a subtle yet distinct impact on my productivity (and WordPerfect X5 Home & Student is now available for $35 since X6 just came out. It's a vast improvement over WP 11 that I had been using, but seriously, anything is an improvement over any version of Microsoft Word).

The one big complaint I have with the wireless keyboard (and bundled mouse) is that for the first day or so I used it, random, unexpected lags would strike. The keyboard or mouse would seemingly go dead, only to spit out all the keystrokes or movements I made during the time out. Almost like there were buffering issues. I checked around online, and this seems to be a common complaint, and one that Logitech seems very reluctant to acknowledge. At least directly. But whatever the cause, folks have come up with a work-around, that is, plug the USB transceiver into an extension cable to move it away from the PC where various signals might interfere with it. Logitech itself seems to accept this, as they include an extension cable with the keyboard, although there are no instructions or explanation for its inclusion. How bizarre! I have started using it with the transceiver (you can see it just above the keyboard in the image) and have encountered zero lag since.

So, there you have it--a high-quality, ergonomic keyboard can dramatically improve the comfort level of a writer and improve writing productivity. Even for those who don't think such considerations are an issue. My one bit of advice would be to try out different keyboard layouts on store display models to get a feel for which might suit you best. And save the receipt--if worse come to worst, you can always return it and try something else. But yeah, I'm happy about a keyboard. Go figure!

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Armadillocon looms

Okay, this is nuts, but Armadillocon is in July this year. I know, I know, that mid-summer date is tough to wrap your head around, but the convention is sure to be a great deal of fun, as always. I've got a fairly light panel load this year, and the entire programming schedule may be viewed on the official website. Here's my slate for the weekend:

Friday
The Still Changing Definition of Urban Fantasy
8 p.m.-9 p.m., Trinity
A. Bishop, J. Blaschke, C. Neill, N. Holzner*, S. Leicht, A. Marmell
This subgenre label has been around for decades -- but would War for the Oaks or other classic works even fit in today's category? What does it mean, and what does it include and exclude? How is it changing, and how is it likely to change in the future?

Saturday
Alternate History: The Way Things Weren't
11a.m.-Noon, Sabine
B. Mahoney*, P. Griffin, J. Blaschke, J. Rountree, S. Utley, H. Waldrop
What are the touchstone tales of what might have been? Why is this even considered science fiction -- and what about fantasy alternate history? What does it take to write a good alternate history?

Learning from Others' Mistakes: Writing Errors to Avoid
4 p.m.-5 p.m., Sabine
J. Blaschke*, J. Cheney, U. Fung, S. Lynch, J. Moyer, W. Spencer
You don't have to make every writing error personally. How do you use others' failures as a way to improve your own work?

There's also one other panel that I'm sure to attend, "Apes and Zeppelins" on Friday. There's a story behind that. Last year, during one panel on apes in science fiction, the cover for the ultra-rare Zeppelin Stories pulp featuring the mind-bogglingly awesome promise of "Gorilla of the Gasbags" came up. Only a few copies of this pulp exist, all in the hands of private collectors. Nobody in out SFnal circle has ever read the story, although I believe Jess Nevins has a scan of the first page. On the rare occasions a copy of the issue comes up for auction, it sells for thousands of dollars. The story has attained a certain "Holy Grail" status because of its unattainability. So during the panel last year, Joe R. Lansdale (his ownself) threw out a challenge to everyone there: Write a story based on that cover imagery before the next Armadillocon. Now seriously, how am I going to pass up a chance to write a Zeppelin story? With a gorilla? I accepted, as did half a dozen other writers there.

Alas, I don't think I'm going to succeed in meeting the challenge. One reason is that I've been, you know, killing myself trying to get this Chicken Ranch book finished. That takes priority over everything else, no matter how much fun it may be. The other reason is that the convention is significantly earlier this year, robbing me of precious writing time. I've started my story, yes, and made good progress, but will it be finished by Friday? Not terribly likely--although I do have some nifty passages I'm quite pleased with. No, the apes-and-Zeppelins story is a fun interlude I'm allowing myself before I dive back in to the second-draft rewrites of the Chicken Ranch book. If all goes well, I'll put the short story to bed next week and get back to the book right after that. Still, I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else came up with, and hope they don't mock me too harshly for falling short of the challenge.

Friday
Apes and Zeppelins
9 p.m.-10 p.m., Trinity
C. Brown, B. Crider, S. Cupp, M. Finn*, R. Klaw, J. Lansdale, J. Nevins, D. Webb
Last year Joe Lansdale tossed down the gauntlet at the Apes in SF panel, challenging all comers to produce a story worthy of a classic cover from Zeppelin Tales: "The Gorilla of the Gasbags". Our valiant panelists discuss their responses.

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Chicken Ranch report no. 25

IT IS DONE! After three years of research, dead ends, frustration and occasional triump (plus lots and lots of writing) I have completed the first draft of my exhaustive history of the infamous La Grange Chicken Ranch! Excuse me while I take a breather.

The final tally? A quick calculation shows a word count of roughly 112,000 words, which by my estimate is close to quadruple the content of any other book published about the Chicken Ranch (Larry L. King's The Whorehouse Papers is substantive, but focuses mainly on the development of the Broadway play rather than the history of the brothel the musical is based on). Believe it or not, I could easily have written another 20,000 words. Why didn't I? Well, a lot of that material is tangential, or focuses on details not wholly relevant to the overall story. Some anecdotes are repetitive, illustrating the same point something else did more effectively. Length and readability are definitely a consideration. I've already mentioned here that certain passages I quite liked had to be cut to improve the flow of the narrative. All the detailed information in the world is useless if the reader can't force their way through boring, tedious prose.

Here's the table of contents for the book. I'm not ready to announce a title yet, but this should be a fun little tease. Especially considering the fact that my initial outline when I began the actual writing nine months ago had just 12 chapters. That brings an added layer of truth to that first chapter, doesn't it?

Table of Contents

1. A History That Grows in the Telling
   
2. Faye Stewart, a.k.a. Jessie Williams
   
3. Miss Edna
   
4. Trixie, the Throw-Away Dog (and Other Societal Rejects)
   
5. Hullabaloo!
   
6. Big Jim
   
7. Everybody Who’s Anybody
   
8. What Doesn’t Kill Me...
   
9. The Wagon Wheel
   
10. Marvin Zindler, Eye! Witness! News!
    
11. Wheels Within Wheels
    
12. Not With a Bang
    
13. Hell to Pay
    
14. Didn’t See THAT Coming
    
15. Enduring Legacy
    

The job's not over, though. Not by a long shot. I've got a short story I'm going to write this next week before attending Armadillocon in Austin, and that will give me a break from the Chicken Ranch and allow a little distance from the work. After that, it's time to jump back in for second draft revisions. Some chapters I won't hardly touch. Others, such as "The Wagon Wheel," are up for major, ground-up overhauls. Once the second draft is completed, I'll be ready to send it out to my beta readers for additional feedback. Hopefully by then I'll have a publisher.

Writing a book ain't all fun and games, kids. Writing fiction isn't any easier than writing non-fiction, and vice versa. Both forms can be stubborn and maddening and offer a whole lot of seemingly insurmountable challenges--just of a wholly different sort. But the mountain itself is climbed, I've reached the peak. It's all downhill from her.

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