Why, Sanny Claus? Why?

To the grinch who visited our house Saturday night:

It may only have been a joke to you, a childish prank, or maybe you just couldn't be bothered to go to Target and buy one of your own, but when you stole the Christmas Choo-choo from our yard, you broke the heart of one little boy.

He loved that choo-choo, as you can see. He used to give it hugs and kisses, because to him its appearance in our yard signaled the beginning of Christmas.

He asked me last night if you, Mr. Grinch, would take the choo-choo back to your workshop and fix it and then bring it back to our yard. When I said no, I didn't think so, that this grinch probably wouldn't have a change of heart, he wished woodpeckers against you to come to your cave and hammer you on the head.

Because the Christmas Choo-choo is broken, you know. Some of its lights don't work, and it was held together with baling wire. I know which lights are broken, Mr. Grinchy Claus, and the color of the wire, and when I see it in your yard, you'll be spending your Christmas in the county lock-up getting ass-raped with a spoon.

So Merry fucking Christmas to you.


One Further Thought:

I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize to all those people whose own Christmas decorations I trashed as a kid, and offer my condolences for all the Halloween jack-o-lanterns I macheted or smashed in the street. A prank is a prank is a prank, and kids will be kids. They've been doing things like this since the first Neanderteen hid a chunk of fresh mammoth dung under a flaming pile of leaves in front of the neighbor's cave.

But now I wonder how many childhood illusions about the overall goodness of humanity I shattered in my samurai days.

On the other hand, if I find it intact, propped up against a tree in somebody's yard, plugged in and blinking...

Ten Years After

I don't like to read popular books until 5 or 10 years after they are popular. I didn't read my first Dragonlance book, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, until around 1990. And I actually read that BEFORE I read Lord of the Rings, if you can believe that. I didn't read The Alchemist, by Paul Coelho, until last year - it was published in 1988. And I only read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone this year. I figured I better see what this Harry Potter business was all about.

I once made the mistake of reading a popular book at the height of its popularity - Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code. All that book proves is that you don't have to be anything special to write a bestselling book that spawns a whole damned industry. You, too, can take the research and work of others, insert a handful of stereotypical characters, write it like a comic book with a hundred odd chapters and a new chapter on every third page, and sell millions.

The point is, you have to actually write the damn thing. Dan Brown wouldn't have dick if he hadn't actually written the damn thing. No matter how good your idea, your world, and your cast of characters, no one will buy or sell an unfinished story.

Which is to say I really need to get back to work.

But right now, I am reading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt, for the first time. Ten years (give or take a year) behind the times again.

What I Really Want for Christmas

Seriously. Mama? Santa? Somebody!
http://www.gizmag.com/linktous/3791/

How Y'all Are?

A big welcome to all the dl3e.com readers who have been visiting the blog and thanks to whoever posted the link.

A blog is a great way to communicate directly. Please feel free to leave comments or ask questions. Don't be shy. You don't have to join anything, you can post anonymously if you so desire - all that is required is that you enter the goofy password, which is there to keep out the spambots.

Current project - I am rewriting The Sword of the Prophet to give it a bigger bite and make it more recognizable. I'm also playing around with some short stories that I wrote last year, tightening them up in preparation for flooding the specfic market.

And I hope you'll visit my webzine, Southern Gothic, and read some of the stuff there. It isn't exactly fantasy, in fact, there isn't much there in the way of fantasy at all, but there is some good fiction and poetry. I'm the editor and I think you'll find it a tasty treat.

How to Write a Dragonlance Novel

Steffen asks in comments to the last post:

Don't you have any plans of writing Dragonlance again?

Not at the moment. I received an email from an editor a couple of months ago asking if I'd be interested at some point in the future. Which brings us to the next question.

Do you have to wait for a contract from Wizards of the Coast to be allowed to write a Dragonlance novel, or do you simply write a short outline for a novel and send it in to Wizards?

The answer to these questions is yes, but not simply. What happens is, Margaret Weis and the editors get together and outline where they want to world of Krynn to go in the next year, what areas they want to explore and which characters they want to do the exploring. Then they go to the authors and ask if we'd be interested in writing a story about this character, or tell what happens to the gnomes when..., or set a story in the arctic region, etc.. I might be asked to write specifically about one of these, or I might be asked if I have other ideas.

With The Rose and the Skull, I was asked for a story about Lord Gunthar's death and Sir Liam finishing the Measure. With Thieves' Guild, they wanted a story about a guy claiming to be Tanis' son who gets involved with the Guild in Palanthas. For Conundrum, I was asked to elaborate on a single sentence in the first War of Souls novel, which stated that Conundrum arrived at Schallsea as the last surviving passenger of a doomed submersible. And for Dark Thane, I was eventually asked for a story about what happened to the dwarves after the fall of Qualinost.

In each case, I took this single sentence request and fleshed it out into an outline. I tend to get rather detailed in my outlines; they usually run about 9,000 words. I then send in the outline, and once it is approved, I start writing. I think I went through four outlines before The Rose and the Skull outline was approved. At some point in here, I get the contract. Then I turn in the first draft and hope for the best. For Conundrum, I had relatively few changes to make in the final draft. With Dark Thane, the entire first draft was rejected and I had to write another entire novel, starting over from scratch.

So, even though there are no Dragonlance plans for me at the moment, that doesn't mean they won't come to me at some point and ask for a story about this or that, or that I couldn't send them an idea of my own and see what they say. Right now, I don't have any Dragonlance ideas, and I've spent most of this year working on screenplays.

Speaking of, wouldn't a Dragonlance movie be cool?