Call Any Vegetable ...

(Which is pretty much how I'm feeling these days) ... Or ask any writer who's freelance about the joys of freelancery. And they'll tell you, if they're honest, about the phenomenon known as "feast or famine."

There are times when the phone doesn't ring. (Or vibrate, or squeal like a pig, or play the opening from Ravel's Bolero, or do any one of a thousand other bizarre novelty tones that are supposed to charm other people, but instead generally just ensure that you get the entire seat to yourself even during rush hour.) No one wants to talk to you, to hear you pitch those great ideas in your head, like Neville Chamberlain being trapped in the bunker with Hitler or King Arthur revived as a 21st Century superhero, or even General U.S. Grant getting a talking horse just before Shiloh, which is comic GOLD, those Philistines! (especially with Justin Timberlake as Grant, trust me, it's not like he's fending off casting agents with a pointed stick these days.)

And no one calls. And no one calls. And no one calls, day after day, until you're perfectly willing your own self to squeal like a pig if it'll guarantee you an assignment. You're at the point of desperation where you'll stand on a street corner and hold up a sign that says "Will
work for Disney."

And then the phone rings. It's not much money, and even less time, but you'll do it, if only to alleviate the boredom. And then the phone rings again. And again. And you grab all the work you can, because who knows when it stops this time it might never ring again, and finally,
when the smoke clears you realize you're standing atop a mountain of assignments like Conan, only that ain't a naked Brythunian slave girl wrapped around your leg; it's a killer deadline.

So -- guesss which state I'm in right now.

A Long, Long Receding Crawl Ago, In A Bookstore Not Terribly Far (I Hope) Away ...

The latest STAR WARS book (STAR WARS: Shadow Games), has been out for a month, and is already on the NYT Bestseller list. This, obviously, makes me happy. I just got Maya's 1st draft of The Last Jedi, which is reading great so far (about halfway through). And another book project is going quite well also.

Say Something

Just post something, damnit. What's the point of having a bloody blog if you're not going to use it?

Problem is, I can't just dash something off quickly. It takes a ridiculously long time to enter data; it's taken nearly four minutes just to type this much. As I've said before, the operative word is triage.

I simply have no time to write anything that doesn't have money at the other end. Even with Medicare, the bills are outrageous. Everything takes so much longer ....

And, of course, all this leads inevitably to a black hole of depression bigger and deeper than Sagittarius A.

Sigh ...

Ten minutes.