My boy.
June 10, 2008
Seriously.
Kid, it’s only going to get worse
March 23, 2008
The wife left me alone last night with the baby . . .
February 18, 2008
. . . And this is what happened:
Thanks to our great friends Dan and Susannah for taking the missus out of the house for an evening, and Baby Will - I’m sorry.
I’ve just blown my first deadline! Now I’m a REAL writer!
February 16, 2008
So February 15th has come and gone and the first round of editorial revisions on Powerless are still not done. Granted, my editor Joan is terrifically understanding person and therefore the Feb. 15th date was always sort of a soft deadline, but still it’s kind of frustrating.
I’ve decided that books are like babies - you expect them to conform to tidy little schedules and work around the important things in your life, but they have an uncanny tendency to surprise you with all-nighters and painful growth spurts.
Baby Will has decided that sleep is for the weak, and Powerless has somehow grown by nearly two thousand words in the editing process, even though I’ve cut two chapters nearly in half.
I love them both dearly, but . . . c’mon! If anyone knows any great nannies who do freelance copy-editing on the side, send them my way.
What’s been going on . . .
January 14, 2008
Well, I had a baby boy. His name is Willem Owen Cody and he is as fine a specimen of baby-perfection as I have ever seen. Razor wit, Herculean strength and Jedi reflexes. This kid’s got it all. 
Now that he is out and about in the real world, I’m changing the focus of this rather focus-less and rarely if ever updated blog into something different and (hopefully) much more reliable. Since my focus for the foreseeable future is going to be life-as-father-husband-writer that’s what I’ll be writing about. All the early morning crankiness, the deadline-making nervousness and, of course, spit up. So I hope a few folks will tune in. On that note, I thought I’d better post a few professional updates:
- I received the first round of edits on Powerless and am hard at work to meet a February deadline, for a 2009 release. It’s amazing the lead time that is required in the publishing world, but there it is. A huge thanks to Joan Slattery and Allison Wortche at Knopf for their insightful comments and deft red pens.
- The second book of the Knopf deal may not be a Powerless sequel after all. I’ve got another project on the back burner that seems to desperately want front-burner status, so that may come first. I’ll let you all know more here when I’m more settled.
- I just turned in a story for a Clarion anthology that should come out sometime this summer. The anthology is being edited by Jeff and Anne VanderMeer, both of whom I’d take a bullet for. (A small bullet. One preferably of the non-lethal and imaginary variety, but it’s the thought that counts). Jeff writes some of the best adult surreal fantasy out there and Anne was recently made Fiction Editor of the legendary mag Weird Tales. Check out Jeff’s musings here and subscribe to Weird Tales here.
Babies are excuses for buying yourself stuff. Really.
September 1, 2007
So while The Wife-All-Powerful has been buying little thumb-sized shoes and teeny-weeny plaid shorts for our expected baby boy, I’ve been quietly up to my own shopping - for books. I’ve been telling myself that I am assembling a library of children’s classics both new and old for the little tot, but as I type this and look at the ever increasing stack of tomes, yes tomes, that I feel compelled to buy, I think it’s time I came clean and admitted that I’m shopping for me.
Honestly, how many years is it going to be before he can enjoy a lavishly illustrated edition of Peter Pan or Treasure Island? And how will I react when he takes his little crayon set and draws his OWN treasure map on top of John Silver’s? Or when he gives the pan a mustache in red marker?
But I can’t help it. Those books are just so freaking cool, and try as I might, I cannot get up the enthusiasm to buy Baby’s First Book of Kittens and Colorful Geometric Shapes Produced on Sturdy Nibble-Friendly Cardboard or some such.
Sigh.
