Okay, okay, I'll blog!!! Note to self: when you forget your log in password, it probably means you haven't blogged in a while (!)

Just finished the Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood. I kind of have a love/hate thing going on for her books. I mean, I definitely respect her, and where she sits in the Canadian Canon. Though, I have uneasy memories of reading the Handmaid's Tale (my favorite, until YOF). If I was uneasy before, now I am down right chilled to the bone (or better, sacred shitless). The prophetic voice in this novel is turned up to 11. Perhaps, because I am surrounded by people in my life that remind me of what we have done (and are doing) to our planet, climate change, pandemics, and population explosion are just a few of the things that haunt my daymares.

McCarthy's Road put forward a dark vision that hard to read. Atwood, in a way, does him one better. Now, let me be straight, The Road is a much better book IMO, than YOF (lol, btw and wtf). But Atwood inhabits this dystopian future with characters I can actually relate to, as opposed to the boy and the father in The Road. YOF has flaws, lots of them - the theology of the Gardners sets my teeth on edge; there are too many coincidental meetings of characters; and sometimes the emotion gets a bit syrupy. But then when I read her list of Saints (Saint David Suzuki, Saint Rachel Carson), I get a bit of a chill. Actually, a helluva chill.

Are we going to look back on this book as one of the many warnings of the death of our society? Maybe I am still writing out of my "spooked" zone. And I have to remember this is a novel - but like some of Philip K. Dick's work, a lot of it might just come true.

I need to go read something light. Like maybe an Archie comic. All is fine in Riverdale. Always.

I picked up the latest Oxford American , a magazine that often interests me - especially the free CD issues.

This month's issue held particular interest as it had an article on one my new obsessions, Barry Hannah. I have a hard time explaining what I love about his work, and I really have just started, but he has crazy sentences that jump off the page and grab your throat. The article in the Oxford talks about his syntax, and how he bends, folds and mutilates it - I am sure ninth grade grammar teachers would burst into tears reading his work. "But, you... just... can't do that. Can you? sob, sob, wail, etc."

This issue also lists the top 10 best Southern Novels of all time - lists like this always generate controversy, but I like reading them, both to uncover gems that I've missed over the years, or to remind myself of books I need to get around to reading (Wise Blood).

Between Faulkner, O'Conner and Lee, I realized there was a lot of "Southern Fiction" I liked. It's a bit of a strange, anachronistic term - they slap it onto Hannah's work as well. I am discovering that rather than geographic, it is a sub-genre, lens, vibe, a way of looking at the world. Now, I grew up in SOUTHERN Saskatchewan and I've been to the Virginia's, I love music from the Delta, and Joe R. Lansdale is one of my favorite writers (East Texas).

So maybe I am a southern writer after all.

Y'all come back to the blog you hear.

Looking forward to the weekend, not because things slow down (they seem to never slow down), but somehow I can catch up on the things I fell behind with during the week.

Writing that makes me sound like a workaholic - I am not. I love leisure, love it, love it, love it. But I currently have seven irons in the fire, twelve plates spinning, and a bunch of lords a leaping (?).

I digress. Often.

But what I'm hoping for is to rent a movie and hang a bit. Oh, and bookclub is this week too, so I get to find out if other people were depressed as I was reading Empire of Illusion.

I better rent something funny to balance. Any suggestions out there?

I am fairly caught up in Empire of Illusion this week (see post below) and by caught up, I mean depressed, but in a good way. Chris Hedges is an amazing writer and thinker - he connects the dots from some other books I have read (Culturally Savvy Christian by Dick Staub and Life is a Miracle by Wendell Berry).

What depresses me as a writer is the climbing rates of illiteracy and semi-literacy. As well, he pulls out a stat that 80% of U.S. did not buy or read a book last year. Can that be true??? Oh my, if it is, well... we're screwed. And by "we" I don't mean writers. I mean all of us.

I am very thankful (in the spirit of our past holiday) that I helped to create a family full of readers. It may be my greatest accomplishment.

Under the category of books that tell me just how far we have fallen as a society is Chris Hedges, "Empire of Illusion. Hedges writes about pro wrestling, porn and Jerry Springer - just writing that abbreviated list makes me cringe. I am a reading this book and nodding my head, going, yep, we are really that bad (and I am really that bad - I know way too much about celebrity culture).

I am hoping that by the end of the book he will tell me how we can avoid all this stuff - but he may just confirm that the whole culture is headed to, or already in the crapper.

Yikes.

I learned about this vid from my friend and recording artist (and award winning, awesome all around great guy etc.) Steve Bell.

I also know Mike (I'm good friends with his Brother-in-law).

But that's not why I am promoting this vid. It is amazing! What a player, what an arranger. He takes the golden, and somewhat moldy hymn I Have Decided to Follow Jesus and bends it, molds it and folds it into a beautiful jazz arrangment. Backing him up on bass George Kholler (bass / Holly Cole) and drummer Ben Riley (Bruce Cockburn).

Watch, enjoy, groove.

I am constantly working on lessening the stack of books on my bedside, and of course like any good book addict, I am constantly adding to it.

Just finished Donald Pollack's Knockemstiff - and still unsure whether I liked it or not.

Working on reading Richard Ford's Rock Springs (yes, again and again). Finished Lansdale's Bad Chili a while back and came across his Mad Dog Summer short story collection (haven't started - though the review I linked to doesn't think much of it.).

Reading through the AMAZING BASS (Best Amercian Short Stories) from 1986, edited by Raymond Carver. Full of brilliance.

And lots of craft books as always - including How Fiction Works by James Wood. There is something beautiful in this book, even the way it fits in your hand. I want to savour it.

Adding to the stack is Barry Hannah's Airships - a recent discovery that I can't wait to dive into. And on their way our a few books for this years bookclub - including Atwood's new one, Year of the Flood.

Someday I will catch up to the stack. But probably not.

Can you will your unread books to family members? To read them I mean.

I've been busy preparing for a couple of classes that I am teaching - one has already started and one starts tonight. Of course with the beauty of the internet, and having profs that blog, one does wonder which students will be checking him out - either for nuggets of wisdom (!) or to find out who this guy thinks he is (!!!).

Being a fiction writer, amongst other things, I like the opportunity of crossing the boundaries, or maybe a better word is mash-up: the visual arts with the written arts. I was thinking about this while listening to yet another radio interview with the publisher of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I was telling my wife about this publishing phenom (best-seller, translated into 17 languages etc.) and told her that the material was copyright free. Well, it went something like this:

Wife - Why didn't you think of something like that?

Me - D'oh!

Wife - I mean you're a writer. You could have done that.

Me - D'oh!!!

And the rest was pretty much the same.

But before I digress into my ideas for Robinson Crusoe in District 9, I'll talk about my mash-up. The graphic designer extraordinaire Chip Kidd turns out to also be a fabulous writer. Okay, maybe fabulous is a bit much, but pretty damn good. His novel The Cheese Monkeys is one of the best art school novels I have ever come across. What, you haven't heard of that genre? Okay, it's small. But Kidd's book is smart and very funny. I like reading it to my graphic design students, though to be honest, I am not sure if they get what the book is talking about. An arrogant and self-obsessed prof, Winter Sorbeck, puts a class of design students through a mental hell. Boot camp for designers. I see you readers rolling your eyes. Hey, wait. Art School was hell, life in the trenches, deadlines, exacto knife cuts, late night slurpie runs and buckets of coffee that no longer has any effect.

If you don't get any of this. Read Cheese Monkeys. Then come take my class. I am no Winter Sorbeck - but I do get passionate. And there are no zombies in my class (usually).

Better get working on that Crusoe story.

My son recently finished a short film called Fight the Future. And it's funny, damn funny - and quite well written, shot and acted (who knows where he gets his talent from). But as he reads this blog from time to time, to check up on the old man, I better not say much more. Just watch the movie, trust me, you'll be glad you did.

The Palpatines Fight the Future from Techknowlogick on Vimeo.

Trying my best to keep the multitude of balls in the air these days. I probably should resort to my plate spinning metaphor of past - at any rate, the music is getting faster and I am trying to keep up.

Correction Line, redux, my much expanded novel will soon be ready for querying. As well, I am knee deep in preparations for upcoming classes that I will be teaching. Oh, and several illustration jobs, oh and some website redesign, and, oh did that music tempo just crank up again. Ed... could I get a drumroll.

If that were not enough challenge, I am performing all of this with one of my famous head colds.

Sniff. Spin. Crash.