More West Virginia Pictures!

From HELLBENDER: The gray came from a full moon. The silver light, so bright it cast shadows, fell upon trees as massive as Acropolis columns. It reflected off empty glass bottles, off the metal barrels of shotguns and rifles. In the forest all around me a chorus of crickets and cicadas kept me company. Time stopped moving forward in a straight line. It felt like a web, where one strand left diagonally, and always returned to the center via another strand, so I experienced the same patterns of pain and dreaming over and over again with only slight variations.

From HELLBENDER: We fled the Shavers Fork watershed and returned to the Blackwater via Otter Creek. When the old green path hit the ridge top, pine gave way to spruce that blocked out nearly all of the morning sunlight. The faint glow of headlights did little to pierce the darkness.

From HELLBENDER: My eyes strained to pierce the fog that prevented me from seeing this wilderness as a whole. Waterfalls streamed down the steep walls in stony chutes that acted more like downspouts than streambeds. White threads intertwined to make strands of lace that plunged a thousand feet from the rocky ledges near the rim. I got drunk on the cool breezes that drifted up from the river below. The speed had a narcotic effect, which when combined with the rhythm of the rails made me want to pull out my fiddle and play along to the song it was singing.

From HELLBENDER: Katy whooshed in with her boyfriend in a scream of car stereo and everybody dropped what they were doing to run over and see them. They pulled the new silver VW onto the grass in-between the fire and Jamie's house. Katy looked more polished than I'd ever seen her. Like, she went from a fern to a Pink Lady's Slipper in just a season. Her hair was colored and styled and she wasn't dressed like a thirteen-year-old girl. Her little floral patterned dress, unbuttoned way too low, made her look like some kind of revivalist rebel. She walked proud and smiled like she was posing for Vogue. Alex stood next to me, holding a kitten, and asked, "Who's that?"

Time for a year in review post? Probably not quite yet...

2011, there really wasn't anything special about you, was there? Maya apocalypse is next year, as are the Summer Olympics. AND a presidential election. 2010 was the end of a decade (and just as equally, the beginning of a decade, I suppose.) 2011 was just supposed to hang out, like Justine Bateman in FAMILY TIES.

But I liked Justine Bateman. I could never understand why she wasn't more famous than Molly Ringwald. Molly Ringwald wasn't even funny (By extension, if humor was a legit reason to be attracted to somebody, I would've been all over Anthony Michael Hall.) Whatever happened to Long Duk Dong, BTDubs?

So 2011 is another year to be filed away and forgotten. Just like 2003. Some things happened back in 03. This year is no different. Some things happened. I got on my mountain bike a lot more than I did last year, and didn't break any bones. Wrote a few songs for the book. Went to Florida and to the beach. I wrote A LOT.

So, maybe it's the writing that'll make 2011 different than the rest. Putting THE DEVIL AND PRESTON BLACK out there was simultaneously the most gratifying and terrifying thing I'd ever done. And it opened more doors than I ever could've on my own. I've met more awesome people and made more friends than I have at any other time since Seton Hill. And now, almost 9 months later, the book has a life of its own. It's out there in the world, and there's no stopping it.

But I wouldn't say that the biggest thing to happen to me was self-publishing, and then ultimately finding a publisher for, THE DEVIL AND PRESTON BLACK. And this is what I want to make clear as the year winds down, especially with a new flurry of self-publishing-related news (Kindle Fire. KDP Select, etc.)in the air. The stigma of self-publishing will remain as long as folks release books that aren't quite fit for human consumption.

'Published' and 'self-published' are temporary states. And the biggest thing to happen to me in 2011 was I realizing my novel was good enough to be read without waiting for an agent's approval. Stepping out of the queue and taking action--a trait I respect in my fellow self-publishers regardless of their writing ability. The capacity to take action is a permanent state, much unlike the states of 'published' and 'self-published.'

Raw Dog Screaming Press is releasing THE DEVIL AND PRESTON BLACK next fall, so I can now check the 'published' box. Working with them has been an absolutely amazing experience, even if it did make me question my southwestern Pennsylvanian dialect. (Question--what's wrong with the following sentence: This car needs washed. Answer: Not a damn thing, jagoff.) The education I received by doing it myself taught me one thing--I learned that if you wait until AFTER you're published to figure out your marketing plan and who your readers are, and how to interact with them and on and on, it's already too late. A lot of writers talk a good game. But if they're focused on agents instead of readers, they aren't in the game.

Heidi told me I have to make sure I don't diss anybody in these little posts, so I'm not really sure how to end this. Had I been allowed to diss, you can bet there would've been some hardcore dissing right about here. Instead, I'll leave you with a Bateman family fun fact:

Because of TEEN WOLF TOO my brother, Mike Miller, hates Jason Bateman so much he refuses to watch ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT.

The Clash, The Lyceum, London, UK, December 28, 1978

Posted this show in honor of my guest post over at Tennessee Hicks' blog.

From my post:

And anybody who’s going to spend thousands of hours embarrassing themselves, losing respect and credibility learns one thing by doing it themselves. They learn whether or not they love it, and if they’re willing to fight for it, even if it means going against the grain and being the unpopular kid.

And THAT’S how I got my deal. By bleeding for it. By hustling. By losing sleep and popping ibuprofen and swallowing a little pride. By taking a risk even though it meant career suicide. In other words, I got my deal by being a little stupid.

Read the rest here: http://www.tennesseehicks.com

Download the show at Sugarmegs.

The Clash
Flash Bastards Remastered
The Lyceum, London, UK, December 28th, 1978

Setlist:
01. Safe European Home
02. I Fought the Law
03. Jail Guitar Door
04. Drug Stabbing Time
05. City Of the Dead
06. Clash City Rockers
07. Tommy Gun
08. (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais
09. English Civil War
10. Stay Free
11. Cheapskates
12. Julie's In the Drug Squad
13. Police and Thieves
14. Capital Radio
15. Janie Jones
16. Garageland
17. Complete Control
18. London's Burning
19. White Riot

The Tweets 2 Lennon Project

31 years ago this week.

Think of all the stuff he would've loved. iPads and Pixar. eBooks. Just a few guesses.

In my book, THE DEVIL AND PRESTON BLACK, John Lennon becomes a father figure for a character who had none of his own. Ironic that Preston would choose John Lennon, who spent a childhood pining for parents who were never there. Maybe that's why John Lennon chose to contact Preston via text:

     I got another text. This game had lost a lot of its intrigue. I just wanted to know who'd been messing with me. The message sounded like something John Lennon would say. everything's proven until it's disproven, isn't it? who's to say your dreams aren't real?
     I deleted it.
(from THE DEVIL AND PRESTON BLACK)

And again:

     My phone buzzed, and since Dani was busy primping in the other room, I figured it had to be Pauly. The text said music belongs to everybody. It doesn't always have to be a suit who decides how much it should cost. Remember what we talked about last night.
     I stared at the text. I knew who it was from, and it wasn't Father James.
     I hit REPLY and thought of a way to ask without coming across as crazy. When I realized there was no easy way to do that, I typed 'JOHN?' and hit send.
(from THE DEVIL AND PRESTON BLACK)

--

When I wrote the novel I liked the idea that technology possessed magical qualities. That the chips and circuits were no different than a shaman's beads and bones. The idea that I could have a conversation with somebody who was long gone intrigued me. In a way, it kept them alive.

So what I'm proposing is that we all send our messages to John Lennon over the next week. Well wishes, favorite bits of lyrics, questions. Something tells me he already knows, but is going to be just as happy to get them.

Leave them in comments below, or Tweet them, using the hash tag #tweets2lennon

THE MUSIC AND PRESTON BLACK: Joe Strummer, Filmore, San Francisco, July 6, 1999

"When you blame yourself, you learn from it. If you blame someone else, you don't learn nothing, cause hey, it's not your fault, it's his fault, over there."
-Joe Strummer

I owe a lot of what I got going on this year to thinking like Joe thinks. Thanks, man.

Download the show at Sugarmegs.

Disc 1
Intro
Diggin' The New
London Calling
X-Ray Style
White Man In Hammersmith Palais
Tony Adams
Straight To Hell
Rock The Casbah
Yalla Yalla
Brand New Cadillac
I Fought The Law

Disc 2
Techno D-Day
Tommy Gun
Junco Partner
Forbidden City
Bankrobber