Newsletter July 2008

Hello everyone,

Wow, I'm at the end of my two month paternity leave, and the time has flown by. It seems like yesterday that we headed off to the hospital to bring the munchkin into the world, and now we've already had to go through her clothes twice to get rid of outfits she's outgrown!

In reading baby books, I've found many that are like Barney and not many that are like Loony Toons. Let me explain. Barney was very popular with the kids, but painfully annoying for adults. They didn't try to entertain adults. They aimed solely at kids. Loony Toons, on the other hand, was made for kids, but it had lots of inside jokes and allusions for the adults. That is good, in my opinion. It keeps the adults interested, so they watch with the kids, and it exposes the kids to more sophisticated ideas--even if they don't realize it. With the baby books that we have, I wound up reading them once to the munchkin, and then after that I showed her the pictures and made up my own words. Much more fun for me that way.

So, being the kind of guy that I am, I wrote my own baby book. I'm still fine tuning the pictures, but the basic idea was to write a travel book with photos that had been cartoon-ized, and keep the text light. Interesting pics for everyone, and interesting factoids for the reader. Check out some early versions of monks and a monastery.


Monks

Monastary


In other writing news, I've sent my revised short story to the Voices editor. I've also found out that the anthology will only be released in England and Australia, but they are working on releasing it in the US as well. I'll keep you posted. In the mean time, I'm joining Greats such as David Hasselhoff, in that we are "popular in Europe."

My other recent short stories haven't sold or won anything on their first tries, so I'll be sending them to science fiction magazines next.

And finally, I'm back to work on my first science fiction novel. I'm expanding the scope of the story, and I'll be doing multiple points of view, so it should be a "grander" scale story than my past novels. It is fun to work on, and I'm really starting to like/identify with the characters, so that bodes well. Plus it will give me something to do when I'm stuck on the road for work, living in hotels and worrying about dry ice-wielding maniacs in the room next door.

I hope you had a fun 4th of July (unless you are British, in which case you probably don't like that date so much). In any case, have a great summer and read some books. Next on my list is I, Claudius by Richard Graves for my book club.

Take care, --Todd