Patrick on the Dead Robots Society Podcast

Posted on | March 17, 2010 | No Comments

Featuring me. P.G. Holyfield, Justin Macumber and a sharp-witted Terry Mixon. It’s all about how to podcast and it’s available here:

http://tinyurl.com/DRSep121

A Wake for the Seanachai — March 24th 9pm

Posted on | March 12, 2010 | 4 Comments

 
Download promo
So, I’m driving home one night and I get shot. Twice with one bullet, actually. It’s not a joke, it’s a true story. And like all true stories that don’t end in death, it is ultimately a comedy.
On March 24th at 9 pm I am going to read this story live on Stickam.com and I hope you’ll join me. It’s the story I have been trying to tell every since I started the Seanachai. And now that I finally got it on the page, it seems only fitting that this is going to be the last Seanachai episode.
Yes, the Seanachai is ending. It’s not the end of me producing and releasing content on the internet for free, but it is time to bring thispodcast to a decent and honorable close. Send it off in style. Give the auld storyteller a proper wake.
P.G. Holyfield is going to help me. We’ll take questions and calls, reminisce about times and episodes past. I hope to have a few special guest appearances. And I promise that I will have a couple of exciting medium-sized announcements about the future and what’s next.

March 24th, 9pm until, well, until we’re done. I hope you’ll join us at Stickam.com for a “Wake for the Seanachai.”

The Third Wave of Literacy

Posted on | March 10, 2010 | No Comments

I believe we just entered what I call the Third Wave of Literacy. It’s tough to pinpoint this occurrence exactly – it’s not like anybody blew a whistle – but as I look back from the dizzying technological height of 2010, here are the divisions I can see.

The First Wave

In the first wave, only a very few people could read and write. The ones who could were scholars, priests and magicians. I add Magicians because, if you are in a pre-literate culture, really, what’s the difference between a priest and a magician? (Okay, maybe Magicians get cooler hats.)

The Second Wave

Around the 14th and 15th century the masses started to read. Dante made the very unusual choice to compose the Divine Comedy in Italian rather than Latin. In 1382, John Wycliffe was heretical enough to translate the Holy Bible into English. And to cap it off, in the 15th century, Gutenberg cranked up his printing press.

The Third Wave

As dramatic and world changing as the Second Wave was, it was still limited. Sure, everyone could read, but only a few could publish. As much as communication media have multiplied throughout the 20th century, a few people were in charge of what got produced/published/broadcasted/distributed. Around 2002, that all changed.

We are living in a time when everyone can consume media and everyone can create and distribute media. In essence, a six year old kid is on the same footing as the Pope, the President of the United States and a book editor. The next email you send can be forwarded to everyone in the world in under a second for free.

The opportunities and the perils of communication have never been greater. Welcome to the communications tsunami that is, the Third Wave of Literacy.

How to Succeed in Evil in a nutshell.

Posted on | February 22, 2010 | No Comments

Okay, boys, this is the week we knock over the barn.

Uh boss? Why a barn again?

Because that’s where the blue bag is, you idiot. Remember: everyone wear suits, so we’ll stand out in a rural setting. Then we’ll meet up right under the big metal grain chute.

And there it is, “Why a barn again?”  The reason I wrote How to Succeed in Evil was to try and find a motivation for a villain that made a little sense to me.

Many more comic covers and commentary here:

http://www.lileks.com/institute/funny/07/45.html

Posted via email from PatrickEMcLean’s Posterous

Going all Old Testament on the Language

Posted on | February 14, 2010 | 1 Comment

Judges 12:6 Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce [it] right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.

This is the oldest example that I know of where the the quality of a person’s language is used to single them out. And as strange and bloody as this passage from the Old Testament is, the use of language as an identifier, or Shibboleth, is still very much with us.

Consider what would happen to a candidate in a job interview who, in deadly earnest, said, “Lemme axe you a question.” Unless the interview is for fry cook at McDonald’s, this non-standard use of language would put a serious dent in the interviewee’s chances. It’s not worth trying to argue with this linguistic prejudice. It exists and we all have to deal with it. We are judged by the way we speak and write.

Sadly, there ain’t much rational about these kinds of judgements. You know exactly what I meant by that last sentence, but, chances are, you had an emotional reaction to my use of the word “ain’t”. To write well requires a sensitivity to these nuances of language. Ya’ll know that. In fact, most of us manage our spoken diction very well. We don’t swear in church. We don’t curse around small children.

I favor a kinder, gentler, more forgiving, New Testament approach to language. I appreciate people who are direct and clear in all of their communications, and try very hard to pay more attention to the substance of any message than the wrapping. To me, that’s the only sane way to look at business communications. In a more perfect world, that’s how I think things would be. People who spoke and wrote correctly, yet had nothing to say would be ridiculed.

But the world is not like that. In fact, I’m not sure people have changed much since Biblical times. Trip up on one of these Shibboleth terms and you probably won’t get killed. But your career might.

Posted via email from PatrickEMcLean’s Posterous

As if there weren’t enough adjectives in the ad…

Posted on | February 5, 2010 | 1 Comment

Why I fear the iPad will disappoint.

Posted on | January 29, 2010 | 2 Comments

I wrote -18,000 words today.

Posted on | January 27, 2010 | No Comments

I AM CORRUPTING YOUTH!

Posted on | January 27, 2010 | No Comments

The Reason to Practice an Art

Posted on | January 26, 2010 | 1 Comment

It occurs to me, how much of my life I have spent in the practice of an art. As I write it, the word ‘art’ seems ladened with incorrect connotations. It seems more correct to describe the process as a craft. There is, to be certain, an art of writing. But to get to the art requires a tremendous amount of craft. So much craft that I find it misleading to talk about the ‘Art of Writing.’

As long as I have worked as a writer, I also have trained in the martial arts. When I set this fact into words, it seems such an odd contradiction to me that I have never been able to write about the martial arts. But the longer that I work in both arts, the more I come to believe they are the same. This may be an illusion of perspective. I may be making them the same through my work.

But whatever the reality may be, the question of why to practice any art remains. There is, I suppose a practical aspect to all things. One may build furniture because one needs a place to sit. One may also build furniture to sell because one needs money. But that’s not what I’m talking about. What compels someone to perfect the craft of building furniture? Another way to ask this question; why am I still trying to improve my writing?

For all practical purposes, my writing is good enough. And it’s been good enough, for practical purposes, for years. But still, I push to do new things. I explore new forms. I reach for longer and bigger stories. I try to convey ideas more simply and powerfully. At all times and in all ways I attempt to do more with less. This is difficult, uncomfortable and it doesn’t pay anything. Writing ads is easy and it pays well. Why don’t I just do the easy stuff?

I’m not sure I have a simple answer to this question. I don’t think that large questions, questions of the spirit, questions of deeper motivation have simple answers. There are no soundbites that can describe what drives us. I’m sure ego has something to do with it. I think greater things lie within me and I would let them out. But the ego-answer is the closest I can get to solving this riddle — the more I practice, the more I learn about myself.

In the end, I think that’s the only profound reason to do anything. Or as Edmund Hillary said of climbing mountains, “It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.”

“The Road to Hell is Paved with Adverbs”

Posted on | January 25, 2010 | 1 Comment

Fifteen Kinds of Snow It Would Be Useful to Have Names for

Posted on | January 11, 2010 | 1 Comment

There is a popular story that says that  Eskimos have many different words to describe many different kinds of snow. It is a total hoax. Which is a shame, because the idea has a certain magic to it.

Fifteen Kinds of Snow that It Would Be Useful to Have Names for:

1. The damp, back-killing snow that’s a bitch to shovel.
2. The snow that increases your chances of getting laid while falling on you while you are in the hot tub.
3. The snow that falls in response to children’s prayers for school cancellation.
4. The heavily compacted snow of mall parking lot snowbergs that lasts well into the spring.
5. The snow that culls the weaker pine branches from the forest.
6. The cunning, kamikaze snow that finds a way past your scarf to die sizzling on the bare skin of your neck.
7. The snow that falls in Minnesota and is blown into Wisconsin.
8. The tough Manhattan snow that gets pushed around, driven over, stepped on, brushed off — but never gives up its dreams of a minor role in a Broadway production of A Christmas Carol.
9. The snow that thinks it’s special and unique when it’s falling, but realizes, when it hits the drift, that it’s just like everybody else.
10. The Mighty Snow of the Rockies — enough to close the pass, strand the travelers and convince families to make a holiday tradition of cannibalism.
11. The snow that covers the climber who failed to reach the summit.
12. The sudden snow that makes a fool of the weatherman.
13. The snow that falls on the just and the unjust alike.
14. The snow that the dog tracks into the house.
15. Snow cone snow.

George Orwell’s Six Rules for Saving the Language (and the World)

Posted on | December 10, 2009 | No Comments

The world doesn’t make much sense to me. Or, more precisely, the sense that the world makes to others is not the sense it makes to me.

Nowhere is this more evident in the use and abuse of language. Language of any kind is a slippery, imperfect instrument at best. And if we want to get good use out of the tool of language, we should take some pains to see that our language stays in good condition.

This is George Orwell’s first point in his wonderful essay “Politics and the English Language”

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.

To be sure, this essay is a source of wonderful, practical advice for anyone who wants to use, as he puts it, ”language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought.”

And to this end Orwell offers these six rules:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

But as you can see from the first quote, for George, the stakes are considerably higher than the marks on your next term paper. Or the stylistic considerations of your next memo. He points out that allowing this kind of sloppy language to advance unchecked also allows people to defend the most horrible of acts.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism., question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, “I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so.” Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

“While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.”

We can easily come up with additions to Orwell’s 1946 list of atrocities (to both persons and language). Most obviously, the President of the United States is to receive the Nobel Peace Prize while his country is engaged in two wars. One of which he has just escalated. More generally, the United States has a “defense” budget that is 48% or almost half of the world’s combined military expenditure. Observing that offense is more costly than defense, and that the United States spends 71% more than Russia, China, Korea, Cuba, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Syria combined, one is moved, at the very least, to begin the search for a different adjective to couple with that use of the word budget. More subtly, Social Security is bankrupt. Those who place their trust in it will find no security at all.

The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.

To appreciate the timeless insight of George Orwell, you only need to remember that in Saddam Hussein’s interview with Dan Rather,  Saddam claimed that he was the democratically elected leader of  Iraq. He proudly told Mr. Rather that he had received 100% of the vote. Dan was skeptical of the percentage. But what he couldn’t do was refute Saddam’s claim. For there is no agreed definition of the word democracy.

Ideas have consequences. And insofar as each of our words is an idea in a more crystalline form, we should take care with them. Orwell understood this and argued for it with brilliance and passion in his essay “Politics and Language.”

The complete text of “Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell is available here: http://langs.eserver.org/politics-english-language.txt

The Toughest Trees Audio Version

Posted on | December 8, 2009 | No Comments

The Toughest Trees ever is the latest Seanachai podcast. There was something about the tree saying, “Yeah, and your great-great-great-great granddaddy was punk too,” that I couldn’t resist. I just had to read it aloud.

All the rest of Seanachai here:
http://www.theseanachai.com

Autumn Day

Posted on | November 28, 2009 | 1 Comment

Autumn Day
by Rainer Maria Rilke

Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
Lay your shadow on the sundials
and let loose the wind in the fields.

Bid the last fruits to be full;
give them another two more southerly days,
press them to ripeness, and chase
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now will not build one anymore.
Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long time,
will stay up, read, write long letters,
and wander the avenues, up and down,
restlessly, while the leaves are blowing.

The Pomodoro Technique (for writers)

Posted on | November 19, 2009 | 9 Comments

So I’ve been using something called the Pomodoro Technique to help me in my writing. It’s been nothing short of amazing. On the surface, it’s very simple. You block out 25 minutes to work, crank up a kitchen timer and only focus on that task until the timer rings. But I have found it to be Double-Plus-Advanced-Level-Zen-Productivity-Ninja-Superbest for writing. And here’s why — It defeats something psychologists call the Anxiety of Becoming.

Here’s what the creator of the Pomodoro Technique, Francisco Cirillo has to say on the subject:

For many people, time is an enemy. The anxiety triggered by “the ticking clock”, in particular  when a deadline is involved, leads to ineffective work and study behaviour which in turn elicits the tendency to procrastinate. The Pomodoro Technique was created with the aim of using time as a valuable ally to accomplish what we want to do the way we want to do it, and to empower us to continually improve our work or study processes.

That feeling of the ticking clock is the feeling that we should be further along in our writing. This anxiety has been very useful to me in my professional life. Writing ads or even brochures is like sprinting. Faster! Faster! Faster!

But a book is a marathon. Aserious article has to be a 5k. And for both, there is certainly something to be said for pacing. And limiting anxiety. For me, the anxiety gets in the way. All those thoughts of, I should be faster, I’ve got to hit this word goal,  I’ve got to make sure that these words are good enough to keep or I will fall behind and I really really suck at this are counter-productive.

As writers, I’m not sure any of those worries are within our control. Or any of a thousand other worries that beset us as we are trying to go about the business of getting words on a page. All we can really do is control our focus. And the Pomodoro technique helps me get better at that.

The Real Distractions

Sure, distraction is the enemy. Everybody knows that. Facebook, Twitter, googling random things — the productivity that a computer can grant us is easily counterbalanced by the interrupts that it offers. But the real interrupts aren’t digital. They are psychological. The thoughts that you have while trying to write that have nothing to do with writing. Here’s how the Pomodoro helped me with distraction:

Every time you have a thought about or desire to do something else, yI write it down and continue with my work.  At the end of the Pomodoro (25 minute interval) I would review the things that had attempted to derail me and see if any of them needed doing, or had merit.

For example, “take the dog for a walk” has merit. I should take both the dog (and my fat ass)  for a walk at some point during the day. But “need to look up commas because you are using them wrong” has no merit. Maybe, I, am, using, commas, wrong. Who cares. Fix it in the rewrite. No reason to let one misplaced comma get in the way of 500 good words.

There are a billion worries and criticisms that can get in the way of getting the first draft down on paper. If we are unaware of them, then were are powerless over them.

Quality versus Quantity versus Progress

There’s probably not much we can do about the quality of our writing in the first draft. It is what it is. If we write enough first drafts and then rewrite them, we will become better writers. The more you work at something, the better you get. But what the Pomodoro Technique has done for me is give me an atomic unit of effort. A first draft is a rough number of words. But to get there I will have to spend X amount of quality, focused time. Not X amount of anxiety. Not X amount of times putting it off. Nope, X amount of time actually at the keyboard (or pad, completely focused on what I’m trying to write)

So the measure of a draft becomes X Pomodoros. Not words. Not quality. The psychological relief of this is immense. It gives me a way to just show up and do my part of the job. I put in the hours, I get the result. But if I worry about the result while I’m trying to put in the hours the process becomes much, much harder.

Here’s an example. I now have a progress bar for a 50k(ish) word story that I’m working on called “Unkillable.” Each box is a pomodoro’s worth of effort.

The Illusions of Quality

I’m not sure anybody can judge what they are making while they are making it. At least, not in the first draft. If you’ve been at this game for a while you’ve been over the moon excited about something you’ve written, only to go back and discover that it’s not that good. Likewise, you’ve cranked on something you thought was total shit and when you’ve gone back to re-read it, you realize that it’s not that bad. While you are giving birth is not the time to critically evaluate your children.

Estimation

So give yourself over to your writing for 25 minutes. And then another 25 minutes. Do this for N trials. Say N > 30. And you’ve got a statistically valid sample of how fast you write. How fast YOU write. Not how fast you should. Not how fast someone else writes. But you. Average those suckers together. In the next 25 minutes you might write more or less. But now you are able to estimate your progress. Now you have a production process. The more I turn the lever, the more words come out. I have a measure of control over the creative act that I did not have before.

Sure, sure. Sometimes you get lost. Sometimes you get nowhere. But over time, that’s not the case. Otherwise writers would never finish anything.

Treating Yourself Like a Dog

Another interesting facet of the technique is the sound of a kitchen timer in the background. After a little while, it become a powerful reinforcing device. Just like Pavlov could ring a bell and get his dogs to drool, the sound of the kitchen timer now causes me to focus. It also reassures me that all is well. It’s an audible signal that I’m working and things are as they should be. This is not a feeling that many people encounter naturally while writing. Especially not while writing fiction at the limits of your ability.

And let me tell you, I’m not above treating myself like a dog (or marmot, or ibex or prairie dog) to get good work done. Really, whatever takes. And anything that can make the passage of time reassuring — sign me up.

Check It Out for Yourself

You can download Francisco’s excellent book and find out everything you want to know about the Pomodoro Technique (including why it’s called Pomodoro) here http://www.pomodorotechnique.com If you put the technique to use. Leave a comment to let me know about your results.

Why is this doll winking at me?

Posted on | November 12, 2009 | 3 Comments

So this little guy is the original weeble-wobble. His name is Daruma and this is his home on my desk. There is a weight in his paper-mache base, so if you knock him over he stands back up again. He is modeled after a legendary monk named Bodhidarma. Like all legendary characters, there are a number of tall tales about him. (They’re has to be, right? He’s got his own action figure.) What is most consistent in the tales is that Bodhidarma was the man who brought the practice of Zen Buddhism to China from India.

It is said that because his students lacked the strength to withstand long hours of focused meditation, that he taught them martial arts. The story goes that he sat in meditation so long, his arms and legs fell off. But whattya gonna do? Lots of things are said. Few things are done.

So why is he winking?

The wink is about doing things rather than saying things. In Japan it is tradition to buy one of these doll at the start of any large endeavor. Like opening a business. When you get it, both the eyes are blank. So you take a pen and ‘open’ one of his eyes. When you reach your goal you open the other eye  and then burn him.

So, when I started working on How to Succeed in Evil, I got this intense-looking Japanese doll. And for nearly five years now this little red-robed bastard has been winking at me. Many times, he’s been unbearably cocky — seemingly secure in the knowledge that I had started a project that I would never finish.  But if you look very closely, you can see that he’s scared. That’s why he’s trying to look so tough with those angry eyebrows.

Daruma is scared, because I now have an agent for How to Succeed in Evil. Which means the book is going to publishers in a highly purchasable fashion. Which means, he’s that much closer to seeing the world in stereo. And, shortly after that, in sterno.

What you really need to write a book.

I believe that the Daruma doll is also  related to a Japanese proverb: “Fall down seven times, get up eight.” For me, that captures  what you need most when creating something of scale, like a novel. There’s not a precise word for it in English, so I’ll call it a mix of endurance, perseverance, persistence and blind, mule-headed, stubbornliosity.

Daruma is a constant reminder of this. Any time I get frustrated, I can knock him over. And then watch as he rights himself. Might sound silly, but I assure you, anything that gets you through the day and keeps you on the path is nothing to scoff at.

So when I get a book deal, this little doll goes up in flames. And if I ever get a movie deal, what the hell, I’ll burn the Jade plant too.

The Toughest Trees Ever

Posted on | November 4, 2009 | 7 Comments

I’ve become fascinated by trees. I’ve always liked them. But David Allen Sibley’s “Guide to Trees” has really sparked my interest. If you see me out and about, and I’m staring at a tree, it’s not because I’ve gone any farther off the deep end. It’s my new curiosity.

So the other day, on my way to a meeting, I’m stopped dead in my tracks by a tree that has very distinctive leaves. They have to be distinctive for me to remember them. I’ve just  figured out how to tell the difference between an Oak and a Maple. So there I am,
late to a meeting, staring at this tree.

When I get home, I look it up. Turns out it’s a Ginkgo tree. They’re often used in cities because they are very ‘hardy’. And hardy is a horticultural term which mean ‘hard to kill.” But when it comes to the Ginkgo, it should mean, ‘damn nigh impossible to kill.’ Don’t take my word for it. Here’s a tree that was half a mile away from the atomic blast at Hiroshima.

This Ginkgo tree is called Hosen-Ji, because anything that lives through an atomic explosion gets a nickname in Japan. Hosen-Ji survived, but the temple it was planted next to didn’t make it. When the temple was rebuilt, it was suggested that the tree might be transplanted to make construction easier. This suggestion was quickly shot down. Instead of moving the tree, they designed the temple around it. This might be because they were Buddhists and revered life. Then again, it might be because anything that is tough enough to survive a nuclear explosion is something you don’t want to mess with. It’s been exposed to Gamma Rays. Who knows what happens when it gets angry?

But the weirdness of the Ginkgo tree does not end there. It’s a profoundly odd plant. So odd, in fact that it’s in it’s very own Division in the Plant Kingdom. And the Ginkgo Biloba is the only member of it’s of Division. So where the Willow Oak in my back yard is classified like this:

Kingdom: Plantae
Division: Magnoliophyta (pop. = 230,000)
Order: Fagales
Genus: Quercus
Family: Fagaceae
Section: Lobatae
Species Phellos

The Ginkgo has this odd classification:

Kingdom: Plantae
Division: Ginkgophyta (pop. = 1)
Class: Ginkgoopsida
Order: Ginkgoales
Family: Ginkgoaceae
Genus: Ginkgo
Species: G. biloba

It’s as if the world Ginkgo meant “I dunno”, in Latin. Because botanists don’t have much of an idea of how this tree is related to other trees. They call the tree a living fossil, because it’s the only one left of it’s kind. Or rather, the only kind left of it’s kinds. It would be like jumping forward in time 270 million years and finding that all the cultures and nations we know now had been wiped out. Except for the Finn’s. And they’re weird to begin with. Oh sure, you’d find some records of the Swedes and the Danes and the Norse. But, for some reason, only the people from Finland would have survived.

And let’s consider what it means for these trees to be 270 million years old. Dinosaurs only appeared 230 million years ago. Which means, by the time the Dinosaurs did show up, the Gingko tree had 40 million years under it’s belt already. Not only are these the kind of trees that can survive an atomic blast, they are tough enough to look at a T-Rex and say, “You think you’re hot shit? We’ll see.”

160 million years later, a meteor slammed into the Earth. And the dinosaurs, and most everything else on the planet, died. But not the Gingko. Oh no. The Gingko tree lived on. In my head, the wise old Gingko Tree turns to the T-Rex and says, “Told you so.” And as the T-Rex looks up into the Gingko tree with wide, fearful eyes, seeking some kind of solace from a fellow land creature in the face of certain oblivion, the tree adds, “Yeah, and your great, great, great, great, great, great, Grandaddy was a punk, too.”

These trees aren’t nice. These trees are survivors

By scientist’s estimates, an impact big enough to create the layer of black ash found in the K-T barrier in the fossil record (and wipe out the dinosaurs) would have to have the energy of 100 trillion tons of TNT — that’s two million times greater than the most powerful nuclear bomb ever tested. That means that the Gingko tree that got bombed at Hiroshima would have been legitimately entitled to say, “Is that all you got?” Oh, if these trees could talk, the smack they would talk.

Surely, the Gingko Biloba are the toughest trees ever. Maybe they had saber-toothed ancestors that were tougher? I’m not putting anything past a tree that can survive a meteor strike.  But those ancestors weren’t survivors. So, I feel that we must convey the Eye of the Tiger, tree-division, to the Gingko Biloba.

Not everyone feels this way. Wikipedia reports that the Ginkgo listed as an endangered species. Not critically endangered, just middle-of-the-road endangered. It may be true, but I find it hard to comprehend. When there’s ten or twenty of them planted as ornamental trees around an office park in Charlotte, NC, I figure they have to be doing okay.  That, and the next time I walk past one, I know I’m going to hear it say, “You think you’re hot shit? We’ll see. You punks haven’t even made it to your first million years yet.”

Update: The End is Never the End (at least not with this book)

Posted on | October 29, 2009 | 8 Comments

So I’ve gotten a number of emails asking about a sequel. And yes, another book is coming. (With that ending, c’mon? There has got be another book.) But here’s a brief update on what I’ve been up to, and what I will be doing before book two.

I have completed a massive rewrite of the book. I’m very happy with it. A pivotal event (to avoid spoiler) happens 2/3rds of the way through and Edwin spends the last 3rd of the book kicking ass. I cut about 20,000 words out and added 10,000 back in. So we’re at a much faster-paced 90,000.

As soon as I am done with this post I am calling an agent to finalize a contract. If that all goes well, I will have secured representation for the print version, and it’s off to the races. And by races, I mean publishers.

I’m the process of migrating all my work under one website, PatrickEMcLean.com, so that their will be a steady stream of updates and goodness and suchlike. (Don’t worry, this site will remain). Because if you just looked at the Seanachai over the last 6 months, it appeared that I was very lazy. This is not the case. I’ve got 71 chapters of written, recorded and produced non-lazy awesomeness right here.

Currently, I’m working on a novella/novel length project called Unkillable. For a number of reasons, it has been important for me to put How to Succeed in Evil down for a while. When Unkillable hits 50,000 words, I’m going to start Evil again. At the the very least there will be a 10,000 word short of How to Succeed in Evil in January. If you’ve been very, very good, maybe in time for Christmas.

Lastly, and more on this soon, I am self-publishing a collection of short stories entitled “Stories I Told Myself” They are taken mainly from the Seanachai. There will be several new pieces in this book. Including the story of how I was shot and almost killed when I lived in Los Angeles. (No punchline here. It’s a true story. Although it is fairly funny in places.)

That’s all the news I got. Hang on. There’s lots of great stuff in the pipeline.

The Vampire in My Face Pt. II

Posted on | October 27, 2009 | 4 Comments

The worst monsters are the ones who believe they have your best interest at heart.