So many thoughts. . .
 
Sometimes it seems the universe has a firm idea of what it wants from you.  If you try to wander too far off the set course, you find the barriers are like frowns; the magnets of life repelling you back towards the way you're supposed to go.

I don't feel like going into the zillions of details which made everything feel off, so I won't.  (There was even a damned hurricane slowing me, repelling me.  --Actually, it kept a great many people locked down for a day or more wherever they happened to be.  I happened to be in an airport in Pittsburgh.)  But it was more than wind and rain telling me not to attend the Small Press Expo in Washington, which I really didn't have the heart to attend.  --I nearly blew it off about five times before finally going against my better judgement.

Now, don't get me wrong!  It was a fine show.  Heck, being stuck in an airport for 12 hours was even pretty neat, (I met some fascinating people; a little woman from East Africa whose brother was flying her in to visit, and she was amazed and a somewhat scared by things like telephones and credit cards and all that stuff we take for granted.  And snow.  She couldn't stop talking about snow, asking me how it is that people don't all die in the winter time in Canada.  Marvelous!)

SPX was as excellent a show as this industry has to offer.  I met some great people, made some good connections and sold a lot of books.  It was a good time.

But, to describe feelings, (that's all I'm filled with right at the moment; feelings running hither and yon, my head still in a fog of them even after a good long sleep in my own bed and a big breakfast in my own kitchen.  I still can't shake the convention daze.), I must say I don't think I was supposed to be in Washington.  Beneath the society and ceremony, the food and that excellent atmosphere of smart, bright and positive people, I found myself bombarded by subtle messages, one after the other, all telling me I was acting like an ass and to get myself back into the proper flow.  So impatient!

I don't understand such forces, be they extensions of my own psychological state, where I see parallels in this infinitely various world of ours to whatever my subconscious happens to be obsessing over; or be they actual strong patterns lining up in the events transpiring around me, rubbing the wrong way against my misguided intentions as though they were laid out specifically for that purpose. . .  I wonder if there is even a difference sometimes; while I do not believe in magic, but I do believe in those forces we call magic, and I have learned to respect them.  I've learned that fighting the designs and rhythms of the world only makes you miserable.

The universe is a peculiar and beautiful place, and while we are all integral parts, our self awareness and intellect is a silly, new thing which is unattached for the most part.  It is able to observe, but really, it just isn't invited to the party.  It's a fine tool, but to follow it exclusively will get you lost, confused and unhappy, guaranteed.  It's worse than rolling dice, really, because so many people believe so thoroughly in logic these days that they often casually follow it to their dooms.

Katara and Soracia.  Heath and Varkias, Rubel and Kim, Quinton and his poor forest Troll.  Jenny and Smith-Robins. . .  These couplets are swimming around me, and they all fit together, but the scripts I have in front of me all seem wrong.  --In ways I can understand upon review, thank goodness!  My abilities in this craft are strong enough now to detect such subtle errors.   But I recently pulled the plug on the Heath strips I'd drawn for this month; I'll not be posting them because they bugged me.  The scene I'm working on with Rubel and Kim is also flawed, and I need to re-do parts of it as well.  But there is so little time!  Schedules these days are important, and money is tight, because it's all tied up for the upcoming $20,000 reprint of the first three rapidly selling TPBs.  And probably as a direct result of that increased interest in the collected volumes, sales have slid on the regular issues, so I find I'm often eating on credit these days.  (I don't like eating on credit.  It causes indigestion).

I've got a new book distribution deal to work out in the Canadian bookstore market.  I've got retailers and comic book distributors waiting for promotional material I've told them I would send shortly.  I've got review magazines waiting for comp copies, with interviews and such all coming due.  --And bank accounts and printing accounts to balance and organize.  All hanging over me, all quietly demanding attention.  Pending, pending, pending. . .

And there is power under the surface of all this turmoil!  Events are connecting in every world I am part of, forming shapes I neither understand nor care to contemplate very deeply.  But I do know it all fits together.  To say that Fiction mirrors Life is accurate, I think, but I also believe that the relationship can be far stranger than is immediately obvious.  Life is a queasy, uncertain, laughing thing.  To be able to mirror this is the true essence of writing.  I am frequently amazed to see how elements of my work fit together in brilliant ways that I certainly didn't plan for.  There are no barriers in the patterns.  Everything affects everything else. . , is replicated by everything else.  Now that I am back from Washington, everything is beginning to click again once more.  How relieving!
 
 

-Mark