The Malice Engine

Realized tonight there’s not near enough surf guitar music on my iPod. Bummer.

The Black Glove just ran a couple of pieces about me and my work.

You can check out the interview here. TBG contributor Karen Newman asked me about everything from my karate studies to my writing to collaborating with guys like Brian Keene and J.F. Gonzalez. Wonder what happened to Muy Mal with John Urbancik, Weston Ochse, and myself? We cover that, too.

The review is here. Newman did the review as well, and the short version is she dug it. Check this out:

Oliveri doesn’t utilize the supernatural as a crutch, a testament to the strength of his writing. Oliveri has made a wonderful contribution to the werewolf mythos in The Pack: Winter Kill.

Rockin’. Ready to buy your own copy of the book? Make with the clicky. You can even get a Kindle version here.

It’s a mellow morning today, and when Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice” rolled through the iPod’s shuffle deck I found the bassline especially suitable.

Then I remembered the video featuring Christopher Walken and had to look it up. It makes me grin every time.

Having a shitty morning? Relax, turn on your speakers, and enjoy.

Yeah. This is almost better than if he spent the whole video in a wild gunfight.

Almost.

Riding pants, that is. Ruben Torres has been running a series of articles on his Better Motorcycling blog about protective riding gear, most recently a summary of protective pants. He makes some good points, and I have to admit, proper riding pants are something I’ve been putting off. Part of it is expense, and part of it is I think it’ll be a pain in the ass to haul leather chaps around (and I’m way too big to be wearing leather pants all the time).

That doesn’t make a good excuse, of course. I wear a helmet, boots, and a leather jacket and gloves most of the time, so it’s pretty silly to neglect my legs. I’m looking at installing crash bars on Lenore, but they’re only going to do so much. Maybe they’ll help prevent a crushed ankle, but they’re not going to stop asphalt from tearing into my ass like a cheese grater if I take a slide. Over the winter I started browsing the web for crash gear just for grins, and I stumbled across Draggin’ Jeans on Amazon.

Made by Fast Company, Draggin’ Jeans are denim jeans lined with Kevlar. In a slide, the denim may give way, but the Kevlar layer holds up and prevents shredded flesh. I’ve been hesitant to buy because I wasn’t sure how well they’d really hold up, but Ruben’s post prompted me to look them Draggin’ Jeans again. This time I hit YouTube and found a good video of guys putting Draggin’ Jeans to the test:

Better them than me. There’s a longer video here, which also offers a better look at the denim damage.

Looks good to me. May have to start rubbing some pennies together and see if I can’t land a pair.

The problem with goals for word counts or page counts is I tend to beat myself up when I don’t make them. I start feeling like I’ve failed at something, and that makes it even tougher to go back and do it again. This is a big problem when I have so many irons in the fire that I don’t actually make it to the keyboard.

Fact is I’m a busy guy. Between the work, the family, karate classes, kids’ basketball games and concerts, trips, and other events, I have a lot going on. Every weekend this month is booked solid, and last month wasn’t a whole lot better. Cramming in an hour of writing a day is not always easy.

Instead I’ve made it a goal to create something every day.

This plan dawned on me a week ago when I grabbed my Moleskine shortly before bedtime. I had an idea rolling around in my head for a couple of days, and I didn’t get it to the computer so I decided to at least get it into the notebook. As I wrote it down, that idea led to another, and another, and yet another, all connected to the same story. In a matter of ten minutes I had four characters and a rough plot for what could easily be a novel or graphic novel.

The hard part of writing them is still ahead, but now I’ve got something to make that precious keyboard time all the more effective. I can’t afford to sit and stare at a blank page, wondering what comes next, for a half hour or so. This way if I’m working on The Pack book 2 and I’m stuck, I can shift gears to this project and bust out several pages or a few thousand words.

I’ve been working on it for the whole week, and so far it’s worked. I’ve jotted notes, I printed and edited an old short story, and I wrote responses to a couple of interviews. I’ve done some research, which in turn led to even more ideas on another project. Better yet, they were all done in short bursts. They were times I had a few minutes to kill, but not quite enough time to get lost in a page. (If I can’t get a complete thought/scene onto a page, I feel I’ve lost the thread of it when I get back to the keyboard and the narrative turns to crap.)

And I haven’t been beating myself up over note writing. I haven’t been crabby and irritable because I’m worried I’m wasting my time. It doesn’t feel like work (in either a good or bad sense), but it doesn’t feel like failure.

So if you’ll excuse me, I have a little creating to do before I crash for the night.

This week I decided to do a quick self portrait.

Black and White and (lots of!) Gray

This time I had two challenges. First was getting my eyes into sharper focus, as the camera kept finding my goatee and knuckles first. Second I tweaked the aperture to properly blur the background, as well as positioned myself to block out the bulk of the shapes behind me.

Two things will make this easier in the future:

First, tracking down the software so I can tether the camera to my laptop. That will help nail down the focus instead of having to do so many test shots (and having to reset the camera between each). Second, I need to find a proper backdrop. I tried having my wife hold my open gi jacket, and while it obscured the background it introduced its own folds and shadows. Our blankets, etc., have patterns, so they wouldn’t have done any good. A simple white cloth and a simple black cloth will probably provide plenty of versatility in the future.

The Photo Friday shots to date can be found here.

This is a truly epic porta-potty prank.

The first prank is bad enough, but the second version of the prank near the end is even meaner.

Not that it stopped me from laughing at these poor bastards…

There are a several more pranks here, some funny and some just plain stupid.

Wired has an article about how it’s legal to give police the finger but it’s not a good idea.

Hell, I can show you that in one short video and save you five minutes:

Yes, some cops are dicks. They don’t hand out reason and common sense with guns & badges. However, there are better ways to show your displeasure than setting yourself up for a hassle or getting your ass kicked.

Doing the headless chicken thing so have fallen silent. Back soon. In the meantime, I will distract you with this slice of awesome:

This week’s Photo Friday is a bit lazy. My son’s park district basketball team had a game tonight, and we had a few other things going on so I figured this would be easier than getting creative.

Get the rebound!

I’ve never been a big basketball fan, but it’s fun watching the little guys run around and do their thing. The Midget is having a blast, and even though he’s never played before, he’s learning quite a bit and has improved with every game. There have been several mornings we woke to the “thump thump thump” of his dribbling practice, and he’ll often dribble some more while he watches TV.

There hasn’t been much I’ve been able to offer him in terms of advice. The Wife played basketball in high school, but I wrestled and we weren’t big fans of the pumpkin bouncers. I more or less tuned out during basketball rules lessons in PE, and I constantly got called for fouls that I didn’t even realize were fouls. For example, if I stand firm and the guy with the ball crashes into me and falls on his ass, why is that a foul on me? Why should I have to give up ground for my opponent? I’m not going to give him a free shot at the basket!

I digress. Point is, I tried to give the little dude advice from the sideline once, but the Wife told me that was the opposite of what he needed to be doing at the moment. So I keep it simple now: “Go go go!” and “Nice shot!” That way the coaches don’t look at me like I’m crazy. It doesn’t matter much this year, but he says he wants to play throughout his school career. If that’s the case, I guess I better start learning how this shit works so we can practice in the driveway.

Yeah, we have a hoop. Inherited it when we bought the house. Only time I’ve ever paid attention to it is when I’ve had to mow around it.

Photography-wise, the lesson this week is a lot like last week’s: spot focus is tough at a distance with a low aperture setting. I need a fast zoom lens, but they’re way out of my financial reach. On the plus side, I got up and moved around the gym a bit, exercising a little more sneaker zoom than usual. The habit of staying in the bleachers with friends is one I need to break if I want to take better pics.