Sugar rush speaking

"This may be my sugar rush speaking from the freeze pop i sucked whole from between your thighs this morning, but i reckon we've been living together for thirty-three billion years now and still at least once a day, once an hour, i catch a pirouette in your speech or a tiny fold in the soft of your body that pulls me out of whatever i'm doing like the sight of a flying cow. And I have long accepted the idea that this is not love as movies and books discuss, that our relationship is more like one of those cosmic arrangements, a sun and moon thing for the benefit of Terran civilizations so they have something to set their calendars to."

(Notes from Heaven Park, ca. 2019)

 

Well, fuck

Heaven Park, the work previously known as the Disaster in Progress that was my endeavor for over four years, is not happening. 

Although the book was signed on with a publisher back in September 2020, long delays on their side had already put a huge strain on my relationship with the editor. Earlier this year the book was finally slotted for publication in September 2023--three years after acquisition, which is both unprecedented and untenable. The editor's insistence on making sizeable cuts nearly two years in was the last straw. So I'm walking out.

I do not make this decision lightly. Canceling this contract means delaying my next book even more, whichever it is, and it puts me in a terrible position financially. While teenage me is proud I stood up for the integrity of my work, adult me is about to jump out of a fucking window. 

But Heaven Park is personal. Its real counterpart, the place the novel is based on, has become my perfect vacation spot much faster than Los Angeles is becoming a nice place to live in. Heaven is square one, but it's a very comfortable square one. Crawling back to die in it is not that bad a deal. 

What I regret most is not being able to share it with you guys yet. But I will. It belongs to Heavenparkers already.

More images at @heaven_park_snaps

Quidnuncs and Aardvarks

Y'all ask, I answer, this blog looks active despite the dearth of new published material.

 

I want to know if you’re working on any new books?

I swear I haven't stopped writing, despite what my Wikipedia page seems to imply! Sadly my upcoming novel Heaven Park has gotten stuck somewhere along the publisher's manuscript-to-book assembly line, and it's still far in the horizon. This is extra frustrating because the logjam is also preventing me from shopping around my new manuscripts, of which I have completed two since Heaven Park (one and two).  

How old were you when you started learning English? And then writing in it?

I was 7-8 when I took my first lesson, and 17 when I took my last. The real learning came later, when I started reading books and watching movies and shows in the original English (in Spain all foreign media is dubbed, a practice I strongly oppose now). I started writing in English around 2004 (23 yo), but never for publication till The Supernatural Enhancements in 2011.

 

How do you come up with the expressions in your books? I swear I'd never heard 'borborygmic' until Meddling Kids. Is it just a process of reading more? Are there secret thesaurus tricks you know?

Thesauruses are awesome, but mostly I come across new words in books and movies. The crux of the matter is that many of those words wouldn't be exotic at all to you, but I make an effort to use them all, regardless of whether they're only new to me or merely obscure. If I only used words with which I am 100% familiar, my English vocabulary would be very limited.

 

Will we see the characters from Meddling Kids again?

In book form, no.

 

Do you see yourself writing a saga? About what? What main character / villain do you imagine for it?

I have considered (even written) loose sequels set in old universes, and I wish I could give A.Z. Kimrean a new case, but I've never envisioned a saga or a multi-part novel. My brain just can't operate at that scale. I am certain that Heaven Park is the longest story I had in me, and right now it's about 570 pages.

Bear with me, I promise it's coming.

Mentally I'm here

 

Corporeally too.

Third version of Heaven Park submitted.

Departure

"I hope my editor likes the new manuscript; it's such a big departure from my previous work."

(Old tweet, but feels fresh anew.)

Round Two

>run statrprt.exe file:WIP.odt

MANUSCRIPT STATUS REPORT OT:2020/04/13 ψSC:UNKNOWN

word count: 151,980 (-15,513)
page count: 585 (-71)
# of chapters: 111 (-10)
longest chapter length: 4711 words (-330)
shortest chapter length: 173 words (-48)
opening paragraph length: 7 pages
# of footnotes: 22
# of pages in meter: 5
longest string without punctuation marks: 24 lines
# of named human characters: ~175 (-25)
# of chapters featuring most featured character: ~20
status: beta-ready
title: HEAVEN PARK

Cooling down

>run statrprt.exe file:WIP.odt

MANUSCRIPT STATUS REPORT OT:2019/09/21 ψSC:UNKNOWN

word count: 169,493
page count: 656
# of chapters: 121
longest chapter length: 5,041 words
shortest chapter length: 221 words
opening paragraph length: 7 pages
# of footnotes: 15
# of pages in meter: 5
longest string without punctuation marks: 24 lines
# of named human characters: >200
# of chapters featuring most featured character: <20
status: cooling down
title: HEAVEN PARK

よくやった！

 heaven_park_snaps

Proof that sometimes I plan ahead

There are literally eight major character deaths plotted here.

Disaster In Progress

DIP is the endearing term I use to refer to my next novel. For years, the DIP was the last page in the file where I list all my project ideas—just one short paragraph with a pitch and a footnote saying I wasn't yet good enough to undertake it. I'm still not good enough, but I've been fiddling with it in my spare time for years now. It kept me pretty busy in New York: for some reason, writing about Catalonia in English and from 6,000 kilometers makes it more interesting. And it's going to be weird, and personal, and different from anything I've done before, and there are bits I'm really proud of so far but right now they're like fragments in a shipwreck. But my editor likes it, so it's going to be the next novel.

I often think that the research, the notes, maybe even the plotboards are a writer's excuse to delay the actual work of phrasing what's in your head. If I'm right, then this thing here is a big waste of time. But it's cute.

The white squares represent units I haven't written yet. The colored squares are units I've written—kind of. The struck-out squares are those that I'm happy with. When all the squares are filled and struck-out, the novel will be ready.

Good thing we're writing TV projects in the meantime.

El señor proyectitos

Look at me, I'm Mister Projects.