• Margaret Atwood
• Cory Doctorow
• Chuck Palahniuk
• James Joyce

So there’s an odd combination of writers.  Palahniuk really throws a wrench into the mix, since I would say he and Joyce are about as far apart in style as writers can be.

Still, a ton of fun, and worth wasting your Friday trying.

Also, I am eagerly anticipating the approach of autumn.  Summer was wicked hot here, and I’m ready for some crisp air, crisp leaves, and crisp cider.  I’m slowly shifting my wardrobe to plaids and half-zip sweaters.  I’m wearing shoes instead of sandals.  I’m drinking chai tea.  I’m plotting which apple orchards to visit.  Scarves are becoming more appealing.  It’s a disease, really.

Speaking of scarves, if you’re looking for a handmade scarf (or hat, or vintage necktie!) as a gift, or just to wear, check out my wife’s etsy website, where she sells a bunch of awesome scarves she has hand-knitted.  They are quite lovely.

This past February, my wife and I were out to dinner (at Cowboy Jacks, which has bomb sweet potato fries) and she said to me (roughly), “John, I know you want to do this [get an MFA], and you will regret it for the rest of your life if you don’t.  So you should do it now before we start having children.”

And I said, “You are a genius.  I owe you many diamonds and puppies for this.”

Which left me in need of a school that fit my schedule, which basically eliminated 99.2% of all schools on earth.  Fortunately, I found Hamline University in St. Paul, which has an MFA program designed for working adults.  All of the classes are in the evenings or on Saturday mornings.  I talked to a coworker who just finished his MFA there, and he said he really enjoyed it.

So, I put together a submission package, contacted a couple of my dearest professors from back in my UWEC days, and applied to the MFA program at Hamline.  I haven’t received word yet if I’ve been accepted or not, but I’m very hopeful (and a little over-confident) that I’ll get in.  I say over-confident because I’ve enrolled in a class and start on September 8th, and I would not have dropped the money on it if I didn’t think I would get in.

I am really looking forward to pursuing this degree, and all the challenges it will present.  I told my wife early on that I would not be quitting my day job to go to school, and I will not be quitting my day job after I receive my degree in order to go off and teach at a college somewhere.  I enjoy my day job.  It involves working with great people and getting paid far more than a college professor.  Just sayin’.

While I’m guessing this new workload will impair my ability to finish my novel Alien Nation (in final draft mode finally!) I still plan to finish that beast before the year is up.  Which is good, because I’ll be expected to write another novel as my thesis for the MFA, though that won’t be for another 3 years.  That means I’ll have about 7 years of college behind me at that point.

As “Tommy Boy” Tom Callahan said, “Hey.  A lot of guys go to college for 7 years.”

“Yeah.  They’re called writers.”

That is me imitating Brownie’s face, which was somewhat tired-looking at this point.  Here’s hoping his face does not turn into the face of my folks’ other pug dog, which could terrify children (and even wives) with a single glance:

Ahhhh!  Yep, that’s a real dog.

Promise the next post will be about writing, and the progress I’m making on Alien Nation.

I also promise it will be less frightening than the face of near-death-wrapped-in-a-handmade-scarf above.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe this is the standard rejection slip from BWR.  This is the next step up.  “We were interested in it,” they say.  And I say yay.

Unless someone replies and says that this is in fact the standard rejection slip.  Then I will look very sad.

Or maybe scared, as can be seen in this picture of me looking outside at the pounding rain:

Funnier still, they held a contest for people to send in fake/humorous title to THE WORST CHILDREN’S BOOK…EVER.  And for your Friday enjoyment, I have re-posted the list below:

Our WINNER was:  @MJsRetweet:  Daddy Has an Itch. Mommy Smells Like Fish: A Child’s Rhyming Guide to STD’s  Congrats to @MJsRetweet!

And here are the rest of the Top 25 WORST CHILDREN’S BOOKS…EVER, in no particular order:

@SmolderingInk:  The Best Things to Drink Are under the Sink

@LynetteCurtis: Toy Story 3: Buzz Gets a Woody

@harleymaywrites:  Is Angelina My Mommy?

@C_Spaghetti:  Where the Wild Thongs Are

@Janet_Reid:  The Smith & Wesson Coloring Book for Kids

@AVgrl:  Ashley Has Two Daddies, and They’re Both Going to Burn in Hell

@KateHaggard:  Dismemberment Donny Needs A Hand

@SarahEGlenn:  The Secret Pot Garden

@Smolderingink: Princess Poledancer And The Twirly Tassle Gang

@Prettyandi:  Santa Clause, The Tooth Fairy & The Easter Bunny: Just The Beginning of a Lifetime of Lies

@Shelltex:  Math Will Make You Ugly

@Juniperjenny:  The Magical World beneath the Tarp on the Pool

@Thericeman: All Alone with the Internet: A Choose Your Own Adventure Story

@MJsRetweet: The Fog in the Looking Glass (and Other Ways to Find Out if Grandma’s Still with Us)

@alc417: A Buzzing in the Night: Why Your Wii Control’s Batteries Are Gone

@FrozenGlitter: It’s Not that Grandpa Doesn’t Love You, He Just Loves Drinking More

@jjdebenedictis: You Don’t Need to Think When You’re Pretty

@KarlShoemaker:  Furious George Gets Cut Off on the Freeway

@Tobywneal:  Why Do Grandma’s Boobies Touch Her Waist? (And Other Questions Not to Ask Out Loud)

@SarahEGlenn: You’re Not There, God. It’s Me, Christopher Hitchens

@GeneDoucette:  Rachel Has Seven Mommies: A Children’s Guide to the Book of Mormon

@Saraheolson: Things We Can’t Afford because Your Father Left Us

@EliasSerulle:  One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Mercury Poisoning

@LynneKelly:  Frog And Toad Are Friends with Benefits

How hard am I laughing?  So hard that I think I pinched my kidney.  Good weekend.

The King of Kong details the life of Steve Wiebe, a guy who gets laid off from work and decides to fill his time by attempting to break the world record score at Donkey Kong, a classic arcade game.  The documentary pits him against an awesome antagonist in Billy Mitchell, one of the most self-centered, egotistical men I’ve ever seen living.  Wiebe comes off as a genuinely nice guy who loves his family and eagerly anticipates healthy competition.  Billy Mitchell comes off looking like an eviler version of Darth Vader.  Way eviler. 

I couldn’t stop watching.  Check that.  I had to stop watching every 9+ minutes in order to click to the next installment of it on YouTube.  Annoying, but better than paying $30 some dollars on Amazon for the DVD.  Maybe for Christmas…

That’s my plug to all of you people who need to give me a Christmas gift in 5 months.  Never to early to start looking.

I’m hoping this particular risk pays off.  Right now, I’m feeling like I need to do something coolish and new to get this story recognized, and I figure I may as well throw caution to the ether until somebody tells me it sucks.  Or until a consensus of people who have good, objective judgment tells me it sucks.  Breaking the rules of good-sense English is not usually my bag, so this is out there for me, and I kinda dig it.

It reminds me of a birthday card I saw earlier this year which went something like this:

[picture of two guys]
“Where’s the party at?”
“Dude, that’s incorrect grammar.  You shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition.”
[open the card]
Where’s the party at, b*tch?”

Now that’s just good English right there.  Can’t fault ‘em for fixing their own lexical aberration, right?

Happy Friday.

• One bowl of generic honey nut cheerios
• One and a half cups of Dunkin’ Donuts’ original flavor coffee (with sugar and cream)
• One banana
• A good amount of natural light from the west-facing windows
• Laptop
• Story open on laptop
• Remembering the review a writer friend gave on how to make the story better

Combine these elements and Bam!(copyright, Emeril) you’ve got  the perfect setup to write a one-and-a-half-page scene that changes the shape of your novel into something better than it was.

Note: The banana can be substituted for an apple, but not an orange, or anything that requires the removal of a peel to access the fruit itself.  That takes up too much time and kills the formula.  Truth.

• Two glasses of Phillips Union Original Flavor whiskey
• One Jack’s pepperoni pizza
• One hour of watching John Mayer videos on YouTube where he does funny stuff
• Twenty minutes staring at novel and doing nothing with it
• One more glass of Phillips Union Original Flavor whiskey
• Forty seconds thinking about how delicious Phillips Union Original Flavor whiskey is
• Ten more minutes staring at novel while resting head on table because it got kinda heavy
• Light bulb idea

Now that I’ve got these light bulb ideas, all I have to do is update the manuscript with them and bing bang boom, we got ourselves a done book.

Should only take a month or two.