I have so massively behind on shit I have to do tonight that I’m bleeding out of my eye sockets. This is just a short one. Go check out my top level site, www.rumored.com and let me know what you think of the new layout. The last few items in the list will go somewhere else eventually. I’m esp. interested in how it looks in IE since I don’t have a copy. Netscape doesn’t do the mouse-over highlighting on links. And I did a bunch of stylesheet hacks which are supposed to be browser-independent, but never are.

Summer Rain, book 3 = 66268. That needs to be 85000 soon. Like I said, gotta go.

[2020 - long ago, rumored had its own layout, and this was under one directory. Now, the home is the blog. Weird to still see these old entries, so I’ll leave them.]

Today felt like a day in Bloomington back in 1992 - the weird vibe you get when it’s about to rain and it’s light out, but the clouds are trying to stomp it all out. Although I ignored this in my book describing that summer, the first week or two was filled with cold and borderline rainy weather like this. I didn’t have a job, the girlfriend had split, and I was stuck taking a political science class that looked pretty daunting. For about the first 10 days, it felt like the entire world was going to collapse in on me. And that weather helped reinforce the feeling.

I read in one of the Bukowski letters books (I’ve been reading both of them on and off, just opening to a random spot and reading for a few minutes or hours) and when he quit the post office to write full time, he went on a ten day terror ride of drunkenness, hangovers, no food, and despair. I guess things have been somewhat easier here, although every time I go to Safeway and drop a fiver on a couple of 2-liters or something, it makes me cringe a bit and think about money. It’s going to be an odd trip across the country.

Ryan’s party on Friday was pretty decent. I got there early and we were both a little freaked because nobody showed up for a couple of hours. I guess everyone learned their lesson on his last party, when there was no food and he was still cleaning an hour into the thing. But the whole gang showed up, plus a bunch of other people I didn’t know. It was pretty fun because everyone knew it was my going-away party so all sorts of strangers were coming up to me and talking to me. I had to tell the whole story a thousand times, but it was much better than doing so with the people at work, because these were all people that thought the whole adventure was cool.

So I shot a bunch a video, talked to everyone, drank a fair amount of beer, and got home around 5am. Since that has been my new bedtime lately, everything worked fine.

All I’ve been doing, aside from sleeping and wandering around aimlessly, is working on Summer Rain, or throwing stuff out. I’ve been shuffling through various shelves, boxes, and corners and pitching more and more stuff in the garbage. I sort of feel like those guys who pushed helicopters over the edge of aircraft carriers during the evacuation of South Vietnam.

Oops, I went off and started reading something for like 45 minutes, and now I forgot what I was talking about. I guess this would be a good place to stop.

I removed myself from On Display because I’m sick of every other journal except mine. Is that wrong? Maybe I will start a ring for text-only journals written by people who don’t read other journals and don’t care about graphics. If you think your journal fits the bill, email me. Also, it helps if you like Black Sabbath.

I’ve been reading Bukowski’s two books of letters, in an effort to think more like a starving writer. It’s made me realize I need to think more seriously about my books and get stuff done. Today I went to Virginia Lore’s and gave her the first two parts of Summer Rain and a recent draft of Rumored to Exist. She read part of Summer Rain and seemed into it, so hopefully that means another dedicated reader to give me detailed feedback, along with Michael, Andrea, and Marie. BTW, if you are reading this and want to review any of my stuff, it’s on my web site. But you have to email and ask for the password. I’m warning you in advance though that it’s a daunting task - thousands of pages, but maybe you’ll enjoy it.

I’ve been working more on Summer Rain lately, trying to get the third book in shape before I move. It’s at about 62,000 words, and my goal is 85,000. (That’s for the third book - the whole thing is currently like 220,000 words.) I’ve been piddling around with how the ending works. The whole thing needs to come crashing down pretty fast, like within a couple of chapters, and it’s not exactly smooth right now. It happens too fast, and out of nowhere. I’m trying to hid little clues and sort of pull back the duration of this final hammerblow to the chest so it’s not too formulaic or something. Although the word count is getting there, some of the final chapters still look pretty fucked.

In the last day or two, I’ve been looking back at older pieces of Summer Rain and doing some housekeeping. I’ve been working on the book almost constantly for a year now, except for the sporadic vacations I’ve taken with Rumored. So there’s writing I’ve done from like last May or even older that I haven’t looked at or messed with in a while. In fact, there are bits and pieces in book 3 I haven’t touched in months. It’s always nice to go back to something you’ve written and forgotten. When I go back to old parts of SR, I see pieces that make me laugh, prose that I think is strong, and stuff that works. That’s good, because in old drafts of SR, I cringe at the stuff I find. Rumored takes the cake though - after I set it down and let it ferment for a few months, I pick it up and find stuff I forgot I wrote, stuff that usually makes me laugh out loud. I love when that happens.

The big party is tomorrow. I don’t know who will be there, except for the usuals. I hope it’s a lot of people, but even if it’s just me, Ryan, Todd, and Keiko telling old stories about Spry, it’ll be fun. Every time I say I won’t miss Seattle, I think of another person that I will miss. And today, me and Virginia went walking, and went to this park up on Queen Anne hill, where she lives. It overlooked EVERYTHING - all of Puget sound right in front of us, the waters going off to the San Juans on the right, with little tugboats and ferries going back and forth below. And to the left, you could see all of downtown Seattle - Belltown, the Space Needle, the buildings, Alaskan Way, Key Arena, and if it would have been clear, even Mount Rainier. Virginia told me this story about how that spot was her first view of Seattle, how when she was going to school in Olympia, she had a crazy blind date that drove her up there and it was the first time she saw the city. It’s kindof sad to think that it will be one of the last times I get a good look at everything at once.

I videotaped it, of course. Making lots of tapes before I leave. I’m going to bring the thing to the party. Having a bunch of drunk people pass around a camera and make commentary is usually a pretty good view later when you’re sober. I have 3 more two-hour tapes to fill on the way out. I have no idea what I’ll do with them once I finish taping them - I still have about 4 hours of Disneyland circa 1997 that I’ve only watched like twice.

I promised myself I’d write until I was tired, and now I am.

Ryan Grant is having a party/wake for me this Friday. If you’re in Seattle, it would be terrific if you could show. Here’s his message:

Party! Friday the 19th, 8pm. http://www.seanet.com/~rgrant/party.html <— more info, map, directions. Jon Konrath is, as some of you may have heard, leaving the state. In fact, he’s moving to the Other Coast. All of you can do something about this. You can show up at my place Friday and, well, do whatever you want to about it. Most of us will be mingling, eating, drinking (to various degrees), and anticipating the Volkswagon giveaway. The rules are basically: bring yourself, invite friends, and if any self-immolations happen, they have to be out on the deck. - Ryan

That’s all for now. I’m supposed to be working on the book. Maybe I’ll write more in a bit.

Today was my first day of freedom, job-wise. Too bad I spent the whole day dragging hundreds of pounds of books down to my car and over to UPS. I dropped about $250 on shipping today, but now my apartment looks amazingly more barren. I started to pack more books tonight, but I’m down to one more box, and then I need to buy more.

It always feels odd to be hanging out on a day when the rest of the world is working. It’s like seeing a world you never knew existed. When I went to college and I skipped classes or otherwise found a way to screw around for an afternoon, I never felt the same sensation - college towns have their busy times, but so many people are vaguely employed or full-time students. I saw the same thing in Elkhart, though. I’d work at Monkey Ward’s during the day some summers, and when I went to get some lunch at the hot dog stand in the mall, the concourses would be completely barren, save a few senior citizens. During my first trip to UPS, Seattle felt like that - fewer cars on the road, the yuppie contingent was absent, and it just had a strange feeling, like you could tell at a glance that the majority of the city was behind a desk or at a factory.

During my second trip, around 3

, traffic was already nearing a peak. I don’t know what the hell’s up with this city. They should’ve spent half a billion on a monorail, not on two stadiums.

I’m supposed to be working on Summer Rain, so I’m going to get back to it.