YEAH, YEAH, YEAH… I bought the damn disc on launch day, surprise. Get on your boots? Try GET ON YOUR GEEK. Oh well. Don’t really have too much to report at this hour, as I’ve only listened to the album, um… thinking here… 12 times? Stand-out songs include the title track (real trip of an opener), “Magnificent,” and “White as Snow.” But I really don’t have the time and the energy to waste on these jokers, not anymore, not tonight. I have a new deadline, and I want it DONE. I really WILL go crazy if I don’t go crazy tonight, and tomorrow night, and so on. I want it DONE. (What, you ask, is “it?” Patience. All will be revealed.) So, this will be my last post for a while. (To which the crowd mumbles, Thank Christ.) But before taking a powder and lighting out of here, I’m going to inflict a bit of show and tell, an abbreviated history lesson. I’ll try to make it as painless as possible. Really.

OKAY! In August 08, this charming, ambitious editor,

VICTORIA BLAKE, a woman possessed of STUNNING GOOD TASTE and the Proud Publisher of UNDERLAND PRESS  <www.underlandpress.com> became moderately enamored with a short story of mine, “The Last Star in the Sky.” To which I responded, Koolness!

(Victoria chose to not make use of the above design. Oh, well.)

Anyway, then she said, “What else do you have?” “Well… I’ve got this kinda crazy illustrated manga-novel-anime-homage that’s really over the top…”

DOOMTROOPERS, via UNDERLAND, would have been a serialized (and illustrated) web-novel, NOT to be confused with UNDERLAND’s recently trademarked WOVEL concept— stay with me now, trust me, this is the short version— ultimately ending up as a printed book. Anyway, Victoria was on board with the plan. Sort of. She was distracted by a different Draxian project she had spotted on a designer’s website…

Victoria said, “What is this?” So I sent her some pages. And Victoria became… enthused. THIS was a book she could publish and market! “Um, okay. Koolness!” I responded. DOOMTROOPERS went on the eternal back-burner: all other concerns were to be thrown in cryogenic freeze as I hammered out DA. Okay. Koolness—-

ARE YOU SHITTING ME? ARE YOU FUCKING SHITTING ME? Sorry. Holy Christ, I’m writing/composing this as The Late Show with David Letterman plays on TV. U2 is the week-long guest, big deal. BUT TODAY THEY JUST NAMED 53rd STREET, the street WHERE I LIVED FOR FIVE YEARS, ONE BLOCK WEST FROM LETTERMAN—THEY JUST NAMED 53rd Street u2 WAY! Holy Christ. This is sick. It’s true. Bloomberg was there and everything. It’s official. Holy shit. U2 fucking way. Sick, sick, sick. Oh, where my street has a new name… Sick. People will think this is fabricated, starting the post with the new album and all… but it’s true. Sick!

Woof. Sorry about.

ANYWAY… Victoria’s madly in love with DARK AUGUST. Everything else must stop. But one of us —I honestly forget which one—  started talking long term strategy, ie, the book to follow DA. So I suggested A VERY FAST DESCENT INTO HELL, a book I had self-published several years ago which had never really seen the light of day…

AND HERE OUR PROBLEMS BEGAN.

Change of plan: DESCENT would be the first book, DARK AUGUST the second. But it wouldn’t be that simple: Victoria wanted changes, changes I was not crazy about. “Would I do it?” she wanted to know. “Well, yeah,” I told her, thinking it would be better to have the book out there then have my self-published copies collecting dust in my office.

This was, what, late September, early October? And my world went fittingly into semi-hell.

Death. Addiction. Doubt. And yeah, Despair. I’m not kidding. These things happen. Not trying to be coy, but this isn’t the time and place to go into the details; it’s not just about me, it’s about my family, too. Hell, one of Victoria’s Wovel authors endured a divorce and a hurricane and joblessness and he still turned his stuff in on time, sometimes writing installments in airports, sometimes having no recollection of  writing what he’d written. Still, from October into December, my world looked like this… hang on, have to find a chaos picture…

CHAOS! You get the idea.

So. Between Victoria being away, my agent being away, ME being “away,” contract negotiation deadlock, back and forth, “away,” angst and difficulty with the changes, more “away,” death, illness, Jesus it’s the four horsemen of the apocalypse, at least that’s what it felt—and feels—like, sometimes… Anyway, as I write this, in the dead of March 4, I have an unfinished revised manuscript, the IT, you patient soul, this is IT, and I want IT done, and the title page looks like this:

And that’s where I’m at. This is IT. New deadline. If this were one of UNDERLAND’S Wovels the reader would be able to chose:

• Will Drax make his deadline? Or,

• Will he miss it?

Oh god. The whole house is asleep save me. That’s nothing new. Time to wrap this up. But let me see if a certain photo has hit the news outlets yet… Hang on…

OH, it’s only temporary. Thank Christ!

Woof. Later, all.

March 4, 2009
Categories: DESCENT, Uncategorized . . Author: Drax

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