I’m not sure who decided screenplays are written in three acts, but that’s what we’ve all become conditioned to. Of course, in television, there are four acts because of the commercials, but the beats are about the same—beginning, middle, complication, ending. In life, it’s good to know there are indeed second acts. At my advanced age, well into my forties now, I presume I am in my third if not fourth act, which has things moving at a brisk pace while we pause for this message from Depends.
I actually keep forgetting about this part of my life. It’s like I ran away to India and live in an Ashram with some Maharashtra natives who have absolutely no clue about STEEL or QUANTUM & WOODY. And you live there long enough, you yourself begin to forget.
I need to completely re-code this website (including this blog which is a spam magnet). The enormity of that task is enough to keep me from doing it. It would probably take me three to six months if I did it a little at a time, and time is simply not my friend.
There was no decision made to stop posting here. I stopped posting, I think, not because I had nothing to say but because I had nothing to say on this particular topic of comic books or super-heroes. I am simply not in that line of work anymore. Nobody chased me out, quite the contrary. I just woke up one morning and didn’t want to do it anymore. I still like the art form but, for the most part, do not care much for the business and, increasingly, know less about it.
And it’s not like I can post anything here about my personal life because (1) who cares, (2) my neighbors tend to copy things off this blog and pass them around (yes, my life is a Seinfeld episode), (3) other family and friends and British writers use this blog to cyber-stalk me, and posting here becomes an invitation for more stress and nuttiness.
Most writing I do these days I do for me. My most recent project, “1999” for Platinum Studios, went really well editorially but Platinum’s business problems delayed it well past our ideal 2009 publishing date (there was a ten-year gag integral to the plot), and the delays turned into my waiting for a bus that simply wasn’t coming. No offense to anyone at Platinum, every one of whom went out of their way to make this right, but getting that property back felt like rescuing my children from a burning house. And when you get used to being virtually unemployed for eighteen months, you have increasingly less incentive to run out and sign new contracts. I will likely publish “1999” along with “Zion,” my completely unpublishable (my agent’s words) novel on my own, making a whopping ten cents off of those properties, at some point. When you take money out of the equation, all that’s left is the fun stuff, what some people call “joy,” though it’s been so long since I’ve experienced it I’m no longer sure of the spelling.
I do, however, feel a CSI:Miami rant coming on, so expect that likely in the next week or so. For reasons too long to go into now, I’ve been watching this series on DVD and am both fascinated and repulsed by it.
As with my filthy garage, I can only walk past the horror so many times before finally losing my mind. It’s possible I’ve lost my mind long ago, but lately this site has been a peculiar eyesore. I should fix it or take it down. I don’t have much of an ego about myself or this part of my life, but people entering Act Four are usually thinking about legacy. It’s nice to have something, somewhere, that speaks for you, that tells your story from your point of view and in your own words. So, on some level, I suppose the site, abandoned in orbit for a long time, now, actually serves some purpose and is, therefore, worth the, oh, month and a half it would take me to actually re-code it properly (assuming I did that all day; figure times six if I just worked on it a day a week). Which I’ll probably do, if only because I’m sick of looking at it, now.
I spent long moments searching for some glib greeting to old friends I’ve vanished on, but can’t find something clever that also expresses how deeply I appreciate each one of you.
