Every year about this time, people ask me for gift-giving advice. Daryl, they say, what can we possibly get you that you won’t complain about?

I know what they’re saying. Finding the perfect gift is a challenge, and some people don’t just try hard enough. Frankly, I’m tired of the whining.

But the answer is right in front of you, people. Daryl loves gadgets. Daryl loves things that don’t exist. Just pick one of the following:

Top 10 Gadgets That Don’t Exist

1. Simple, home-administered DNA test that will prove Daryl is right in political arguments.
2. FM radio that detects when Daryl has already made his donation to public broadcasting and replaces all the pledge drive interruptions with the real programs.
3. Angry Birds. Not the game. *
4. Multi-compass collector set: Includes moral compass, emotional compass, and the compass that tells Daryl which indie bands will make a sucky second record so he doesn’t have to invest time in them. I’m talking to you, Ting-Tings.
5. Jetpack.
6. Forcefield that will stop teenagers and drunk drivers from crashing into Daryl in their jetpacks.
7. Electrical collar that when triggered will make Daryl’s dog immediately squat and crap. I mean, come on, it’s frickin’ 17 degrees, and she’s going to walk around and sniff? Stupid dog.
8. Portable parking spot.
9. Starbucks Ultra Super Platinum Remote that kicks people from Daryl’s favorite table, ejects their power cords from the nearest outlet, and changes the PA to his Pandora station.
10. Peace Love and Understanding app. So when people accuse Daryl of being selfish and only interested in presents for himself, he can shove his phone in their face and say, See? Would a guy who doesn’t care about people have this? I don’t think so.

So let’s get inventing, people! Only four shopping days left!

* I know, technically this is not a gadget, but I just thought it would cool to own a lot of angry birds. And then launch them at buildings with my slingshot.

You know, people come up to me all the time as I’m out raking leaves, and they ask me two questions: One, what should I get my mother for Halloween? And two, why are you in my yard at 3AM? I have this to say to them: Fresh graves don’t cover themselves, and Moms go wild for Dracula: Company of Monsters.

See, Drac #3 comes out Wed. the 27th, just in time for Christine ODonnell’s* favorite holiday. No, not Anti-Masturbation Day (that’s in November) — I’m talking Halloween. The nice people over at Robot 6 ROBOT 666 are running a big juicy 10-page preview of the issue.

I really enjoyed writing this issue, because it introduces the fightin’ Stefanescus from Basov, Romania — a family of kick-ass vampire hunters. The Drac Kill Krewe (as they were instantly nicknamed by editor Dafna Pleban), feature Scott Godlewski’s fabulous character designs, and I had a blast working with them on fleshing these guys out.  They show up right on page 1 of that preview. Oh, and also check out the Drac containment vest, which may be the coolest thing that’s sprung from Busiek’s mind since… well, he thinks of awesome ideas pretty much on an hourly basis, so let’s just say, Since Lunch.

*I fervently hope that when people stumble across this blog post 18 months from now, they’ll say, Christine who?

Today I got an email from Antonello Silverini, the artist who did the cover for the Italian version of Pandemonium now available from the publishing house Fanucci Editore– and the cover is quite cool. He went for the pure Americana at the heart of the book, which is all about pop culture, comic books, and science fiction going back to the 40’s, and the cover includes all kinds of “clues” and references from the book. I love it.

Click to see a large version

Check out Antonello’s website, antonellosilverini.com for his portfolio. He does very interesting things with photos and collage and text, and you know that he’s pays special attention to the content of the novels he’s illustrating, looking through the book for the right image to illustrate. You MUST check out his series of Philip K Dick covers.  His Man in the High Castle particularly knocks me out.

Hey there, Party People. About twice a day I think, “I should do a blog post on that.” For example, I’ve been learning a great deal about the difference between writing comics and prose. There are at least four articles right there. Also, we’ve been pet-sitting a gecko, and I have a long treatise on how geckos are the pot heads of the pet world.

Continue reading →

I’m reading a great book I plucked from my wife’s bedside stack: Reading like a Writer, subtitled “A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those who Want to Write Them,” by Francine Prose. (That’s her married name: she was born Francine Cinquain, but found that too restrictive.) (I kill me.)

Prose is a writer and writing teacher, and she starts the book with the big question: Can writing be taught? Well, no: “A workshop can be useful.  A good teacher can show you how to edit your work. The right class can form the basis of a community that will help and sustain you.”

That sounds about right. More than 22 years ago I went to Clarion, a long-running SF and fantasy workshop, where I learned how severely Samuel R Delaney and Kate Wilhelm  could edit, made good friends, and walked away with one lifetime critique partner who recently gave me, well, critical feedback on the book I’m finishing up now. But if anyone came to Clarion not knowing how to write, or where they were going to get their ideas, they weren’t going to learn it there.

Prose goes on to say that she learned to write the way all of us did: by reading. Her first chapter is called “Close Reading” where she talks about reading great work, but reading it slowly and carefully. The next three chapters are on words, sentences, and paragraphs, where she pulls selections from Alice Munro, Philip Roth, Virginia Woolf, and Raymond Chandler, plus a long excerpt from Rex Stout, where the great detective Nero Wolfe solves a mystery by explaining paragraphing.

This is not a review of Prose’s book — I’m not even finished with it yet. But the book is energizing me, and I need that right now. I’m at kind of tipping point: the current novel is in rewrites, the comic book is humming along, and I’m daydreaming about the next novel, the next short story, and the next comic book. In short, I need inspiration, I need ideas, and I need to become a better writer.

I’m at a tipping point in another way. For several years I had a part-time day job, writing computer code in the morning and fiction in the afternoons. It was great. The day job meant we were covering the mortgage, but I was finally putting in enough hours into fiction that I was finishing stories and novels. Life was in balance. But for the past 18 months I’ve been working full time at the day job, and trying to get the same amount of writing done by disappearing from home on nights and weekends. It’s been a stressful time, and not just for me — this schedule took a toll on the whole family.

This is not news to anyone in this business. 90% of writers — probably more — have a day job. I’m sorry about  whining. But that’s what blogs are for, yes?

Well, this week I went back to working half time at the day job. I feel like I’ve been given a surprise parole, a last-minute reprieve from the governor, a replacement liver from an accident-prone decathalete. Suddenly I’ve got a new lease on life, with very generous terms. And I don’t want to waste it. It’s time to get to work.

And part of that work is reading. That includes fiction that inspires me to do better, and non-fiction that gives me ideas for my own work. During those 18 months, I hardly got any reading done. There just wasn’t time with that novel deadline looming. And consequently, I’m ready to start new projects, but the well feels dry.So, I have time at night to read again, and I’m using Francine Prose to point the way to great writers I haven’t read yet, and to think harder about my own sentences.

And hey, I may even have time to update this blog more often. Look for that review of Reading Like a Writer when I finish it.

The first review of Dracula: Company of Monsters is up on Newsarama, and it’s a kind review at that. They’re completely right about Scott Godlewski’s art and Stephen Downer’s coloring. Fantastic stuff.

Update: Second review (also very nice — a 7.9 out 8.0) from the Multiversity Comics site.

Oh, and I recently did a couple interviews. In the Talking Comics with Tim column on the Robot 6 blog, Tim and I… talk. About comics. And things like how Kurt Busiek and I split the writing work, the difference between writing novels and writing comics, and my life as a corporate drone.

And over on Joseph Mallozzi’s blog (Joe is a producer and writer on the Stargate TV franchise, and his first short story is in the Masked superhero anthology), I answer questions from readers. Joe picked The Devil’s Alphabet as his book of the month, then generously opened his blog for discussion. As Joe called the post:

Author Daryl Gregory makes a return visit to discuss the Kirby-Lee gene, the mystifying popularity of the Kardashians, and, oh yeah, his novel The Devil’s Alphabet!

Some Dracula stuff is in there as well.

And did I mention that Dracula #1 comes out today? No? Well it does. And if you’re in State College Saturday, stop by the Comic Swap from 1:00-2:00 pm and I’ll sign your copy. And any blank checks you have.

Hey folks, quick word: We’re on for the signing of Dracula: Company of Monsters #1 at my favorite comic shop, the Comic Swap in State College.

It’s on Saturday, August 28, from 1 to 2 PM. The Comic Swap is 110 South Fraser Street  in downtown State College, tucked neatly near the Dunkin Donuts.

If you’ve got a comic fan in your family — or if you want to dip your toes into the graphical awesomeness that is modern comics (and not just the one I’m working on) — come on by. I’ll sign comics, and anything else you want me to — I’m that accommodating.

CBR — Comic Book Resources, natch — has posted up a 12-page preview of Dracula: Company of Monsters #1.

The release date is now set at August 25. The guys at The Comic Swap in downtown State College have been nice enough to host a signing, and I’ll have an exact date on that soon. (Though lay money on August 28.)

For a comment on the news, here’s a message from  Daryl Gregory, 9 years old, calling from 1974:

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA  HOOOOOOOOOOOO!

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