It’s been a busy month, between the day job and some projects I’ve taken on.
Heading the pack in the projects arena is working with some others on the Unscrewed! comics project. It is a pleasure on my part to join up with a very talented group of people to provide assistance to some people disadvantaged by an unscrupulous person, and to give many of them opportunities to showcase their work. Mostly, I’m helping with the editing and organizing of this special anthology. And I am humbled to be in the company of all this talent.
I also got the (pleasant) surprise recently of getting a request from the folks of Into the West, concerning my Tolkien adaptation, “The Masque of the Silmarils.” They were interested in doing a reading or performance of it for their Tolkien Festival 2007 on Saturday, April 28 at the University of Utah. I was very flattered, and sent them a copy of the Masque. I won’t be able to attend their conference, alas. It turns out that their featured speaker, Paul Nolan Hyde, had recommended my verse play to them. An added benefit of this request was that I got back in touch with my friend Paul (we’d lost contact some years ago).
I am moving forward in preparing to pitch my book on mythic motifs to a publisher. This work grew out of many of the things covered in the “Mythopoesis” columns – which was one reason why I republished the columns here on the internet. I hope to reveal more news about this project as things move forward. I call the book The Scribbler’s Guide to the Land of Myth. It’s a comprehensive (and I do mean comprehensive) presentation of mythic motifs – in a way that helps writers understand how they work in stories.
Even though it is only February, I’ve booked my hotel for the San Diego ComicCon. I’m going to have to draw up a list of folks to hobnob with – I’ve been getting acquainted online with so many new (to me) people lately! But I love it! The convention is far more than just comic books – it has become, basically, an entertainment industries trade-fair with a potential captive audience of over 100,000 people (last year’s attendance numbers).
Included in this update of the site:
A new blog entry – inspired by the need to confront bullies, how does a Christian approach this problem?
Another writing sample in the form of a TV spec script. (In this case, an X-Files script, perhaps one of my oldest specs. But, again, it was fun to write, so why leave it languishing in the dark?)
Another poem, prepared for web display. “God’s Gifts” was written in 1982. The particular experience it refers to occurred a few years earlier. I had written a rather long narrative poem in blank verse (well, over 400 lines, actually). I had never worked so hard on a piece of writing (my dictionary and thesaurus both got a heavy work out), and yet also had never felt so inspired. It was a very humbling experience for me, because I knew the long poem was excellent. I felt inclined to call it a “masterpiece” – a term I did not use lightly. And it was alarming to know that I had done it very early on in my life as a writer. Would I ever reach that level of quality again? I still don’t know the answer to that question. (As for the long poem in question, “The Marble Don” – I’m considering preparing it as a small book with artwork, possibly as a publish on demand offering. There are not many venues for long narrative poems these days.)
