So my cousin Brian, who lives up the road in Glendale, just got engaged to his longtime girlfriend Kelly. They met at USC. What fun! Congratulations!

Two more of my stories are up on Fictionwise this week, “Seven Brothers, Cruel” and “The Black Bird.” Also, “Lest We Forget” is the #8 bestselling title on the under a dollar list.

I’m taking a playwriting class Monday nights, so not only have I now read Stanislavsky’s An Actor Prepares (which was an immensely fascinating book), but I also went and saw two plays this weekend.

First I drove over to Venice Boulevard to see a one-person play written and acted by a student in my program. In the play, “Dottie,” we see Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz still struggling, ten years on, to come to terms with what she experienced in Oz. My favorite line: (while trying to convince the audience that she’s not crazy) “I sometimes hallucinate that I see flying monkeys. This is a perfectly rational post-traumatic stress response to having been carried through the air by actual flying monkeys.”

On Sunday I went and saw another student production, Spike Heels, which was pretty edgy. One actress’s outfit was so revealing that it elicited an audible gasp from the audience when she walked on stage. The story concerns a love rectangle among 30-something Bostonians. My favorite line from that one: “Now you’re putting words in my mouth. What I actually said was appalling enough without you twisting it.” And this exchange: “Are you using my toothbrush?” “I don’t know. Is yours the red one?” “It’s the only one!”

After that I went to the Sunset Junction Street Fair (at the junction of Santa Monica & Sunset Boulevards). First we watched a band called the Suicide Girls, who surprised me by both not playing any instruments and by doing a series of striptease acts — my favorite of these being two girls doing an S&M reinterpretation of the ear-cutting-off scene from Reservoir Dogs set to “Stuck in the Middle With You.” Then came the aging punk rockers the New York Dolls. All I could think of was This is Spinal Tap. A lot of the crowd was older, and seemed to be wearing the same clothes they’d worn to concerts back in the early 80s. (And I don’t mean the same kinds of clothes. I mean like the same T-shirt.) One kinda young-looking girl was chatting us up. I asked her if she’d ever seen this band before. She said, “Never in concert, but I’ve listened to all their albums since I was seven.” I was like, “And … how long ago was that?” She laughed and said, “Like eights years ago.” It turned out she was there with her mom. After that we wandered up and down the street. I commented to my friend, “Man, I’ve never felt so normal before.” I’ve always maintained that a day would come when I would feel like part of the extreme counter-culture fringe by not having a tatoo, and that day has come. The people at this street fair looked like rejects from Mad Max (the ones who were rejected for looking too weird). I told my friend that I knew people like this in high school, but always imagined that they sort of grew out of it. He said, “Nah, they just all moved to L.A.”

I’m impressed. My two Fictionwise stories have been up less than 72 hours and already 47 copies have been sold. I don’t know who these people are that are buying, but nevertheless I love them all.

Update: I just noticed that both my stories are listed on Fictionwise’s front page as New and Featured eBooks. “Lest We Forget” is displayed quite prominently near the top of the page. Not sure if that means anything, but it’s still kinda cool.

Further Update: I also just noticed that at Fictionwise “Lest We Forget” is #15 on the science fiction bestseller list and “Seeds-for-Brains” is #6 on the fantasy list, outselling titles by Robin Hobb, Dave Duncan, Laurell K. Hamilton, and Christopher Paolini. I have no idea how those rankings are calculated or how meaningful they are (probably not very), but it’s still kind of fun to see.

Well, my attempt to get permission to check scripts out of the cinema-television library got a remarkably swift and curt response: “Sorry, cinema stickers are for cinema students. I recommend the WGA library to read scripts.” You see, though I am a USC student studying screenwriting, I am not studying it through the School of Cinema-Television, and therefore can’t check stuff out of the library. The internecine departmental strife around here makes the Medici Family look like the Cosby Family. So guess what School at USC won’t be getting thanked during my Oscar acceptance speech? Oh, and the WGA library? It’s all the way up in frikkin’ West Hollywood. That’s really helpful. Maybe I’ll swing by the Library of Congress while I’m at it.

I’ve never lived in a bad neighborhood before. It’s actually kind of an interesting experience. It’s totally changing the way I think in everyday situations. My normal modus operandi is to wander around lost in thought, greeting the occasional passerby, looking up every once in a while to try to figure out where I am, often after dark, exploring hidden nooks and crannies.

Not around here.

Now I carefully figure out my route before I leave my apartment. I stick to busy streets, avoiding side streets, alleys, and shrubbery. I’m constantly aware of where I am and who’s around. Sometimes I’ll change routes to avoid a dubious-looking individual. (And I’m learning to spot them from 50 yards away. One distinguishing characteristic is that they don’t seem to be in a hurry to get anywhere.) I ensconce myself in my apartment after dark, or else get a ride door to door. My cell phone has the campus emergency number on speed dial. I’ve taken to carrying around a pipe in my bag to hit people with, and that’s only until I can get my hands on some pepper spray.

The student who was robbed at gunpoint outside my apartment the other night was standing around on the sidewalk at 1:00 a.m. on a Sunday night talking on his cell phone. It says a lot that in just one week I’ve gone from thinking of that as perfectly normal to incredibly stupid.

I had my first class tonight, which was quite interesting. I also made some new friends. On the downside, a male student was robbed at gunpoint last night right outside my apartment.

My Fictionwise author page is up, and right now two of my stories are available, “Lest We Forget” (which I wrote when I was 17) and “Seeds-for-Brains.” Come buy our orchard fruits, Come buy, come buy!

Liberated my car from the Parking Center last night so I could drive up to Glendale for my cousin Brian’s birthday dinner. Then this afternoon I drove back up to Glendale to obtain some desperately needed cargo shorts at the Galleria. On my way back to USC, I somehow missed the exit for the 110, and made it as far as the Downey (not the fabric softener people) city limits before I was sure I’d made a mistake. (And frustratingly, I had left all my street maps back at my apartment.) I turned back around, somewhat apprehensive as the sun began to set, as I’d prefer not to be lost in South Central Los Angeles after dark. I felt a lot like the guy in I Am Legend. But, as you may have surmised from the fact that I’m posting this, I made it.

Though I would never have been able to find my way around L.A. at all without the wonder and majesty of Google Earth, which presents such a detailed recreation of the city that it almost obviates the need for me to ever actually go outside.

Classes start tomorrow. I’ve got Playwright’s Workshop at 7:00 p.m.

A few people have recommended my short story “Veil of Ignorance” for the Nebula award, and one friend encouraged me to post it to the private SFWA page so that other SFWAns can read it, which I did. If you are one of the aforementioned SFWAns, you can read the story here. [dead link]

Curious to see just how the tram spends its day, I spent this afternoon riding around and around in it, learning street names and engaging in random conversations. I talked to one girl who had driven to USC from St. Louis, and had wrecked her car in the same lightning storm in Kansas that compelled me to pull off the road. I also spent a long time talking to the bus driver, Francesco, who’s worked at USC for over 30 years. He knows everyone, waves at people as he passes, and greets many students by name. He hooked me up with some invaluable local info — events, places to eat, places to see, and tips such as that if I missed my tram, I could catch the other line just one street over. The tram does go by my apartment on a fairly regular basis, so I’m a bit perplexed that it never seems to show up when I’m waiting there. And apparently once class starts, there’ll be two busses doing half the route that the one bus was doing today, so maybe they will come every 15 minutes.

At one point, a residential street was blocked by a UPS truck on one side and a big SUV on the other. I was aghast when Francesco steered between them. It just did not seem physically possible that the bus (a full-sized city bus) could fit, but somehow it did. Maybe it’s like that bus in Prisoner of Azkaban. Later, as we drove down Figueroa, I noticed a visibly deranged individual glaring at us from the sidewalk. I thought to myself, Wow, I’m glad I have the walls of this bus between that guy and me. After a few minutes, I forgot about him. But on our next circuit, the guy was waiting for us and, very deliberately, dashed out in front of the bus, trying to be run over. Francesco slammed on the brakes and just barely stopped in time. The guy glared again, and ambled off.

So I managed to take the tram back and forth to campus yesterday. In both cases I had to wait for over an hour. Everyone else seemed to be walking (or driving, bastards) to campus, but I wanted to take the tram because I wanted to figure out when it comes, where it goes, how it works, etc. In the afternoon, I waited over an hour, then finally gave up and walked. It turns out it’s only like an eight minute walk, but they recommend you take the tram after dark if you’re worried about crime, though so far it seems that my odds of being mugged are much higher standing around on the sidewalk for 75 minutes rather than walking for 8 minutes. Supposedly once class starts, the tram runs every 15 minutes. We’ll see.

I tried going to two job fairs on campus yesterday. I spent an hour wandering around and around a dorm looking for the “back courtyard.” It turns out that it’s through a locked, unmarked gate that they didn’t open until minutes before the event started. The turnout was me and 18 Indian guys. Even though I was the first one in line, everyone else clearly knew the drill and they all bum rushed me as soon as the gate opened in order to get to the sign-in sheet before me, which kind of irritated me. As a “job fair,” I was expecting there to be some information about various jobs on campus. There wasn’t. The first and only step was to fill out an application for whatever job you wanted and then line up for an interview. When I asked the woman if there was any information available about what the duties, hours, and pay were for any of the jobs, she looked at me like I was insane. I decided that before I interviewed to work at, for example, the bookstore, I’d like to at least be able to find the bookstore, and cut out feeling very frustrated. Later, as I walked by the bookstore, I was handed a flyer for another job fair. The flyer said, “Need a job on campus? It’s not too late! Job fair today.” I was like, “WTF? ‘Not too late’? Yesterday was the first day I was allowed to move into my apartment. How can it be almost too late to get a job?” And anyway, that job fair turned out to be all jobs for work study, which I don’t have. Argh.

Though, amazingly, the USC campus bookstore currently stocks three copies of the All the Rage This Year anthology, which includes my story “Veil of Ignorance,” so that went a long way toward rehabilitating my mood.

In the evening, there was a reception for MPW students, which was great. There were about 40 people there, and everyone seemed fun and friendly. And I came home to find that Fictionwise has processed my stories. I read over them all this morning and just sent them back, so they should be going up on the site fairly shortly.

I have arrived in Los Angeles.

Spent last night at the apartment of my cousin Brian and his girlfriend Kelly. Then this morning we drove down to USC and they helped me move in, showed me the campus, took me grocery shopping, and helped me get my car over to the parking center.

You see, despite the fact that I live in a building with 12 parking spaces and 16 residents, half of whom apparently didn’t bring cars, I couldn’t get a permit to park here, so my only option is to park my car in a parking garage farther away from my apartment than the building where my classes are.

I have a writers reception thingie to get to tomorrow evening, and being functionally carless, I must resort to the “tram,” a bus operated by the school. I decided to give it a whirl today to make sure it works. It doesn’t. Busses are supposed to come every 30 minutes. I waited an hour before finally giving up.

Of course, I could walk. From what I saw today, the neighborhood looks pretty good. From crime reports I’d heard, I was expecting it to look really run down, but it actually looks like a country club compared to many neighborhoods in Manhattan that I blithely stroll through alone after dark (though maybe I shouldn’t). But I guess looks can be deceiving. Taped to the front door of my apartment was a report of a recent (Sunday, when I was safe in Kansas) crime:

A guy came and grabbed a student’s bike. The student and four of his friends confronted the guy. The guy pulled out a gun and fired a shot in the air. The students backed away, and the guy ran to a waiting SUV, then turned and fired four shots at the students. Apparently no one was hit, but damn.

Now excuse me while I go barricade my door.

I’ve now made it as far as a Best Western in Mesquite, Nevada.

Yesterday Interstate 70 was delayed due to a rockslide. A rockslide! Electrical storms, rockslides, this is starting to feel like Damnation Alley. What’s next, giant mutated scorpions?

Otherwise, yesterday was a relatively light 12 hour drive, and now all I have to do is zip through Las Vegas, across the desert, and into Los Angeles. Should take about six hours. Ha! Six hours is nothing. I sneer at six hours. Maybe I’ll walk.

As I checked in to the hotel yesterday, the teenage girl at the desk was like, “Are you a member of Triple-A or AARP?” I was like, “AARP?!” Ouch. But it quickly became apparent that she was new and didn’t actually know what AARP is.

Recent audiobooks I’ve listened to are all nonfiction: Confessions of a Video Vixen (pretty racy stuff), The Sociopath Next Door (fascinating but somewhat discursive and repetitive), and Between Good and Evil, the memoir of a top FBI criminal profiler. Between Good and Evil is really, really disturbing. I’m only halfway through, and he’s already discussed at least three crimes that were so horrifying I could never even have imagined them. Definitely not going outside for a while.

America is a really large country. You’re not aware of that so much when you fly from coast to coast. But when you’re, oh, say, driving from New York to Los Angeles, you can’t help but notice.

I’ve been alternating days of brutal, endless driving with days of rest. On Wednesday I drove 14 hours from New York to Bluffton, Ohio, where my good buddy Tobias Buckell lives. On Thursday I hung around Toby’s house during the day and slept, then in the evening we went out to Mexican food and The Wedding Crashers (which was much funnier than I was expecting). On Friday I set out at 6:00 a.m. and drove 15.5 hours to Lawrence, Kansas. (You might ask: Is it really necessary to mention that last measly 0.5 hours? But believe me, when you’ve been driving for 15 hours, there’s nothing measly about that last 0.5, so I’m mentioning it. Try to stop me.)

As I entered Kansas City, I was set upon by the mother of all electrical storms. A continuous curtain of rain pounded my windshield and ran off onto the highway where passing tractor trailers helpfully splashed it back onto my windshield. Visibility was zilch. Lightning was striking all around. The water was so thick I was plowing through it, creating a wake like a tugboat. Having driven for 15 hours, I decided I was too tired for this crap, and pulled off onto the shoulder to let the rain abate. I got out of my car and climbed up under an overpass. Since everyone else was still driving at 80 miles an hour without their headlights while weaving without signaling, I was really worried that someone was going to careen into my parked car, but at least I wouldn’t be in it. I also had a strong feeling that I was going to be joined by another guy taking shelter from the storm who would turn out to be an escaped mental patient. (I mean really, who else are you going to meet beneath a highway overpass?) The storm went right overhead. The thunder was loud enough to make you jump. I saw lightning strike the highway a quarter mile away, and hit a couple of the surrounding buildings for good measure. One building lost power. Finally, after half an hour, the rain lessened significantly, and the only lightning I saw was back the way I’d come, so I returned to my car and continued on my way.

I spent last night and today at the house of my friends Thomas Seay and Lane Robins. Activities have included sleeping, sleeping, more sleeping, and going out to Mongolian barbecue. Mmmm. Mongolian barbecue.

It’s still raining pretty hard. I’m hoping it clears before I set off tomorrow for Colorado. Now I know how those Oregon Trail settlers felt. This is just like that. Except with an air-conditioned car, audiobooks, and no dysentary (at least, not yet — fingers crossed). Speaking of audiobooks, Wednesday I listened to all of Orson Scott Card’s new novel Magic Street, then yesterday I listened to all of Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass.

Went out to eat three times this afternoon. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it. Today was almost certainly my last trip into Manhattan before I leave for L.A., and I had several people to see one last time. First was lunch — Chinese — with Circehellene at 2:00 p.m. Then another lunch at 4:00 p.m. — Mexican — with a friend from high school whom I haven’t seen in years. Got caught up on some high school gossip. Apparently we went to high school with Andy Milinokas, who now has his own TV show. I can’t say I remember him, but I’ve blocked out much of high school. Then a 6:30 dinner — Sushi — to bid adieu to the 8th of February Group (my local writers group), though by that time I was too full to actually eat anything. Great conversation, great fun all around.

Spent all of yesterday and today packing. This involves throwing out enormous numbers of old papers, notebooks, magazines. It’s sort of like the burning of the Library at Alexandria, only worse. What a momentous loss for the future David Barr Kirtley National Library. It kills me to lose all this stuff, but what’re you going to do? I can’t fit it all in my car. Or, for that matter, in my new apartment.

Many of these notebooks are from college. Lots of stuff I barely remember about how a bill becomes a law, etc., etc. The notes themselves are no great loss, but some of the doodles are spectacular. I’ve been trying to salvage some of the best ones, but I’m sure I missed a few treasures. I never noticed before how much I like armor. Some 90% of my doodles involve either armored knights or armored futuristic soldiers, each protective plate lovingly shaded. It’s funny how there’s an inverse correlation between the quality of a class and the quality of the doodles. In a good class, doodles are small and careless, and don’t start appearing until the end of the semester. On the other hand, the notebook for a particularly lousy class I took in Ireland (Postmodern Theory) contains a virtual cornucopia of maniacally detailed grandly full-page blue-lined masterpieces.

Also into the box old love letters (can’t bear to discard them, can’t bear to reread them). Maps of places I’ve haunted — Austin, Manhattan, Villefranche Sur Mer, Konstanz, Cork, Grenoble. Books without which life is meaningless: The Chronicles of Amber, A Song of Ice and Fire, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Scar, Anubis Gates, Ender’s Game, Use of Weapons, Long Arm of Gil Hamilton, Forever War, Book of the New Sun. A few movies (I don’t buy many): Fellowship of the Ring, Donnie Darko, Last Unicorn, Bourne Supremacy, Solaris. Maybe two dozen photos (I don’t take many). Into the box, into the box all.

I’ll be leaving Wednesday or Thursday, driving west and staying with friends along the way. In the meantime, I’ve been madly lining up lunches and dinners to see various friends one last time before I go.

Also, the dude who handles acquisitions for Fictionwise is taking this week off, so it’ll be at least another week until my stories start appearing there.

Whew. I finished editing all my stories for Fictionwise. I sent the stories off yesterday, then spent today fiddling with my website, adding graphics and stuff in anticipation of the time when the stars are right and my stories go on sale. I must’ve read over one story in excess of a hundred times in the last few days. I made fairly major changes to the underlying narrative logic, while retaining most of the actual details. It was like the Pimp My Ride of polishes.

Reading over old stories so many times, you really start to notice small details. For example, how did I ever become so enamored with dashes? Some of these stories have like 50 dashes. I took out a lot of them. I probably should’ve taken out more, but I left some in just in deference to my 18-year-old or 23-year-old self. Also, I never noticed before how often the words up and down serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever in a sentence.

Friday was the last softball game. We all went out to dinner afterward and Adam handed out medals to everyone. Printed on the back they say No Pressure. We need this. (It was a pretty relaxed atmosphere for a softball game.) Everyone was really cool. I was telling one person about how I first got invited to play, and one of the women, who’s a fashion model, explained, “He was so hot we just had to ask him to join us.” She was kidding around, but that still made my day.

After that I tagged along with one of the other women over to Washington Square Park to watch her play chess. We ended up playing each other, and it was an almost mystically intense game. It was daylight when we started, and we played through twilight and well into evening. Some artist has installed fancy colored lampshapes on the ring of lampposts there, which was breathtaking after dark. We were perfectly evenly matched. I took an early lead, controlled the board, and started playing a daring, all-offense game. Then I got greedy, grabbed her bishop rather than shoring up my defenses, and my whole center collapsed dramatically. I thought I was doomed, but managed to scrape by until I was able to bring my rook over to reinforce my flank, which bought me some breathing room. She still kept chipping away at me, and I was just about ready to concede when I noticed she’d left her king exposed. Pieces fell left and right, and we ended up racing pawns to be queened. She would’ve won, but I still had a knight I could use to stymie her, so I won. (Luck on my part, all luck.) The magical atmosphere was only marginally diminished toward the end by the indigent chess hustler beside us repeatedly shrieking, “Motherf***er!” at his opponent.

I’m really going to miss New York.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I just added the most devious twist to the story I was polishing. And it’s so perfect, I barely had to change anything. And forget Use of Weapons. My story is now the sine qua non of sneaky viewpoint tricks, hiding from the reader that no fewer than three characters are not who you thought they were. (And it’s only 15 pages long.) Am I going too far? Well, in the words of Ferris Bueller, “You can never go too far.” Well, okay, maybe I’m going too far, but I don’t think so. I’m 90% sure I’m going to keep the new twist. And even if I don’t, it’s still pretty damn clever.

So I finally took the plunge and arranged to have some of my stories sold through Fictionwise.com. Fictionwise is a site where you can buy books and short stories. (It’s sort of like the iTunes of prose fiction.) Some of my friends are on it, and have had good experiences.

It’ll probably take a few weeks to get rolling, but these are the titles of mine that’ll be available: “Seeds-for-Brains,” “Seven Brothers, Cruel,” “They Go Bump,” “The Prize,” “The Skull-Faced Boy,” “The Disciple,” “The Black Bird,” “The Second Rat,” “The Trial of Thomas Jefferson,” and “Lest We Forget.” Basically, most of my published work since I was 18.

So for the last few days, I’ve been madly giving all these stories a final polish before sending them off again. I’ve already read and edited each of these stories hundreds of times, so the fact that I’m still able to spend days making line edits really drives home how much my prose style has evolved in the last few years. (Plus I’m still finding really blatant typos. Argh!) I don’t think any of these changes would be really apparent to the casual reader, but to me they make a huge difference.

I’m particularly proud of the edits I made to one story. I was always dissatisfied with one aspect of this story, but didn’t know how to fix it. Basically, I have a character who’s pretending to be someone else, and the viewpoint character knows this, but the reader isn’t supposed to. If the viewpoint character refers to this character by their real name, it gives away the surprise, but if the viewpoint character refers to this character by their assumed name (which is what I did), it’s really cheating the reader.

There is a sneaky solution to this, which I’ve learned in the intervening years, and have lectured about, but I didn’t realize I could apply it to my own story until I just went back to polish it again. Basically, you only refer to the character by name in the dialogue, and in the exposition only refer to the character by pronoun (he) or descriptor (the man). This requires a lot of massaging to make it not draw attention to itself, but I think I did a pretty good job. (For a real tour de force example of this technique, see Iain M. Banks’s Use of Weapons.)

Of course, some purists argue that any critical information withheld from the reader by a viewpoint character is unforgivable cheating, but I think that’s too restrictive. I wouldn’t make a habit out of it, but really, what’s the fun of writing fiction if you can’t just screw around with the reader every once in a while?

Played softball in Manhattan again yesterday. I did all right, and had fun. I got my first invitation to an L.A. party — one of the softballers is a clothing designer, and is having a reception at her L.A. retail shop a few days after I arrive. Another softballer said he’d put me in touch with a friend of his who’s also starting at USC this fall to study screenwriting (though she might be in a different program), so that was cool too. After the game, I went out to dinner with a bunch of people, then a few of us went over to Central Park to watch a free, open-air modern dance show. It was actually pretty interesting, though our location was pretty uncomfortable. (We were seated on a carpet with the texture of steel wool, and our view was mostly blocked by people in front of us in folding chairs.)

Back in April, I applied for grad student housing at USC. Given the multitude of students and the paucity of student housing, I thought the chances of me getting anything were pretty slim, particularly after they emailed me a few days ago and told me to forget it. But they just emailed me again last night and offered me a spot in a 2 person 2 bedroom place at the Twin Palms dorm. (Certain to be known, after my upcoming wacky time travel adventure, as the Lone Palm dorm. Haha. Anyone? Is that too obscure?) I have until July 26th to decide whether I want it. I’ve heard that the dorms aren’t great, but right now I’m leaning toward taking it, just in the name of expediency. Hopefully once I’m out there and start meeting people, I can find something cooler.

Tonight was my last night (for the forseeable future) attending the monthly fantastic fiction reading series at the KGB Bar, as I will be in L.A. by the time the next one rolls around. I will sorely miss my KGB, where everybody knows my name and they’re not infrequently glad I came.

Tonight’s readers were Kelly Link and Michael Blumlein. Kelly Link left no doubt as to her mojo, packing in the largest crowd I’ve ever personally witnessed there, with audience members perched on every available horizontal surface. In fact, I had invited a new acquaintance to come check out KGB, and had assumed she hadn’t shown, but she emailed me later to say that the crowd was so voluminous that she’d been unable to even get within listening distance, and had eventually given up.

The highlight of the evening for me was my brief chat with Firebird editor Sharyn November, during which I described my short story “Seeds-for-Brains” that was in Realms of Fantasy, and she exclaimed, “Oh, I liked that one!”