City of Legends

According to various sources, including myself, my web hosting company (web.com), my publisher, my friend Dan McTaggart, the remaining judges for the TVC2008 who have not yet gotten their votes in to me (harrumph), Barnes & Noble, my parents, my sibs, the media, my sons, one of my ex wives and two or three inspirationally-gifted friends, the next three days of my life should unfold with some of the following milestones.

Tomorrow we will announce the winner of the TVC2008. Mass hysteria will abound as we announce the TVC2009.

peacat.com will vanish, by midnight tonight. If no one with greater claim to the name asks for it before the registration runs out next year, it will go back on the open market.

I will give three two-hour readings at Barnes & Noble in Morgantown, WV, Sunday (10-12, 1-3, 4-6) with the assistance of the amazing Dan McTaggart, who co-authored Psalms of the Monster River Cult with me. I don’t think they could handle the intensity of the Long Beach reads, so I am trying to strike a balance.

Michael Phelps will win two more Olympic Gold Medals.

I will add ten more pieces to williamfdevault.com. Someone will blast me for the lovely nudity that is interspersed with the other artwork on the site. I will feel bad that I am being criticized, but will soldier on.

I will hear from someone out of an unexpected quarter.

I will write something inexplicably charming.

I will announce sometime today…oops, already did, that some of the Fields of Arbol pieces appearing on Amomancer will find their way onto williamfdevault.com.

Some doucebag will leave a stupid (definition: willfully ignorant), presumptive and irrelevant comment on one of my blogs.

I will drive over 500 miles in the next three days. I will still be alive Monday morning.

I will have dinner with my family on Saturday, and visit with my Grandmother, who is 96…bearing down on 97 next month.

I will discover a fantastic new muse.

Not the poem, TRIUMPH, but the sense of victory I have and had enjoyed so much over the past months.  A part of me is still in shock, a part of me still writhes in pain, but a part of me is intent on locking in t mountaintop moments and feeding me the morsels and mould of those times.

I don’t claim to know anything about anything, I just feel that, I know that, as sure as God is in the rain, love is more than a transient state.  There is much I would do to heal the wounds, much I would do to make things right, much I would do to acknowledge that I have lived, not an illusion, but something so powerful that every atom of my existence is changed for all eternity.

I may feel this alone.  But I feel this.

And by this awareness, I am humbled and exalted.  I am broken and purified.  I understand a depth of emotion I had not known and probably a sane man should never touch.

I had a good working session with Tag yesterday.  One question came down to the name of the press.  I told him I was uncertain, as I had no indication, no sense, of how keeping the peacat name would be received and whether I would be doing more harm than good for and to people I honestly care about the feelings of.  His response?  (He’s getting cheeky in his old age.)  He told me that every time I work on a project to for or with the press I would be reminded of something, of someone, and I have to ask myself if that’s what I want for the rest of my life and legacy.

My answer, after a moment’s pause, was "Yes".

A look to the heavens, a gesture followed by my now familiar cry of defiance:

"If you want me dead, you have to come for me in person."

Now that is triumph.

Barring a specific request to not use the name by the one person who I would listen to on the topic (and not some asshole who thinks they are speaking for another, I can talk directly to God (the priesthood of the individual is a cornerstone of the Protestant faith, for those of you who didn’t stay awake in Sunday School), no human is too good for my countenance), which I would accept, without question or rancor, peacat press lives.

We have two projects in the hopper, I am awaiting manuscripts on both, including a very exciting combination short story and poetry collection from Dan McTaggart entitled Best Man in Albuquerque. 

I stayed up way too late last night, working on the final tracks to Evangelist. Every time I thought I had one finished, I’d suddenly get another idea, changing the instrumentation, the attitude, something about the piece in my mind. It’s a little insane right now. I feel like I’ve lit the fuse on the rocket but am having problems getting comfortable in the pilot’s seat. This will probably end up being one of those projects where I hate everything about it before I am done with it.

We were working with the guitar for one particularly upbeat piece (which I shall not name at this time) when I realized we needed a good bass line. So we turned what we working with on the guitar into a bass line. Better. But now, the drums sounded wrong. Too fast, too shaky. Maybe slow them down a bit and…hold it. Now we have a problem with the tone of the vocals. Sheesh. This reminds me of why I gave up painting. I would tweak things until they were a mess. Maybe I just need to timebox the process and deal with it.

A name for the publishing house is driving me nuts. The original name, peacat, is off the table as far as I am concerned. I could use it, but that would be disrespectful and a little odd. As such… will have to go down through history as the one publication of that imprint. An amazing book, if now a bit….ironic.

McTaggart wants Monster River Press. No. Too regional (we dubbed the Monongahela River the Monster River for our collaboration Psalms of the Monster River Cult.

City of Legends Press is in play, but too self-referential. Likewise any variation on my name or various sobriquets. I will give myself until mid-July to work it out, I have authors waiting on me and I am so fucking tired of waiting on other people. Patience was the last virtue I learned and the first one I lose, it is not in my nature to wait, I pace a hole in the rug.

I am going to see my Grandmother this weekend, and I have an invite to a party. I know why I was invited, and although there is a part of me that always knows I am cunning enough to dodge flagrant temptation, for at least three good reasons I don’t even want to see me have to. So we shall see if my curiosity and arrogance beat out my virtue and common sense.

Place your bets.

I checked.  It had been more than 6 months since my last podcast of ‘from out of the city’.  I should be ashamed, but I am not.

But, to make it all up to you all, here’s the way to catch the second wave.

Just follow the link to Peacat on the right, and you will find a link to the newest podcast, just uploaded, where I spend the whole time discussing and reading from the new book As such…

Enjoi!