Ghoul Season Begins

Yes! It's October. The countdown to probably my most favorite holiday: Halloween, All Hallow's Eve, Samhain... Plus, don't you just love the smell of cooling air tinged with, on the best of days, a bit of rain? Everything becomes colorful and you're usually through feeling like a sweaty pig. Well, it makes me want to sing and dance.

I re-worked my website at http://www.freewebs.com/cdallen/
so, if you're interested in seeing what I've done, I'd stop by and have a look.

Also, I'm proud to say I'm on my second day of having not one smoke. It's very hard. Even as I write this, my fingers itch for putting one between them, so I'm making it through each minute by chanting, "You're not a smoker anymore. You have those who love you. You have those you love. And Jennifer would kick your ass." That usually does it for about three minutes and then I have to repeat. That, or I eat. Luckily, I have a very fast metabolism. Hopefully it can keep up with me.

The hardest part about quitting smoking, for me, is what the hell do I do with my hands if they're not working the cigarette from lap to mouth? My answer: read. More reading never hurts. So I subscribed to a couple more magazines and picked up Neil Gaiman's American Gods.

American Gods. You know, I have never read Neil Gaiman. Not really. I collected his Sandman comics, which I loved, but after comics Mr. Gaiman put out a collection of short stories. Mike, a friend of mine, picked up the collection and read through them. He said, "Charles. I'm not liking any of this. I think Neil's a great comic book writer, but I don't think he can write narrative very well. At least, I'm not liking his style." Apparently that had an affect on me, because I never did read his book or anything else he's ever written (save comics and watching movies based off his work). Flash forward, I pick up a copy of American Gods, thinking about how badly I needed a cigarette, and took it home with me, still needing a cigarette, and started reading it, still needing a cigarette. Three hours later I'm still turning pages and suddenly realizing, I forgot I needed a cigarette. That and Jennifer's pissed because I forgot to take some time to finish the dishes. But that's a small grief. I was still happy that I bought a good book and it was taking me away from thinking about something I don't really want.

Speaking of Neil Gaiman, his The Graveyard Book is turning out to be a very cool story, too. I've been listening to it for free on audio, as they are coming out in like a serial audio/video. Check it out!

QUITTING ZOETROPE

I received a few question regarding my withdrawl from www.zoetrope.com and +The Horror Library+. I just wanted to point out that my reasons for doing so have nothing to do with anything that happened on Zoetrope. I have a lot of friends there (or one would like to imagine, anyhow), and it is a great place to rework your stories and network friends and colleagues. But my time has become very active. I used to go from day job, to Zoetrope, to writing, to bed and started the whole thing over again the next day. I was single (mostly) and had no other expectations of me. Now, I've gotten engaged to a wonderful woman, Jennifer, who also happens to have two kids: ten and eight. Now my time runs more like this: day job, clean/errands, make and have dinner, clean/errands, and then go to bed. I read during my breaks at work and perhaps have time to write a few notes for a story, but otherwise, I'm hardly doing either. I decided that on my days off, I need every spare second I can get toward writing. And I only get the morning. Starting at 1:00pm I'm making sure the house looks good so Jennifer doesn't have to worry about anything when she gets home. Then we make dinner. And then we spend time with the kids or work on our wedding plans.

That's all there is, really. It's nothing more than that.