New Year, New Goals, and a Little WOOHOO Thrown In

Happy 2009, everyone.

So, it’s a new year. And while I’m not one to make resolutions, I always like to re-affirm my long-term goals and strategies at the start of every year. Like last year, my only real goal was to finish Inventing Vazquez. Which I did. Kind of. I finished the third draft, at least.

This year, my goal will be to complete the book in earnest, and land an agent. And while I was busy thinking in December that I’d be sending out queries this month, I decided to not be so hasty. I’m working on the next round of edits right now, with the goal of not just cleaning up the writing and adding a small wrinkle or two, but of shortening the novel. Because it’s a bit too long, maybe long enough to scare off an agent.

So far, with the first five chapters I’ve edited, I’ve succeeded in knocking off a page per chapter. So if I can do that all throughout, and there are 65 chapters, that’s at least 65 pages I’ll streamline from the final draft.

My plan, though, is to make the most efficient use of my time. Because it can take so long to hear back from an agent, I think I’ll work on getting the first half of the book done, right and proper. Once that first half is done, I’ll send out the query packages, and then get to work on the second half. The hope is that, by the time an agent (hopefully) requests to see the entire manuscript, I’ll have it ready to go. That’s the hope, anyway.

But because I don’t want to take forever, this time I’m setting a very concrete deadline: I want to have the entire novel finalized by the end of March. It’ll be tight, but doable. I think that, while setting artificial deadlines can be counterproductive, in some cases they can give you the right kind of urgency. And urgency is definitely something I feel right now, in terms of getting Inventing Vazquez moving from manuscript to published work. I’m very enthused and confident about this book, and I really want to get it out there. Somehow, I think it’ll have some good things to say, and I think it’ll make people laugh a lot. I hope so, anyway ^_^;

So that’s the deal with Inventing Vazquez. Its sequel, Electing Choi, is now on hold, since I’m trying to punch out at least one chapter of edits per day, but really aiming for two. Next month, I’ll also have to start working more seriously on the query letter, synopsis, and other such agent-related goodies.

So yeah, Electing Choi is going to have to wait. One thing that won’t have to wait, though, is Liliana’s new character design ^_^ For Electing Choi, since Liliana’s character is now older, more mature, and a lot more spunky and confident, I figured she’d need a makeover from her character design from Inventing Vazquez. And so, I thought she’d need to have shorter hair, something more whimsical and playful. And my brother, ever the artist, made a chibi rendition of Liliana in her old and new incarnations:

Isn’t it adorable?! And yes, in both novels, Liliana is in a band, although she’s never the bassist (at least, I don’t think she’ll be). Like I said, this is a chibi style drawing (a Japanese Anime-style super-deformed animation), but I thought it was adorable. So, thanks, Arturo! ^_^

Speaking of bands, The Pineapple Brigade project is definitely picking up steam. The guitarist I’ve been working with (let us call him Gene for now) and I are clicking very well. So much so, we essentially laid down the foundation for an improved version of one of my songs, Frozen Summer. He’s a natural guitarist, and a very good one, and he was able to add a lead guitar track that gave the song a whole new dimension. Plus, in one of the song’s breakdowns, he improvised some backing vocal arrangements, and I was blown away at how well they worked. I was geeked, to say the absolute least.

Even more geeked about something very unexpected. I’ve always said I’m primarily a bassist. But this past practice, I took my electric guitar down to the basement, figuring I could use it to more easily show Gene the guitar notes for some of my songs. I ended up playing rhythm guitar for the entire practice. By the end of it, Gene makes a startling declaration: he thinks that, instead of playing bass in the band, I should play rhythm/lead guitar. Because what I was doing wasn’t only good enough, but it was essentially lead guitar work.

I was stunned, because while I always wanted to play guitar in a band (it’s more fun, I think, and more conducive for my onstage freestyle maniac style of play), I never thought I was good enough. A proven guitarist thinks I am. That’s good enough for me ^^;

So here I am, switching gears musically. I was planning on buying a better bass amp to start off the year, but now I’m researching new guitars, looking for one to call my own. The one I’m currently using is a loaner, a Fender strat, and I think I’ll stick with a Fender, maybe another Stratocaster, depending on what I can afford. I’m pretty excited about it.

Hopefully, Gene and I can soon find a female bassist in the Detroit area who likes punk pop, and then we’d really have the start of something very special. Because it’s part of my whole band dream thingy: to have a female musician who does backing/lead vocals, and give the band a male-female vocal dynamic. Kind of like what Kim Deal did with The Pixies, and Jeannie Lee did for Dirt Bike Annie. I think both those women added so much to those bands.

I guess, between Inventing Vazquez and The Pineapple Brigade, I have enough to keep myself busy with. Still not sure that I’ll be able to start that e-zine, but I’m not discounting the possibility yet. I still think there would be some very good benefits to doing so, especially as I ramp up my literary agent search. We’ll see, I guess.

And, oh, one last, unrelated thing. Don’t ask why, considering there was no regional sense for me rooting for them (I was born and raised in NYC) ever since I was old enough to understand football. And it made no sense that, as a kid tossing a football around, I pretended I was Neil Lomax instead of, say, Phil Simms or Richard Todd. But that’s how it worked out, and I’ve remained loyal to my team throughout all the ups and downs, but mostly downs. And every year, despite everything, I would insist, this was our year. This was the year this team surprised everyone and went all the way. And every year, I’ve had to content myself with our usual mantra of, “Wait till next year,” and look forward to Draft Day and the top pick we’d be getting that would take us to the Super Bowl next year.

Now, having said all that, please forgive this following outburst.

Ahem.

GO ARIZONA CARDINALS!!! WOOHOOO!!!! ONE MORE WIN, AND WE’RE IN THE SUPER BOWL!!! And then I can NON-facetiously say, “WOOHOO!! CARDINALS, SUPER BOWL BOUND!!! WOOO!” ^^;

I dare anyone to say I’m a bandwagon jumper. Really. Go ahead. Just try it ^_^ I’ll refer you to my friends, who regularly mocked me during fantasy football for filling my rosters with Cardinal players. Or my girlfriend, who makes fun of me for liking a team I had no regional reason for liking just because they had a cute cardinal on their helmet.

So, to the Arizona Cardinals, good luck this Sunday! No matter what happens, you’ve already made this lifelong (if incomprehensible) Cardinals fan giddy and half-insane with happiness.

GO CARDS! WOO!

Agents, Sequels, and Pineapples. Oh my.

So I finally burned through most of my excess vacation time, and got quite a bit done. I began the process of researching literary agents, and came up with some very promising leads. I drafted both a query letter and a six-page synopsis for Inventing Vazquez. I still have to proof the first three chapters meticulously, and have them ready to go. My plan, now, is to send out the first batch of queries in early January. And then pray really really hard to the gods and the universe that, this time, a literary agent will want to work with me.

I also started the sequel to Inventing Vazquez, Electing Choi, in earnest. In fact, I completed both chapter ones (a little joke there, thanks to the dual narratives that start the story). My goal is to have the first 30 pages of Electing Choi written by the end of December (you know, a page a day, more or less), and so far, I’m at page 15, so I’m more or less on track. And I’m really excited about this project, not just because I get to work again with Liliana and her crew, but because of the plot twists I’m looking forward to writing down.

I’m going home for the holidays, and I’ll probably get more work done there. I think I’ll focus more then on editing the samples chapters and the query literature, to make sure I’m ready to go when I come back home in January. I hope to also map out the ideas and general direction for the e-zine I want to start, and then ask my friends and bro to join in the mayhem and help me get it off the ground. Have to think more on the title, though. The one I wanted is kind of already taken ^_^;

I also had the chance to compose four new songs, three of which I still need to write lyrics for. Ugh, that’s one thing I struggle with, mostly because I never know what to sing about. Heh, ‘sing’. There’s a lie if I ever said one. The truth is, I’m getting more and more frustrated with my inability to sing well. One of my new songs, Room I-94, I did write lyrics for, and I tried singing it. And I couldn’t stand it. I really need to find a female musician/singer to do these songs. Because I find myself hating my own songs just because I kill them with my crummy vocals! ^^;

But things are looking interesting for The Pineapple Brigade. For one thing, it’s now my sole musical focus. Following all kinds of misunderstanding, I was unceremoniously dropped from the blues band I was with on Sunday. Via voicemail. Because that’s the mature way of handling such things. I was pissed for a while on Sunday, not because I’d been let go (like I always said, blues was never my thing), but because of the way it was handled. It really irritates me that people can’t seem to tell you things in person. In person, they tell you things are great, you’re great, hey, let’s stay together, we love to have you, bla bla bla. But when they decide to contradict everything they told you in person, and leave you a voicemail saying, “Yeah, I’ve hired a friend to play bass, thanks,” you realize you’re probably better off not working with them. Dear gods, what ever happened to common courtesy and manners?

Still, after blowing off some steam and leaving that guy a voicemail calling him out for his lack of professionalism, I saw things in a different light. Now I think this is the universe’s way of saying I’m supposed to be working to make The Pineapple Brigade happen. That I shouldn’t have been spending time on a musical project my heart simply wasn’t into. That now’s the time to focus back in on the music I love and want to play live. And I’ve got a great foundation to build on. I have 12 original songs ready to go. That’s enough not just for a set, but for an album. So maybe now’s the time to keep working on those songs, and some new songs, and work toward making The Pineapple Brigade more than just a ‘project’.

The other thing is that I’ve been in touch with a really cool guitarist who’s recently moved to Detroit. While we haven’t jammed yet, I have high hopes that we’ll be able to work together, now that our musical tastes are virtually identical, we’re the same age, we’re both experienced musicians, and we have the same attitude and passion toward music. If he and I decide to start The Pineapple Brigade in earnest, well, it’ll be a critical first step toward making the whole band idea come true.

So that’s what’s been going on. In other words, nothing much, really. Anywayz, stay warm, folks. And remember: you don’t win friends with salad.