I have been keeping a few projects secret. Here is another one come to light today:

But that leaves a lot of questions open. So let me answer some and open the door for any others and out of these we can build a FAQ even!

What is Legend of the Burrito Blade?
An ongoing webcomic. Each update will be a full page of black and white comic book. Each update will happen at BurritoBlade.com.

Who’s doing all the work?
Adam P. Knave writes it. Renato Pastor draws it. Lauren Vogelbaum edits it and rides herd on the story, keeping everyone focused and honest. D.J. Kirkbride is the spiritual guide, ensuring our souls are shiny.

But what is it about?
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Oh fuck it. I was going to save this news until Monday but I can’t. I just can’t.

Yup. Now, of course, I have two books coming out before the novel does. Those hit March. But…

August 2009.

Creative Guy Publishing (them what gave you Installing Linux on a Dead Badger and Brine as well as lots of other stuff) will release:

Many more details to follow over the next 11 months.

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“There they are,” Edward said over his shoulder. “They don’t move too fast, and slower still when they have captives, but there are at least three of them for each of us. I am reminded of Custer, except he wasn’t on the move and the Brainers don’t have arrows. Also, we’ll win.”

“That is the general idea, Eddie,” Franklin said and then turned to face us, stopping our walk. “Here’s the thing. The captives won’t be much help to us. They’ll want to be but they’re weak and hungry by now. Which makes them a threat to themselves, really.”

“So we should separate them and get them clear,” Edward put in, “except that leaves us down a few men, doesn’t it?”

“It does. So here’s what we were thinking. If we can break their circle and round up the captives then…”
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The sun set and the temperature started to drop. We marched on, regardless, for a while. Our feet hurt from walking all day, our backs shared the pain lugging the packs and our very skin crawled with sweat and grit. When Edward discussed something with Franklin, they were far enough ahead that I couldn’t hear ‘em. When they turned and gestured to us that we were stopping for the night Sally puffed a gust of relieved air from her cheeks.

“All right, drop the packs and let us get set for the night,” Franklin said, “unroll the fence and get out the wood and wire and staples, will you?”

We did as asked, as quickly as we could, which wasn’t half as fast as they wanted us to I’m sure. Everything got laid out of the ground in front of us. Edward and Franklin walked around the supplies, nodding. Travel and packing hadn’t seemed to have damaged a thing.
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“Eddie’s right. Everyone had a theory, but no one had seen it in action. So we went and looked. They tie them up and march them out across the desert. The Brainers ride some Brainer horses and corral them, like so many cattle.”

“Although traditionally you don’t tie cattle when you go on a cattle drive. Then again, I suppose that cattle don’t often want to escape. They might, granted, but they seem to be fine just walking.”

“Yes. Thank you, Eddie, for that brief, yet fascinating, look into cattle herding,” Franklin said with a roll of his eyes. “When we saw that we realized we couldn’t ignore it. Humans suffer, they die and they do what they need to in order to survive. We get that, better than a lot of people, probably. This is different.”
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It happened late one night, out back of the bar. Edward was setting up his cook pots and slicing roots into a bucket. Franklin was busy starting a roaring fire. The men had taken to cooking late nights, Edward seemed to insist, and feeding whomever was still awake. It didn’t invite conversation, much other than thanks, but it warmed some of the locals to the two.

Johnny Boots saw it different. He felt that his woman, Betsy Klein, was paying that Bones man far too much attention. Betsy didn’t see it that way at all, but then she also didn’t see herself as Johnny Boots’ woman, either.

Boots was out back watching the fire grow along with his ire. He shot Edward a look, trying to warn the man off through sheer force of will. None of us knew, then, that battle was a losing proposition. Johnny Boots learned it soon enough though, and learned it for all of us.
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Now this was back in the early days of the dead west. Back then it didn’t have a name or anything, It was just where man was losing the fight to survive. The desert was bad enough on its own, but add the Brainers and their mounts to the mix and, well, to be blunt we were losing bad. Most civilized areas had already collapsed. The future wasn’t lookin’ too bright.

By then, this was only ten or so years after the Brainers had come in you understand, the whole of what used to be called Texas and most points west of it clear to the ocean had already fallen. The Brainers moved fast, faster than anyone thought they could. The disease they spread with them affected mammals of all sorts and made ‘em hunger. It made ‘em kinda stupid too, at first, but they got smarter as they adapted. That was our mistake in the first days, we showed ‘em all what we could do and they learnt from it like children.
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There are some books that seep under your skin. I have a few books I read over and over again. After a while, when you’ve read a book enough that it is part of your waking memory at all times, it can slip into your being, without you fully noticing.

Dhalgren has done that to me. I mean, it did it years ago but there you have it. I just finished another re-read of it and find myself, my internal constant monologue, colored by the book again. For a few days I’ll notice the sky more, think about the small every day seconds a bit clearer and wonder why we live our lives the way we do a bit more often.

My mental speech pattern shifts for a few days, fully.

There aren’t many books that do it to me, anymore. Just the three: Dhalgren, Illuminatus! and Lonesome Dove. I don’t know why those three, either, but they do. I can read, and re-read, them endlessly and each time I do I have a few days where I am myself+bookhead. I enjoy it, but it also kinda messes with me.

I dunno. Rambly.

Oh, and I was gonna start posting new free fiction today but due to having my keyboard die this Saturday and not getting a replacement until Sunday and then having to do all my Saturday work on Sunday and getting dates confused - I left the file at home. Makes it hard to post. So sorry about that. I will start it tomorrow or Weds.

If you like Talking Heads I did a bit on the footnote on Friday that was … well … Talking Heads, but with footnote staff. It’s the start of a new thing called Pipe Dreams.

Books I have on the way:

* Neal Stephenson’s Anathem
* Stan Nicholl’s Orcs
* Ernest Tidyman’s Shaft: Among the Jews
* Matthew Stover’s Caine Black Knife (Oct 14th, mind you so on the way is loose)

I still have to read Malfi’s Passenger as well.

I am awash in great looking books!

More later.

So what’s up with me? Well then. the footnote gets a lot of love, of course. Go read it and enjoy. But outside of that? I feel a bullet list coming on!

• Been working on a novel.
• And the materials for a comic pitch.
• And a comic script for something else.
• And a short film.
• And now a different, shorter, film project.
• And laying the groundwork for a new webcomic that will hopefully burst into life in a bit.
• And the day job.
• And the coolest new big project ever that I am under NDA about but soon… soon I can talk about it.

So I pretty much: Go to work, work, set up things, go home and write on seven different things at once and then go to bed. The life of excitement.
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The Big Lebowski - 10th Anniversary Limited Edition comes in a freakin’ bowling ball.

Mind you, it’s on sale for 24 bucks on Amazon right now, ships Sept 9th. Has new bonus features. Still! Bowling Ball case! But I don’t need a new copy. Like the Dude, I abide.
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Just finished The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman. I have always loved Haldeman’s work but this book is like … think a Heinlein juvie, but not a juvie. It’s clean. Damned fine book. Fun, exciting, playful, smart and amazingly good writing.
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An d to end with: Here is a Japanese game show where the point is to start yourself to a wall with a rubber band and then try to eat marshmallows on strings. Yes.

From a bio: Kazuo Ishiguro claims to have “drifted into” writing. “It wasn’t necessarily what I wanted to do,” he admits and speculates that writing “may be a consolation for something that got broken. The activity of re-creating the world on the page, finding alternative worlds, is a way of trying to fix that thing or caress that wound…a wound that will never heal.”