Thursday of last week was a three star day for close observances. After work, as I was getting out of the car in the parking lot at Wheatsville Co-op, a Question Mark butterfly lit on the window beside me. It sat unperturbed, opening and closing its wings without hurry as I inspected both upper and underside patterns. This is the third time one of this species has afforded me a leisure eyeful, and the third time I have not had a camera at hand. What I have done is looked and looked and looked again.

When I left Wheatsville I circled around back streets to get on 29th heading toward MoPac. I stopped at a stop sign facing an alley just as a blue jay attacked a fledgling house sparrow. The sparrow parents tried to intervene, but the jay batted them away without apparent effort. The fledgling struggled hard, almost but just not quite old enough to escape, as the jay hopped straight up and came down with both feet on the smaller bird. Then it stabbed with its beak. Then it cocked its head and looked, knocking the parents away. Then it hopped again. And stabbed again. And cocked its head and looked again. And hopped again. A good thing no one came up behind me on the street, because I sat with mixed emotions at the stop sign and watched the jay kill the sparrow. On one hand, I felt bad for the young sparrow’s death. On the other, the jay’s approach to predation seemed fascinatingly intelligent. Like Chimpanzees hunting monkeys, I thought.

Later that evening I went into the garage and discovered a Great Purple Hairstreak on the garage door. The temperature dropped enough that night that the butterfly was sluggish. I got a good look at the underside of the wings and the body but, uncooperative as all hairstreaks, it never opened to reveal the upper pattern. In the morning I opened the garage door, caught the butterfly and released it in the sun. As it flew off my hand I saw the flash of bright blue edged in black once, twice, three times before it was over my head.

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Aggiecon 39 kicked off this afternoon. Thursday, as it turns out, is primarily a day for check in and set up by dealers, but a few shoppers wandered through. The real action starts at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow, and runs through Sunday. The dealer room is large, and there is nowhere to hang my banner, but I’m the only vendor in the room selling Prelude to a Change of Mind and Nod’s Way, so I should be hard to miss.

Aggiecon is one of the oldest student organized science fiction/fantasy conventions in the country. It also enjoys a reputation as one of the more literary cons in Texas. In testament to this, fully a third of the dealer room is reserved for autograph stations by guest writers and artists.

If you live within a few hours of College Station, consider making the drive. Besides a great con for a destination, the journey will pass through fields of bluebonnets, paintbrush, primrose, wild onion and oodles of other wildflowers in bloom. My trip from Austin this morning was a fresh reminder of exactly how beautiful Texas can be in March. Lovely, lovely.

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…or maybe it’s just shifting clocks, weather and allergies wreaking havoc with my system.

According to powers greater than I, March is Small Press Month. In observance of this happy fact, the five Austin area Barnes & Noble stores are featuring displays of Dalton Publishing titles. These include mine. The stores will continue to carry the titles as long as they sell, so consider breaking your routine with a run to B&N for a stock of Prelude to a Change of Mind and Nod’s Way.

Later this month, March 27th through 30th, I’ll have a dealer table at Aggiecon 39, on the Texas A&M campus in College Station. Aggiecon has a reputation as one of the more literary cons in Texas; we’ll see if that is true. Check back for the report.

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In a little over five hours the doors open on the dealer room at ConDFW, in the Radisson Hotel North Dallas/Richardson. Selling books, signing books and demonstrating the Nod’s Way oracle, Robert Stikmanz will be there.

Now, three weeks out from handing it off, I’m ready to talk about the new novel, Entranscing, due from Dalton Publishing in August of this year. The book is tight, fast paced and considerable fun. Featuring not one Jackanapes Plenty but two, this second book in The Hidden Lands of Nod picks up the story of Meg Christmas twenty years after the events told in Prelude to a Change of Mind. Besides Meg and two Jacks, returning cast include Ekaterina Rigidstick, Roamer and (hiss!) General Rataxes. It has new cast, new action and new perspectives on alternate realities, but it also has to wait. Today, tomorrow and Sunday have to focus on the titles in hand. Entranscing will have its time in August.

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Last night I submitted Entranscing, the sequel to Prelude to a Change of Mind and the second book in The Hidden Lands of Nod, to Dalton Publishing protagonist, Deltina Hay, and senior editor, Ric Williams. Now I sit back, chew my nails, and wait to learn whether or not it lives up to expectations.

Producing this work differed from any writing project I’ve ever attempted. Instead of taking years to tinker and refine an idea until it looked novel-like (as I did with Prelude to a Change of Mind), necessities of meeting an August 2008 publication deadline meant that the entire book, from detailed outline to completed fourth draft, was produced in 100 days. Is it any good? I have no idea. Today, for the first time since October, I found I could not think about the text at all. During the process of writing I was so driven to meet a deadline that I hardly reflected on the narrative as I constructed and revised it. Fortunately, the next task doesn’t involve thinking about the text. In the next couple of days I have to refine a sketch for the cover illustration and render the title in Dvarsh script. How nice it will be to spend time drawing as opposed to writing.

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Tree sex continues rampant, with the central Texas cedar fever season in full swing. Because for several days I could not breathe and tonight I can, I pause for a deep cycle of air in/air out. Hello, babies.

Tonight I reached the halfway point of the third draft of Entranscing, second book of The Hidden Lands of Nod. That’s not quite as simple a statement as it sounds. I have not yet reached the middle of the story. What I managed to catch and pass this evening was the constantly retreating middle of the file as it existed when I stopped. Where the final “geographical” middle of the story will fall is not yet clear. I’ve added 5000+ words since beginning the Third Draft. Likelihood is high I’ll add at least 5000 more before starting draft number 4. A completed manuscript is due to Dalton Publishing by January 31st, making this my 100 day book—from start to finish I will have written it in 100 days. That’s a heck of a lot more rigorous than I’m used to working, so don’t complain if the final product is short. It will stand as the officially designated sequel to Prelude to a Change of Mind.

Looking ahead to Stikmanz in the world again, I hope to have a dealer table at ConDFW, February 22-24, in Richardson. My table in the dealer room at AggieCon, March 27-30 on the A&M campus, has been confirmed. Tentative plans for later in the year include SciFi Summer Con in Marietta, GA, in June; Conestoga in Tulsa in July, Austin’s Armadillocon and Albuquerque’s Bubonicon in August, and Denver’s MileHiCon and Dallas’s Fencon in October. That’s as far as resources will allow me to stretch at present. In the meantime, I can be found most Saturdays staffing the Dalton Publishing booth at the Sunset Valley Farmers Market, signing books, demonstrating my oracle, Nod’s Way, and holding forth on my enlarging ontological fantasy.

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Sunday night I took time off from the novel in progress to attend a performance and album release by my favorite musical experimentalists, Inversion Effect. Appearing with fellow Artificial Music Machine recording artists, Numbers on the Mast, they were coming off a mini-tour that took them to Houston and New Orleans before Sunday’s show. Often cerebral, always evocative, each set I have heard by this trio combined the distinct sensibilities of the principals in unexpected, wide ranging improvisations of almost cinematic character. This was again the order of the evening.

Inversion Effect is a collaboration of three artists, Thomas Fang, Martin McCreadie and Dan Burton. In many ways theirs has been an unlikely union. Thomas Fang’s instrumentation includes radio and scanner frequencies, field recordings, samples, turntables, “bent” toys and effects devices in addition to keyboards. Dan Burton, with keyboards and laptop, contributes synthesis and programming. I always think of Martin McCreadie as the man with the guitar, but Martin is also a synthesist and programmer. Their individual expressive modes are so different they hardly seem like they should be in the same band. Fortunately, they are, or have been, and the chemistry that shifts between them, dialoging noise and melody, decontextualizing and recontextualizing familiar voices, produces results that surprise even the artists.

Thomas Fang told me that I may have heard more Inversion Effect performances than anyone else in their audience. In light of that, he asked how I thought Sunday’s set compared to others. I, however, was reluctant to compare. The same methods have been used in every performance, but I came away from each with a different impression. Sunday was the same. It was the show in which I had the most pronounced desire to get up and move in response. I do not mean to dance, as in shake my moneymaker, but to move as a Noh actor might move if Noh became suddenly improvisatory. The feel was more visceral than other sets—or perhaps poignancy influenced my reaction. Martin, Dan and Thomas each told me this performance may be their last. While I heard that regretfully, it has been a grand run.

The album just released, A Brief History, consists of selections from across the entire six years of their work together. Despite differing sources, the result does not come across as a sample of episodes. Rather, the material has been carefully integrated to produce a unified, evolving whole that assimilates archival material into what is, ultimately, a new work. More synthesis than summary, the album could not be a more fitting retrospective. See here for details.

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Three nights ago I finished the first draft of Entranscing, the Second Book in The Hidden Lands of Nod. The manner in which the story was built differs considerably from my approach in the past. I spent decades developing the first novel in the series, Prelude to a Change of Mind, simultaneously with the third novel, Sleeper Awakes, and the Nod’s Way oracle, the Dvarsh language, a Dvarsh visual tradition, a set of Dvarsh proverbs, poems channeled from Jackanapes Plenty and a series of unsatisfying day jobs. It was all a single multi-faceted project that grew over years. By contrast, Entranscing will be a novel written in under 100 days. The outline required about three days to develop; the first draft, thirty-two days to write. I have from today, December 1, until January 31 to revise. On the latter date I have to turn the completed manuscript over to Dalton Publishing. Fortunately, I know exactly from what source the story springs—Prelude to a Change of Mind—and the target at which it aims—Sleeper Awakes. Having those works already in hand to inform this tale, and the whole body of Dvarsh cultural materials on which to draw, simplifies the task dramatically.

Also unlike Prelude and Sleeper, Entranscing is set mostly away from the human consensus. Chapters take place among the Dvarsh in their cloistered consensus, aboard the command sphere of Rataxes, and on earth’s sister world of Hurt. Picking up the story of Meg Christmas twenty years after the events of Prelude to a Change of Mind, this sequel chronicles the pitched struggle to save all of being from brutal conquest by piercing the barriers between realities. Ekaterina returns, as do Roamer, not one but two Jackanapes Plenties and multiple iterations of the evil general, Rataxes. Ekaterina’s formidable elder sister, Mathilde, joins the core cast. Look forward to a great deal about Dvarsh culture and society, acts of courage, Jack’s poetry and more ontological fantasy. I look forward to it. At the rate it’s being written, I’ve hardly had a chance to get to know the book as it has appeared.

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The sequel to Prelude to a Change of Mind and second book of the Lands of Nod, Entranscing, begins to take shape. Following a thirteen chapter outline, I completed the rough draft of Chapter 5 this evening. The accumulation so far is a little over ten thousand words at not yet halfway through the scheme. Considerable material will have to be massaged into the crude architectures that always are my first drafts. With luck and focus I’ll begin working on a second draft before November is out—a goal within reach if I don’t get distracted. Fortunately, ten thousand words is enough to bring the story to life on my mindstage, and that provides ready material when I sit down to enlarge the rough document.

Entranscing takes up the story of Meg Christmas twenty years after the events of Prelude to a Change of Mind. She has matured into a formidable adept on the one hand and on the other a seeker trying at last to come to terms with unresolved matters from that season on the mountain two decades before. The tale will serve up more Dvarsh, more Thrm’m, more Nod’s Way, more evil generals, more ontic imaginings, more wolves, more sex, more of Jack’s poetry and not one but two iterations of the master of action himself, Jackanapes Plenty, in further elaboration of the Stikmantic ontological fantasy. Dalton Publishing will release Entranscing in August 2008.

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