My screenplay Eurabia is a Quarterfinalist in the The 2009 PAGE International Screenwriting Awards. After the first two rounds of competition, my script has made it to the top 10% of all entries. Eurabia is the timely story of what would happen if Europe was ruled by radical mullahs like in Iran.
Read the first ten pages online.
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Check out my short story, Don’t Mess Up My Block which was recently published in Thirty First Bird Review.
The editor of Thirty First Bird Review called my story an “unholy marriage of New Age fluff and international diplomacy.” That’s about right – it’s a dark satire about a management consultant who tries to apply his misbegotten theories to an already screwed-up country.
Thirty First Bird Review is a new literary journal published by Edward Simon, an adjunct instructor of English literature and composition at Point Park University and Duquesne University. The journal is a web site but also intends to publish a print journal and be an integral part of Pittsburgh’s literary scene.
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Since I finished writing Murder in Ocean Hall, I’ve gotten questions from friends and family regarding the book. Creating something from nothing seems enough of a magical act to inspire some questioning. The question I’ve gotten most is:
Where’d you get the idea from?
I originally planned to write a much different book, something much more serious and literary. It’s a manuscript that I’ve worked on for three or four years and exists on my laptop as a mix of disparate scenes and ideas that have never quite come together. The novel that I had in mind was a much grimmer story, about DC during the summer before 9/11. The book is about people chasing success, unaware that their world is about to be undone.
Finishing that big serious book was my plan. It’s why I decided to leave my government contractor job. [Read more →]
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Just a quick update to let people know where I’m at with my book.
I finished writing Murder in Ocean Hall at the beginning of April. It’s a murder-mystery about a controversial explorer who’s killed in the Smithsonian’s Ocean Hall, when a giant replica of a whale falls from the ceiling and crushes him. It’s up to a cynical DC detective to solve the murder of a man who was equally admired and hated among scientists and explorers.
There really is whale hanging from the ceiling of Ocean Hall – go check it out.
The book was loosely inspired by the three years I spent working as a web site manager for NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research. Of course, no one was murdered while I worked there but a lot of what I learned about ocean exploration, government bureaucracy and the occasionally big egos of people in the field has made it into the book.
I’m represented by Stuart Chang of Samara Literary. I’ve known Stuart for several years – we used to be in a writers’ group together – so I was really happy that he agreed to be my literary agent. Samara Literary will be focusing on DC authors. I’ve signed a six-month contract with the agency. Literary agents work like other types of agents – they get paid a percentage, if the book gets sold.
I’ve submitted the manuscript to Stuart and he’s gotten back to me with some excellent edits and suggestions that I’m in the process of making. A select group of readers has also provided invaluable feedback. After I get the book in final shape, we’ll start looking for a publisher.
This is the beginning of the long process of getting the book published. Coming from a career in web site development, the publishing world seems positively antiquarian with its lengthy lead times and schedules. If we sold the book today, it would be a year before it’s in stores.
But I’ve done the hard part – I wrote the book – so I’ll keep pushing on.
I’ll let you know what happens next!
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I was excited to learn that The Nature Conservancy won a Webby for their web site, nature.org. They beat out the competition (which included the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation!) in the category of Charitable Organizations Nonprofit.
I worked on nature.org from 2003-2005 as a Web Producer. I think it’s a great site though, of course, I’m hopelessly biased 
Nature.org was recently redesigned but it follows a core set of design principles that I think helped it win the Webby. If you look at past screenshots of the site, these principles have been pretty consistent over the years. They include:
Note how simple this is. Readers aren’t overwhelmed by flash animations or crowded blocks of content. This simplicity is a design choice that has paid dividends for The Nature Conservancy.
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Gwynne Kostin has written about how efforts like the Online Presidential Town Hall can reveal larger problems. In her article, she mentions that world-class government web sites, like the Centers for Disease Control, hand-code web pages.
Most large-scale web sites use some sort of content management system (CMS) to publish and organize their web sites. Even small-scale web sites (like this one) use a CMS for their work. This site runs on Wordpress, for example. I don’t need to know code to update my site; I just have to type into a box on a web page. [Read more →]
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I’m in the final stages of my book, Murder in Ocean Hall. I’ve spent a lot of time at Caribou to get this far. Right now, I’m busy proofing the book. I’m done writing it, have edited a couple times already, and am going through the book once more. I’ve printed all 235 pages and and am closely reading the book to catch any mistakes.
Am I really done with the book? Hmm. I could probably spend the rest of my life tweaking it but eventually you have to send it off into the world. “Real artists ship,” to quote Steve Jobs.
Am I happy with the book? Yes. It’s got a beginning, middle and end, interesting characters, some good info on ocean exploration and urban life in DC, and a couple of plot twists. It might meander at times, a bit.
Is it perfect? No. Nothing is as perfect as it is in your head. By putting your idea to paper, you take it out of the ideal world and put it into the real one. This fear of sullying your own creation is a cause of writer’s block. It causes many people not to write anything because they know it won’t be perfect.
What’s next for my book?
Plan A – The Traditional Route. Look for an agent, try to sell the book to a publisher, and then wait for it to appear in bookstores.
Plan B – The Nontraditional Route. Self-publish it using Lulu or Blurb. Sell it online using one of these print on demand services.
The first path is more prestigious and accepted but the print publishing world is in really bad shape these days. The second road is much easier – I could have a paperback version of the book next week- but it’s more of a DIY project.
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I’ve been reading Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. It’s a brilliant book on the information revolution that we’re going through. He believes that this revolution is as momentous as the development of the printing press, which triggered the Reformation and religious wars. The rise of amateurs and the expansion of consumer choice has meant the end of seemingly unassailable institutions like newspapers.
Seeing how the world is rushing to adapt to the web, I had a practical question. Why doesn’t the government use the web to more efficiently accomplish its work? For example: [Read more →]
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A Guide to the Recovering Job Market
I’ve had the experience of looking for work during the worst economic periods of the last twenty years. As a recent college graduate, I passed out resumes during the post-Cold War sag of the early 1990s. I was an unemployed web editor following the collapse of the dotcom bubble in 2002.
And I’m looking for work now. My timing has been impeccable; I’ve left jobs at precisely the worst times.
In Washington, we’re better off than the rest of the country but not immune to down times. Slowly, however, things are getting better. My experience has been that job market goes through four distinct stages. [Read more →]
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Like it or not, newspapers are going away. Printing day-old news on dead trees and then shipping the results to subscribers by gas-burning trucks seems antiquated and inefficient, a process that has become obsolete in our lifetimes.
I love newspapers. One of things I like about living in DC is the heft of the Washington Post. Weight seems to connotate authority, a “real” newspaper for a real city, so different from the flimsy papers of smaller towns. However, that distinction is changing as the Post eliminates sections and physically shrinks while raising the newsstand price. [Read more →]
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