The Month That Was - September 2010

The Month That Was - September 2010: Happy Birthday to me. Monday 9/13 was the big one. (As Jerry Pournelle would say, Friday the 13th fell on a Monday.) Half a century of banging about this world. Like everything else in life that is supposedly momentous, it passed without any great revelation or drama. The only actual celebration came two days prior when I was up on Mackinac for a 8-mile race around the island. More on all this below.

More exciting was getting the cover art for Misspent Youth completed, designed and executed by an exceedingly talented local artist named Ken Blaznek. I highly recommend him to anyone in the Ann Arbor area (or beyond for that matter). He was conscientious, creative, and a good listener and, as I said, quite adept at his work. You can see the cover graphic here. It's a 2 meg pdf so give it a chance to load. Comments welcome. Still some work to get the actual book out, but seeing the cover makes it seem awfully real.

[Rant] 50
[Movies] Flick Check: Movie Round-Up
[TV] Toob Notes: Knocking on The Pantheon Door
[Detroit] Selling Detroit - Style Over Substance

[Misspent Youth] Three Steps Forward, Two Back

Three Steps Forward, Two Back: I continue to find myself at the start of the end game for Misspent Youth. I have seen the first version of the formatted pdf -- with pages appearing as they will in the final book, not as a Word doc. The formatting is a disaster. Also, in re-reading it if final layout I've noticed a bunch of things I don't like, including stuff beyond copy edits, so I'm back in minor revision mode. None of this is unexpected. It's just a matter effort and diligence to get through it.

Anyway, here is the first draft of the long description -- what you will see as the description presented by booksellers and probably, with some slight variation, what will appear on the back cover.

David Mazzotta's third novel continues his comic exploration of the benign absurdity of normal life. His first, Apple Pie, looked at questions of identity and ethnicity in a college setting. The second, Business As Usual, took on topics of mortality and fortune amidst a corporate meltdown. Painting with his broadest brush yet, Misspent Youth presents an interconnected ensemble of all ages meandering through a few months of daily life in a leafy suburban community.

Billy, a weary lothario, is taking the plunge into standard domestic life -- although it's not really a plunge, more of a toe-by-toe wade into the shallow end. This tentative behavior is the source of great anxiety to Marlene, his do-it-all, single-mom girlfriend. Her impossibly precocious but behaviorally troubled daughter, Missy, is a concern for both of them.

Billy's life gets entangled with other denizens of the neighborhood veldt. Adults indulging their half-understood impulses; children bent by the burdens of the world. Without a native's understanding of communal norms and manners, Billy shuffles and sidesteps through carnal temptations, civil disobedience, and outright criminality before finding his place, sort of.

Misspent Youth lovingly satirizes the happy desperation of 21^st century middle America.

You just can't wait, can you?

[Misspent Youth] What's It All About

What's It All About: The first draft of the jacket copy for Misspent Youth. Not sure it scans all that well -- words like "inscrutable" and "normalcy" may scare readers. It needs revision, but there's time for that. The key thing is that it's accurate and catches the tone and concept of the book exactly.

With his homeland turning cold and indifferent before his eyes, Billy sets off on an intrepid journey that leads him to a strange and baffling world; a world of inscrutable codes and icons; a world where honesty and maturity are turned inside out; a world that will test his reason and spirit to the limit; a world called...Suburbia.

Misspent Youth is a sharp-eyed, comic, and ultimately affectionate look at the insanity of normalcy.

Does it pique your interest? That's the primary goal.