Yanks Abroad

Well, I'm in England. London, to be exact. Chelsea, to be ridiculously exact. I have good news and bad news. The good news is, I made it, I'm alive, and I'm well on my way to getting my first-ever press credentials to cover Rangers matches while I'm over here. The bad news is, some ass stole my credit card and made off with it. I've told the story so many times I'm going crazy, so I won't tell it again, but sufficed to say it's a huge pain in the ass not having a credit card in a foreign country. I can't pay for anything, and London is, to be perfectly frank, a very expensive city. An exchange rate of over 2 dollars to every pound doesn't help matters. Right now, I have shelter (a hotel paid with my father's credit card ... pathetic, I know), and some food (a burger for dinner tasted WAY better than it actually was). Tomorrow, my quests include not just the planned trips around the city and eventually to the train station out, but concentrate mainly on jaunts to the US embassy and a bank to try to make some sort of sensible way out of this. It sucks. Hopefully, by tomorrow, I'll work it out. My bank is shipping a card off to me, but it could take a week, and London is not the sort of town in which one can vacation for a week without any money.

But, like I said, I'm just about set up for my first real live press box, which will hopefully come August 4th in Inverness at the Caley Thistle-Rangers season opener. I will be reporting for Yanks Abroad, a website covering American athletes overseas. DeMarcus Beasley is my particular focus, as he is the only current American playing in the Scottish league.

I just hope I get my money sorted soon. Otherwise, the title of this blog may be suddenly much more fitting than I had planned.

In the airport

... on the way to London. Finally, after what seems like a year of waiting, I'm on my way to England and Scotland for a half-working vacation that I sorely need. I have already lost my phone and almost left my passport a handful of places, but who's counting? Next time I post, I will be in England, and writing furiously. As I've said, I want to come back with a vast array of at least starts for stories, if not a notebook full of poems and stories. The football work I'll be doing over there will be great, but its a means to an end also. Literary work is what I really want to get done over there. We'll see.

Having a try at Yog's

I discovered a cool little zine today called Yog's Notebook, and promptly sent them off a story. They seemed enamored of Lovecraft, from a little joke on their "About Us" page, and so I sent them a story called "Further Study", a little 1600-word short-short about Cthulhu and a scientist that witnesses his near-return. I'll be curious to know what they think of it.

In other news, I leave the cozy confines of the West coast in about a day and a half, first for New York, then for London. I'm hoping that I can find a nice little corner of Scotland to finally relax in, between football games of course. I've followed both my favorite national team (Scotland) and my favorite club (Inverness Caley Thistle) from afar for so long that I can't believe I'm actually going to get to see them play live. Between the matches, though, I'm planning on making writing a full-time job, and I'd really like to come back with notebooks full of work. While I'm here, I find it really difficult to find the time to write, and so I hope a trip to the old country is just what the doctor ordered. We shall see.

Me: 55 words; Them: 1 ... No

So, another day, another rejection letter. This one stung a bit more than the average, since it was a piece written specifically for the place I sent it. There's a cool little online litmag called "55 Words" that publishes, you guessed it, 55-word flash fiction. I hear people talk about novels and how impossible it can seem to write that much, but I think the opposite is true. It's relatively easy to tell a full and rich story in 10,000 words. Try it in 55 - now, that's a challenge. Anyway, regardless of their lack of interest in my particular story (or perhaps more so because of it), you should definitely check them out. Flash fiction is an interesting medium, and I'm looking forward to trying more of it.

Deserts BAAAAAD

Yeah, I know. I am the worst blogger ever. It's been like three weeks. I'm not even really posting right now, because it's late and I still have real work to do. The truth is, this blog has been last priority and so has been abandoned because the first-through-second-to-last priorities have taken up absolutely all my time.

But, it is World Day to Combat Desertification, and so how could I not post. I hope everyone took time today to ... not ... make ... anymore deserts ... (?)

Goodnight.

Brilliant

Enough said. Great website from Miranda July, whose movies (and now, websites) I absolutely adore. I will be immediately buying her book, which I also expect to like a lot.

Linky

Thanks to Neil Gaiman for introducing me to this via his blog.

That is all.

Ah ..... yup

So, there's no way around it. There's just not that much worth blogging about going on here in the Valley of Corn. There's been some personal stuff - that girl I was dating - well, that worked out sort of predictably badly. On the positive side, I think I actually succeeded in pushing her back to her ex-boyfriend. I should start a new sort of relationship counseling. I'll call it "Could Be Worse Relationship Services", and our slogan could be "Take What You Can Get". Anyhow, whoever you are, girl's ex-boyfriend, glad I could be there for you, mate. I assume the check is in the mail.

This is a short blog, because, like I said, not much is going on.

Something funny I saw on Kermit the Blog. I enjoyed it, and I'll be stopping by there more often to see if they're always so clever. Bye now.