In the 1930’s America was in the grips of the Great Depression. Jobs were scarce, people wore overalls and farmers attempted to eek a living out of the hard dirt of the barren mid-west.  This was a real thing that happened.

Photo: Typical American Homestead in the 1930's

While pondering this predicament a savvy businessman began to think about the amount of sunlight in the day, when that light was present and how all of this related to the amount of time spent at work.

He came up with a groundbreaking theory:

Washington was quick to grasp the significance of this breakthrough and was swift to act establishing the National Daylight Preserve in a secret location and immediately seeking out sources of clean viable daylight. After several false starts they finally struck upon a deal with our friendly neighbor to the north…Santa.

That's Right, Bitches

Santa had been trying to offload all of his surplus daylight for years having long since been convinced by his marketing department that fur and robes were the look for him, not to mention the Elvish labor unions were breaking his back to cut his work week to five days a week. Back then the North Pole received more sunlight than anywhere else on earth and Santa knew that with a normal five day work week he’d never get toys made for all the good girls and boys. So when Uncle Sam came calling they struck a happy deal. Santa could dump excess daylight down south and make each work day last six months. There were some repercussions.

All that was left was a way to sneak all this daylight past the shifty eyes of the Canadians who, for some reason, would probably most likely want to steal it. The answer was obvious: the mafia. With bootleggers already sneaking whiskey into they had the perfect infrastructure in place to smuggle whatever the hell they wanted across the Canadian border. Plus some bootleggers had their own reasons for wanting more daylight:

Things went smashingly for almost a decade with the government setting up a movable strategic reserve in a large ceramic container capable of retaining massive amounts of heat, similar to those used to bake clay: the American Reserve Kiln.

Then the forties came along and things went wrong in the only way things ever went wrong in the forties, the  Nazi way. Learning the secret location of the American Reserve Kiln, which was in Egypt for reasons I really don’t think I need to go into, the Nazis sought to dig it up and steal it. And when Nazis are after your American Reserve Kiln, or A.R.K., there really is only one place to turn (I am so very very sorry for that pun):

It belongs in a museum.

Dr. Indiana Jones chased the Nazis, in possession of the A.R.K., across half the globe from Tunis to Whythefuckareyoustillreadingthisastan before tricking them into opening the A.R.K without proper protection. Yeah. You know what happens at the end when all their faces melt? That’s why you don’t stare directly at an eclipse.

Dr. Jones was successful and returned America’s daylight reserves home and things remained peaceful until the early nineties when the criminal element that had helped to bring the daylight into the country in the first place began to feel like they had gotten a raw deal. They dispatched two of their best men:

These two waged an unholy war against southern California, rival mobs and traditional linear storytelling in their search for the current resting place of all our wonderful daylight…that god damned briefcase.

They retrieved said briefcase and returned to their criminal boss, but then the T-1000…well I don’t need to bore you with the rest as everyone surely knows how that part of the story goes. But you probably never put two and two together and realized that this is the reason we now disperse our daylight over only half of the year.

Which is why you had an extra hour to get drunk last weekend.

You’re welcome.

The entries were great, I had a lot of fun reading your interpretations of my characters and book.  Most of you wanted some attempt by me to answer these questions as well so here goes, though I have to stress that there really weren’t many of these that had “right” or “wrong” answers. Basically everyone who entered received full marks and made it to the random number phase of the contest.

1. What was Mary in her previous life, and how does it contradict her duties/identity as an angel?
   Mary was a nun her first time around. This past has put her at odds with herself as a tester as she seems to gravitate towards relationships and sex for her pushes. It seems to be a minor theme that in their second time around these characters wind up in areas that are almost polar opposites from their original lives.
2. Which aspects of his life in the ancient world color how Epp handles decisions as an angel? Does his status as an ancient being influence your regard for him?
   I get the feeling that as a Roman slave Epp was kept to a pretty strict schedule and discipline with his work. It’s worth noting that Roman slaves were all over the map as far as their relationships with their owners and a lot of these relationships were actually quite civil…you know, for slavery and all. I get the feeling that where Epp landed as a slave turned out to be a good fit for him and I definitely think he was encouraged to learn as much as possible there. I think it was one of the great ironies of his life that he flourished under slavery in a way that never would have happened as a free man.  As for the second part, well, I created him so I’m not sure I can answer that. I will say that anyone who sticks around for two-thousand years and keeps their eyes open you should probably listen to.
3. Do you see Matthew as a hero or just an observer? What role does he play in the larger story?
   I started referring to Matthew in my head as a robot by the later parts of the book because he started reminding me of C-3PO and R2-D2. He’s very much a guide for the reader, though for me he does start to step up at the end.
4. What’s up with the mountain tops? If you could go anywhere to peacefully contemplate the big issues in your life, where would it be and why?
   I have absolutely no idea why I started using mountain tops the way I did.  Whatever the reason I’m of the opinion it was the right choice.  Just look at it! As for where I’d go, it’d probably be Central Park…in the rain.
5. What do you think Hector did for a living in his first life?
   Sorry. I’m not answering this one.
6. If you were an angel and could “push” anyone in history, who would it be and why? What sort of outcome would you want?
   I’m pretty sure I listed a lot of my top candidates throughout the book. And I think all I’d want out of a push is to be surprised at the strength of the person I was up against.
7. What does the title of Part 9, “Where Sarpedon’s Body Lay,” mean?
   Ahhh…this question had so many of you Wiki-ing up.  There were some very good responses and I’m hesitant to write the “answer” here because the stuff you came up with was equally fun.  So I’ll just say that, in my mind, this is was the title means: Sarpedon was a soldier in the Trojan war and he pops up in the Iliad a few times before falling in battle. I was always struck in that book at how the battles were so fluid, constantly ranging back and forth across the beaches and the front of the Trojan walls and how the fighting could coalesce in a heartbeat around the oddest things. When Sarpedon falls some of his compatriots stop to retrieve his body so that it can be properly buried. Then some of his enemies stop to try and stop his compatriots so that they can’t give him a properly burial. Then more compatriots join in, then more enemies, then more and more and more and suddenly there’s a full on battle being fought. For me that was a lot like what was happening in the last parts of the book as things began to come to a head of their own accord in places nobody would ever have thought to prepare for them.
8. Would you want to have Epp as a mentor? Why or why not?
   No, but it would probably be good for me.
9. Matthew has a “thing” for cigars. Freudian aspect? Habit? What is the most realistic habit that the angels have in Probability Angels?
   Ha…I don’t do symbolism much and certainly not Freudian symbolism so that’s out.  The most realistic habit these characters have is their inability to keep time zones straight. Kyo in particular.
10. Sum up what you think happens in the next book in one sentence.
    I can’t quite do it in one sentence but I’ll try and put together an answer using thousands of sentences.  You should have it in your hands in a little bit if all goes well.

Thanks to all who entered, congrats to Red and now I’m off to work on question 10 some more.

Today I thought I’d share some of the ways I choose to derail my productivity (some I’ve mentioned before).

First is something called Pangya, which is a game in which you apparently play a Japanese school girl in a mystical world where you fight dragons by playing golf.

I don’t even…I can’t…what?

I should point out that I haven’t actually played this game I just keep watching the trailer. It’s like someone fed me Nyquil, stole my dreams, then made a video game out of them while on acid.

Okay, so that one is a bit of a joke.

This one is not. In fact, this one is probably the most engaging set of puzzles I’ve ever played. We’re talking multiple roommates in separate rooms swearing at their computers at two in the morning back when this was discovered. Hapland. So simple, so easy, just click on the stuff and stuff happens. The goal is to make the little men light the torches. Back when this game broke my spirit there were three puzzles, now I think there are four. If you Google “Hapland” then a number they’ll pop up.  Here’s the first one. Be afraid:

If you played that and it stressed you out, or if you’re just stressed out for other reasons, this next one will be a welcome change.  Locoroco is a wildly popular game for the PSP or something but I don’t care because I just go here and play the free sample. I love it. I love it and it soothes me. You move these little singing blobs around and make them touch the flower that’s their color and then they sing. And as you move through the board and get more flowers the singing changes. And it is wonderful. I seriously play the first board of this game when I’m stressed. It’s a great use of sound in a video game. Damn those blobs can sing. Needless to say you sort of need your sound on to get this one.

Now back to maddening. For our final choice we have GROW. You drag the things from the side into the center and try to make the thing in the middle…you know…grow. This one is all about the order that you use the items in. Use them in the right order and they all work in sync and everything…grows…before the addition of each new item and you achieve maximum growth. It’s hard to explain but if you start clicking you’ll get it and then before you know it you’ll be sitting at your computer, bedraggled and starving, muttering to yourself: “But if I use the tornado the ball grows except I need the water to make the egg.” And off to the left there are like eight more GROW games.

Which is fun.

There you go.

That should kill the better part of your day.

Basically after four or five years these things just start to wither and need to be replaced. Which, in absolutely no way, makes the slightest bit of sense to me. It’s a microchip, what the hell is going on in there? Is sludge accumulating? Would that even matter? Isn’t it just a logic circuit at the heart of this thing? What’s slowing down? The logic?

Please don’t answer that. Computers exist as one of many things in this world that I take great delight in knowing absolutely nothing about. In my mind you have a hard drive:

And then you have some bugs or something:

And sometimes, when a computer and a bug love each other very much, they decide to lie down together and give each other special adult hugs and this is where computer errors come from.

Seriously. I don’t want to know more.

Oh, yeah, sure, I know what you’re thinking.  “Well, sheesh, I know a lot more than that. There’s the CPU which tells the monitor what to do and RAM, that’s like working memory, and then the hard drive stores blah blah blah.”

Trust me. You have no idea what you’re talking about. See this thing?

Photo of difference engine at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California by Allan J. Cronin

That thing adds and subtracts numbers. That’s it. All that crap is required to make a non-thinking piece of machinery work out the logic required to add and subtract.

Want to know what’s going on at the heart of your computer? For things like multiplication and playing music and drawing lines and stuff? Go here.  This is a logic gate and is the bottom line use of all those ones and zeros.

If you’re the compulsive type I’d stay away.  I once tried to think through some of the simpler logic gates and it made my brain hot.  And if you’re one of those people who just “gets” this stuff then my hat is off to you.

But my main point here is that I need a new computer and I’m scared to buy one because I’ll have to use either Vista or Windows 7.

It starts off fine. On the first half of their little show you choose what item you want, they steam your tortillas, you pick your bean and meat. Fine. Great.

Then we move over to the second half of things and the whole system goes to hell.

First there are tomatoes. Tomatoes chopped up with some onions. Which is salsa. But they don’t call it salsa. They ask if you want tomatoes and then move on to the salsas. The salsas come in medium or hot versions. Hmm…what’s missing? Why, mild is missing. Which would really be a bunch of tomatoes chopped up with some onions. Which we already covered only they won’t call it salsa they call it tomatoes and whatever I get medium anyway and we move on to corn.

Just corn. That’s the next step. I say no to corn and then it’s cheesesourcreamguacamolelettuce. And they have never, ever, over the course of the eight bajillion burittos I’ve ordered there, made it through the cheesesourcreamguacamolelettuce part of the fixins bar with any semblance of what I wanted intact. I always have to back up, say things twice, usually yell at one point as they grab something I don’t want and prepare to put in on my burrito or skip over something I did want and move in to wrap my burrito.

And forget about the “The Guac Costs Extra” hurdle. There’s no telling at what point that information is getting transmitted. They tend to inform me of that at the worst possible moment so as to ensure that I don’t get lettuce.

I molest children!

There has to be a better system. Why are the last four items all lumped together? Why does corn go alone? Is it unstable? Why are tomatoes by themselves way at the beginning? Why not move down the line item by item? Or, and I know this sounds crazy, allow corn to be mixed in with some other fixins during the ordering process? Maybe do three at a time there at the end instead of pretending that my yesnoyesyes response to cheesesourcreamguacamolelettuce is getting us anywhere?

I’m just saying is all…

This is, oddly, not the finished product.  The finished product exists as ones and zeroes on my computer and has never been seen by anyone.  What you see above is a drastically shrunken down version of the final product.  In fact, if you click on the picture you should get taken to a larger version.  But that still isn’t the real version.  The real version is forty-two inches by twenty-eight inches (though I think the size that helps put it in proportion is that each individual photo is six inches by four), and, as I keep mentioning, I’ve never seen it. That in no way fits on my screen so either I view it life-sized and see a tiny chunk of it or I view it in a reduced size which, considering the content, very much alters things.

A lot changes when each of those pictures is the size of a snapshot.  For example, some of the shots look sort of blurry in the small scale, but blown up that blurriness reveals itself as plain old weather. Some fog or snow or sun dappled leaves look wonderful in the large scale but it kind of looks mushy in the small scale.

And that’s to say nothing of what possibly gets lost due to your internet browser and my publishing platform not shaking hands properly, or the file size I have to save it in to upload it to this site a sane amount of time affecting things.

This is all very confusing and I can’t decide if I should print up a large scale version.  Mainly because I don’t know what I’d do with it…look at it once and then put it in my closet, most likely, which seems silly.

I don’t know.

Sharing work on the internet has tons of pluses but it does create weird moments like this.

But I can’t figure out how to cut any of them and it’s not like they all have massive roles.  They’re kind of the undercurrent that the main characters are all floating along.  So then I get a little less worried.

Yet, that is a lot and the plot is rather involved and I’m folding a lot of different locales and social groups into the story and…well it’s starting to feel like I’m writing the freaking Godfather saga with zombies.

Just so you know.

Also I kind of want to just hurry up and finish this thing.

Another reason for it not looking the way it did in my mind is that I have no idea what I’m doing. Which I like.  Photography is a hobby of mine and I want to keep it that way. I’m happy to learn things if I happen to bump into them tangentially but I’m not looking to think about it in the same way I think about writing.  I like being stupid at it. So my photoshopping skills are less than extraordinary and I think maybe someone who had a clue could make the colors pop a bit more.

I’m muddling my way along, though, which leads me to the third reason it isn’t looking the way I thought it would, which is that I’m wondering if I still want it to be what I wanted it to be. I have an awful lot of these pictures and putting them together in various ways is producing unexpectedly pleasant results.

For example, here’s a nice quartet of shots from the different seasons:

It’s very odd.

Yeah.

Part 3 isn’t exactly going well.

Once a year there is a large push amongst the population to write an entire novel in one month.  I always find this beyond impressive and always think about doing it but then never do. This year in particular wouldn’t work as I’d have to either finish Persistent Illusions this month and then write a new novel during November, or put Persistent Illusions on hold and write an entire other novel over the course of November and then switch back to Persistent Illusions, which is beyond crazy.

The mix of people who participate ranges from first time authors to a few established names who want to join in the fun to masochists to a fair amount of people who have “Write a novel” on their list of things to accomplish at some point in their life.  Also I’d imagine a lot of these people are drunk.  Writing a book in a month is out of hand bonkers.

I do enjoy it when this rolls around, though, despite never having participated because it does provide a nice kick in the ass. These people are writing an entire novel in a month while I sit here sweating my lowly, by comparison, daily word count.

Plus, for me a lot of writing consists of getting the hell out of my own way and just writing the stupid book, so this time of year always helps me find an extra gear.

I will continue to watch as this gathers steam over October and am very much looking forward to the November launch.

They should sell tickets or something.