Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you celebrated well and responsibly. Krista and I watched a ton of movies and started playing “Skyrim” on the ol’ Xbox 360 (we just finished playing “Saint’s Row: The Third,” and I honestly think it was the most fun game I played all of last year). All in all, being the old man that I am, I consider that a good way to end 2011 and start the new year off right. But, it wouldn’t be a new year if there weren’t some resolutions to go with it, so if you’re interested I’ve decided to post mine here. Maybe if I have the whole world keeping me accountable I’ll make a greater effort to actually stick with them. Please comment periodically to see how I’m doing.

Anyway, here we go:

1. Live healthier. This means eating better and being more active. I have a gym membership, and access to a personal trainer, yet I treat both with regular indifference. That needs to change. Plus, I just need to eat healthier. No more midnight snacks!

2. Treat my writing more like the career it is and less like the thing I do when I’m not busy doing everything else. I’ve let my writing take a backseat far too often in the past, and I have to stop that. My daily goal is 2,000 words written. That’s an achievable number.

3. Read one book a week. Lately I’ve fallen into the habit of watching pointless TV shows, and I know I’d be so much better off reading instead, especially since my stack of books to read is taller than I am. So, one book a week. Another achievable number.

And that’s it! I think those are all realistic resolutions. Will I succeed? Can I dare to dream? Check back this time next year and we’ll find out.

For those who don’t know what Movember is, I’ll let the site that organizes the event tell you:

During November each year, Movember is responsible for the sprouting of moustaches on thousands of men’s faces, in the US and around the world. With their Mo’s, these men raise vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men.

Once registered at www.movember.com, men start Movember 1st clean shaven. For the rest of the month, these selfless and generous men, known as Mo Bros, groom, trim and wax their way into the annals of fine moustachery. Supported by the women in their lives, Mo Sistas, Movember Mo Bros raise funds by seeking out sponsorship for their Mo-growing efforts.

Mo Bros effectively become walking, talking billboards for the 30 days of November. Through their actions and words they raise awareness by prompting private and public conversation around the often ignored issue of men’s health.

At the end of the month, Mo Bros and Mo Sistas celebrate their gallantry and valor by either throwing their own Movember party or attending one of the infamous Gala Partés held around the world by Movember, for Movember.

And, to make sure that I do my part to help this worthy cause, I’ve shaved off my goatee, signed up with the site, and am now asking people to donate. If you’d care to lend your dollars to this effort, please go to http://mobro.co/JustinMacumber and make your donation. We can use every dollar you’d be so generous to give. Thank you in advance.

Oh, here’s what I look like tonight, just so you know I’m on the up and up:

There are times when I wonder if updating this blog serves any purpose. I rarely get comments or emails, and by rarely I mean once in a blue moon, so does anyone even read it? Perhaps if I put up notices on Twitter and Facebook letting people know I made an update, that might draw more people in. I’ll have to give that a try.

Anyway…

First, an update on my writing and the upcoming books. It looks like A MINOR MAGIC will be the first to hit the market. We’re hoping for a November/December release. And then, somewhere around March of 2012, you should see HAYWIRE come out. I’d like a bit more space between then, but I won’t know if that’s possible until dates firm up a touch more. I’ll keep you in the loop. And as for STILL WATER, I took a break the past two weeks to work on my podcast’s anthology plus to rest for a few days, but next week I’ll get back into it hardcore. If I’m not done with it by the end of October I’ll be upset with myself.

Speaking of podcasts, I’m still doing two of them right now. The Dead Robots’ Society is nearing it’s 200th episode, which doesn’t include all the convention panels, special episodes, and audio dramas we’ve produced, so in reality we have over two-hundred files available for download right now. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished with it. But I’m also still co-hosting with the guys over at The Hollywood Outsider. If you haven’t listened to it yet, I really encourage you to, especially if you like movies and TV shows. I have a lot of fun doing it, and the guys I host with are a lot of fun. I wish they lived closer so that I could hang out with them in person. Please, do yourself and us a favor, and give it a spin. We just put out our ninth episode.

If you’re interested at all in video games, I just finished replaying Gears Of War 1 and 2 in preparation for playing the third game, and I also just finished playing a new RPG (that’s Role Playing Game for you non-gamers) called X-MEN: DESTINY. As you can tell from the title, it is a comic book game, but with an RPG feel. It’s not the best RPG I’ve ever played (Hey, Bioware, what’s up? Get Mass Effect 3 out NOW!), but it was still a lot of fun. I’d give it a solid 8 out of 10.

I think that’s it for now. This brings you up to date on where I am with some of my projects, and as they develop I’ll post ‘em here and keep you in the loop. Thanks for coming, and please let me know what you think regarding anything I’ve talked about.

Oh, before I go, please notice the new icons I’ve put at the bottom of this post. I got the idea for this from Robin Sullivan, and I’m hoping they’ll help in keeping people connected with me and what I’ve working on. If you see any problems with them, or have other ideas, please let me know.

Take care.

Man, it’s been a long while since I last posted. I keep saying that, and I keep promising to do better, but those promises don’t seem to be kept all that well, do they? I sincerely apologize for that. Life has been pretty busy, though we can all say that, I suppose. Anyway, here is the latest update. I wish it was more pleasant.

The biggest — and most recent — bit of news is that I no longer have an agent. Back in the later half of last year I met Cari Foulks of the Tribe Literary Agency, and after having her on my podcast I submitted the manuscript for DIGITAL DECAY to her to see if she’d be interested in representing it. A few days later she said she loved it and would be thrilled to rep it. I was excited, my wife Krista was excited, and I felt like I’d cleared one of the hurdles to getting published. In the months since then Cari would inform me of small developments and bits of news, but nothing substantive until a little over a month ago when she told me that a large publishing house wanted to read the full manuscript for the novel. (For those who don’t know, usually when a book is submitted to a publisher, they aren’t sent the full work. Instead they’re only given the first fifty pages or few chapters. This cuts down on the amount of paper they have to deal with. If they like what they read, then they will request the full manuscript. That isn’t a promise of anything, but it’s a good sign). I was over the moon.

Shortly after that I went on vacation with my wife and mother. We flew to Virginia to see some of Krista’s family (whom I adore), and then we rented a car and drove to Washington D.C. before heading on to Baltimore a few days later so that I could attend BaltiCon. It was an okay vacation, all in all, but it ended on a sore note for two reasons. One, my digital recorder accidentally got swapped with another just like it, so I lost all the panels I’d recorded. Two, I came down with strep throat on the last day of the con and got to enjoy being sick for about two weeks after. My wife then got sick after that, and then I got an ear infection, and now I’m dealing with a sore back. Suffice it to say, getting older sucks.

Anyway, as I was recovering I tried getting in touch with Cari to see how things were, but found her to unresponsive. I tried emailing her, texting her, and I sent messages via Facebook, all to little avail. Things came to a head yesterday when she informed me that she was quitting the agent business. What does that mean for me and the book? I have no idea. Her partner, Jonathan, informed all of Cari’s clients that he would investigate the situation, but I’m not holding out any hope of anything. I don’t even know is the house Cari mentioned really was interested in the book. I’ve got nothing to verify or check. To say that I’m bummed would be to seriously understate the situation. If Jonathan gets back to me with good news, fine, but I’m not holding my breath. So far as I’m concerned, I’m back on my own. So be it.

On to more pleasant topics, I finished my edits on A MINOR MAGIC. I’m really pleased with how it turned out. I’m sure that possible publishers would have more than enough suggestions on how to change it, but as it sits now, I really like it. I have ideas for where I could take the story in the future, making A MINOR MAGIC the first in a potential series. I’m not going to go down that road, though, until I get interest in it. Until then, I’m going to work on the next thing.

Speaking of which, I’ve started work on my latest book. This one is going to be a straight up horror novel. The title for it is STILL WATER, and it’s about a fictional West Virginia coal mining town that becomes victim to an ancient evil. I’m thinking of it as a combination of Silent Hill and the Spike TV realty show Coal, with lots of water. This week I began the outlining process, but I’m still having to do some research for one of the characters, and that’s hampering things. Hopefully I’ll be able to knock the outline out by the end of next week, and then I can get writing. My goal is to have the first draft done by the end of August. I’m betting I’ll come in under that.

Well, I think that brings the blog up to speed. I talked about finishing A MINOR MAGIC, going to BaltiCon, getting sick, getting sick again, starting STILL WATER, and losing my agent. Anything else? Hhmm… Oh, well, I did sell a short story. A friend of mine, Morgan Electra, asked me to writer her a horror short story for her upcoming horror podcast, so I wrote one called INTO THE DEEP DARK. I used it as an opportunity to do a dry run on some of the elements that’ll be in STILL WATER, so I set the short story in a coal mine. When I submitted the story to her, she flipped over it. Everyone else I’ve let read it has loved it too. The consensus seems to be that I should be writing horror. But, since all Morgan wanted were the audio rights for the story, I figured I could still shop around the print rights, and I found a home for it with Abattoir, the horror side of Flying Island Press. I don’t know when it’ll be published, but I’ll let you know when it does.

NOW I think I’m finished. See you next time, and hopefully it won’t be so long a wait.

But, all of that isn’t why I’m writing this blog entry. No, I’m writing this because I recently got to meet Kevin Smith, and it was a fantastic experience. You see, his next film is RED STATE, and it is very much unlike his usual fare in that it’s a horror movie. And, not only is it his first horror movie, but it’s also a movie that he didn’t want to sell the distribution rights to, so he’s been going around the country to show it to audiences himself. Luckily for me, one of his stops was Austin, which is about three to four hours south of me. Now, I have to say, when my brother first brought up the idea of going to Austin to see the movie and Kevin Smith, I was hesitant. I am a creature of habit to the extreme, and the idea of going so far to do something so other than what I’d normally be doing made me itchy. Even though I love Smith’s work, I didn’t want to go. Were it not for my wife saying she wanted to go too, I probably would have stayed home. But, she did want to go, as did my brother’s wife, so we decided to make a little trip out of it. We’d get tickets, drive together to Austin, see the movie, and then drive home the next day. It would a simple, fun time. Knowing we’d all be together made it easier for me to want to go. So, we made plans.

Cut to a couple of weeks ago, and my brother telling me that not only were we going to see the movie, but he’d also gotten us backstage passes to MEET Kevin Smith. How had my brother performed this incredible feat? After cyber-stalking Kevin for what seemed like months, finally he broke through, and Kevin said my brother could have the passes if Scott could give him something in return. Well, as luck would have it, my brother had a short song he’d created awhile ago, and he sent it to Kevin to see if he liked it. Indeed he did, and four backstage passes were issued for us. Joy! Fast-forward to a few days ago, and we all drove to Austin. My wife loves the city, as do I, so it was a pleasure to be there anyway, but knowing we’d get to meet Kevin Smith AND see the movie made it that much sweeter.

Now, if you don’t know who Kevin Smith is, I can only assume you also don’t know what RED STATE is about. RED STATE is a rather simple film, all things considered, but it is a brutal film as well. RED STATE tells the tale of three boys who think they’re going to drive to an internet hookup and get laid, only to have their little sexual sojourn turn into a horrifying ordeal at the hands of a congregation of religious zealots made in the mold of the famous Phelps family, but taken to an extreme. Soon the ATF is called in, and all hell breaks loose at the Five Points Trinity Church compound, which is part Westboro Baptist Church and part Branch Davidian Complex. It’s a short movie, but every second of it counts, and there is no fat to be had. We all really enjoyed it. I wish I had a copy of it so that I could watch it again. If you get a chance, go see it for yourselves. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

After the film, as he’s done at every stop on the tour, Kevin likes to come out and do a little Q&A with the audience. I say little, but really it ended up being about an hour and a half of him talking about the film and his plans for the future (which includes making one more movie — HIT SOMEBODY — before he retires from the film industry and concentrates on his writing, his internet radio show, and developing an independent film distribution company). I loved hearing him talk, but after an hour or so my legs were killing me, I was sweating like crazy, and I needed to go to the bathroom. When it was over, it was bittersweet. Fortunately we knew we were going to meet Kevin soon, so it really wasn’t over at all.

I’ve been lucky, in that because of my podcast and writing I’ve gotten to meet a lot of celebrities I look up to, either in person or over the phone while interviewing them. I’ve met Kevin Anderson (writer of more books than I’ll ever be able to produce from my meager fingers), Nathan Fillion (star of such TV shows as Firefly and Castle), Ray Park (his greatest claim to fame was playing the roll of Darth Maul in Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace, and you need to hear my wife tell the story of that meeting), and Tracy Hickman (one of the authors of the Dragon Lance series, which when I was kid I thought was better than The Lord Of The Rings) amongst others. Meeting Kevin Smith might have been better than them all, because not only did I get to shake his hand and tell him how much I liked his work, but for those few moments he was really engaged with me on a personal level. Thanks to my brother I was able to talk to and touch a person I idolize. Thank you, Scott. And thank you, too, to Kevin Smith. I really hope you kept my business card, and that you call me. I know you’d have fun on my podcast, and getting to talk more with you would be a dream come true.

Anyway, that’s it from me. The trip to Austin was great, the movie was amazing, and I’m still kind of floating on the high of it. Now if only I could figure out a way to meet Stephen King and Joss Whedon…

It seems like I’m constantly apologizing for not updating my blog enough, and that has to be as annoying as me not posting at all. To be honest, I think my frequent (read that: nearly hourly) posting to Facebook sucks out nearly all need and desire to make blog entries here. It’s not like I care for this place less, or the people who do me the honor of reading this blog, just… Facebook is easy, and I feel like I don’t have to stretch things out in order to make them worthy of posting. The blog would be a great place to post longer and perhaps more intimate thoughts, though, so perhaps I shouldn’t be so quick to ignore it. Sorry, all the same.

Anyway, for those who care and who don’t follow me on Facebook, what have I been up to? Mainly I’ve been trying to get control of my life. No one has tried to take that from me, you understand, but over the past year or so I’ve been all too willing to coast through my life and let whatever happens happen. I would later complain that I wasn’t getting enough done, or I wasn’t doing what I knew I should be, but really the fault has all been mine. I was reacting to things instead of taking command. With the coming of the new year I decided to regain control, to become master of myself, once again. So far… kinda good. I’m more proactive than I’ve ever been, and the schedule I made to give shape to my daily life has worked out fairly well, but I still tend to let things slide while I sit back and watch too much TV. At least I’m better able to recognize it now, and I take all the blame for it.

As far as my writing goes, I’m actually pretty jazzed. No word from my agent on how trying to sell DIGITAL DECAY is going, but my work on A MINOR MAGIC is proceeding nicely. One of my other New Year’s Resolutions was to try write 2000 words a day. Up until last week I had yet to find a way to do that consistantly, but this week I’ve hit it every day, and I think the momentum I’ve created will carry me through so that the first draft will be done by the beginning of March. One big reason for this spurt in energy is an idea I recently started working on for my next book. Not to pat myself on the back too much, but it is a DAMN good idea — pure horror novel — and I want to write it badly. I can’t do that, though, until the current project is done. So, let’s get it done! I’m excited.

Anyway, that’s it. Not much, I know, but it is what it is. If you want to hear more from me on a day-to-day or even hour-to-hour basis, I encourage you to friend me on Facebook. So, until next time, adios…

Growing up, speaking clearly and properly was drilled into me, especially by my maternal grandmother. Anytime someone in the family used improper grammar, she would stop and correct us. It was never done in a mean-spirited or elitist way, you understand, but out of love. She believed that the way we spoke, the way we communicated, told the world who we were as people, and I took that opinion as my own. That has carried with me to this day, and it drives me up the wall when I see and hear people communicate as though they never received a single second of English education. If you want me to take you seriously, then you need to communicate with me that way. We all make mistakes, but by and large, communicate clearly and properly with me, and I’ll do the same.

Now, yes, I said we all make mistakes. That includes me. As a writer I’m constantly aware of my ignorance regarding some grammar rules, and I’ve spent many an hour searching for the answers. Well, I recently found a book that does just that, but it does it in an entertaining way that never talks down to me or needlessly confuses the issue. It’s titled “Woe Is I,” and it’s written by Patricia O’Conner. I’m only a little way into it, but already I’ve found it to be invaluable. If you’d like to improve the way you speak and write, I encourage you to get it too. I’m all about helping us become better people, and communicating clearly is one way of doing that. The book is cheap, and I’m enjoying every page of it. Hopefully you will too.

The following is NSFW and probably not kid safe, it’s also damn true –

Like many people, I spend a lot of time wondering how some things in my life got the way they are. And introspection, when appropriate, can be a good thing. I mean, how do we know where we’re going if we don’t know where we’ve been? But worrying over the past can also be a roadblock over moving into the future, and it’s at those times when you have to say to yourself, “This is it, fuck it, it is what it is.” I never knew that until I watched the Paul Crik video embedded above. A friend of mine posted it on Facebook, and I watched it expecting a cheesy inspirational message. And yep, it was cheesy, but also yep, it was inspirational. He’s absolutely right. This IS it! Fuck it! It IS what it IS! These three sentences are now firmly etched in my brain, and they’ve already helped me get through moments that might have otherwise left me locked up and unable to move on.

Be present in your life, let go of expectation, and leave the past where it is so you can move on into the future.

I hope you find the video and its message as moving and life changing as I did.

If someone were to ask me who my creative heroes were, who inspired me and made me want to be a storyteller myself, I could rattle off a laundry list of names for them. People like Robert Heinlein, Joss Whedon, Stephen King, Gene Roddenberry, and Bill Willingham would all feature very highly on that list. Each one of them has impacted me creatively, sometimes personally. But, there is one person above all others who shaped me and helped make me who I am today, and that person is George Lucas.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Everybody hates the guy now. Once upon a time he was the god all geeks worshiped, but after the prequels (and really, I think starting with “Return of the Jedi”) his star fell from the cultural firmament, and he became a bit of a joke. Now most people say his name with scorn, if not outright hatred. You won’t get that from me, though. No sir. All you’ll get from me is love and appreciation for the man.

You see, I will never forget that it was George Lucas’ original “Star Wars” that first hit my young brain and woke it up to the possibility of myth and story. I remember watching the movie as a child, marveling at the space battles, the sword fights, the music, the emotion, the drama. I remember the fear I felt at seeing Vader walk into that smokey spaceship corridor, the elation at Luke’s swing over that chasm, the childlike affection for Princess Leia. I was five years old when “Star Wars” came out, and I was never the same afterward.

And then came “The Empire Strikes Back,” which took everything I loved about “Star Wars” and rose them to new heights. I wasn’t as big a fan of “Return of the Jedi,” but I still appreciated the story Lucas was telling, and watching Anakin redeem himself was the perfect end to the trilogy. But the train didn’t stop there. After that came an endless procession of comic books, video games, and novels. The Star Wars universe had no end to it, and I found myself exhilarating in so much of it. Whether it was the “Knights of the Old Republic” games, or the Thrawn trilogy, or the “Dark Empire” comics, there was always something new for my creative spirit to hold close and draw strength from, and none of that would have been possible if it weren’t for what Lucas created. Say whatever you like about how he handled the prequel trilogy, none of that takes away from the fact that the man created an entertainment empire (pardon the pun) that has thrilled and excited hundreds of millions of people for over thirty years. Not many people can make that same claim. He is the wellspring from which all this started. I owe him more than I can ever say. I am who I am — for better or worse — because once upon a time George Lucas wrote the words, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”

Happy Birthday, George. I hope you have many more to come.

When Krista and I got married way back in November of ’99, we lived with her father in the house we currently occupy. Without going into details you won’t care to read about, an intimate moment was interrupted, and the next day we were looking for a new place to live in. Several hunting trips later we settled on a cute apartment near plenty of shopping and main roads. Both of us had lived in apartments before, so we knew what to expect – neighbors that didn’t love loud music as much as we did, limited space, constant parking problems, etc. The apartment was okay for what it was, but after adopting a few pets and expanding our possessions we decided to take the plunge and get a house.

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t prepared for the amount of work a house took. In an apartment, if the water heater broke, that wasn’t my problem to fix. Same for the dishwasher. Same for the air conditioning. If it was part of the apartment complex, it wasn’t my problem and fixing it didn’t cost me a dime. In a house, though, EVERYTHING is your problem, your expense. When our water heater went out and flooded our garage, we had to deal with it. When shingles were blown off the roof, we had to hire and pay people to fix it. And then you have yards that need mowing, fences that need replacing, on and on and on. And since this was our first house, everything was new to us. Add to that the fact that I have a black thumb and no handyman skills, and you see how bad I was (and still am) at being a homeowner.

It is now a bit over nine years later, and that first house has been sold to a new family. Barring a zombie apocalypse, we’ll finalize the sale at the end of this month. And you wanna know what’s weird? I’m actually going to miss it. We had to do a lot of work to it over the years, but I knew that house. I understood its creeks, its groans. I knew which faucets had to be babied, which outlets were loose. The small kitchen was a pain, but I’d cooked in it for so long that I knew where to put platters, where to cut meat, where to sit my stirring bowls. I knew exactly how long it would take for the shower water to warm up. The landscaping was also done, with our rose bushes blooming annually like crazy. The house wasn’t perfect, but it was ours, and it was part of me. I’ll miss that.

That isn’t to say I’d go back to it, though. The new house (or, old old house, if you want to look at it that way) is bigger, the yards are much more expansive, we have room to grow, and since we don’t owe a mortgage on it we can actually start saving money. And, after all the work we’ve done, this place is getting pretty swanky. There are too many pluses to let the negatives make me want to go back. That doesn’t mean I can’t go by and visit it every once in awhile, though. Give it a drive-by, make sure the roses are being tended properly.

Anyway, goodbye, first house. I hope they treat you well.