Back to School

September has brought about a return to school on two fronts for me. At the beginning of this month, I began my new day job. I’m still teaching English in public schools here in southern Kyushu, but now I’m working for a private company instead of the JET Program (which imposes a limit of five years). The other major difference is that before, I taught at elementary and junior high schools, whereas now I’m teaching at only elementary schools. I’ve also got a much longer commute, around forty minutes to an hour and a half depending on the school (I have a lot of schools to visit). The good thing with that is I’ve gotten a chance to catch up on a lot of podcasts, as well as discovered some others.

On that note, if you aren’t listening to Tommy Hancock’s excellent PULPED! and Pro Se Presents: The Podcast shows, then you need to jump over to iTunes right now and search for those. Every week, both are updated with Tommy speaking to a different New Pulp writer and they’re well worth a listen.

The other “back to school” front is I’ve begun the second semester of my online masters course at Southern New Hampshire University. The first semester was a difficult one. I took two classes with the assumption that I’d have plenty of time—after all, I was taking five classes a semester during my undergrad years, why couldn’t I be able to handle two? Famous last words, as those two classes took up a lot of my time and I was burning the candle at both ends. This semester I’ve only decided to take one class. Initially, I was enrolled in a Masters in English, but when registration time came around and I looked over the required classes, I realized they were pretty much identical to classes I took in my undergraduate years. Not wanting to just repeat myself, I changed my major slightly—I’m still going for a Masters in English, but now it’s more specific: a Masters in English and Creative Writing with a Screenwriting Concentration (man that’s a mouthful). Poetry doesn’t pose much of an interest to me (and I’m not very good at it) and while there’s no harm in improving my prose skills, screenwriting and film has always been one of my first loves, so I wanted to focus on that. This semester, I’m taking a class called Fiction Fundamentals and today’s the first day. I popped in on the message boards and introduced myself (as is customary at the beginning of these online classes), talked a little bit about myself, and was surprised to find someone who recognized me from my work with PulpWork Press! Always a nice feeling.

On the education front, last semester both of my final papers focused on pulp work. One of them was a linguistic analysis the language of Fleming’s Bond novels and how Fleming used that language to promote notions of British superiority. After a semester full of struggle and my professor getting really frustrated with me just not getting ig (although still disguising it with nearly endless patience), imagine my surprise when she sent me an email in response to my first draft and asked me to post it up on the class message board to serve as an example!

My other paper was comparing Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan to another jungle hero, Charles Saunders’ Mtimu, who made his debut in Black Pulp. As an editor for Pro Se, I’m entitled to digital comp copies of their entire library, so I emailed Tommy and asked him if I could get one of Black Pulp and explained why. Tommy was more than happy to provide me with a copy (and go pick up yours, it’s an excellent book). Once I finished the essay, I sent it to him and Tommy loved it to the point that he asked me if he could post it up on the Pro Se website as one of Pro Se’s Free Extras and I said sure, albeit with some trepidation. I hadn’t yet received a grade on it, nor feedback from my classmates, so the self-conscious part of me who has been out of college for about seven years kept telling me “this is crap, you don’t know what you’re doing.” But Tommy liked it and so I allowed him to post it up.

Nothing could prepare me for what would happen next. A few weeks ago, I received an email from Ron Fortier, who really needs no introduction (but go on over to Airship 27 if for some reason you do need one). Ron’s always an interesting guy with a story to tell (if you’ve ever heard him on any of the podcasts he’s appeared on, you know this, and he just did one for The Nocturne Travel Agency that you should listen to), and this was no exception. This time around, Ron told me about how he’d been trying to convince Charles Saunders for some time to write a jungle queen novel focused on the character of Lulama, who was at first an antagonist of sorts in the Mtimu story. Saunders gave it some thought, but once my essay was posted on Pro Se’s website, Ron took advantage of it and sent it to Charles. The essay apparently delighted Charles to the point that he decided to move ahead with the Lulama novel! You can read the full account on Airship 27’s press release. Needless to say, I was floored by this news. What turned out to be a simple essay (and writing about pulp in a positive light in an academic setting is a steep hill to climb) turned into something that served as inspiration for a great writer!

And yes, I got an A on the paper.

Things have now calmed down after I’ve moved into my new house and settled into my new job. I’ve managed to jump back on the writing horse. SoulQuest, my next novel, is close to print. My old friend and wonderful artist Brad Horton is handling the cover art this time, and from the concepts he’s shown me, this will probably be the best-looking book I’ve published to date.

After living with SoulQuest for far too long, I decided to recharge by doing some short story work. I’ve also finished two short stories for Pro Se, and I’m in the process of working on a third. I’m not sure if Tommy would like me to go into more specifics than that, so I’ll keep quiet about what those projects are until there’s a press release. I’ve also got another short story to work on for the 2013 PulpWork Christmas Special. This will be the first time I’ve participated in that anthology. I had to decline in the past because I was in the midst of other things and couldn’t get it ready in time. But this time, I had an idea for a great Christmas story. So rejoice, Myth Hunter fans, because this story will focus on Asami, Elisa Hill’s changeling partner!

Once I’m done with those stories, I can get back to my next novel project. I put it to the side for a while so I could recharge myself with these shorter projects. But now I’m chomping at the bit to get back to work on it. I won’t say much more about it than that. I’ve started using the Magic Spreadsheet to chart my progress, and you can find out more about that here.

That’s all for now. Hopefully with some more time, I’ll be able to post on here more frequently.