Mom said it best when someone asked about what was going on with me lately: “Oh, he’s trying monogamy again.”

In spite of my every effort to the contrary, I have a girlfriend. Boy, does that sound gay. By the term girlfriend, I imply a female who wants to see me in the daylight. And not because it means a free hot breakfast. My omelets are legend, after all. While this situation was pretty much the last thing I planned for heading into 2009, because really, slutting it up has served me so well, I welcome the development.

She’s a writer–a really good one, too–and a professor.

Yeah, did I mention she’s drool-worthy?

On other fronts, I’m writing seriously again. A lot of stuff has been bottling up since mid-summer, and I’m letting loose on the page with great force.

As for the oft-mentioned marketing effort, I met with the graphic artist this weekend and shot some pictures in the woods; she already has rendered an awesome graphic in which she will incorporate a new image from the photo shoot into the existing design. Depending on the amount of photoshopping and final lighting, some may recognize the person depicted in the scene. Can’t say too much more about that without the graphic in hand.

But speaking of the marketing stuff, there’s actually four separate but complementary components to the plan. Of the four pieces, I have direct control over only one. Learning how to deal with so many outside voices has proved a major challenge. I’m used to being able to do whatever I want at the keyboard, with no compromises until after there’s a good draft. First I get a draft hammered out to my liking, then I open the office door and invite feedback. But getting The Last Track on the right desk means getting it off of mine, and working with other people. So I’m learning how to play nice with others.

While a lot of it is in flux right now, and I’d rather keep everything under wraps pending the final package reaching completion, I can mention there is a visual element to this strategy; that includes a short depiction of some hand-to-hand combat.

I can also mention I damn near took a knife across the stomach while filming the segment.

As the sun dipped behind the trees, the sight of razor sharp steel slicing towards my torso in the hands of someone who could gut me twenty-five ways to Sunday, yeah well, that woke me up.

Uh-huh.

In early October, the reason for my near silence these past two months will be revealed. I’m working with some super talented people behind the scenes on that oft-mentioned-yet-never-quite-materialized-guerrilla-style-marketing project for The Last Track.

At this time, it’s best to keep the details brief, but I will mention the background of a few of the people involved.

1) A former lead art director for Harper-Collins.

2) A professional film editor.

3) An advice columnist and actor who once attended acting classes in college with a star on The Office.

4) Me. Natch.

OK, so my pedigree is a bit speckled, but still, if you’ve hung with me so far these past few years, I’m just saying it’s about to be worth your while.

You know who you are, and I’m forever indebted to your support and advice. Just a few more weeks and my raptors will be loose on the Internets.

Oh yes, they will.

Had my first hiccup in years with the site this week. At some point the entire thing became, well, unusable. Initially I suspected the cause was due to an upgrade of some of the underlying software on the server; being on a shared box, maintenance schedules are completely beyond any one occupant’s reaches. So I upgraded the WordPress install and the databases to the latest versions. That got me closer.

Yet the content remained unavailable and attempts to access anything threw up ugly errors.

On a whim I started deactivating some of the plug-ins that add functionality to WordPress. After squelching the Markdown plug-in, everything was lovely. Essentially the server upgrade was the catalyst, but the actual problem stemmed from how the new software interacted with a single pre-existing file that functioned incident-free for more than three years. Maybe I do have some tech chops still. Years of maintenance programming served me well.

While I’m doing some personal accounting, I’d like to explain why things quieted down so much on the site. Things are happening, but there’s been very little evidence of movement this summer.

Here’s the short version:

1) As a result of a reorg at work, I went from four bosses to one. Two of the four are, ahem, “exploring other opportunities.” Boy, I sure do wish them well.

2) My new boss kicks ass. And their new boss is even cooler.

3) The new bosses increased my responsibilities and compensation.

Essentially I’ve been attending more to my professional side, which left less time for recreation. I’ve also been taking a long hard look at the finances. Now that every dollar earned after taxes is mine to keep and not subject to division, I’d like to keep as many as possible. That led to some adjustments in savings and investments plans, as well as allocations.

Before I continue on with the previous entry, an email came in from a good friend about word count. In brief his question: how many words does it take to make a novel? While there is no hard and fast answer for this–it’s a subjective matter–there are some general guidelines:

Short stories: A few hundred to 15,000 words.

Novellas: 15,000 to 40,000 words

Young Adult Novels: 40,000 to 50,000

Novels: 60,000 and up.

Keep in mind, there is a lot of room within those guidelines. There’s also plenty of exceptions. Rather than arguing whether a manuscript is a novella instead of a novella, I think what’s more important than how long or short a piece of writing is, is whether the words on the page work. If the writer feels what’s on the page serves the story, and they’ve left nothing on the table, then the manuscript is the right length.

Certainly, history offers up several examples that prove this, great manuscripts in the 20,000 words range. Jonathon Livinston Seagull, for instance. Tuesdays with Morrie is another.

And brevity might be ultimately less of a problem than unwieldiness. Without naming names, there’s definitely books that are unmanageabe, verging on endless. To me, if it takes laying sideways in bed to keep from cramping my hands up while reading it because the goddamn thing weighs so much . . . anyway, I leave it at sometimes less is more.

There’s an old joke about the salesman and the engineer that shows why one often hates the other. Historically engineering types will design and build a product or service first, then–in the rarest of cases–market and sell it. A salesperson will invariably sell a new product and then call an engineer to build it, probably chiding the engineer at once because, hey, this project is already late!

In the second case, the movement initiates with a nudge from the sales and marketing group–some creative type looks at a gap in the current marketplace offerings, and promises a potential customer there’s a solution without questioning why there is no current one available. When reality sets in, and the salesperson learns that fulfilling the promise might take longer than the customer was led to believe. And so enter tension between sales and engineering. It’s a bit like War of the Roses, really. Neither can live with out the other, but all the same, compromise is unthinkable.

But what if it is possible to manage both sides with respect for the each parties role? In a more balanced model, creating a new product could depend less upon the advances of one faction at the expense of the other. Rather than two kids on a see-saw, where one rises and the other falls, and neither side really gets anywhere, it’s more like a tandem bike. Each party must pedal for them both to climb a hill.

Ideally, such a paradigm could manage customer expectation for an upcoming product right from the outset, while keeping everyone on the same page. Customers get something closer to what they were promised–and hopefully what they need. Engineers perform their design magic and sales types hit their numbers.Now consider a little word substitution.

Replace engineers with authors, customers with readers, and salespersons with publishers. Exclude the top three percent of novelists who make a full-time living at it, and virtually every fiction project is done on spec by a writer hoping to sell it at a later date. Branding simply comes later.

Publishers on the other hand want something as close to a sure bet as possible right now, or more of the same that sold last year, month, week, etc. Unless it’s non-fiction or a memoir, they are generally not interested in asking the magic 8-ball.

The problem any novelist faces is pretty obvious: publishers know what they want to buy and push, based on past sales and subjective tastes. Writers know what they like to write, but worry very little about what the market might want until after the fact. Readers know what they enjoy, and don’t care about the risks publishers and writers take on a project.

All in, this leaves a huge divide between the reader’s wants and the writer’s tastes, with a publisher ( whose slanted view is usually tempered with past successes and failures ) running interference between the two sides. How can the writer provide the reader with an entertaining story, and keep the publisher happy with sales? Better yet, how does the writer even know what the reader wants, since they are largely insulated from them?

Which is where the Internet comes in.

To Be Continued . . .