Blogkeeping: Writing Stuff

It's been quite a while (just over six months) since I did a blogkeeping post, updating my regular readers--yes, both of you--about various projects. Blogkeeping posts often appear when I don't have a regular post ready to run on a given day. Sometimes, like today, I just want to pause and take stock in where I am and what I'm doing. So I'm bumping the post originally scheduled for today, and turning instead to another exciting edition of Blogkeeping.

As noted here on Friday, I have completed a revision of my long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) and submitted it to a potential publisher. Thursday night, I also completed an alternate version of the book, a slightly shorter document that reduces its word count by 10,000 words and cuts its song total from 175 songs to 155 songs. This is a contingency plan, though it's also possible I will wind up preferring the shorter book (and moving the remaining chapters to a hypothetical Volume 2). Now, I will await feedback from the publisher.

A few months ago, I finished a short story called "Rain-Hat Sam." The story is based on a ludicrous superhero character I created when I was a kid, but I think I found a way to make it work for a single story. I decided to sit on the story, not showing it to anyone, but came to my senses last week and submitted "Rain-Hat Sam" to the good folks at AHOY Comics. It will be a while before I learn of its fate.

Illustration by Ed Catto

"Chaos At The Copperhead Club," a short story already published by AHOY, will be appearing here on the blog soon. Definitely soon. I had planned to run it last Friday, but opted to post the Greatest Record Ever Made! update instead. It was going to run today, but, y'know, Blogkeeping. It's tentatively set to run in this spot on Friday, April 15th. (Wednesdays are reserved for collaborations with the pop culture website Pop-A-Looza, and Thursday's 10 Songs is already written.)

AHOY has also purchased my story "Flight Of The Copperhead" (as revealed here), another segment in the same continuity as "Chaos At The Copperhead Club" and previous stories "The Last Ride Of The Copperhead Kid," "The Copperhead Strikes!," and "The Copperhead Affair." I have other Copperheads stories on the docket, with several paragraphs already completed for "The Copperhead Kid's New York Adventure." I have a long-term goal of eventually collecting these stories as a novel.

Illustration by Elliott Mattice

I am also pulling at the threads of collecting my non-Copperhead short stories in a (probably self-published) book. Here's the tentative Table of Contents for that book-in-theory, Guitars Vs. Rayguns!:

Guitars Vs. Rayguns!

Home Of The Hits

Pop Friction

Montie Pylon Finds His Holy Grail

The Picture Of Amontillado

Sword Of The Chosen One

The Greatest Thud Never Heard

Rain-Hat Sam

The Traitor's Tour Guide To Hell

Dreaming Deadly

April's Fool

Seven Minutes To Blackout

The Junk Food Of Your Life

The above is very much an idle notion for now, and subject to change.

I continue to work on two secret projects. One of 'em is so secret I can't tell you anything at all about it. In fact, forget I mentioned it. SHHHH! Loose slips slink...to the bedroom floor. Well, now I'm intrigued, but we're off on a tangent. The other secret is my first book, still targeted for publication in late 2022. That book is done, its contract signed, and pending permission from its publisher to tell you all about.

And none of this even touches much on what I'll be presenting every day right here at Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do). A bop a day, every day--that's the Boppin' way.

And that, my friends, is where I think I am and what this place looks like today. Thanks for checking out this adventure in Blogkeeping.

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This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl