Bill's pulpy new short story, "The Visitors at Wriggly Field," is available free at the ChicagoIn2012.org web site, in support of Chicago's bid to host the World Science Fiction Convention in 2012. Batter up!

I don't know why I've spent so much of my life being afraid to write a novel. All these years I've figured I was afraid of failing at it, that the short story was my natural form as a writer.

That was all ridiculous, and easily disproved had I stopped to think about it. Back in 1994, I wrote a 170,000-word novel in about eight weeks while I was between jobs. I holed up in my apartment and wrote eight to twelve hours a day. On my most productive day of that period, I wrote 8,500 words. The Revivalist was a huge, sprawling, shambolic, undisciplined thug of a novel, but it wasn't entirely bad. I never sold that book, but I also never did the subsequent work that was necessary to turn it into something saleable.

Clearly I didn't have a problem writing. What I had a problem with in the years that followed was getting off my ass and committing to doing the work.

Don't get me wrong. I did a lot of work in those years. I wrote a 250,000-word memoir, which through subsequent drafts I revised down to nearly half that size. I wrote and sold a bunch of short stories and a couple of novellas, but my one or two longer projects ran out of gas. I kept psyching myself out with the idea that I didn't know how to write a novel, and for the most part I kept that fear to myself.

My wonderful wife Laura forced my hand, though, by moving us to Chicago where I could be an almost full-time writer. I'd had an idea in my head for some time for a science-fiction novel about a kid who develops apparently magical powers, and one day I forced myself to just start writing it, without having worked out all the details of the world or everything that would happen along the way—things I usually like to have done before starting something. Laura's inhumanly patient encouragement and forbearance kept me going, as did a wealth of encouragement from friends and fellow writers, many of whom were setting a great example for me simply by sitting down in their chairs and writing and selling novels and expecting me to do the same.

I'm a little stunned, but on Tuesday night I typed END OF BOOK ONE at the bottom of page 805 of my novel manuscript. Endgame, in its current 175,000-word state, is a huge, sprawling, shambolic, undisciplined thug of a novel, but I have enough confidence now to believe that I can whip it into shape.

Along the way, I've finally debunked that crazy idea or fear I've had that the short story is my natural length. I can see it a little more dispassionately now for the nonsense it is. Every short story I write comes out twice as long as I expected or intended it to be. Every book I've tried to write has emerged a behemoth. My natural length is the natural length of whatever story I set out to tell, times two. I don't have to worry about not being able to write enough. I have to worry about writing too much.

I think for my next novel, which I miraculously am already itching to get started on, I'm going to cook up only enough plot for a 40,000-word novel. Then I won't be so troubled when it weighs in at 80,000 words.

The biggest fear I have now is that I'm never going to want to write another short story.

The great folks at Essay Fiesta have posted video of the memoir excerpt I read for them at the Book Cellar on April 19th. This is a segment from The Accidental Terrorist called "Gluttons for Punishment":

(Damn, that was over my time limit. Thank God I didn't exceed the YouTube limit of ten minutes.)

Essay Fiesta is a monthly reading series that benefits the Howard Brown Health Center, hosted by Keith Ecker and Alyson Lyon. Please come out to the Book Cellar in Chicago on the third Monday of every month to support the series.

I want to offer sadly belated congratulations to friend and former CD Mix of the Month Club compatriot Francis Heaney, who made his Sunday crossword puzzle debut in the New York Times this past, er, Sunday. Way to go, Francis!

Now if only I were a subscriber so I could test my mettle against Francis's by-all-reports-monstrous puzzle.

If you'll be at Wiscon tomorrow afternoon, I'll be part of a terrific group reading at 4:00 pm in Conference 2. The participants include Carrie L. Ferguson, Nicole Lorenz, Chibi-Evil and me. Here's the program description:

Disappearing Acts Reading | Conference 2 | Friday, 4:00–5:15 pm Come on in, sit down and get comfortable—we're only going to erase certain important things from the world. You don't need those stars, do you? Oh—you'll miss the words, surely, but we'll read that one last. Trust us. We're only ending the world here.

This will be the first group reading of the whole convention, so please come over to Conference 2 and help us make it a success. Looking forward to seeing you there!

It's been so long since there's been constant bright sunlight in Chicago that I am startled every time this week that I walk indoors and see that the phosphorescent hands and numbers on my watch face are glowing.

Of course, this is the time of year when I don't need that feature so much...

[sung to the tune of "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath]

She's my hungry bear
She's the little dog with the golden hair
She'll just sit and stare
Anytime I'm eating and I won't share

Nobody feeds her
She just stands there and pouts
(do do do-do-do do-do-do do-do-do)
She's gonna starve soon
Of this she has no doubts
(do do do-do-do do-do-do do-do-do)

Hey there, hungry bear
Your bowl's full of pheasant and ground-up hare
Ain't no cheese on there
So you walk out with your nose in the air

Today is the 114th running of the Boston Marathon. I am reminded of this because I've started receiving race alerts via text message for a runner named Jen Stronge. So has Laura.

I wish Jen Stronge all the luck in the world in finishing strong in the marathon this morning. But I never signed up to get her alerts, and I wish they would stop. My guess is that she has the same chip number that Laura had last year, and the fine IT staff of the Boston Marathon never cleared out the alert requests from last year's race. Which makes them, for today anyway, some of the dumbest fucks in the tech industry.

To repeat, Boston Marathon IT crew—you suck.

UPDATE: It's the bib number that's the same as Laura's from last year—18649. A dumb, dumb programming mistake, friends. And who's paying for all those bad text messages?