I’ve been spending most of my time over the past few weeks working through the fifth draft of ‘The Odyssey’ — I’ve got a director who’s interested in taking it on, which gives me a deadline to work with. Later this month I’ll probably have a reading of it (sixth draft) just to get a sense for how it sounds. But I’m having a hell of a time finding actors/readers. I need at least ten (five men, five women) and it seems like everyone I know is in rehearsals right now for something else. If you’re interested in taking part, please forward all inqures to tmc@tmcamp.com.

The kind folks in my writer’s group are going to pitch in and I have a few others lined up . . . but I’ll probably have to read as well (which is somewhat discouraging) and probably just do some selected scenes and episodes.

More news as it develops. Once I get the sixth draft behind me, it’s back to the tea kids novel and rewriting an old story I wrote nine years ago about an undertaker. And lots of submissions to send out this year — surely there are theatres out there interested in doing some of these plays?

I got a stack of books over the holidays — all sorts of great stuff (some new things and a lot of hard-to-find stuff). I’ve been reading Gene Wolfe’s Terry Brooks, are you listening?) and they’re all so bland and uninspired. They lack a central core that is credible, a world that I recognize, a character that I care about, a plot that I understand. They’re too easy, too easily written and too easily interchangeable and therefore dismissed . . . and the writing is lousy.

But not with Wolfe. He’s got a core that’s strong, a world that’s credible, a protagonist that’s emotionally accessible. There’s an underlying culture that sn’t as intricate as Tolkien, but it has enough depth and detail to shwo that Wolfe did some thinking ahead of time. And it’s apparent that he wishes that his world, his story, were real — which is, perhaps, the best test of a piece of fantasy.

And, above all else, he writes very well.

There’s an interesting part of the book, about halfway or three-quarters through, where I get the sense that he set it down for awhile and just let the ideas percolate. It feels like he didn’t know what happens next and, instead of forcing it, he just let it sit and wait. And he wasn’t afraid to let the reader know (through the voice of the protagonist) that this was precisely what he was doing.

As a matter of fact, the whole book feels like he wrote it by peeking over the shoulder of his main character, follwn him around and waiting to see what would happen next. And, because of that, it’s got a great sense of “being in the moment” (as they say in acting class).

Anyways. It’s late. I should go to bed and read for a bit.

If you’re interested in Wolfe, try Powels.com. They’ve got a few things available.

Actually, if you’re looking for a book (any book), you should go to Powells — they’ve replaced Amazon (note that I’m not linking to them) as my favorite online book source.

Goodnight.