jump without looking

or, i can sing the loudest song tonight

Driving for twelve hours on Wednesday and trying to not fall asleep at the wheel, I put on Agitator and listened to this episode because I loves me some Brian Allen Carr, but I was struck by how the podcast began.

Just this haunting performance by Cocco from a very strange and unpleasant sounding movie. The Agitator boys do cool stuff with the format. I don’t typically listen to podcasts so maybe other people are fucking with the format in similar ways, but I dig what they do when they do what they do.

Well, of course, this triggered a minor obsession with me and now I’m listening to this on repeat and writing a cyberpunk novel because Kelby Losack and J David Osborne are both writing cyberpunk novels and they’re releasing them on December 1st, which is now my goal as well.

You mathematicians out there might think that that’s not enough time, but it shouldn’t be a problem, assuming I don’t have any surprises come my way.

Given that this has been a year of unpleasant surprises, the odds may not be in my favor. But I’m giving it a go anyway.

Because I’m being a big weirdo about it, I’m writing it live in google docs, so if you want to be a creepy voyeur about it, you can watch me write this strange little novel as I’m writing it. I’ll probably be writing in there as soon as this post goes live so you may find me tinkering around in there.

I don’t have a cover yet, obviously, but I’ll try to rustle one up in the next few weeks. The novel’s called Howl for now. We’ll see if that title makes any sense once I’ve written the rest of this.

But I’m just jumping in feet first into the deep end without a plan or direction, so maybe we’ll discover where I’m heading together, or maybe this will all burn out in a few days or weeks, but I’m having a fun time messing around in a very unusual kind of cyberpunk.

I think I’ve mentioned before that I don’t like cyberpunk. This remains true, but I’ve always wanted to give it a shot because my hubris knows no bounds. But after spending every week of October on the road and in airports, I think I’m just itching to get on a keyboard and groove.

Call it a compulsion. Addiction.

There are far worse ones to have.

As I’ve said before: writing is fun. It should be fun. If you’re not having fun, just quit. No one will care or notice. But I intend to continue having fun doing it.

And so you can join me, or not, while I write this strange little monster into existence.

Howl.

Wolf.