The body is weak, but the mind is chillin’. Back from Baltimore at last, I can barely move a muscle, I’m so tired. Some unforgettable moments and late nights of great conversations with brilliant people made this the best Balticon I’ve ever attended. Sharing it with my wife and son made it that much better.

I have only one complaint, and I’ll share it now to get it over with: <begin rant> PLEASE FIX THE DAMN A/C IN THE NEW MEDIA ROOM OR PLEASE GIVE US A BIGGER ROOM NEXT YEAR! SHEEEEESH! </end rant>

Seriously, I sweat buckets in the Chesapeake room this year. If it weren’t for some merciful souls handing out paper plates to fan our corner of the smoldering room during Tee Morris’ and Philippa Ballantine’s big announcement, I would have missed one of those great moments at Balticon! (And BTW, Tee and Pip were fantastic. I can’t say this enough: I love Pip’s voice.)

In all fairness to the designers of the A/C system, it was more an issue of sheer body heat. No A/C system could adequately accommodate the number of human beings that stuffed themselves willingly into that tiny, hot sanctuary of media madness. Solution: get a bigger room, please, I beg of the organizers!

Alright, I said I’d share my complaint and be done with it, so now I’ll get on to some of my other thoughts and impressions of a truly great Memorial Day weekend.

Where to begin? Well, what jumped out at me this year (surprise, surprise) were the cool people I got to spend time with, both in and out of the sessions. Old friendships reaffirmed and new friendships kindled, combined to enlighten and inspire me to create more and better work. More music, more stories. More, more, better, better, that’s what I wanted to do as I hauled out my gear to the car in the humid May afterglow of a truly memorable weekend.

Standout highlight of the convention for me this year? Well, besides participating in the program in some fun sessions (more on that later), it HAD to be the PG Holyfield, Nathan Lowell and Patrick McLean book launch on Saturday night. For me, that was a sublime moment of pure awesome.

Now, I don’t make it a secret that PG Holyfield has been a big influence on my podcasting, and anyone who knows him knows what a talented storyteller and great guy he is. As a fan, I hope for his success. As a friend, I hope for his happiness. It was particularly exciting to see him launch his book, something that has meant so much to him for so long, something that he spent years developing and pouring his heart and time into… all to have that distilled down into one soul-satisfying physical object in his hand. What a great moment by any standard.

Now, the event included two other ridiculously talented writers who also launched books that evening, and so it was a great moment in the New Media family, and we all felt the excitement and — to be blunt — joy, of the event. But then, it got really interesting…

They were each going to read excerpts from their own books, but someone — perhaps one of the authors or someone in the audience — suggested that they take turns reading from each other’s works… not their own. Whoever came up with this spontaneous flash of brilliance made the evening the stand-out session of Balticon for me. And what happened next was magic.

They agreed to take turns reading from one of the other authors’ books, and it was clear this was not planned in advance. These would be cold (as in, unprepared), honest, pure reads from esteemed colleagues, in an intimate audience of friends and fans. The magic started with Nathan Lowell reading a short story from Patrick McLean’s book, and that set the tone for the other readings.

Nathan’s reading was nothing short of brilliant, and Patrick’s story was so clever, pithy and perfectly written, I honestly felt like I was witnessing a live Sci-Fi/Fantasy version of a secret Dead Poets Society gathering. Only the writers weren’t dead. And they weren’t poets. (Although, Patrick’s work might qualify in terms of bang-for-the-buck per word.) But you get the basic idea.

And then a murmur of restrained awe seemed to spread through the room, when we realized no one was recording the event. And this, in the New Media room, where everything is recorded. The unspoken message was loud and clear: this would be a one-off moment in time. Something to etch in your memory. And we better pay attention, ’cause it was gonna be special.

PG, Patrick and Nathan each took turns reading, and the stories came alive in a way that reminded me of my childhood — in a golden-hued memory of a magical campfire evening with a master storyteller.

Damn, it was simply awesome. I love going to conventions in the hope of experiencing just one of those types of moments, and sure enough, it was Saturday night with PG, Patrick and Nathan for me.

Now, Balticon this year was filled with great moments in many different ways. I had the excitement of participating in the program with some panels and presentations. I did a session called “Podcast Production Gorefest” about audio production which I think turned out reasonably well. I also did a reading from another novel I’m working on (insert evil laugh here), which I was pretty damn nervous about, but I think it also went well. I participated on a lively panel with Guest of Honor Tanya Huff and Gary Ehrlich about music in science fiction stories, which is a topic I love.  And I was blown away by joining Mattie Brahen, Kim the Comic Book Goddess and Norm Sherman on an insanely fun songwriting panel.

When the excitement and fun of my own panels were over, I enjoyed other events at Balticon, from great New Media panels and presentations to the film fest, the masquerade, and so forth. That is, if I could make it to the sessions. What happened was that I kept on running into great people in the hallways and lobby and engaging in some great conversations, late into the night.

Highlights include many discussions and run-ins with some amazing writers, podcasters, musicians, costumers, social-media-acquaintances-turned-friends, and I could go on and on. That’s what makes Balticon special for me.

I want to list names, but I swear I’m going to pass out from lack of sleep at any moment, and chances are I’ll miss a couple of names of some wonderful people that I really enjoyed meeting, conversations that made Balticon so memorable this year. Some people I still only know from their social media handles! <sigh> What has become of old social norms? Are we all just physical avatars of our online personas?

The only thing I regret is my lack of stamina to talk with everyone for as long as I would have liked to. There are some loose threads of conversations I’d love to resume one day soon. Conversations about music, favorite writers, publishing ventures, crime scene investigation issues, film noir favorites, dreams/hopes/aspirations, love-hate relationships with movies and directors, life and family conversations, the supportive nature of the podcasting community, things like Second Life and the anthropological implications of the future of social media. Alright, I better stop there.

In the end, time passed too quickly. My wife and son were awesome and we all had a great time. It was filled with a quality of experience that, thanks to some old and new friends, made this year the best Balticon I’ve ever attended. It inspired me and fueled me for a huge upcoming summer of intense work and production as I wrap up all the remaining FETIDUS episodes (woo-hoo!) and a killer score for 95ers. Thank you so much!

And now, for some sleep.

The last couple of weeks have been surreal for me. I’ve been in a funk creatively, wrestling with the demands of “normal” life and trying to balance them with my hard-core creative ambitions, which include, among many projects, finally wrapping up with my long-overdue FETIDUS episodes. It’s been so strange that quite often when I get going on a major creative personal project, working on a big writing project or piece of music, some event happens that alters/delays/postpones/derails/(choose your favorite term) the effort, and I often have to pick up the pieces or dangling threads of my creative dreams, take a deep (deep, deep) breath, and buckle down for another go at it.

Feels like I’ve been “buckling down for another go at it” for the last 15 years.

The only thing that keeps me from literally banging my head against the wall in utter frustration (well, actually, I’ve done that), and succumb to the sublime temptation of resignation, is… well… actually, I don’t really know. I have some theories, but as I’ve written and edited this post, I realize that my theories about this very profound issue sound like half-assed psycho-babble with a dollop of whipped cream on top. So I’ll spare you the painful regurgitation of my pitiful self-analysis.

Instead, I’ll tell a story.

A few weeks ago, I was gearing up yet again for a major creative push into the deepest realms of my imagination, after months of sincere, but sputtering, attempts due to various other interruptions… and then… I got the call. Yes, that kind of call. The kind of call you drop everything for and haul your creative ass back into reality, grab the keys and head out the door.

My poor wife had been injured during a performance, and I needed to come and pick her up prontisimo. Thoughts ran unchecked through my mind… no, don’t let it be one of her legs… she’s a dancer. It’s too important to her, it’s her life. No!

But the call didn’t seem that serious at the time, even though it was, indeed, her leg. On my way to pick her up, I received another phone call, more urgent this time, that her colleagues thought it *might* be much more serious — like a torn Achilles. My heart raced, I couldn’t fathom something so terrible would happen to her… on top of all the other medical issues we’ve experienced together in recent years. A torn Achilles could be career-ending for a dancer, and to be quite frank, I was filled with dread.

Instead of meeting her at the theater as originally planned, they told me to head to the nearest hospital. At that moment, life again took on that surreal quality of a sepia-colored drama, starring the handsome hunk-du-jour (me, but not really, I’m far from it), and the beautiful pop-star-turned-actress-playing-a-beautiful-grad-student-dancer (my wife), and our amazing son, played by himself.

As we went through the very familiar motions of the hospital ER in-take, the nurses’ and doctors’ faces all in a cinematic blur, we confirmed that the Achilles was fortunately NOT torn (whew!), but rather her calf muscle (I don’t remember the name of the specific muscle). We sighed one of those long sighs of relief, knowing that she’d be able to recover and dance again — albeit after at least a few months of healing and physical therapy. It was a “close one” this time, nothing more.

On the drive home, with my wife’s leg all neatly bandaged up with a splint, brand new crutches rattling in the back, I had a “moment.” A Groundhog Day moment.

Those who have seen the hilarious 1993 comedy Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, will know exactly what I’m talking about.

I’d been there before. That exact time, space and even road. It was even raining the same type of rain. Everything seemed like I had been there before, only shuffled around in a twisted tapestry of my memory. Which “drive home” was it this time? The dreadful car accident? The surgery? The torn calf muscle?

That drive home felt like I was Bill Murray in Groundhog Day finally figuring out what was going on.

I found myself muttering under my breath, “This is so strange.” It wasn’t a bitter or ungrateful moment. In fact, I was deeply relieved that my wife’s dreams of dancing weren’t destroyed, because I know how much that means to her — and us. That moment was simply a realization that I was at that “loop point” of my life. Again. The same spot, only Tivo’d to March, 2010.

When we got home, the power was out.

Ahhh. Now I get it, Universe. Spring, rain, trees, power lines, zap. Deep meaning there, right? I almost called a hotel, but resisted the temptation to cave in that easily. Two hours later we had our power back.

So the next week had its ups and downs. We spent a lot of time with each other, and in the non-managing-her-leg-situation time, she helped me organize my efforts for some of my creative projects (she’s a natural organizer, a trait I admire in her). At first we thought her recovery would go quickly. She was hobbling around on crutches, but then the pain got to be too much. Just as I wrapped up my latest devious plans for world domination (version 42.5), her leg pain became intolerable, and she needed to see a doctor right away. Turns out it was indeed a more serious muscle tear than we thought. Another urgent doctor’s visit later, we confirmed the seriousness, but still not like the career-killer a torn Achilles could have been. So we were still grateful, but simultaneously amazed by how disabled she was for the short-term. She was stuck in bed, unable to walk or drive, and barely able to crawl (which she did, to the bathroom, no stopping Mother Nature).

We were both stranded, in a way, in a bizarre limbo land, an alternate reality that was still reality. It takes its subtle toll, emotionally and physically. Adjustments had to be made. “Normal” elements of life had to proceed, whatever that meant. Days blended into each other, just like they had so many times before.

I’ve adapted to these situations now, I’m a veteran. Part of me tunes out by necessity, another part takes a back seat and watches how each hour will progress, like an endless mini-series that’s “kinda good” but “kinda sucks.” Another part is actively engaged in trying to be a good human being, a good husband, a good Dad. Another part restlessly computes and then re-computes my creative plans when we get through all of this. Again.

Little snippets illustrate how this time has been:

One day, our little boy was recruited to help with piles and piles of the laundry that had gotten out of control. He was a good trooper that day, for sure. One batch, I thought he’d fall right into the washing machine. Hilarious, but not really.

Naturally, my wife’s laptop decided to die (a few months out of warranty, dammit!), and she needed her IT department (me) to rescue all her data. Now stranded in bed, she then needed a more powerful computer which I set up in our room so she could edit video for one of her classes. I wore many hats, none of which said, “Writer” or “Musician” that week. Not to mention the backlog of client work I would have to deal with when we got through this.

Now add that up, and it clearly has an immediate affect on an on-the-go little family with lots of things on their collective minds, and lots of projects on their to-do lists. “Normal” life ground to a halt. “Important” things were no longer important. Work stopped. Creative work? Fuhgeddaboudit. I’d been there before. At times I marveled. Wasn’t it just recently that we were in the hospital with a serious life-threatening complication from a medial procedure? Weeks blurred in my mind, and then weeks just catching up with “normal” work. And before that, a serious car accident with health issues we’re still dealing with? And before that… the list goes on.

I think we’re up to 8-9 hospitals now, in not nearly as many years. I should start a blog about hospital ER services! (BTW, I can heartily recommend the ER at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Maryland. They treated us pretty damn well. Nice interior design upstairs in the Express Care area. Good muffins in the lobby. Housekeeping was a little shabby, but overall, a solid A-minus.)

On Monday, my little boy had a presentation to give in class about his favorite dinosaur, the truly awesome Spinosaurus. I had no idea how awesome. We had a diorama, poster and hand-outs to produce, you get the picture. The original plan was that my wife would do most of the project over the weekend so I could try to catch up on work, etc. This time, she couldn’t, due to the miserable leg situation and other things going on. So, I had the joy of building the diorama with him (which really was incredibly fun), but I was amazed when 6-7pm rolled around Sunday evening and we just started to rehearse his presentation. By the time we took care of dinner, prepped my boy for bed, etc., the next time I looked at the clock it was around 9pm and I was exhausted.

I don’t even remember Monday. I think it was Monday night when my little boy complained of sickness, and sure enough he was sick. Tuesday he missed school, was in bed with a fever along side my leg-challenged wife. Wednesday is a blur, and just now I returned from the doctor’s office with a prescription for an antibiotic because my son’s cold turned into a lovely infection.

So right now, my wife — the dancer — is finally back hobbling around on crutches (fortunately, getting a bit better), but now my little boy is in my bed sicker than sick. (He bumps me out of my side of bed when he’s sick, because he is at that age that he needs his Mommy for comfort. I try to sleep within earshot so I can help out in the middle of the night — my wife can’t exactly get up and retrieve things easily, remember the leg? — so I tried pumping up my air mattress the other night. No go. The pump gave out. And it’s a NEW air mattress! Damn quality control!)

All I can say is thank heaven for frozen pizza, good humidifiers, Netflix, Tivo and PS3.

So what’s next? At this moment, I have no idea. Except I will take a deep, deep breath, catch up with work, get back to my plans of conquering the universe, and hope that I don’t see the inside of a doctor’s office or ER for at least a decade. No, how about I just shoot for one year.

Through all this, I have tried to contemplate the oh-so-profound “deeper meaning” of it all. I compared this ongoing mini-drama — this now-predictable cycle of never-ending events — with Groundhog Day.

What the hell am I supposed to learn from this? What is the magical thing I do to break the Groundhog Day cycle? What nagging flaw in my personal, ever-flawed human essence do I need to overcome to wake up that fine morning and realize that I’ve conquered Groundhog Day and mastered the uber-lesson “The Universe” is trying to teach me?

Hogwash.

Apart from the fact that I continuously re-confirm that I am a LOUSY cook, and will probably ALWAYS be a lousy cook (I can burn a frozen pizza with the best of them), perhaps there’s not much more I need to learn from these experiences. Except ONE thing. Maybe this is the LAST thing I need to learn from this ever-looping cycle…

And this last lesson may indeed have a more profound cosmic, metaphysical or spiritual meaning. At least for me. Now before I say what I think this lesson is, I want to clear up one thing: I don’t want this all to seem like I’m complaining. This little recent series of events, while certainly not yet over, is really a tiny blip in our own lives, and it definitely doesn’t register on the Richter Scale of Life or in the grand scheme of things. Except perhaps on a personal level, where lessons learned are lives changed.

Yes, this “moment” I’m experiencing is just a small bookmark, maybe even a tiny footnote or a passing curiosity in one sense. I was even very fortunate to have had some much-appreciated family support to help out, and a huge thank you is merited. So that smoothed out many “sub-moments,” for sure. Having said all that, I also don’t mean to over-minimize this experience. The fact that we’re just a few tiny humans spinning on a small planet circling an average star in a lonely little part of one of billions of galaxies doesn’t diminish the personal value I can extract from this experience. The fact that I’m just writing this in between checking in on my little boy, who fortunately for both of us, just fell asleep, also doesn’t mean the very writing of it is meaningless. On the contrary…. oh, hold that thought…

Maybe my son’s fever will break soon. That will be good. I’ll go check on him again.

I’m back. See what I mean?

Now that I’ve got that cleared up, I return to the lesson of the week for myself.

Maybe what I needed to learn this cycle is that sometimes there is no further lesson that I need to learn. That I need to just get on with it. The profound thing for me to learn this time around is to see this just for what it is. This is just…

Normal life.

But man, how I wish it meant even “more” than that. So how about this? I’ll share a self-gratifying corollary for the hell of it, with the hope, for the sake of hoping, that it’s actually true:

It takes just as much or more to live a good, meaningful and loving life as it does to write truly great books or compose lasting, magnificent pieces of music.

There, I said it.

My heroic bit-wrangling and IT-shamanism for my wife’s computer is my sonnet this week.

My son’s cool Spinosaurus diorama is my sonata.

This week I am Husband. This week I am Dad.

Warm Regards to all who happen across this post,
James Durham

Today is the day, folks! The day that new media changed forever. JC Hutchins has released his groundbreaking Personal Effects: Dark Art novel and it is nothing but a revolutionary scream in the face of that old, tired, worn-out paradigm of old-school media. With this release, and the ridiculously cool trans-media, pseudo-reality audience-participation activity JC has launched with it, he has redefined how stories can be told and experienced.

If you are a new media creator, if you are a new media consumer, if you want to know why I think new media has just taken one thrilling step forward, please do yourself a favor and check out JC Hutchins’ website, and make sure you look at all of the Personal Effects content and related brilliance (from the Suicide Girls to the artifacts to the Brinkvale site to the promos, to the YouTube clips to the Twitter avatar to the audio promos… it’s all-out WAR on the status quo of new media). And then take a moment to buy an awesome piece of history that will chill you to the bone.

Now you can see why I’m honored that he accepted my invitation to be an evil guest judge as part of the FETIDUS Great Evil Laugh Contest! Thank you, JC, and congratulations on your amazing launch! May you rise to the top of the charts and keep pushing the bleeding edge of new media!

Woo-Hoo! I just found out today that FETIDUS hit page 5 of the featured podcasts in iTunes Literature! Feels good to be in such great company! The undead are cheering!

Now, you might think this is a silly thing to celebrate, but the truth is, it gives me a great excuse to say THANK YOU to everyone who has joined with Art Blanchard and entered the fetid alleys of Washington DC of 2034, to set some things right and help the innocently damned! Each month, our audience has been growing — we’ve had thousands of downloads, and we’ve only just begun! Six episodes in, and the best is yet to come!

Thank you also to the great cast — you’ve done a fantastic job! I encourage all our listeners to go and support their work! Check out the FETIDUS cast page and please take the time to check out the talented people involved with FETIDUS!

For those that haven’t subscribed yet, please do so! You can subscribe in iTunes by searching for “FETIDUS” in the iTunes store, or try clicking here on this link.

Thank you all again, and I can’t wait to bring you Episode 7!

Best,
James

I was thrilled to have an interview about FETIDUS with the great team of Shannon and Matt over at Seattle-Geekly last week! They had a special zombie episode and I was honored they’d call me and ask about my take on zombies, among other things, to add to their massive zombie special. Their podcast continues to surprise me with how much content they cover, and they managed to put quite a bit of our lengthy conversation and some excerpts of my music in there! Thanks, Shannon and Matt! In our discussion, I geekishly wax verbose on the five types of zombies in the FETIDUS universe, as well as some of my influences and thinking processes as I developed FETIDUS. Check out the interview in Seattle-Geekly episode 12! Click here for the show notes and click here for the huge MP3 file, or you can subscribe to Seattle-Geekly in iTunes.

Welcome to my personal website! I hope you come back often and enjoy the content, old and new, that I will be posting here in the coming months. I’ll also be updating you about some of my exciting personal and commercial projects, such as FETIDUS, Arothea, and my score of the feature-length indie film, 95ers.

I decided the time had come to overhaul this site, and add proper blogging and RSS features, along with an expanded collection of content and topics that I’ll be covering… including the dreaded and dangerous written form known as commentary. It could get controversial here in the coming months.

This is a quiet “soft” re-launch, with much more content on the way. Please subscribe for updates and you won’t miss a thing, including the slow-but-sure posting of some of my favorite previous content and music, including songs from Aeolian May – Port of Embarkation.

In the meatime, as this website is built up, please don’t miss out on FETIDUS: The Damned Heir… Episode 6 is around the corner!

Best,
James

The website is undergoing massive, earth-shaking changes. I’m currently updating the website using a new back-end system and refreshing the design. Please check back over the next several days (and weeks, and months) as I put the pieces together and add old and new content! It may be a little sparse at first, but eventually, this website will be overflowing with content.

In the meantime, please check out my FETIDUS project at www.fetidus.org!

Best, James