Sorry it’s been so long since my last update. While life is always hectic, things have been especially so over the last few months. I’ll give you the short version, but let me start with some mental_floss linkage…

5 Alternative World Cup Tournaments: This was posted the Monday after the 2010 World Cup ended. My editor and I both thought it might be good timing as a sort of exhale from World Cup fever. Apparently we were way off base, because the story was probably my worst flop yet. It registered a whopping two comments, one of which was “You forgot about…”. I think the most frustrating part was that I remember staying up until the crack of dawn that Monday morning to make sure I got it done on time to still be relevant. However, when it hit, I found out just how irrelevant it really was.

12 Essential Facts About the Folks Who Race Horses: This was a reprint on Neatorama from my last mental_floss Magazine article. It’s always nice to be reprinted by the fine folks over there.

The Ultimate Superfans: Tribute Bands That Really Rock: This was such a fun one to write. And it wound up being a fairly nice hit, garnering plenty of good comments from readers. I even sort of became friends with some of the guys from Rad Bromance, an all-male Lady Gaga cover band, as I was the first “big” media outlet to cover them. They’re a cool group and I wish them the best in the years to come.

7 Bits of Movie Magic That Disappeared: Much to my surprise, a story I wrote back in June wound up on CNN.com on August 8. I didn’t even know it was on the radar until my editor sent me the notification that it was online. I remember it was a nice way to end the weekend.

Public Transportation is for the Birds (And Dogs and Goats): Now this was a fun one to write! It was inspired by an article on the stray dogs that use the subways of Moscow to get around the city, but it just expanded from there to some really fun stories of animals riding buses, subway cars, and trains. It didn’t take the internet by storm, but it was such a fun one for me to work on that I’m ok with that.

The Stories Behind 8 Back-to-School Essentials: I remember when I was researching this story, I dug through mentalfloss.com for at least 30 minutes to make sure it hadn’t been done before. I just couldn’t believe someone hadn’t thought of it already. Admittedly, my initial thought was to do office supplies (Post-It Notes, fax machines, etc.), but it was my editor who finely-tuned it to school supplies to fit in with the week most students were coming back from summer vacation. The narrowing down was a good thing, because the story has been very popular, reaching #2 on mentalfloss.com for the week. I’m still getting the occasional comment notification almost a week later.

That about wraps up my mental_floss news for now. Some exciting stories, a few flops, and a few “meh”. But that’s the way it goes online. That’s something I have to often remind myself of, but it is such a valuable thing to learn if you’re going to stay in this business.

As for the rest of my life, well, frankly, it’s a wet, soggy mess. Since late July, we have been battling a water leak coming from the condo upstairs. This leak has been an occasional problem since we bought the condo back in 2006, but it always went away after a day or two, would stay dry for a few weeks, and then rear its ugly head again for a day or two, then go away again. So it was really hard to nail down to any particular cause. Back then it wasn’t really creating any major problems – we’d put a bucket under the leak in the basement to catch what little dripped out and we’d be fine.

But Summer 2010 has been different. It’s been so stinking hot here in lovely Missouri that our upstairs neighbors have had their air conditioning running constantly. This has helped us pinpoint the source of the leak, but it’s also meant a steady of stream of water droplets cascading down the inside of our bedroom closet and into our basement. Now, instead of a day or two here and there, it’s been more and more water every hour of every day, going on since July.

For potentially legal reasons, I don’t want to describe, in my unprofessional opinion, what type of damage we’re looking at here, but know that it is severe. When repairs are finally done, there’s a very good chance we’ll be moving out of our condo during that time since it will be quite uninhabitable. We’re not looking forward to the massive inconvenience this will be, but we’ll do what we have to do to get the problem fixed and our condo repaired. Still, just the prospect of packing things up, moving them to storage, and then living either in a hotel or at a relative’s house for a few weeks or a month, is not a fun one by any means. It has been causing a lot of stress on my wife and me and we haven’t even started doing the actual packing yet. I can’t even imagine what life will be like during that time, though I hope to blog about it throughout to give you some idea of the hell our lives will become.

Well, I really don’t have much more to say at the moment. I’m getting pretty tired from a full week of mental_floss, my day job, and stressing out about the leak, that I should probably hit the sack pretty soon. Maybe dreaming for a few hours will help me adequately escape reality for long enough to temporarily forget.

Until next time, folks, thanks for reading!

I have other things to update my three readers about, but for right now, please give me a moment to just sort of sulk, if you will.

Recently, I applied for two jobs at my current employer. As if to punctuate my schizophrenic resume, I applied for a job as a GIS Technician and another as a Techinal Writer.

You might ask why I applied for other positions and the answer is simple – I’m off my career path.  For about the last 18 months, I have been one of three, and then later one of two, primary contacts to support our outage management software. To know our outage software requires zero knowledge of GIS.  I fought tooth and nail to land a GIS job at the City of O’Fallon, and now I have been away from GIS for about half as long as I was ever in GIS. I’ve lost track and I’d like to get back on.

But what about the writing job? Well, if I can’t make GIS work, why not try to segue my writing for mental_floss into something new, ya know?  I’d love to take my career in that direction, so if I’m going to get off the GIS track, I’d at least like it to be towards something I enjoy.

The thing is, my co-worker that also supports our outage software is himself a writer. More specifically, a tech writer who used to work in the department I was applying to work in. He was forced to change departments years ago after a corporate shuffle took place, so he left under good terms with the department head and employees.  So since he left when he didn’t really want to in the first place, of course he applied for this latest tech writing position, just as I did.

Today it was announced that he had received the job. I wasn’t surprised whatsoever – logically it makes perfect sense for that department as he can simply step into the role without much fuss, plus he’s a good writer, so it’s a total win-win for them. I knew all along, honestly, that he would get the job.  That’s not the part that necessarily bums me out.

The part that sucks is that now I am the only person in my department who will be full-time outage management support. This means I have to take on the support calls, all the training, all the conference calls, and all the meetings by myself…for a job I no longer wanted to do so much that I tried to get out twice.

And because I’m now suddenly the go-to guy, that means I’m automatically taken out of the running for the GIS job.  I mean, it makes sense, of course, because the department can’t be left without someone to support the software, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t suck any less.

Long story short, I lost two jobs today at the same company. How’s that for impressive? I wonder if I can put that down as a skill on my resume? Don’t get me wrong, folks – I’m thankful that I have a job. And I’m going to do my best after I’m thrown to the wolves once my soon-to-be-former co-worker has officially made the move to the other department. But at the same time…damn.

So now my options are: Stay where I am and accept the fact that I’m probably stuck in this role for the next year or two until I find someone to replace me so I can transfer to another department; or find another job outside the company. Neither are especially appealing to me tonight. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll feel differently, but for tonight, after this just happened, I’m pretty well down in the dumps. I’ve found myself in some dead-end jobs before, but never have I been so utterly pigeon-holed as this; absolutely stuck between a rock and a hard place. 

But for right now, all I can do is accept it and move on. Unfortunately, I’m not independently wealthy, so I have to have a job. Nor do I have the background, skillset, experience, and the personal contacts to just be able to find a new, better job tomorrow in a field I want to be in. I’m just a working stiff who has to do what he has to do.

Maybe someday I’ll get my career back on the GIS track. Or maybe I’ll find a whole new track to lay with my writing experience. Who knows what the future brings? But at the very least I can tell people I lost two jobs on the same day at the same company. That seems like a rather fun topic for a cocktail party, huh?

No? No, it doesn’t? Hmmm…well, then I guess it just plain sucks.

I won’t lie – I’ve been avoiding Jules Verne’s classic tale of a giant beast under the sea. I’ve started it a few times and just haven’t been able to get into it. But I’m doing some traveling for work this week, so I’ll be sitting in airports and hotel rooms, giving me a little downtime to get some reading done. So I thought I’d tackle 20,000 Leagues again. Maybe I just need to be isolated with few other entertainment options available to break through the wall and get to the meat of the story. Never underestimate the power of boredom…

Whew! It’s been a while…

Honestly, not much has been going on, other than a few more mental_floss posts to share. So let’s get to it!

Hollywood Lost & Found: 7 Stolen Movie Props was a nice little hit on the site and a really fun one to write. It received a ton of comments and wound up ranking #1 on mentalfloss.com’s Top 10 stories of the week. It didn’t get picked up by any major sites or anything, but I was still happy to see it bring in some hits for mental_floss.

The Amazing Stories of 6 Sudden Savants was another solid hit for me, ranking #5 on the Top 10 for the week.

You’ll probably also notice on that last link that I barely scratched the Top 10 with Road Trip! 6 Incredible Cross-Country Journeys. I was really disappointed with this one’s performance. It was a lot of fun to research and write and I thought it was just quirky enough for people to retweet or send in an email to their officemates. However, it ran late in the day before the big July 4th weekend. I hoped it would have legs to last through the holiday, but, alas, it died on the vine. It received the lowest number of comments I’ve received yet, I think, and most of them were “You should have mentioned this…” So, disappointing, but, what’re ya gonna do?

I just found out moments ago that I have two stories in the Top 12 of 2010 (so far). I just hope the second part of 2010 is as good to me as the first. We’ll find out…

A man dies. The evidence points to suicide, but his distraught daughter refuses to accept the official conclusion. So she hires private dick Mike Sheppard of New Orleans to investigate. With no money, no hope, and all expenses paid, Mike has little choice but to hop the next flight…to Mars.

In Red Planet Noir, the debut novel from writer D.B. Grady, all the hard-boiled elements are there – a femme fatale, a down-on-his-luck private dick, burly henchmen, bartender informants, corrupt police, powerful mobsters, and, of course, murder most foul. But all of these characters live on Mars beneath domed cities, scurrying around in tunnels under the red soil, and even on the asteroid mining colonies out beyond the Martian atmosphere, giving the book a twist that makes noir fun.

Most people are going to draw comparisons of the book to the film Blade Runner, which is often considered a definitive work in the sci-fi noir genre. However, with its flying cars and more-human-than-human robots, Blade Runner leans to the fantastic, whereas Red Planet Noir stays grounded in the mid-20th Century with technology, slang, and characters that feel old, worn down, and past their prime. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of sci-fi elements in Red Planet – android cab drivers, datapads instead of filing cabinets, rickety spaceships, and planet terraforming, just to name a few – but they’re not at the heart of the story; they play a more peripheral role. The approach works, though, as private eye Sheppard doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would go in for too many bells and whistles, anyway. He’s definitely old school and you get the feeling that, even though his life has gone to hell, he almost prefers it that way to keep him grounded. Besides, I like the idea that, in 2075, people still call cigarettes “nails” and that most hand cannons spit lead instead of laser beams.

But outdated slang and downtrodden protagonists do not a hard-boiled tale make. For any noir story to work, it all comes down to characters. Plot is secondary as long as you have good, multi-layered characters, preferably spewing witty dialog whenever possible. Those words have to be quick, snappy, clever, and telling of the character saying the lines. In Red Planet Noir, the dialog is spot-on. Sheppard’s words do their job by making you feel like he’s the smartest guy in the room, even if he’s clueless as to what’s really going on. Retired revolutionary cum sidekick, O.W. Lime, who really is one of the smartest guys in the room, gets off plenty of his own zingers, as well. There were more than a few times when I actually laughed out loud at a quip this unlikely duo threw back at a henchmen or a dame. It really helped build their characters and made them someone we could root for – an absolute essential in any mystery novel.

Another key aspect, of course, is the plot, which needs a few twists, turns, and red herrings to keep you interested. There are a lot of them here, told in an efficient manner that doesn’t take much time to meander. That being said, its not so mechanical or sparse as to be little more than a series of events designed to move the plot forward. For example, near the middle of the book, we break away for a handful of pages to learn the history of the asteroid belt mining operation. Of course we learn how Lime fits into the bigger puzzle that is the Mars political climate, but its real purpose is to build upon the world that Grady has created into something real and substantial. It’s this attention to the peripheral that shows this is more than just pulp sci-fi fantasy with an old-timey hook.

That’s not to say the book is perfect. There are a few instances where a seemingly unimportant character, who is only briefly mentioned earlier in the book, comes back to sweep our heroes out of danger. However, the deus ex machina is not an uncommon trait for noir, either, so old fans of the genre might not bat an eye at this. But for only casual noir readers, it might be a bit jarring and will probably require digging through earlier chapters to determine just who this savior is. That being said, a few obscure characters being more important than they seemed at first glance is not always a bad thing. It’s just a shame we don’t get to know them even a little bit better before they make their sudden reappearance. This won’t ruin your enjoyment of the book, but could be seen as a misstep in an otherwise well-rounded story.

Red Planet Noir is a very fun read. It doesn’t necessarily break new ground in either the mystery or science fiction genres, but you can tell that isn’t the author’s intention. There are no greater truths revealed about the nature of mankind and his place in the universe, nor are there any deep social messages that we should take away about the state of the world today. The story is simply a joyride through the genres, touching upon what makes them both so gratifying to fans. For an entertaining read, you can’t ask for anything more.

Pick up Red Planet Noir from Amazon, available in paperback or for the Kindle

Disclaimer: I did not pay for my copy of Red Planet Noir. I won it through a random drawing at the website of Adrienne Crezo, a mutual friend of mine and the author’s.