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My rationale has always been that since my name is “Peter”, “Pete” is just a nickname, regardless of how it is spelled, and so I am justified in spelling it any way I want.

When I was 13 or so, I wanted to encourage people to call me “Pete” instead of “Peter”. I also wanted a fun way to sign my art (I was an aspiring artist at the time). I had an old issue of Playboy’s Playmate Review from 1984 (actually, it was more or less current at the time) that I had read a million times. Porn was scarcer back then. Anyway, Miss April, Lesa Ann Pedriana, said in that issue that she was christened “Lisa”, but that, “I wanted to make it different, so I just stopped dotting the i.”

My kid’s brain thought that was kind of cool, finding a new way to spell your name without changing it aurally, so I experimented with “Peet” (no good, had ‘pee’ in it), “Peit” (could be pronounced wrong), “Pita” (too common a word) etc.

Eventually I settled on “Peat”, and started signing all my paintings, drawings, and stories that way, which got my friends using it, and it stuck. Even my parents started spelling it that way. At this point, I think only my family and maybe 2 other people I am still in touch with knew me before the switch.

I made a decision to stick to “Peter” at work (mainly because I was sick of explaining it), but one way or another, people catch wind of the other spelling and start using it. Like it or not, I am stuck with it unless I want to start being a dick to everyone who does, and I don’t.

And after 21 years, when people spell it “Pete” it looks weird to me. It doesn’t feel like it’s my name.

Posted on June 3, 2007 at 5:30 pm by PeatB
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So, 8 days ago, my agent sent out 10 copies of my manuscript to the 10 major publishers that would be interested in a work of fantasy. Publishers like Del Rey, Roc, and Tor. Publishers who put out all the books I loved so much as a kid. I went down the list, and every one of them had authors I love; authors that shaped who I am and how I write. There wasn’t a one I wouldn’t be proud to sign with.

It was a big deal. With the exception of courting my agent, I have never submitted anything for professional publication. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Not a one.

It was both gratifying and daunting to start right in the big leagues, but it’s really the only option. Self-publish? Not a chance. With a few rare exceptions, that is a realm of vanity. There are small publishers, but none of the legit ones (the ones that aren’t just fronts for vanity publishing) are going to pay enough to help me fulfill my dream of writing full time, or get my work out to a wide audience.

Of course, I realize that while getting an agent probably brought my chances of publication from 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 10, the odds are still stacked against me. I knew that going in, and was prepared for it. After all, what published writer is without his rejection stories? They all have ’em, even the greats. Some have stacks of rejection letters. Some have papered their walls with them.

Today, I lost my rejection virginity. Popped my rejection cherry. Someone doesn’t love me.

I had just spent my lunch hour in Bryant Park writing the first chapter in the sequel to The Painted Man on my Ipaq Pocket PC, and was really pleased with the results. It was a beautiful day, and I returned to work feeling refreshed and hopeful for my theoretical future as a writer.

Then I got back to my desk and found an e-mail from my agent entitled “Rejection the First”.

The forwarded letter said how interesting the setting I had created was, dark and original, but that my writing style didn’t jive with the new line they were putting out. They said the novel looked really special, and wished it the best, but it wasn’t for them.

As rejection letters go, it’s not so bad. But a glowing rejection is still a rejection.

I’m not taking it hard. It feels more like a rite of passage.

Posted on May 10, 2007 at 5:09 am by PeatB
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So, on Friday, the sleep clinic called me to tell me I have apnea. Sleep Apnea is defined by 5 or more neurological episodes during sleep that prevent you from breathing properly (10 or more seconds between breaths) and wake you back up. Because of this, you spend less time in the deepest, most restful kind of sleep, leaving you overtired physically, and mentally unrested.

I had 15 episodes in the night they monitored me, which is defined as mild apnea. Moderate would have been 20 or more. Serious apnea can kill you.

While this whole thing started because my wife says I snore, apparently snoring doesn’t really have a lot to do with it. That is a popular misconception. It can be a symptom, but not necessarily. Plenty of snoreless people still have apnea.

I have a number of treatment options, but none are very reliable. One exciting option is to wear a Darth Vader Mask (see left) while sleeping every night for the rest of my life. Wouldn’t that be fun? At 34, I can look forward to a good 50 years of that shit, feeling like I am in a hospital with an incurable illness every night.

That is SO not going to happen.

I can also elect to get surgery, but elective surgery creeps me out, and it isn’t even a guaranteed cure. Essentially, I would be getting a nose job, but to ACTUALLY fix a deviated septum, as opposed to using it as an excuse to get a cosmetic nose job in time for prom pictures, like half the girls I went to high school with.

Another option is to try some hippie self-help breathing regimen, which might be an option if everything about the website didn’t scream “This is a scam!”

Some drugs, like the nasocort spray, may help (no guarantees), but they are steriodal, and would have to wait until after Dani gets pregnant, on the off chance that it would make us produce some kind of mutant spawn.

Or, like with my (still painful) spinal syrinx, I can just learn to suck it up. I’ve woken up tired and achey every morning I can remember, so why should I have any expectation or hope for that to change?

I hate that every time I actually feel bad enough to go to a doctor, they make me pay a fortune for testing only to find that I have some condition that has no reliable treatment. I should just go back to not going to the doctor. Life was so much simpler then.

Bah.

Posted on April 15, 2007 at 12:08 pm by PeatB
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So, the wife says I snore sometimes, and it keeps her up. She’s been pushing me for a while to see a doctor about it, but I haven’t had a lot of luck with doctors lately (see last years entries for the full story on my phantom pain), and wasn’t terribly eager. Still, I want to be a good husband, and I don’t want to be responsible for her not sleeping.

In my defense, EVERYTHING wakes her up. Baby crying upstairs, car alarm, cats, the heater hissing, crickets, whatever. She NEVER sleeps properly.

Apparently, the snoring is somewhat new. An ex-girlfriend heard about this, and said, “Since when do you snore?”

“Don’t know,” I replied, “I never stayed awake to find out.”

Anyway, I went to an ENT, who stuck a camera up my nose and down into my throat (seriously). He said, “You’ve got one heckuva deviated septum there, but I don’t see any major blockage. You might have Sleep Apnea. We’ll have to do some further testing. I want you to get a CT Scan, and then go for an overnight sleep test.”

“Uh, what?” I asked.

“You just go to a sleep clinic and they hook you up to a computer that monitors your sleep patterns,” he said.

Er…

So he writes a prescription and a couple of days later I get a call from Clinilabs to make an appointment. Of course, they called my home number, even though I made it clear my cell was the preferred mode of contact, but that’s par for the course. Doctor’s offices either think everyone has nothing better to do than be home all day; either that or they would rather just leave a message and so call the number you are least likely to answer during business hours.

In the meantime, I find out that my uncle and cousin both had surgery to correct potentially life-threatening sleep apnea, so it’s not THAT far-fetched. I figured I should go along with things. I AM tired all the time, and never feel like I am rested.

So I made the appointment, and went in on Wednesday for Polysomnography. Wisely, I took a vacation day on Thursday. I had to kill time in the city until my 9pm appointment. A nice technician escorted me into the lab, which is really just 20 or so little bedrooms and one control room with a bunch of monitors and whatnot.

They made me fill out like 50 pages of forms with tons of questions like “What is your ritual before bed?” “How much caffeine do you drink each day?” “Do you smoke?” “What time do you go to bed?” “What time do you get up?” “How many times do you wake up in an average night?” “For how long each time?” Etc.

After that, I changed into sweats to sleep in, and still had time to kill, so I sat in my mini-hotel room and read X-Men: Deadly Genesis. It was meh.

Finally, the girl comes in and says “Okay! It’s time to get you hooked up!”

Polysomnography is a profoundly unpleasant experience, as you can see from the (not me) picture. They glue 29 (I counted) electrodes to you; on your legs, into the hair atop your head, on your chest, your face, etc. You wear a finger cap thing to monitor your pulse, and they put tight straps around your chest and stomach to monitor your breathing. Tubes go in your nose to measure nasal air flow, and another contraption goes over your mouth.

Then they expect you to sleep.

At one point, when they were shoving the tubes in my nose, I started laughing.

“What?” the technician asked.

“This has officially gotten ludicrous,” I said. “How can you possibly expect me to sleep like this?”

“Everyone says that,” she said, “and everyone sleeps. You won’t be able to help it. You’ll be lying in a dark room late at night with the lights out.”

I had my doubts, but whatever. I wasn’t going to back out at that point. So around 11:30 she tucks me in, and says “the intercom will be on all night; you don’t have to hit the button. If you need anything, just speak. We’ll also be monitoring you on the video camera.”

She turned out the light and left. I laid there for a while, feeling like I was in A Clockwork Orange. The wires were all gathered together and attached to a box next to me. I had maybe 18 inches of play, whcih meant I could roll over once, but not twice. Even when I did roll over (I normally sleep on my stomach), all the wires on my FUCKING FACE made it pretty hard to get comfortable.

I did sleep, but it was a restless sleep filled with dreams of being a lab rat. I felt like I was at the Weapon X project that made Wolverine, or that I had cancer or was in a car wreck. I kept waking up feeling frantic and wanting to yank off all the wires and get the fuck out of there. One time a technician came in to adjust my straps and scared the crap out of me. Another time, I would be rolling around trying to get comfortable and a voice came on the intercom saying “Is everything all right?”

Creeped me the fuck out until I remembered they were also watching me on the video camera. I hoped I didn’t get morning wood.

Around 5am, I gave up on trying to sleep anymore, and just shifted uncomfortably for an hour. At 6, she came in, flipped on the lights, and said “Sleep study’s over! Sit in the chair and I’ll detach you.”

You know what’s no fun? Being dead-ass tired and getting pulled abruptly from bed to have someone you don’t know start pulling glue out of the hair all over your body at 6 fucking am.

After that, still 70% alseep, I had to fill out a bunch of forms on what my night’s sleep was like, how typical it was, etc.

Typical? Were they fucking kidding?

By 6:20, I was on my way home. Wednesday was nice and warm, but the temperature had dropped considerably, and I wasn’t dressed for it. Cold and tired, I made my way back to the subway.

I’ll say one thing. The F train may be a misery during the business day and at night, but at 6:30am, Brooklyn bound, it is a pleasure. Plenty of seats, and no dilly-dally at the stops, because almost no one is getting on. I was home by 7:15.

I squandered Thursday, but that is my right. I didn’t go back to sleep, because I thought it would mean I couldn’t sleep that night, so I just worked on the sequel to my book, watched Lost, looked at internet porn, etc. Good times.

No results yet from the study, so don’t ask. The people there were just technicians. A real doctor needs to check the results and then give them to my ENT. I probably won’t know shit for at least a week.

Posted on April 7, 2007 at 10:02 am by PeatB
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Recently, there has been a pretty hefty shifting in the licensing agreements of the estate of Robert E. Howard, the depression-era pulp author most famous for his character Conan the Barbarian, and, to a lesser extent, Red Sonja.

Howard committed suicide in the midst of the depression and never saw the huge fame his characters would come to. He died penniless after begging Weird Tales, the magazine that had published most of his work, to pay him the money they owed him.

I have a few of Howard’s books, but I am sad to say they are fairly recent acquisitions, and still on my reading pile. I have a renewed interest in getting to them, thoush, so they will likely move up from the bottom of the pile. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a love of Howard’s characters. Long before Hollywood got their mitts on them, Conan and Red Sonja were licensed by Marvel comics, and wildly popular. Conan helped put Marvel on the map.

But for some reason or another, both of these characters have had their rights sold to other publishers in the last few years. Conan has come into the possession of Dark Horse Comics, famous for, among other things, Frank Miller’s work 300 (which I haven’t seen yet, so shush), and Sin City. Writing of Conan was taken over by one of my favorite writers, Kurt Busiek, and the book was painted by Cary Nord in a kind of watercolor-style that got me reading Conan again after something close to 20 years.

Red Sonja fell to Dynamite Entertainment, who gave writing over to Michael Avon Oeming, whose art I loved from Powers. Art was taken over by Mel Rubi, who fucking ROCKS, even if he doesn’t have a Wikipedia entry.

Reading these books now has awakened my love of sword and sorcery comics, and I’ve started buying the trade paperback collections of the old Marvel runs of Conan and Sonja that the new publishers have put out (with fancy new computer coloring on Conan!).

It’s been an eye opener, particularly with the Conan books, of which there are 11 trades out (all of which I now have, thanks to a very lucrative birthday and some generous friends) collecting something like the first 100 isues. The book started in 1970, three years before I was born, and probably 15 years before I would start buying it around issue 160 or so.

Author Roy Thomas, who wrote the first 200 issues of the book, give or take, writes long afterwords to each trade, reflecting on each issue and its origins. Most of the original stories were adapted from Robert E. Howards’s stories, combining his half-dozen or so heroes into the Conan we know. When that well ran dry, he licensed plots from other sword and sorcery writers, as well. I don’t blame him. The guy was editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics for a good chunk of that time, and writing other comics to boot. He was busy, and still had to compress and adapt the stories into the comic format and write all the boxes and balloons.

In it, he talks about how he originally wanted the top-rated Marvel artist at the time, John Buscema, to draw the book, but after having to pay $150 an issue to Howard’s estate, Buscema was too pricy. Instead, he went cheap, and got stuck with a so-so artist, Barry Smith.

I was a little annoyed at first, because when I read Conan, Buscema was doing the art, and it is that style I most associate with the barbarian. I was fascinated by the history lesson, though, because I knew that Barry Smith would one day become Barry Windsor-Smith, who is a famous and amazingly talented comic artist.

Smith’s early work was a hackish imitation of Jack Kirby, who was the comic art icon of the time. I give props to Kirby for pioneering much of the art style that drives comics to this day, but personally, I don’t really dig his stuff.

Sacrilege, I know.

Anyway, over a few short issues, Smith’s own style develops, and it is an amazing thing to see. By the time he stopped drawing Conan, the apprentice had become the master. I was actually sorry when Buscema took over.

But I quickly got over it. Buscema, while not as detailed and inventive as Smith, is the artist whose style really represents Conan in my mind, and it made me feel like a kid again.

What’s interesting about John Buscema’s work, though, is that his penciling was very loose, leaving a lot of work for his inker. I get the impression that he left out a lot of backgrounds, and probably left several lines defining the characters that the inker needed to solidify while adding in all the depth and shading that bring out the art.

Inkers never get proper cred. I’ve always said it. That job is fucking hard, and thankless. The penciler almost always gets full art credit; the inker might as well be the letterer (another hard and thankless job).

One time, The Pickytarian and I went to the Museum of Cartoon art, where John Byrne and Terry Austin were answering questions. Terry was John’s inker on his X-Men run, which was what he was most famous for at the time. No one had any questions for Terry, and it made me feel bad. So I raised my hand and asked him, “Does it bother you that John gets billing as the ‘artist’ on the book, while you are just credited as ‘inker’?” This was something John Byrne always did that pissed me off.

Well, apparently I had picked at a raw wound, because Terry went on a rant about giving credit where credit is due. Byrne turned bright red, and had no choice but to publicly agree with everything Terry said. Good times.

But even knowing all this, as I did from my experience reading, penciling, and inking comics as a kid, I was still stunned at the difference an inker can make while reading these old Conan books.

Inkers were a rotating bunch in those days, and while several were names I recognized from decades of Marvel service, like John’s less-famous brother Sal Buscema, Tom Palmer, and Frank Springer, others were just listed as “C. Bunkers” which stood for “Crusty Bunkers”, the nickname Buscema gave to the team of young hungry art apprentices he had in his studio to ink his work. There were even a few issues John Bucscema inked himself, because he felt the inkers were not staying loyal to his style.

Thus, from issue to issue, there are MASSIVE differences in the art. Backgrounds vary from huge detail to a few spartan lines. Tom Palmer used a thick brush for most of his work (which I hate), whereas Frank Springer used a pen that seemed like it had run dry three panels ago, producing a thin, sketchy line (also crappy IMHO). Sometimes faces and muscles have tons of rendering lines. Other times they just have the black “holding lines” around the perimeter. Sometimes the panels look flat and two dimensional, and others they sprawl out into the horizon so that you feel you can reach right out into them. If you didn’t know it was all the same penciler throughout, you would never guess it.

Mad props to all the great inkers out there. We owe you a debt. It ain’t just tracing.

Posted on March 10, 2007 at 10:16 am by PeatB
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